The Anti Xeelee and The Closing Entity

The universe is vast, more vast than the human mind can conceive. And it is also old, impossibly old. The human race has existed for roughly 100,000 years, a blip when compared to the long history of the cosmos. In all that time billions upon billions of years, what other life came into existence? Sure the first intelligent race didn’t just form 100,000 years ago, can’t possibly be the first. If so, who was, and heights did their civilization rise to and where are they now?

The Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter is a collection of science fict...