his book is number two in the Destiny's Children sequence that began with last year's Coalescent. But more importantly, it is part of Baxter's enormous Xeelee saga, whose central volume is perhaps Vacuum Diagrams (1997), wherein curious readers can find a snapshots from all eras of the saga, plus a timeline that diagrams the major events in Baxter's 10-million-year arc of future history.
This novel fits into the sequence around 25,000 years from the present. Having faced numerous alien invaders over the millennia, all of whom they've bested and "assimilated," humanity is locked in a final war with its most potent challengers, the Xeelee. The Xeelee are an ancient, unknowable race whose redoubt is the core of our galaxy. There, the massive black hole known as Chandra powers their war effort. Humanity, obedient to the harsh doctrine first spread by the prophet Hama Druz, and now spread across thousands of worlds, has fashioned itself into a machine with a single purpose: keeping the Xeelee bottled up at the Core. For 3,000 years the war has raged in a wearisome stalemate that has claimed trillions of human lives and the galaxy's entire resources. But now an end appears to be at hand, auguring victory for humanity. But only if a handful of freethinkers can overcome the inertia and timidity of generations.
A common fighter pilot named Pirius is the key. In a battle with the Xeelee he breaks orders to perform a startling tactic involving the time-travel capabilities of his faster-than-light ship. (FTL travel grants time travel implicitly, as Baxter shows.) Pirius survives the battle, ending up in the past, where both he and his younger self are instantly court-martialed! The elder, more guilty Pirius is broken down to foot soldier, while the younger is placed under the custody of a governmental functionary named Commisary Nilis. Nilis is an eccentric visionary genius who has already achieved much. Now he has plans to use Pirius and his innovation to defeat the Xeelee, against the orders of his own superiors.
Leaving the battlefront for the moment, Nilis, Pirius and Pirius' lover, Torec, journey to Earth. There, the three will embark on a quest across the solar system to discover the ancient, forgotten tools that, combined with the new discovery, will spell defeat for the Xeelee. From the Martian Archives to a Callistan map of the cosmos compounded of "reality dust," Pirius will undergo a quest that will change him forever. Meanwhile, his older duplicate is finding out that life as a foot soldier is infinitely different from that of a hotshot pilot.
Eventually, the two Piriuses will reunite to carry out the final make-or-break attack on the Xeelee, deep in the blazing heart of the galaxy.
Details behind a grand design
Certainly Baxter's Xeelee mythos is the grandest future history in science fiction, putting such formidable competitors as Heinlein's and Niven's cliometric fabrications into the shade, at least in terms of sheer scope. Having established the broad outlines of his cosmos ever since the publication of his first story in 1987, Baxter is now intent of filling in the gaps. As such, his new books can still be thrilling and intriguing in their own rights, even though we know, for instance, that the defeat of the Xeelee is predestined, and that they will return to conquer humanity in the year 1 million A.D.
Baxter digs down deep into his mythos, showing us in voluminous and specific detail what was only hinted at in earlier narratives. We witness the ossification of mankind; the survival of a few immortals from a previous era, who remain as a hidden hand on the tiller of state; the death and resurgence of aliens known as Silver Ghosts; the creation of "reality dust"; and other wonders. But all of this is embedded in the personal tale of the two Piriuses, how they sacrifice themselves and mature in the course of the galaxy-shattering events. In short, Baxter manages to blend vast Stapledonian perspectives with intimate human warmth: a major achievement.
There are echoes of other SF galore here. Asimovian vibes occur in the stuffy and shortsighted bureaucratic nature of those who run human affairs. Earth is a kind of Trantor as well, not paved over but still vastly artificial after multiple alien remakings. Echoes of Fritz Leiber's Changewar series resonate outward from the time-travel capabilities of the FTL ships. Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality is cousin to Baxter's Interim Coalition of Governance. But all these influences are subsumed gracefully into Baxter's unique conception.
And despite Baxter's adherence to hard SF ideation (he retains his talents for making even the most abstruse theories tangible, through easy infodumps and bright metaphors), his work also exhibits a fairy-tale understructure that conduces toward a mythic level of action. Is it too much to say that the three tokens that Pirius must gather—an advanced computer, an invulnerable shield and a mighty black-hole gun—correspond to a brain, courage and a heart, as sought by Dorothy and crew in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), with Nilis as kind of an Oz figure? Such implicit deep structures supplement the speculative elements wonderfully, making for a galactic quest that boasts more than surface charm—just as the black holes in Baxter's universe, impressive as they are, contain further wonders below their event horizons.
