New Release Books by Stephen Baxter

What would happen to the world if the sun went out? New epic sci-fi from Stephen Baxter, the award-winning author whose credits include co-authorship of the Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett. By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has managed to overcome a series of catastrophic events and maintain some sense of stability. Space exploration has begun again. Science has led the way. But then one day, the sun goes out. Solar panels are useless, and the world begins to freeze Earth begins to fall out of its orbit. The end is nigh. Someone has sent us a sign.

In 2145AD John Hackett's adventure is just beginning. In Year 30, Mela's story is coming to a close. Hackett, in his trusty ship the Perseus, is not just a space traveller - beginning his travels with an expedition to Neptune and back - but, thanks to the time-dilation effect, a time traveller as well. His new mission will take him to Andromeda, to get a close-up look at the constellation which will eventually crash into the Milky Way, and give humanity a heads-up about the challenges which are coming. A mission which will take him five million years to complete. Not only is Hackett exploring unknown space, but he will return to a vastly different time. Mela's world is coming to an end. Erosion is eating away at the edges of every landmass - first at a rate of ten metres a year, but fast accelerating, displacing people and animals as the rising Tide destroys everything in its path. Putting more and more pressure on the people - and resources - which remain. She and her people have always known that this long-predicted end to their home, one of the Thousand Earths, is coming - but that makes their fight to survive, to protect each other, no less desperate . . . and no less doomed. A beautiful, page-turning story which interweaves the tale of these two characters, separated by both space and time, in a hopeful exploration of humanities' future, this is Stephen Baxter at his best.

It is the dawn of the twentieth century. Following the Martians' failed invasion of Earth, the British Empire has seized their technology and unlocked its secrets for themselves. It is a Golden Age of discovery, adventure, culture, invention—and of domination, and rebellion. Scarlet Traces reveals a world of ant-headed nightmares; vacuum salesmen; war machines; deadly secrets; clockwork marvels; and Sherlock Holmes, T. S. Eliot and Thomas Edison as you've never seen them before... Including stories by Stephen Baxter, I. N. J. Culbard, Adam Roberts, Emma Beeby, James Lovegrove, Nathan Duck, Mark Morris, Dan Whitehead, Chris Roberson, Maura McHugh, Jonathan Green and Andrew Lane.

This collection highlights 20 stellar space operas published over the past 20 years by top-notch authors of the science fiction genre. A soldier fights for survival behind enemy lines, on an alien vessel, thousands of light-years from Earth in "On the Orion Line," by Stephen Baxter. A man aboard a ship in deep space wakes up from biostasis at the wrong time in "The Days Between," by Allen M. Steele. An astronaut in a damaged balloon struggles to survive 800 meters above the surface of a sea on Titan in "Slow Life" by Michael Swanwick. Two rival space-faring cultures vie for influence over the people of a forgotten human world in "The Third Party," by David Moles. One thousand people, aboard five generation starships, leave the Sol system to flee an enemy that threatens to destroy their way of life in "Mayflower II," by Stephen Baxter. Modified combat troops must deal with recalcitrant settlers on a planet being attacked by hostile aliens in "Bright Red Star," by Bud Sparhawk. Programmed military doppelgängers continue to carry out their missions long after the Quiet War's end in "Dead Men Walking," by Paul McAuley. Mathematicians seek to learn more from a civilization, on another planet, that spent three million years doing math in "Glory," by Greg Egan. Human diplomats must deal their own cultural biases while dealing with two representatives from warring factions on a newly discovered planet in "Saving Tiamaat," by Gwyneth Jones. Space pirates haul in booty aboard a living spaceship that doesn't quite smell right in "Boojum," by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. The constable in a settlement on a planet full of the tombs of a long-vanished alien race befriends a woman who researches dangerous hive rats in "City of the Dead," by Paul McAuley. A dying young man on a treasure hunt tries to save a world that's devoid of gravity and lit by artificial suns in "The Hero," by Karl Schroeder. An eternal, aboard a slower than light ship, is woken to investigate an unexplained signal emanating from the area of the ship's next stargate construction site in "The Island," by Peter Watts. An alienated teenager, in a domed iron city on a planet where a fundamentalist revolt is brewing, seeks to uncover her enigmatic tutor's long-held secret in "The Ice Owl," by Carolyn Ives Gilman. A woman recalls a childhood train journey, on a planet with a permanent dayside and a nightside of eternal darkness, to see a captured specimen of the Nightmare race in "Weep for Day," by Indrapramit Das. Peculiar mating rituals and divergent evolution have developed on a lost colony that has been out of contact with the rest of humanity in "Someday," by James Patrick Kelly. An aristocrat's trip to Venus, in search of her disgraced brother, is memorialized by papercuts of flora native to the planet in "Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan," by Ian McDonald. An enemy of the revolution, on a colonized planet, uploads a digital copy of himself into the body of a braindead boy in an attempt to escape off-world in "Jonas and the Fox" by Rich Larson. Set in the author's Machineries of Empire universe, an undercover agent infiltrates a space station to recover the crew of a lost ship in "Extracurricular Activities," by Yoon Ha Lee. And finally, the captain of a dustship musters her crew to escape from a trap set by Hunter-Killers in a game of cat and mouse amid the rings of a giant planet in "By the Warmth of Their Calculus," by Tobias S. Buckell.

