Can someone provide me some info on them? (not the most basic info)
And I want info about Photino Birds. ____________________________
That's first. Second: Do you think that real fuure will be something like this?
More stuff later.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Buh?
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
dont encourage him.. move slowly, back out of the thread.. no sudden moves
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I believe he's refering to this. I don't think I've ever read any of them. They appear to feature a "temporal cold war" though. Curious.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Oh, Baxter. Good God, someone apart from me has brought up a British SF author in this Forum, it's a miracle. . .
I read a couple. Never really got into them, he tends for the most part to do really hard SF that's not to my taste. After these novels, he did a sequel to The Time Machine that went off into parallel universes, then a series of books based around an alternate US/NASA timeline - Voyage, Titan, the collection Traces, plus my personal favourite of his, Moonseed. Since then he's gone strange again with the Time/Space/er, Something Else trilogy that features the same set of characters but in different universes each time.
Has a thing for destroying the world, indeed in one of them he destoyed the universe. It's being a failed British astronaut candidate that does it, I reckon. . .
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Oh...hey, has anyone seen the previews for the remake of "The Time Machine" ? Can't remember who's in it, but it looks decent.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Guy Pearce and, er, Samantha Mumba.
Posted by Xeelee (Member # 1433) on :
The Xeelee were baryonic lords of this universe who were waging a war with the dark matter lifeforms. They knew they were going to lose and started building the ring which would enable them to escape this universe into another where there were no dark matter birds. Us humans did not know that and thought they were out to destroy the universe with their great attractor so then we went to war against them. We were like flies to them. Finally they got pissed off and enslaved the last humans in a 4-d box.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Jesus the Christ!
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Close to three years. That's gotta be a new record.
Posted by Xeelee (Member # 1433) on :
Sorry guys. I was looking for a book by Baxter and I came across this forum and I just had to register and give more info. Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I think we've had at least 3 years before...
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I thnk so too....
Do we get the 'old thread resurrection' warning here???
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I swear, I read my posts and it's like they're by a different person. . .
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ritten: Do we get the 'old thread resurrection' warning here???
Do we have "old thread resurrection" warnings here? I can't remember, and my moderator's handbook is at a friend's house.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I was reading the thread and then along came mention of "That remake of the Time Machine" and I thought it was a sarcastic joke!! LOL!
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poet: Oh, Baxter. Good God, someone apart from me has brought up a British SF author in this Forum, it's a miracle. . .
I'll also join the club of having read a couple. The Time Machine was decent, Manifold Time was just weird, and there was that Clarke collaboration, The Light of Other Days, which was also decent.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: I swear, I read my posts and it's like they're by a different person. . .
We still have the piece of your brain we took out: it's in a jar, if you'd like it back as a momento.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
It's in the jar next to the pickled egg, but behind the pickled onion.
Xeelee sounds somewhat like "Gigli" Posted by Xeelee (Member # 1433) on :
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: It's in the jar next to the pickled egg, but behind the pickled onion.
Xeelee sounds somewhat like "Gigli"
Xeelee > *.aliens
I've read most of his work. I like his style in that everything is pretty hardcoreSF. The only things I dont like are the mammoth stories. Not my style. Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xeelee: Xeelee > *.aliens
What?
Posted by Xeelee (Member # 1433) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam:
quote:Originally posted by Xeelee: Xeelee > *.aliens
What?
Means that Xeelee are greater than any and all aliens. Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
You do know they aren't real, right?
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
WTF??? and here I thought we had first contact....
Damn you Bones....
Posted by Manan Shah (Member # 1559) on :
A bit more information:
Photino Birds: Lifeforms made of dark matter. The matter consists of the 99% of the mass of the universe, so they are too many to count. There is a problem: All the Suns going nova is bad for them (kills them). So they devise a plan to suck the energy out of every Sun, so they can live in peace.
That of course, is bad for us.
20 billion years ago, Xeelee (baryonic life forms who need the suns, like us) were already the dominant species in the universe, first made contact with these photino birds and discovered what they were up to. Realizing what the birds were after, they started a war, THE war actually, in order to fight them.
They probably realized really quickly that they werent going to defeat the birds, so they sent timeships into the past in order to alter their own genetic history to give themselves more time. Even so, the war will be lost. So they begin construcion of 'The Ring', or the Great Attractor about 10 billion years ago, which is like a gateway to other universes, in order to escape.
Five billion years ago, the photino birds found out about the xeelee project, and began attacking it, however, they did not destroy it before it was completed.
ENTER HUMANS: We are idiots (basically), and eventually we become the dominant species in the universe (besides the xeelee, which are immesurably more powerful, as to be incomparable). Everyone else (including humans) basically try to copy their technology and get by.
So, humans get this crazy idea that xeelee are actually killing the universe (we dont know about the birds) instead of fighting to save it from the real threat. So we start attacking the xeelee too. THankfully, we are not really a threat and after a while (when they get tired of us), they destroy our worlds and lock us up in a box so they can focus on the real fight (against the birds).
