Traces - Hardcover

Baxter, Stephen

3.74

248 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002254271 ISBN 13: 9780002254274

Publisher: Voyager, 1998

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Stories set in a variety of futures from the award-winning heir of Arthur C. Clarke: Traces gives a kaleidoscopic vision of the possibilities for humankind.

There are vision of histories which differ from our own, either through small changes – what if Germany had won WWI (‘Mittelwelt’) – or through a fundamental difference in physical laws – what if Archimedes had been right in his clockwork-like cosmological vision (‘No Longer Touch the Earth’).

There are visions of futures in which people struggle to survive in a variety of bizarre environments (‘Downstream’, ‘The Blood of Angels’), or, weakened and powerless, inhabit the end of worlds (‘Inherit the Earth’, ‘George and the Comet’).

There are explorations of astonishing events of our own lifetimes, in particular the grand expansion into space (‘Zemlya’, ‘Moon Six’, ‘Pilgrim 7’).

These visions give an impression of the contingency of our everyday here-and-now, surrounded as it is by an infinite array of possible pasts, presents, and futures.

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Review:

‘The most important living science-fiction writer in the country’
THE TIMES

‘The best SF writer in Britain’
SFX

Praise for Stephen Baxter’s short fiction:

‘The stories are the purest distillation of hard SF. They add up to an essential collection’
INTERZONE

‘A luminous collection . . . Baxter can overwhelm you with a traditional SF “sense of wonder” until your jaw drops’
SFX

‘Baxter sends into free-fall the most awesome ideas in science fiction today ... [He] reveals the mortal host in the machine.’
THE TIMES

From the Back Cover:

Stories set in a variety of futures from the award-winning heir of Arthur C. Clarke: 'Traces' gives a kaleidoscopic vision of the possibilities for humankind.

Stephen Baxter is universally acclaimed as the best science fiction writer of his generation. His second collection of short stories offers visions of histories which differ from our own, either through small changes – what if Germany had won WWI (‘Mittelwelt’) – or through a fundamental difference in physical laws – what if Archimedes had been right in his clockwork-like cosmological vision (‘No Longer Touch the Earth’).

There are visions of futures in which people struggle to survive in a variety of bizarre environments ('Downstream, The Blood of Angels'), or, weakened and powerless, inhabit the end of worlds ('Inherit the Earth, George and the Comet').

There are explorations of astonishing events in our own lifetimes, in particular the grand expansion into space ('Zemlya, Moon Six and Pilgrim 7')

These visions give an impression of the contingency of our everyday here-and-now, surrounded as it is by an infinite array of possible pasts, presents, and futures.

‘Tom Clancy meets Tom Wolfe’
KIRKUS REVIEWS

‘Good science by someone who knows what he is talking about’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘Baxter recalls the most visionary moments of Wells and Clarke’
LOCUS

‘Baxter sends into free-fall the most awesome ideas in science fiction today’
THE TIMES

‘... the reaction is that which C.S. Lewis referred to when he describes science fiction as the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug’
NEW SCIENTIST

FROM REVIEW OF 'VACUMM DIAGRAMS', STEPHEN BAXTER’S FIRST COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES:

‘The stories are the purest distillation of hard SF. They add up to an essential collection’
INTERZONE

‘A luminous collection... Baxter can overwhelm you with a traditional SF “sense of wonder” until your jaw drops’
SFX

‘This book’s depth almost produces vertigo – a classic in the making’
EXAMINER

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