Most Popular Books by Stephen Baxter

A hard-SF cli-fi saga set against the background of the birth of the solar system. Filled to the brim with big ideas and breathtaking worldbuilding 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 . . . Readers are blown away by World Engines: Destroyer: ''The book quickly becomes epic in a massive, yet thoroughly believable way, precisely because the story is grounded in all of these well-realised characters'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ''It is a really good Cli-Fi but not only ecological . . . It touches on very many different topics that are very much in our future'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ''It''s a great sci-fi novel, well written and gripping. I loved the amazing world building, the fleshed out cast of characters and the plot'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ''This is a complex book with a lot going on . . . Suffice to say this was a fantastic read with a great story, good characters & a world that I would very much like to come back to'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ''The large scale is always where Baxter is so exciting and passionate and it pays off in spades in the final act. Worth your time to read and enjoy'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ''If you love your science fiction hard, look no further than Stephen Baxter to find your fix. He was literally a rocket scientist. His work is always grounded in science'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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...

Audiences around the world have been enchanted by James Cameron''s visionary Avatar, with its glimpse of the Na''vi on the marvelous world of Pandora. But the movie is not entirely a fantasy; there is a scientific rationale for much of what we saw on the screen, from the possibility of travel to other worlds, to the life forms seen on screen and the ecological and cybernetic concepts that underpin the ''neural networks'' in which the Na''vi and their sacred trees are joined, as well as to the mind-linking to the avatars themselves. From popular science journalist and acclaimed science fiction author Stephen Baxter, The Science of Avatar is a guide to the rigorous fact behind the fiction. It will enhance the readers'' enjoyment of the movie experience by drawing them further into its imagined world.

Stephen Baxter''s new series is full of page-turning action, intriguing mystery and awe-inspiring scientific speculation. Full of evocative historical detail and characters who jump of the page this is history lived by people whose future is not yet locked as our past. Navigator is the third of the series, and delves deep into the discovery of America.

From the combined talents of the UK''s bestselling novelist and a giant of British science fiction comes the dazzling new chapter in the extraordinary and bestselling The Long Earth sequence. 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 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: he needs her help to trace an advanced alien technology which, he believes, will help mankind’''s post-Yellowstone recovery. 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, and the authorities, afraid of anything or anyone not deemed ''normal'', order that all Next children be imprisoned. Joshua is determined to liberate the children -- and a dramatic showdown over the inhumanity of humans against their own kind seems inevitable.

“Magisterial and uplifting . . . A brilliant, grandscale sampling of sixty-five million years of human evolution . . . It shows the sweep and grandeur of life in its unrelenting course.” —The Denver Post Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty. Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate? Praise for Evolution “Spectacular.”—The New York Times Book Review “Strong imagination, a capacity for awe, and the ability to think rigorously about vast and final things abound in the work of Stephen Baxter. . . . [Evolution] leaves the reader with a haunting portrayal of the distant future.”—Times Literary Supplement “A breath of fresh air . . . The miracle of Evolution is that it makes the triumph of life, which is its story, sound like the real story.”—The Washington Post Book World

It''s the year 2030. The oceans have risen rapidly, and soon the entire planet will be submerged. But the discovery of another life-sustaining planet light years away gives those who remain alive hope. Only a few will be able to make the journey-Holle Groundwater is one of the candidates. If she makes the cut, she will live. If not, she will be left to face a watery death...

Detailed research, empathy with his characters, an ecological perspective and his trademark flare for epic narrative sweep make Baxter¿s Mammoth series very much key works in his canon. ICEBONES takes the action to a stunningly realised partially terraformed Mars in the far future and sees the epic Mammoth story cycle come to fruition.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter''s third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction. Microscopic inhabitants of superfluid air above a Quantum Sea and below the tangled Crust of the Star, swimming in an electric-blue grid, the Magfield, which is subject to violent storms, Star people struggle, like us, to make sense of their world... and the threat hanging over it. Though the truth is far more disturbing and ominous than they feared, they will confront, finally, their makers, and they will rebel against the purpose for which they were created.

The first novel in Stephen Baxter''s acclaimed Time''s Tapestry series. “EPIC HISTORICAL FICTION laced with a science fiction premise...a vividly convincing picture of a past world.”—SFX It is The Prophecy. Inscribed in Latin, the ancient scroll has resided in the hands of a single family for generations, revealing secrets about the world that is to come, and guiding them to wealth and power. It begins when a Celtic noble betrays his people at the behest of his mother’s belief in The Prophecy—and sides with the conquering Roman legions. For the next 400 years, Britannia thrives, as does the family while Rome rules over the island. But loyalties are torn when Constantine, most powerful Emperor of them all, comes to Britannia. And even as the sun begins to set on the Roman Empire, the Prophecy is renewed—a message from an unknowable future promising the world to those who can decipher its cryptic words...

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape, and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising. But some changes were not small. The solar system has been altered, changed, shaped in the various realities, and the World Engineers - unspeakably powerful, completely unknown - are still active. Why have they populated this planet with humanity''s ancestors and dinosaurs? What is on the moon of Saturn that gives off such an odd light? And even if they can be found, can they be stopped - and should they be? Malenfant, Deidra and the rest of their party must find a way off the planet, back into space, and into the many dimensions seeking the answer...

The concluding volume of the acclaimed Time''s Tapestry series. "This is the climax of one of the most thoughtful and involving series of novels that have brought history alive like no other."—Fantastic Fiction It is a war that has been fought throughout the centuries—the fate of Rome, the fate of Christendom, the fate of the young country called America—all were at stake down through the ages. Now, in the early days of WWII, as Germany launches a successful invasion of England, nothing less than the fate of the 20th century is to be determined. For the Nazi’s have a secret plan, far grander than simply subjugating an enemy. In the middle of that plan, tangled up in the strands of history, are Mary Wooler, an American historian caught in the Blitz; her son Gary, fighting a ruthless invader at civilization’s frontier; and Ben Kaman, a Jewish refugee whose dreams place him at the heart of the conspiracy that is threatening the fabric of the tapestry of time…

The Wheel. A ring of ice and steel around a moon of Saturn, and home to a mining colony supplying Earth. Itâe(tm)s a bad place to grow up. The colony has been plagued by problems and there are stories of mysterious creatures glimpsed aboard the Wheel. Many of the younger workers refuse to go down the warren-like mines anymore. And then young Phee Laws, surfing Saturnâe(tm)s rings, saves an enigmatic blue box from destruction. Aboard the Wheel, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves caught in a mystery that goes right back to the creation of the solar system. A mystery that could kill them all.

The second novel in Stephen Baxter''s Time''s Tapestry series. Inscribed in Latin, the ancient scroll known as The Prophecy has remained in the hands of a single family for generations, revealing secrets about the world to come, and guiding them to wealth and power... Three centuries have passed since Rome fell, as foretold by The Prophecy—which is now in the hands of a young girl who lives disguised as a boy among the monks on the isle of Lindisfarne. When the Vikings come, deliberately destroying the final copies of the scroll, it will still live on—in the memory of one family. And when William of Normandy, whom history will call the Conqueror, rises to power, once more the fate of the land rests on actions inspired by the ancient words. But as time passes, memories dim—and the surviving member of the family struggles to understand his heritage before all knowledge of the future will be lost to the past…

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.