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Destiny's Children #4
Resplendent
Resplendent: Destiny's Children Book Four
"Cadre Siblings" (2000)
"Conurbation 2473" (2003)
"Reality Dust" (2000)
"Mayflower II" (2004)[b]
"All in a Blaze" (2003)
"Silver Ghost" (2000)
"The Cold Sink" (2001)
"On the Orion Line" (2000)
"Ghost Wars" (2006)
"The Ghost Pit" (2001)
"Lakes of Light" (2005)
"Breeding Ground" (2003)
"The Dreaming Mould" (2002)
"The Great Game" (2003)
"The Chop Line" (2003)
"In the Un-Black" (2001)
"Riding the Rock" (2002)
"Between Worlds" (2004)
"The Siege of Earth" (2006)
"Cadre Siblings" (2000)
"Conurbation 2473" (2003)
"Reality Dust" (2000)
"Mayflower II" (2004)[b]
"All in a Blaze" (2003)
"Silver Ghost" (2000)
"The Cold Sink" (2001)
"On the Orion Line" (2000)
"Ghost Wars" (2006)
"The Ghost Pit" (2001)
"Lakes of Light" (2005)
"Breeding Ground" (2003)
"The Dreaming Mould" (2002)
"The Great Game" (2003)
"The Chop Line" (2003)
"In the Un-Black" (2001)
"Riding the Rock" (2002)
"Between Worlds" (2004)
"The Siege of Earth" (2006)
Paperback
First published September 21, 2006
12 people are currently reading
960 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Baxter
405 books2,621 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
February 15, 2015
This is a very unusual and ambitious book.
It forms part of the Destiny's Children series, which is itself part of the larger Xeelee Sequence... yet it is very much a unique and wonderful beast.
It's a short story collection, set in the Destiny's Children universe and joining the dots between the other novels (and beyond). Because it's part of such a large, carefully developed universe each short story has powerful echoes of depth and atmosphere behind them - and because the stories form a long chain across the centuries, they have this cohesive message and momentum that is intoxicating.
It doesn't feel at all like reading a collection of unrelated short-stories. There's a Kim Stanley Robinson book, The Years of Rice and Salt , about a group of souls that live, die and then reincarnate in different constellations. Through their many lives they chart the evolution of an alternative Earth, one where Europe was wiped out by the black plague. That book is BRILLIANT.
Resplendant doesn't quite hit those heights - but there's a lot of similarities in the way Baxter weaves a single thread through many different lives down a time-line.
For me, what sets The Years of Rice and Salt above Resplendant is the vision of humanity - Robinson presents individuals who dance and love and create and dream... Baxter presents cogs in the great war machine of humanity as it grinds across the galaxy. For all it's wonder and ambition, this is a bleak assessment of humanities potential.
But I can LOVE bleak books - Willis' Doomsday Book broke my heart, but I loved it. I never loved this. I respect it enormously. It grew on me throughout as I found new aspects of it's innovative design and execution to appreciate. It's austere, and brilliantly balanced. But it's not terribly fun. The light-hearted and playful moments are few and far between.
There's a very old-school vibe about all of Baxter's work. Some essential quality reminiscent of sci-fi written by thinkers who are scientists and engineers first, and become writers second. Fans of Arthur C Clarke and Asimov may gel well with Baxter.
For fans of intelligent, serious, fascinating sci-fi - Resplendant is HIGHLY recommend.
And despite being part of a bigger series, it would stand-alone perfectly well.
Considering the low number of reviews/ratings it has on Goodreads, this is also clearly a bit of an under-appreciated gem!
After this I read: Mona Lisa Overdrive
It forms part of the Destiny's Children series, which is itself part of the larger Xeelee Sequence... yet it is very much a unique and wonderful beast.
It's a short story collection, set in the Destiny's Children universe and joining the dots between the other novels (and beyond). Because it's part of such a large, carefully developed universe each short story has powerful echoes of depth and atmosphere behind them - and because the stories form a long chain across the centuries, they have this cohesive message and momentum that is intoxicating.
