| Timelike Infinity |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT TIMELIKE INFINITY | |
| 1993 novels | |
| science fiction novels | |
| novels by stephen baxter | |
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Set thousands of years in the future (5407AD), the human race has been conquered by the Qax, a truly alien turbulent-liquid form of life, who now rule over the few star systems of human space - adopting processes from human history to effectively oppress the resentful race. Humans have encountered a few other races, including the astoundingly advanced Xeelee, and been conquered once before - by the Squeem - but successfully recovered. A human-built device, the Interface project, returns to the solar system after 1,500 years. The project, towed by the spaceship '' Cauchy '', returns a Wormhole gate, appearing to offer Time Travel due to the time 'difference' between the exits of the wormhole (relativistic time dilation), with one end having remained in the solar system and the other travelling at near lightspeed for a century. The Qax had destroyed the solar system gate, but a lashed-up human ship (a great chunk of soil including Stonehenge , crewed by a group called the Friends Of Wigner ) passes through the returning gate, travelling back to the unconquered humanity of 1,500 years ago. One of the crew of the ''Cauchy'' returns with the Friends, Miriam Berg. The Friends have a complex scheme, which does not include a simple military return-and-rescue - the 1,500 year technology gap makes this "risible". From the Wigner Thought Experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe, as a consequence of this they intend to turn Jupiter into a carefully formed Singularity and use it as an information store. Miriam Berg is more concerned over the immediate fate of humanity, with the threat of the future Qax, and transmits a 'help' message to the gate designer Michael Poole. The Qax, naturally, panic a little at the escape to the past. A complex, unavoidably fragile species in their huge living Spline spacecraft, the few Qax present are somewhat at a loss. They decide to build their own Interface, with major human-collaborator assistance (headed by Ambassador Jasoft Parz), to create a link to their future to gain aid in resolving the problem - with more modern GUT -engined spacecraft they can make a 500 year link in just eighteen months. A startling high-technology future vessel (using much Xeelee technology), with a startling high-technology future Qax comes through the gate. Its first act is to execute the Qax Governor of Earth and gather up Parz, before passing through the original portal after the Friends and all humanity. The future Qax takes two Spline ships through the gate and on the journey reveals to Parz the reason behind its desire to completely destroy the human race. Poole joins Berg on the Friend vessel shortly before the Qax emerges, having travelled aboard his ship, ''Hermit Crab'', from the Oort Cloud . He is accompanied by a Virtual of his father, Harry. |
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