Raft

Raft is a sustained feat of the scientific imagination, a supreme exploration of the 'What If' questions, in this case, 'What If' the crew of a lost spaceship, trapped by tremendous gravitational forces, colonised this weird pocket in the universe and somehow survived. The book leaps from one unbelievable premise to another, but with such deft and agile balance that the story come alive. A fabulous adventure and an essentially... Read Full Review

I first heard of Raft in an SF encyclopedia about extensive time lines in science fiction series. Raft is the first book in a series of 5 that span the life of the universe, from the big bang all the way to the end. The series is called "The Xeelee Sequence" and was written by Stephen Baxter, a British science fiction author whose earlier work like Raft is fairly scarce in the U.S. The books that make up the Xeelee Sequence,... Read Full Review

A very weird book indeed, situated in a universe where gravity is 10 billion times greater than on Earth. Stars are born and die in months, and a ship has its own gravity. Definitely a worhtwhile read. Adam

A fasinating and imaginative adventure of human survival inside a dense gravitational nebula. An interesting and entertaining hypothesis on the evolution of the human species trapped in an inhospitable environment. Baxter's nebula is a mind boggling tapestry of unbelievable concepts, like the human mining of a collapsed star to a planet covered with human skin, stitched together by a convincing plot. A definite must read... Read Full Review