Rating: 
Summary: Great Big Chunks of SF Goodness
Review: First off, I the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because, like others have said in their reviews, character development is kind of lax. In Baxter's defense however, the story is told in little vignettes spanning 5 million years. Of course you're going to have to leave old characters behind and introduce new ones. In my opinion, he does a passable - but not outstanding - job of character development. You don't need a degree in physics or quantum mechanics to understand the concepts Baxter presents, but an "armchair" familiarity with these disciplines will help. Still, Baxter does a very good job explaining difficult concepts within the stories. The scope of the overall story arc is amazing and it left me with a very warm feeling and a little more optimistic opinion about Humanity's future. For a scientist come late to writing, Baxter has achieved far more, in my opinion, than most of his hard SF contemporaries.
Rating:
Summary: Great Big Chunks of SF Goodness
Review: First off, I the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because, like others have said in their reviews, character development is kind of lax. In Baxter's defense however, the story is told in little vignettes spanning 5 million years. Of course you're going to have to leave old characters behind and introduce new ones. In my opinion, he does a passable - but not outstanding - job of character development. You don't need a degree in physics or quantum mechanics to understand the concepts Baxter presents, but an "armchair" familiarity with these disciplines will help. Still, Baxter does a very good job explaining difficult concepts within the stories. The scope of the overall story arc is amazing and it left me with a very warm feeling and a little more optimistic opinion about Humanity's future. For a scientist come late to writing, Baxter has achieved far more, in my opinion, than most of his hard SF contemporaries.
Rating: 
Summary: an Amazing find
Review: I am an avid reader of science fiction but somehow Baxter had slipped under my radar until now. I picked up this book on a whim in the paperback section of a supermarket of all places! What got me was that
the back cover claimed to tell the story of Mankind for the next 5 million years. I tore though this book, it was a great read. People are critical of his character development and it is something that he needs to work on but the ideas are so immense and engaging you can get past that. I see why it won the Hugo Award. It was the most fufilling SF novel I have read in years.
Rating: 
Summary: Great ideas, weak stories
Review: I leave this book wondering how anybody could top it. It ends, literally, with the very last humans in the universe managing to leave the universe itself, through an artifact (the "Ring" of an earlier novel) thousands of light-years across. I don't think anybody will surpass the boldness of Baxter's imagination. A previous reviewer mentioned that the characters are flat. So they are, but I think that really doesn't matter in this type of fiction, which instead offers mind-bending ideas, exciting struggles, etc. However, I have other issues with the book. It took a second reading before I realized that the stories aren't really stories, but more like series of events. They end with some wild idea or image (that the people depicted are about 1/20,000 of an inch tall, for example, or that a character literally doesn't have a past). There is nothing that makes you care what happens next. Of course, the book alludes huge struggles between immensely powerful races, which would work well to advance the plot (see Lord of the Rings), except we don't actually see the struggle. At one stage in the sequence, humans vie with the Xeelee for mastery of the universe, but we never see that struggle. Instead, we see very, very minor, incidental events. Another qualm is that the science comes very close to hokum, at least partially, on a second reading. A computer driven mad by "quantum loneliness"? Baxter goes for the "gee whiz" without really earning it. The best hard science fiction (Benford's Eater, or Cosm, for example) doesn't just invoke science, it absorbs it and works within it. The result can create wonder, not just at the writer's imagination, but at the world itself. Telling stories set against a vast backdrop is not easy. Good examples that come to mind are Lord of the Rings, again, and perhaps Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep (some would include the original Foundation series.) Baxter gets the vast-backdrop part of it right, anyway. It is also not easy to link disparate short stories and novels into a coherent whole. The best example I can think of is Niven's Known Space series. Here, Baxter succeeds reasonably well. (Although I thought the final Observer was Michael Poole, from Timelike Infinity, not the pastless "Paul".) Despite these faults, I find myself looking hungrily for my next Baxter fix. Perhaps that incredible imagination is really all you need.
