‘Timelike Infinity’ Is Sharp And Compelling

Timelike Infinity (1992) by Stephen Baxter raises the bar on hard SF. Baxter grounds his story with real science and maths yet balances it with high stakes action and believable characters. Baxter takes enormous ideas and makes them relatable and urgent without sacrificing authenticity. This makes Timelike Infinity an engaging story on multiple levels.

The Qax have subjugated Earth and all its colonies. Humanity serves the needs of the Qax with little hope of escape. However, the Cauchy, a ship ferrying a wormhole gate returns after 1,500 years of travel and rebels shock the Qax by flying a ship into the open wormhole to travel into the past before the arrival of the Qax.

The Qax worry what effect these rebels will have on the timeline and so revive Earth technologies to create a new wormhole gate. When the gate is complete a ship emerges. A Xeelee ship commanded by a future Qax. This Qax has come to stop the rebels at all costs.

When the future Qax arrive 1,500 years in the past only Michael Poole, the scientist who created the wormholes, has a plan to stop this Qax. A foolhardy and reckless plan but it’s the only plan he has. Michael must make the plan work or accept the utter destruction of humankind.

Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Sequence is one of those series I didn’t read when they were first published. I was at uni in the early 90s and had neither time nor money to spend on books. It’s a good thing too since this is the kind of story that easily distracts me from other activities, like studying.

After reading Baxter’s first novel, Raft (1991), I had no clear sense of what the Xeelee are. Timelike Infinity , however, is much more direct about the Xeelee and their supreme god-like abilities. They are, for all intents and purposes, the ‘owners of the universe’. Which is to say don’t mess with the Xeelee if you don’t want your whole species eliminated.

The Xeelee aside, Baxter uses science to create problems and solutions. He twists and turns physics and maths into metaphysical pretzels. This, in turns, allows characters to justify actions or refute those same actions. The arguments are all correct, from a point of view. And that’s the whole point. Baxter uses Schrödinger and Wigner to set up a solution that only works if there is an observer. But who is that observer? God or something else?

Timelike Infinity is not just a philosophical treatise. For all the grand scientific ideas Baxter bandies about he also creates high action. The stakes are big and the weapons are bigger. Yet, there is room for subtlety and surprise. Given the superiority of Xeelee technology the humans face incredible odds. But Baxter allows for the creativity of his characters thinking to make the battle more equal.

The characters of Timelike Infinity are interesting and well developed, yet there is something a little uniform in their make up. I think it’s because they all seem to be geniuses at one thing or another. This doesn’t harm the story in any way but it is something to be aware of while reading it.

One thing that strikes me is that Timelike Infinity harkens back to SF space operas of the Golden Age of SF. The ideas and action are huge and on the grandest of scales. I have no doubt that given the chance John W. Campbell, Jr. or any of the other editors of that era would have jumped at the chance to publish Timelike Infinity.

Timelike Infinity is big, bold SF in the grandest tradition. If you like your SF hard, your technologies incredible, and your action vast then Timelike Infinity is perfect for you. And you don’t need to have read the previous novel, Raft. Timelike Infinity stands on its own within the Xeelee Sequence and alongside any SF you choose to mention. I will be returning to the Xeelee universe in the near future.

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Hat fast ein Jahr gedauert, aber endlich geschafft. Wer Sci-Fi auf epischen Zeitskalen mag ist hier genau richtig!

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66 lat temu przyszedł na świat brytyjski pisarz science fiction Stephen Baxter.
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