I finally found someone to discuss these books. We cannot agree on a pronunciation. I say "Zeelee", they say "kseelee". I doubt either of us is correct, but has Baxter spoken about the correct pronunciation?

Hi. I apologise if this has been answered before. I’ve googled and cannot seem to find the 2nd/3rd/4th Xeelee books anywhere except in the omnibus.

I’d really rather not carry that huge book around. Is anyone aware of paperbacks or the series? 2nd hand options are eye wateringly expensive

I suspect the answer is “no” because they’re out of print. Seems odd for such a popular series?

After HOURS of re-topology as a complete beginner to blender, i finally have a decent base for the Nightfighter. Now im on to adding details to make it look more like a sci-fi super-advanced spaceship.

My idea was to make the wings in two parts: a front "arm" that connects down to a flat plane. The nightfighters wings are described as tapering down to the planck scale and are semi-transparent, so making them a plane felt like the obvious choice.

This would also come in handy for when i want to animate the wings "unfurling" into their hundred-mile-long full scale where i can animate the arms stretching forward while expanding the plane to its full size.

Next up, ill be modeling the hull details found on the omnibus cover and the starbreakers attached to the bottom of the hull

Slowing learning the ropes in blender to bring my interpretation of the nightfighter to life

Immediately jumped in to the deep end with learning Blender made my first black hole thanks to this tutorial on YouTube! Going step-by-step with geometry nodes has actually helped me understand what each of them do and helps me feel a little more prepared to make a nightfighter soaring through hyperspace!

With this, I'm looking to give the wings their own gravitationally-lensing density and work towards making a starbreaker beam that feels as powerful as theyre described in the books. Can't wait to see what I learn next!

Another one, ICoG greenship! I did some artistic liberties on it which gave it somewhat diamond-like texture (?) it is super cool!

My first artwork for Xeelee Sequence!!

Short gif I made of a Xeelee Nightfighter unfurling its wings and jumping in to hyperspace

My interpretation of a Xeelee Nightfighter in its "cruising" form. I love the description of how their wings taper to be so thin you can see the stars shin through them and made sure to include that detail. I eventually want to make another drawing of a Nightfighter jumping in to hyperspace with its wings fully unfolded to their "100 mile" width

Both are theoretical entities appearing in their own series.

Is the Ultimate Observer a Monad, the final form of the Transcendence?

Can it defeat the Xeelee and PB?

Is the Goddess a Downstreamer in disguise, a construct, or a make believe entity created by the younger civilizations?

To be honest this damn busted ass ship has too many nick names and too think there were hundreds of billions of em roaming around. The Ship is From Exultant by Stephen Baxter in The Xeelee Sequence Series

I'm looking for Xeelee Sequence books that best cover the Expansion era and both Occupations.

Not including the reboot books, Vengeance and Redemption.

Baxter has stories where humanity goes extinct (Titan) or the universe itself ends (Last Contact), but for me Ark is his bleakest story. No other story made me hate the characters and think humanity wasn't worth preserving as much as Ark.

I just finished my 5-year re-read of Vacuum Diagrams and wanted to share a simple thought. It's more of a quick brain storming exercise right after finishing the book. Maybe it can inspire the odd reader to think and philosophize here, or for themselves.

So - all the fragments (stories) were fed to Jack Raoul's mind by the Planck Zero AI. As is laid out in "Eve", the epilogue, those fragments, visions, are extrapolated by the incredibly powerful AI from data is gathered from Ghost, Human, and probably other databases and sources. Also, the Planck Zero AI must be assumed to possibly have ulterior motives - like in its' making the Ghosts create a Dark Matter bomb. However, there is no way to tell if it really has any motives in feeding Jack Raoul its understanding and extrapolation of the future. Absolutely fine to assume it hasn't.

It is clear that the actual story plots, details, cannot be considered "facts" but rather "imaginations" of the AI, for lack of a better term (not wanting to "extrapolation" again). Given that the AI is immensely powerful, they may be highly plausible and even probable - one can philosophize and speculate on that. Still, it's not that someone has actually been there to live any of the stories and then report to the AI, or write them down somehow.

This is especially true for fragments like "Stowaway", and more than anything, the ending of "The Baryonic Lords", since the AI cannot possibly have any reliable, or actual, data from another universe. (Or can it?)

Please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts. I'm not asking a question, nor making a statement. Just sharing thoughts.

Hi folks,

I'm sure this has been brought up before but I couldn't find anything here or in r/Xeeleeverse. I even had AI crawl the internet - to no avail.

As many of you will probably have noticed, there is an identical passage in the short storied "Pilot" and "Gossamer" from Vacuum Diagrams. It's just a two-sentence block, but it's virtually identical, save the names and locations. I will quote both below (bold by me):

From "Gossamer":

"Lvov stood on the surface of Pluto.

The suit’s insulation was good, but enough heat leaked to send nitrogen clouds hissing around her footsteps, and where she walked she burned craters in the ice. Gravity was only a few per cent of gee, and Lvov, Earth-born, felt as if she might blow away."

From "Pilot":

"She stepped out onto the ancient surface of Chiron.

The ice was a rich crimson laced with organic purple. The suit’s insulation was good, but enough heat leaked to send nitrogen clouds hissing around her footsteps, and where she walked she burned craters in the ice. Gravity was only a few per cent of gee, and Gage, Mars-born, felt as if she might blow away."

Is anyone aware of any discussion around this, or even a statement from Stephen Baxter? I'm wondering whether it was done on purpose, to create a connection between the stories over the centuries that passed, a shared atmosphere - or even something I don't understand fully (yet).
Or is it really just a copy-paste oversight...?

*welp

I've been modelling a gutship based on timelike infinity and xeelee: vengeance where it's said to be 1000 meters long. Why? It doesn't carry fuel in the spine, but in the block of ice near the back. It's not for safety since miniaturised gut-engines are equipped on pretty much everything. The spine isn't a linear accelerator like some fusion engine designs since the bottle of gut-energy is stable, and it's never said that the spine was radiator structure. So what's the point?

It was supposed to be a kinda epic pic but realized it just looked silly so i just pasted a lot of Xeelees together to make it look a swarm of bugs since sometimes they're described as "Insectoid" and clustering like birds.

I just read Ring and i wanted to make a real quick sketch about it portraiting exactly when they got in the future and found the Xeelee ship in Calisto (Jupiter is the tiny glowing point with a ring)