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Raft

By: Stephen Baxter
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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Publisher's Summary

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....

1992, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Short-listed
©2020 Stephen Baxter (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group
Adventure Fiction First Contact Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Space Transportation
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Very Memorable

I first read this book years ago as a kid, coming back it may not be the best written book ever but the setting and story are so, so utterly fantastic, and unique....and for once that term isn't hyperbolic, that It was well worth coming back to all these years later.

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Refreshingly fantastic

This is just a good romp through a strange world. Timeless read. Characters and dialog aren’t so strong but this is more than compensated by the weird universe.

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