Raft cover art

Raft

Xeelee Sequence, Book 1

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Raft

By: Stephen Baxter
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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About this listen

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

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All stars
Most relevant  
Perhaps it’s because I’m a sucker for anything to do with space and ramblings on physics. But I just enjoyed listening to this audio book, the narrator was good and kept me engaged with the story. Even though the setting doesn’t span a big area, it still sets up a curiosity for the rest of the Stephen Baxter universe while also delivering a great story. And if it can do that I would warrant the experience a success.

A great start point into hard science fiction

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A demonstration of massive imagination yet always bound to a respect for physics, a really enjoyable read with an engaging and relatable protagonist.

Excellent book

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I loved the world building in this, so very clever and involving. The story is a bit of a parade of incidents though without any real arc in the story, or the characters. The protagonist does experience some growth to be fair, going from a junior miner, to a trainee scientist, and ultimately a leader. The rest of the characters start and end as they were. The writing more than makes up for that though with sumptuous wordsmithing throughout, and despite my initial misgivings about the narration style, it grew on me and by the end I was looking for more by the voice actor. An easy 8/10.

Clever and interesting

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Stephen Baxter is new to me. But from what i've been hearing about his work he sounded totally up my street. I had briefly dipped into one of the later ''Xeelee'' books recently, but as soon as i realised that there was an order to them then i decided to start at the begining. In that respect, this was not the huge, multiverse sweeping epic that i was expecting. But now feels like it might be the first small step in a huge story. As such, this is much more to do with the almost day to day lives and realities of the people living in one unusual part of the multiverse. Though by the end of this book i was eager for the next instalment. But it looks like the next 5 or 6 books are not yet available here! So either i change format, or i skip ahead. But i now think that there are so many books in this series that i wonder if skipping half a dozen will ruin it or not?

Good, but not quite what i was expecting.

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The world itself was fantastic and well described. The performance was fantastic and well spoken. There were a few repeated sentance but it was a minor error.

Amazing world building

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I have never read any of the Xeelee books so when I saw this I snapped it up and I haven't regretted a second spent either riding whales and trees or exploring a rich universe this has it all!!

Fantastical beginnings

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an absolutely stunning universe different from anything I've seen imagined before, im excited to listen to the rest of the xeelee sequence

Brilliant!

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Very fragmented and not much of a 'journey'. lacks some explanation, and long winded in places, without actually progressing the story.

Not much of a story

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