Destiny's Children (4)

RESPLENDENT is a collection of stories that encompasses mankind's epic fight for survival against the Xeelee, a narrative of how man will change and evolve over our epic journey out into the universe. These tales will encompass the rise of sub-molecular empires in the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang to mankind's final transformation. Full of cutting-edge science, descriptions of time and space on a mind-boggling scale and memorable, all-too-human characters. It is both the capstone to one of the most significant series in the history of SF and a remarkable achievement in its own right. This is a mature and uniquely talented writer at the height of his powers.

Set in the same vast time scale and future as (2003) and (2004), can be read independently. Michael Poole is a middle-aged engineer in the year of the digital millennium (2047) and Alia is a recognizably human (but evolved) adolescent born on a starship half a million years later. Michael still dreams of space flight, but the world and its possibilities are much diminished due to environmental degradation. The gifted teen has studied Michael’s life, for the Poole family played a pivotal role in creating the human future, and thus her world. Through seemingly supernatural apparitions, Alia bridges time to communicate with Michael as they determine the future of humanity. The Pooles are a troubled family, and readers will appreciate the conflict between Michael and his son as they are forced to find common ground in a struggle to reverse the final tipping point of global warming. Teens will also understand Alia’s alarm, and her growing determination to choose her own destiny, when she is selected to join the Transcendents and is rushed into their unimaginable post-human reality. This is visionary, philosophical fiction, rich in marvels drawn from today’s cutting-edge science. A typical paragraph by Baxter might turn more ideas loose on readers than an entire average, mundane novel does, but all this food for thought is delivered with humor and compassion. Experienced SF readers will enjoy sinking their teeth into the story, while general readers who have enjoyed near-future, science-based suspense novels such as those by Michael Crichton will discover here that science fiction can set a higher, much richer standard than what they’ve experienced before.

In humankind’s Third Expansion, the species has spread throughout the galaxy and assimilated all challengers but the mysterious Xeelee; in a 20,000-year stalemate, humans have kept them at bay in the galaxy’s center. Time travel (used by both sides to gather intelligence) creates numerous “drafts” of time lines, but apart from this uncertainty the endless war has brought about a strangely static human society. Soldiers and pilots are bred in vats near the Front and taught only war; few survive past their teens. When Prius, a young pilot, captures a Xeelee ship and takes it to the recent past for study, an innovative program is begun to develop new weapons technology. While Prius Blue (the pilot from the future time line, now stuck in this one) is sent to the Front, the younger Prius Red (from this time line) must travel throughout the solar system with an eccentric but brilliant scientist in a quest for knowledge needed for the anti-Xeelee weapon. Working with widely differing elements of society, Red learns many secrets he’d rather not know, adjusts to new knowledge, and grows into a leadership role: he heads up Exultant, the elite squadron tasked with deploying the new weapon. Even in a genre characterized by unfettered imagination, Baxter’s future universe is extraordinary in its depth, breadth, and richness of invention. Cutting-edge physics, subtle humor, time-travel paradoxes, and loopy twists combine to give readers a wonderfully original sci-fi experience. It can be read independently of , which is set in the same universe but mostly in the present age.

Baxter connects the lives of George Poole in the present and Regina at the end of the Roman empire. George’s father has just died, and the picture of a girl, Rosa, comes to light in his effects. Rosa is the mysterious twin George never knew, and he becomes consumed with the desire to find her. Regina’s part of the story begins in Britain at the end of Roman rule and takes her through the western empire’s collapse to Rome itself. Back to the near-past: George’s sister, it develops, had been sent to the Order of Mary, Queen of Virgins, which has existed, hive-like, in Rome since the time of Regina, one of its founders. George is Regina’s descendant, and the order being rather a family affair, George arrives at many uncomfortable realizations as he learns more about it. Opening with an artificial anomaly discovered in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and ending with disturbing extrapolation of humanity’s future, is a fabric of many slowly developed plot threads woven into a tight tapestry.