Rating: 
Summary: Mindbending ideas, tedious execution
Review: I really liked parts of this book, but it was a struggle to keep going. Finally, with about 20 percent to go, I gave up when yet ANOTHER new character was introduced. The concepts are big and bold and almost always interesting, but the characters and storylines cannot carry it off. I really wanted the author to succeed, but after this attempt I doubt I'll ever try another one of his works.
Rating:
Summary: Introduction to Baxter's Mithology.
Review: I started backwards. I think I should have read first this book and then gone to Flux, Ring and other Baxter's novels, but I started by Ring. I specially liked its first chapter, and then I discovered it was originally a short story, contained in this book. I have to concur with other reviewers: I like the science in Baxter's books, even if sometimes he is too dense. The four stars come from this. Sometimes the main interest lies not on the plot, but in the ideas presented. Why should you read it? Standalone, it is interesting. In the Xeelee Universe, this book gives the background to others, through its short stories. I finally understood why the Xeelee Ring is associated with a human name, and some other details about the Xeelee and other races.
Rating:
Summary: Great scientist, mediocre story teller
Review: I truly enjoy science-based science fiction, and Stephen Baxter is one of the few writers who applies the latest discoveries and theories in particle physics to his novels. The only drawback is his story telling. Which leaves much to be desired. He can tell you about cosmic strings and inspire awe in you and a new way of looking at humanity and technology, but he really doesn't have a good grasp of the art of keeping a reader interested in the characters or the plot development. What carries his stories, (I have read 6 of his novels thus far)is his grand visions of the galactic struggles and technological advances. His visions of aliens are the most realistic and logical. They don't just have horns and an extra eye and limb, they are truly fundementally different from carbon based life forms. Some aren't even made of baryonic matter, they are made of Dark Matter. What's also great is that by the end of his novels you actually can grasp "Dark Matter" vs "Baryonic Matter". I recommend Stephen Baxter despite his shortcomings as a story teller just on the merits of his science based stories. Hopefully he'll improve in his future novels.
Rating:
Summary: Great collection of related stories
Review: PROS: Vast scope of ideas, steeply based in science, epic quality
CONS: Writing style is a bit dry
BOTTOM LINE: Great collection of related stories. BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A collection of related stories set in Baxter's Xeelee Universe. The memorable things about Baxter's stories are not so much his characters, nor his writing style, which is a somewhat stiff, but rather his ideas. Each story contained in this collection contains some form of scientific concept that defies any simple comprehension due to sheer scale, large and small. Sometimes travel spans universes, sometimes beings are microscopic in size, and sometimes artifacts are light years wide. Baxter's signature hard science is present here in a big way. The stories average 14 pages in length but are packed with all these ideas. Many of the stories, spanning 5 million years, reference the same events or reference each other, which is always a secret thrill for a science fiction reader. One huge plus in Vacuum Diagram's is the Xeelee Sequence Timelins listed at the back of the book. This makes it prerequisite reading for anyone wishing to dive into Baxter's 4 Xeelee novels (in Xeelee Universe order: Timelike Infinity, Raft, Flux and Ring).
Rating:
Summary: You might need a degree in Physics to understand it...
Review: This compilation of Baxter's short stories comprising the Xeelee Sequence is awesome in scope, but at times too heady. For me the book began to pick up steam with the last few stories, when there is a nice balance between plot and science lesson. This is real HARD SF! Baxter knows his physics and quantum mechanics, and uses them bravely throughout the book. It's not an easy read, but, if anything, will leave you contemplating its many themes and ideas.
Rating:
Summary: possibly?
Review: This novel is long, and it does get dry at some times, but some of the stories are remotely interesting. I liked parts of the book, (it's made of 23 short stories SB wrote and published in magazines.) but the characters were constantly being throw out, leaving you wondering: why? Overall, I use this book as a guide of what NOT to do to a character in a novel, but it also gives you an okay, and somewhat comprehensive idea of what quantum physics are about. Read Hawking's "Brief History of Time" for clarification on some points. I just don't understand what some stories had to do with the novel.
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