This collection puts together 20 of the best science fiction stories about Mars published over the past two decades by top-notch authors of the genre. An improbable group of astronauts are slingshot to Mars in cheap one-person, one-way jalopies in "Terminal," by Lavie Tidhar. In "The Cascade," by Sean McMullen, an affair between a shy robotics postdoc and an adventurous young woman change the destiny of the first landing on Mars. A penal colony on Mars violently clashes with a science base in "Falling onto Mars," a Hugo Award winning story by Geoffrey A. Landis. In "The Old Cosmonaut and the Construction Worker Dream of Mars," by Ian McDonald, the lives of a young Indian construction worker and an old Estonian cosmonaut collide during the terraforming of Mars by quantum machines. Two young girls are desperate to survive on the surface of Mars after their commune's underground compound is destroyed by comet strikes in "Hanging Gardens," by Gregory Feeley. In "Digging," by Ian McDonald, a project has been undertaken to create a breathable atmosphere on Mars constructing a valley so deep that the planet's thin atmosphere will be forced into it. An amusing step-by-step program enables potential potentates to find the right Mars to rule over in "How to Become a Mars Overlord," by Catherynne M. Valente. In the Hugo Award winning story "The Emperor of Mars," by Allen M. Steele, a laborer on a corporate-owned Martian colony transforms himself into royalty while coping with a tragedy on Earth. A young girl defies the conventional role she's fated for on Mars in "La Malcontenta," by Liz Williams. In "The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini," by Chez Brenchley, a gravedigger uncovers many secrets at the burial of a hanged British nobleman on a Victorian Mars. A colonist provides a moving account of his life on Mars to inspire a new generation of Martians in "Martian Heart," by John Barnes. In "The Vicar of Mars," by Gwyneth Jones, a High Priest suffers hauntings after visiting an old, reclusive, wealthy woman on Mars. A rough and tumble Martian mining town reconstructs a lawman from the Old American West to restore order in "Wyatt Earp 2.0," by Wil McCarthy. In "An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away," by John Barnes, the rivalry between two documentarians, filming on Mars, puts them in peril as the planet is being terraformed. A corporation building New Las Vegas on Mars grooms a janitor for rock stardom to improve worker morale in "The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars," by Ernest Hogan. In "Martian Blood," by Allen M. Steele, an Egyptian-American astrobiologist travels to a Martian aboriginal settlement to prove his theory that life on Earth originated on Mars. Pilgrims, tourists, and locals visit the many monoliths of Mars to commune with their unknown builders through radio bursts in "The Monoliths of Mars," by Paul McAuley. In "The Martian Job," by Jaine Fenn, the greatest heist known to humankind, with many a double-cross, is pulled on the largest corporation on Mars. The first man to step foot on Mars recounts his life's story as mankind ends its colonization of the planet in "Mars Abides," by Stephen Baxter. And finally, in the Locus Award winning story "The Martian Obelisk," by Linda Nagata, a robotic crawler threatens the remote construction of a monument on Mars, by an architect on Earth, as it approaches the obelisk.

