Post
by Kugelfisch » Sat May 24, 2025 9:25 pm
Raft by Stephen Baxter
On a whim, I've decided to read the Xeelee Sequence books by Baxter. I've downloaded a compilation of them, which includes: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring, Coalescent, Exultant, Transcendent, Resplendent, Vacuum Diagrams and Xeelee: Endurance.
Raft is an odd story and I don't really know yet what it has to do with the Xeelee stuff because they aren't in that story. Nor are any alien lifeforms above basic fauna. Nor does it even take place in our universe.
You'll be terribly confused if you just go in blind because immediately, from page one, shit won't make sense and you'll wonder if you've picked up a fantasy novel instead. I'm not sure why it's in the sequence and it feels like it was retconned well after the fact.
Apparently, it was a short story later expanded and one of the first novels Baxster wrote. It shows.
It's not hard sci-fi. It's rather pulpy soft sci-fi and you'll have to treat it as an adventure novel of older times. It works as that but it's unbelievably fantastic in a lot of places.
Basic plot:
What the book won't tell you until a cool third into the story is that it's not taking place in our universe. May have worked for the short story that likely went for an odd atmosphere but doesn't work for the full novel because it's confusing as fuck!
A spaceship travelled from our universe to another one, in which gravity is a billion times stronger. That immediately fucked their shit up but people survived.
We get introduced to our protagonist, a miner, who lives in a small colony of shoddily built container homes arranged into a ring structure about 800 meters across via iron ropes around a cool star core, about 80 meters across and entirely made of iron, within a nebula that is breathable.
So basically, stars are tiny, so are nebulas, planets don't even exist. Nebulas are so dense that one made out of the right gasses is pretty much a breathable atmosphere.
In the ring you're weightless, on the tiny star core you experience a crazy 5G!
The miners pretty much all don't know what is going on. The tiny ring of habitats is their entire world and all anyone has ever known. They are born there, they work there, they die there.
They don't know they aren't native to this universe.
They mine iron and in exchange they get food via trade with the Raft, a supposed utopia (at least by comparison) sort of city somewhere higher in the nebula that no miner has ever been to.
Our protagonist wants answers and thus looks to get to the Raft to figure out what's going on. Especially since he seems to be the o ly one that even questions the whole existence of the whole situation.
It's a weird story that moves fast and is less about science than about group dynamics and ones role in society.
It's not great but not terrible and it's a short read. I've started Timelike Infinity and it feels immediately different, as that one takes place in our universe and mentions the Xeelee very early on.
I don't think Raft is required and it's inclusion is perhaps a bit misguided. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the novel. It's interesting in an odd way but also rather pedestrian, at times incredibly contrived and certainly not something you should put on your reading list with any priority.
If you're up for some odd, fantastical Sci-fi, read The Stars My Destination instead. Then perhaps, if you're bored and need a quick two day read, maybe go with this one. Imaginative, yet mediocre.
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