Anyway, the xeelee sequence basically documents this, up until 4 billion years in the future, when xeelee at the height of their power and in their full baryonic glory finally admit their defeat and leave the universe through the ring. Soon thereafter, the Ring is destroyed, and the universe dies prematurely (killed off by the birds), forever.
Some bands of humans also make it out of the universe and colonize other universes.
In the end, just a couple conciousness's are left in our current universe to ponder the futility of human existance.
Thats it in a nutshell.
The Xeelee sequence is one of the best works of fiction ever written (in my opinion).
Feel free to ask any questions about the Xeelee sequence, I love discussing these books.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Well, I suppose four months is better than two years...
Not that Nevod will appreciate it, not having been around since March 2002.
Posted by Manan Shah (Member # 1559) on :
Haha, oops! I found the thread through Google search for 'Xeelee'.
Didn't realize the date.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Manan Shah: Thats it in a nutshell.
Mabye it's just the synopsis that makes it sound like ass.
Dark matter birds? Pass.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
This is why I never bothered reading any of the Xeelee books apart from Raft. And wasn't Timelike Infinity a Xeelee book? Or was that by some other author entirely? And I read his newest-but-one book, Evolution: Destiny's Children Book One in all innocence, and now find from reading the back-cover blurb of Exultant (book two) that it is a Xeelee story. I've been robbed!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I believe that all of Baxter's books fit in the sequence, if only tangentially, except for his sequel to The Time Machine. (Cross thread points!) Or maybe even that does.
I'm pretty sure I've never read one, though.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Please excuse my crappy writing abilities. I definatly dont do it justice. It really is a great work of fiction.
They really aren't 'birds'. The reason they were called 'Photino Birds' by humans was that when Liserl (an AI or sorts) observed them, she couldnt adequetly describe it, and they seemed to 'flock' and move around like birds so she made the closest analogy that she/it could.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: I believe that all of Baxter's books fit in the sequence, if only tangentially, except for his sequel to The Time Machine. (Cross thread points!) Or maybe even that does.
Ug. I hate it when a writer decides to write a sequel to a classic.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Like that lousy Aeneid.
Posted by Manan Shah (Member # 1559) on :
"Ug. I hate it when a writer decides to write a sequel to a classic."
I believe Time machine is an alternate what-if, documenting what happens if the machine fell into government hands, and not a sequel.
He even writes like HG Wells, and the novel is relatively highly rated from what I hear (I've never read it).
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Surely that's just an issue of semantics, re what technically counts as a sequel.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I didn't like Time Ships. It got far too long and complicated.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Hmm funny i just bought it.
Posted by Xeelee (Member # 1433) on :
Did you like it?
Posted by Zefram (Member # 1568) on :
I bought Time Ships last year on the recommendation of a guy from my university's sci-fi club. Unfortunately I've got about a dozen Star Trek novels in line to be read so I haven't gotten to it yet. It sounds like Baxter injected a lot of quantum mechanics stuff into the story, which is partially what attracted me to it in the first place.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
It's sad, but when I want an "easy read" I turn to Trek. When I want something worth thinking about I go for hard sci-fi (Simmons, Bear, etc.).
I'm going to start Dan Simmons' Illium next week....anyone read that yet?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
OK, so I read Exultant that gave a lot of the info about the Xeelee vs. Photino Bird conflict. At the end the Xeelee effectively stop building their escape route and all-out XvPB war seems to be brewing. With humans caught in the middle. If I have this right, at some point during the war that follows humanity get trapped in a box or something (has that been coevered in one of the previous books?) and eventually the Xeelee do a runner to another universe, and some humans use the same method to go to other universes as well, and it's those groups whose fates and descendants are covered in the first books - Raft, Flux, Ring was it?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
So...pretty confusing, eh?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Just a bit.
Posted by Soliton (Member # 2164) on :
All highly improbable and poorly written, at that.
Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :
Holy thread necromancy, nubface.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
Surely you can't forget this.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: Like that lousy Aeneid.
The Aeneid sucks my ass- lousy Roman propaganda. Paris lived and founded Rome? Fuck that noise. Paris was a weasel and died like a weasel.
WINNER: longest time between post/reply ever.
Posted by The Ginger Beacon (Member # 1585) on :
Longest running thread on Flare?
(Well I say "running"... I make it something like 2691 days, 2 hours, 59 mins)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I could dig up that old "I've been in the hospital" thread, if you like.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Holy Shit, I just stumbled upon a post I made in this God forsaken thread. It is like reading some one else's post.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
We still have the piece of your brain we took out: it's in a jar, if you'd like it back as a momento.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
Who needs time machines when we have this thread.
Impenetrable, dense alien sci-fi spanning billions of years and time travel shenanigans in which Humans are just a squashed bug on the windscreen of the smallest player. You've got to love it.
Actually I dont think I'll be reading the novels anytime soon.
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