In the year 2570, a sleeper will wake . . . In the mid-21st century, the Kernel, a strange object on a five-hundred-year-orbit, is detected coming from high above the plane of the solar system. Could it be an alien artefact? In the middle of climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts - but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns . . . By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps. It is not an age for expansion; there are only small science bases beyond the Earth. But this is a world you would want to live in: a Star Trek without the stars. After 500 years the Kernel returns, and a descendant of Stoney, who Malenfant will call Emma II, mounts a mission to see what became of Malenfant. She finds him still alive, cryo-preserved . . . His culture-shock encounter with a conservative future is entertaining . . . But the Kernel itself turns out to be attached to a kind of wormhole, through which Malenfant and Emma II, exploring further, plummet back in time, across five billion years . . .

This guide deals with the various tax concessions that are available for small business taxpayers, including CGT relief, GST and state based payroll concessions. Written by a team of highly experienced tax and finance experts, this guide is a must-have for anyone handling taxation for small businesses and is an indispensable tool for accountants, tax practitioners and business advisers. Up to date to 1 July 2019. KEY FEATURES: - Eligibility for the concessions. - General rules for accessing the small business CGT relief. - Specific CGT concessions allowing exemptions, deferrals and reductions in tax. - State-based payroll tax concessions. - Application of the GST system for small business taxpayers and the specific GST concessions that are available. - Concessions under the superannuation regime. - Simplified depreciation, trading stock and other special rules.

A sequel to the H.G. Wells classic THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, brilliantly realized by award-winning SF author and Wells expert Stephen Baxter It has been fourteen years since the Martian invasion. Humanity has moved on, always watching the skies but confident that we know how to defeat the alien menace. The Martians are vulnerable to Earth germs. The army is prepared. Our technology has taken great leaps forward, thanks to machinery looted from abandoned war-machines and capsules. So when the signs of launches on Mars are seen, there seems little reason to worry. Unless you listen to one man, Walter Jenkins, the narrator of Wells’ book. He is sure that the first incursion was merely a scouting mission, a precursor to the true attack—and that the Martians have learned from their defeat, adapted their methods, and now pose a greater threat than ever before. He is right. Thrust into the chaos of a new worldwide invasion, journalist Julie Elphinstone—sister in law to Walter Jenkins—struggles to survive the war, report on it, and plan a desperate effort that will be humanity’s last chance at survival. Because the massacre of mankind has begun. Echoing the style and form of the original while extrapolating from its events in ingenious, unexpected fashion again and again, The Massacre of Mankind is a labor of love from one of the genre’s most praised talents—at once a truly fitting tribute to a classic and brainy, page-turning fun for any science-fiction fan.

A sequel to Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Nebula Award–winning novella “A Meeting with Medusa,” this novel continues the thrilling adventure of astronaut Howard Falcon, humanity’s first explorer of Jupiter from two modern science fiction masters. Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter—and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead, he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable. With permission from the Clarke Estate, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds continue this beloved writer’s enduring vision and have created a fresh story for new readers. The Medusa Chronicles charts Falcon’s journey through the centuries granted by his new body, but always back to mysteries of Jupiter and the changing interaction between humanity and the universe. A compelling read full of incredible action right from the beginning, this is a modern classic in the spirit of 2001 and The Martian.

Stephen Baxter's The Martian in the Wood, a Tor.com Original In the aftermath of the First Martian War, in the interim between it and what was to come later, England seemed to once again become a green and peaceful place, if one haunted by the terrible events in Surrey that had happened in those early years of the century. Although people hoped and prayed peace had come, they were wrong. Across the gulf of space, plans were being drawn for a return, but before they could bear fruit a terrible discovery was made deep in Holmburgh Wood, one that would tear a family apart and shock the world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the Galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won, but at a huge cost. And, defeated in a greater war, the Xeelee eventually fled the universe. Most of them. A handful were left behind, equipped with time travel capabilities, their task to tidy up: to reorder history more to the Xeelee's liking. That million-year war with humankind was one blemish. It had to be erased. And in order to do that, a lone Xeelee was sent back in time to remove Michael Poole from history . . .

