Name: Raft
ISBN: 9780586210918

Stephen Baxter

Five hundred years after a spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to another - and very strange - universe, the crew’s descendants still struggle for existence on the 'Raft', a structure built from the wreckage of the ship. A small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. But now they must contemplate a journey even more perilous and fantastic than that of their ancestors, or die.

Raft

Scordatura

** spoiler alert **
           The start was somewhat confusing: normally I don't mind an in medias res beginning but for some reason this time it annoyed me more than it interested me. Soon though, the story started proper and things fell in place. It's an interesting world and I am probably going to read more novels in the Xeelee sequence but I wish the characters were a bit more rounded, a bit more interesting. They seemed formed by the gravity in that nebula: as flat as possible.*

*I know, gravity forces matter into spheres...

Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence finally enters the SF Masterwork series! A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree - just one of the many strange local lifeforms - carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft. And what he finds will change his world...