The thrilling conclusion to the internationally bestselling Long Earth series explores the greatest question of all: What is the meaning of life? 2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day, a new society continues to evolve in the Long Earth. Now, a message has been received: “Join us.” The Next—the hyper-intelligent post-humans—realize that the missive contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence known as The Machine. But to build this computer the size of an Earth continent, they must obtain help from the more populous and still industrious worlds of mankind. Meanwhile, on a trek in the High Meggers, Joshua Valienté, now nearing seventy, is saved from death when a troll band discovers him. Living among the trolls as he recovers, Joshua develops a deeper understanding of this collective-intelligence species and its society. He discovers that some older trolls, with capacious memories, act as communal libraries, and live on a very strange Long Earth world, in caverns under the root systems of trees as tall as mountains. Valienté also learns something much more profound . . . about life and its purpose in the Long Earth: We cultivate the cosmos to maximize the opportunities for life and joy in this universe, and to prepare for new universes to come.

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape . . . This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius ten thousand times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest it would have a surface area equivalent to about thirty billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near lightspeed. And because of relativistic effects, distances are compressed for inhabitants of the Belt, and time drastically slowed. The purpose of the Belt is to preserve a community of Xeelee into the very far future, when they will be able to tap dark energy, a universe-spanning antigravity field, for their own purposes. But with time the Belt has attracted populations of lesser species, here for the immense surface area, the unending energy flows. Poole, Miriam and their party, having followed the Ghosts, must explore the artefact and survive encounters with its strange inhabitants - before Poole, at last, finds the Xeelee who led the destruction of Earth...

Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence finally enters the SF Masterwork series! A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree - just one of the many strange local lifeforms - carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft. And what he finds will change his world...

The multi-award winning Infinity Project undertakes its seventh and final voyage in the imagination of the finest science fiction authors alive… Infinity’s End Humanity has made the universe home. On the outskirts of the solar system, beyond the asteroid fields, deep in space, under the surface of planets, in the ruins of fallen civilisations, in the flush of new creation: life finds a way. From intelligent velociraptors to digital ghosts; from a crèche on an asteroid to an artist using a star system as a canvas, this is a future where Earth’s children have adapted to every nook and cranny of existence. This is life on the edge of the possible. Featuring astonishing tales from Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Naomi Kritzer, Paul McAuley, Seanan McGuire, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Justina Robson, Kelly Robson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lavie Tidhar, Peter Watts, Fran Wilde and Nick Wolven.

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this collection of stories, available in ebook for the first time! Baxter's future history, known as the Xeelee sequence, is an exemplar of the form: it comprises his first four novels - Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring - and these marvellous linked stories, as well as those in the new collection XEELEE: ENDURANCE. Contains 21 short stories, all set in the XEELEE universe.

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order. From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed - the ability to endure. Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

Hailed as “one of the most inventive writers that science fiction has ever produced" (SF Site), Stephen Baxter builds on the massive success of Proxima with a career-defining novel of big ideas.... On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered—hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has consequences.... As humanity discovers the real nature of the universe, a terrifying truth comes to light. We all have countless pasts converging in this present—and our future is terrifyingly finite. There are minds in the universe that are billions of years old and now we are vulnerable to their plans for us.... It’s time to fight back and take control.

Eighteen stories from some of the biggest names in genre fiction, written in honour of Arthur C. Clarke. The Fountain, a traditional London pub where a group of friends - scientists, writers and SF fans - meet to swap anecdotes, reveal secrets from their past, tell tall tales, and maybe, just maybe, save the world...

What makes for a good short story? Being short, you might think the story's structure would yield an answer to this question more readily than, say, the novel. But for as long as the short story has been around, arguments have raged as to what it should and shouldn't be made up of, what it should and shouldn't do. Here ,15 leading contemporary practitioners offer structural appreciations of past masters of the form as well as their own perspectives on what the short story does so well. The best short stories don't have closure, argues one contributor, 'because life doesn't have closure'; 'plot must be written with the denouement constantly in view,' quotes another. Covering a century of writing that arguably saw all the major short forms emerge, from Hawthorne's 'Twice Told Tales' to Kafka's modernist nightmares, these essays offer new and unique inroads into classic texts, both for the literature student and aspiring writer.

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “Earth I,” by Stephen Baxter, asearch among the stars to ferret out the origins of mankind amidst the Xaian normalization digs up many surprises. In “Success,” by Michael Blumlein, a brilliant but erratic biologist studying epigenetics struggles to hang on to his grip on everyday life as he writes his ground-breaking tome. In “Feral Moon,” by Alexander Jablokov, the Alliance military is invading Phobos to retrieve dead bodies for later repatriation, but the stiff resistance is putting the operation in serious doubt. In “The Weight of the Sunrise,” by Vylar Kaftan, winner of both the Nebula Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, the Incan empire is offered a vaccine, to contain a smallpox out-break, by a Virginian raising funds for the American war against the British. In “One,” by Nancy Kress, a boxer down on his luck gains the ability to read minds and grapples round-after-round with the consequences. In the Great Shipstory “Precious Mental,” by Robert Reed, an immortal captain who has been living incognito for hundreds of years is kidnaped to help salvage an ancient derelict spaceship. Finally, in the Poirot-like mystery “Murder on the AldrinExpress,” by Martin L. Shoemaker, murder is suspected in the death of the leader of a Mars expedition when evidence of sabotage is uncovered.

The Spacetime Pit Plus Two collects three collaborative stories by two of science fiction's finest writers. Never before published in one volume, the triptych showcases the authors' ability to create narratives on a vast scale, and yet never to lose sight of the all-important human element. In the award-winning 'The Spacetime Pit', spacer Katerina Wake crash-lands on a primitive alien world and faces certain death unless she can harness her ingenuity, and technical know-how, to bend the destiny of an entire race to her will... 'Green-Eyed Monster' follows Richard as he wakes up after a night on the tiles to find himself inhabiting the body of a toad - and that's just the start of his troubles... In 'Sunfly', Onara and her people live on a world very different from our own - a vast ribbon encircling a sun. But a change is coming to the land, a mysterious narrowing that threatens not only the stability of her world, but the very order of everything she has taken for granted. "With every passing year, the oft-made remark that Baxter is Arthur C Clarke's heir seems more and more apt" - SFX "Eric Brown spins a terrific yarn" - SFX "There's real beauty and excitement to Baxter's writing" - Starburst "British writing with a deft, understated touch: wonderful" - New Scientist on Eric Brown

“Stephen Baxter has been heralded, with some merit, as Arthur C. Clarke’s literary heir, and Proxima certainly reinforces this accolade in spades.”—Concatenation Mankind’s future in this galaxy could be all but infinite. There are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, lasting trillions of years—and their planets can be habitable for humans. Such is the world of Proxima Centauri. And its promise could mean the never-ending existence of humanity. But first it must be colonized, and no one wants to be a settler. There is no glamor that accompanies it, nor is there the ease of becoming a citizen of an already-tamed world. There is only hardship...loneliness...emptiness, even as war brews in the solar system. But that’s where Yuri comes in. Because sometimes exploration isn’t voluntary. It must be coerced.

The highly-acclaimed sequel to H G Wells’s THE TIME MACHINE, from the heir to Arthur C. Clarke.

The third novel in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s “Long Earth” series, which Io9 calls “a brilliant science fiction collaboration.” 2040-2045: In the years after the cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to myriad Long Earth worlds. Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous rescue work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper device, Willis Linsay. He tells her he is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars and wants her to accompany him. But Sally soon learns that Willis has an ulterior motive for his request. . . . Meanwhile U. S. Navy Commander Maggie Kauffman has embarked on an incredible journey of her own, leading an expedition to the outer limits of the far Long Earth. For Joshua, the crisis he faces is much closer to home. He becomes embroiled in the plight of the Next: the super-bright post-humans who are beginning to emerge from their “long childhood” in the community called Happy Landings, located deep in the Long Earth. Ignorance and fear have caused “normal” human society to turn against the Next. A dramatic showdown seems inevitable. . . .

Praised as “not only a gifted storyteller but also a master of speculative fiction” (Library Journal), bestselling author Stephen Baxter brings his epic Northland trilogy to a close as a once-thriving civilization faces winter without end.... Many generations ago, the Wall was built to hold back the sea. A simple dam, it grew into a vast linear city, home to scholars, builders, and merchants. Northland’s prosperity survived wars and unrest—and brought the whole of Europe together. But now darkness is falling. Days grow shorter, temperatures colder, and in the wake of long winters come famine, destruction, and terror. As a mass exodus to warmer climes threatens to fracture Northland, one man believes he can outwit the cold, and even salvage some scraps of the great civilization—before interminable gloom settles over the land; before the fires of war lay waste to an empire; before the ice comes....