It doesn't feel at all like reading a collection of unrelated short-stories. There's a Kim Stanley Robinson book, The Years of Rice and Salt , about a group of souls that live, die and then reincarnate in different constellations. Through their many lives they chart the evolution of an alternative Earth, one where Europe was wiped out by the black plague. That book is BRILLIANT.
Resplendant doesn't quite hit those heights - but there's a lot of similarities in the way Baxter weaves a single thread through many different lives down a time-line.
For me, what sets The Years of Rice and Salt above Resplendant is the vision of humanity - Robinson presents individuals who dance and love and create and dream... Baxter presents cogs in the great war machine of humanity as it grinds across the galaxy. For all it's wonder and ambition, this is a bleak assessment of humanities potential.
But I can LOVE bleak books - Willis' Doomsday Book broke my heart, but I loved it. I never loved this. I respect it enormously. It grew on me throughout as I found new aspects of it's innovative design and execution to appreciate. It's austere, and brilliantly balanced. But it's not terribly fun. The light-hearted and playful moments are few and far between.
There's a very old-school vibe about all of Baxter's work. Some essential quality reminiscent of sci-fi written by thinkers who are scientists and engineers first, and become writers second. Fans of Arthur C Clarke and Asimov may gel well with Baxter.
For fans of intelligent, serious, fascinating sci-fi - Resplendant is HIGHLY recommend.
And despite being part of a bigger series, it would stand-alone perfectly well.
Considering the low number of reviews/ratings it has on Goodreads, this is also clearly a bit of an under-appreciated gem!
After this I read: Mona Lisa Overdrive
October 21, 2025
What is it with Baxter and last books being novellas omnibus, I don't know, but I like it, and he might continue to do so - especially when they are so damn good.
The Destiny's Children saga spans on such a long time it's mind boggling, and Baxter's creativity and ability to dive into the human's pysche is unmatched.
Very solid space opera, will 100% be back to it again in like 10-15 years.
The Destiny's Children saga spans on such a long time it's mind boggling, and Baxter's creativity and ability to dive into the human's pysche is unmatched.
Very solid space opera, will 100% be back to it again in like 10-15 years.
February 16, 2014
Blame it on Asimov. Ever since he had unleashed the “Foundation” saga, with its maddeningly realistic-yet-improbable glimpses of future where mankind shapes the fate of the universe through ups & downs, every writer ‘doing’ sci-fi has felt like having one of his/her own epics in that vein, comprising doorstopper novels and intimidatingly long novellas. As it happens, readers have thrown away most of the garbage, and all that we are left with are hard & compact stories. Stephen Baxter has tried (with considerable success) to tell several epical stories concerning the fate of mankind, separately. One such arc is commonly known as the ‘Xeelee Sequence’, and this book contains several stories & novellas (all of them are stand-alone) depicting various points & stages in that particular ark.
Trying to summarise the stories would essentially give away vital plot-points of the sequence, and readers who are yet to encounter that sequence in the form of the novels might find such a summary as utterly ‘killjoy’. Hence, I would refrain from that, and would confine myself to offering the following observations:
1. This is mostly a bleak book. When you keep in mind the time-frame of the chronologically arranged stories (1st story AD 5301, 19th /final story AD 10,00,000), you are bound to feel depressed because, from our perspective, even a decade seems to be inordinately long. Also, the modifications that humanity undergoes during this time-span are not just physical (unlike other space-opera or ‘hard’ SF), but mostly emotional, and that is not very inspiring.
2. While wars and wanton savagery (both resulting not just from tactical quest for resources, but primarily due to intolerance & suspicion towards anyone or anything ‘different’) have already started ravaging our planet, to read about a future where mankind becomes less ‘humane’ than aliens and carries out such savagery on a universal scale to ensure that the species becomes a monolithic parasite intent on exploiting everything indefinitely, is positively depressing.
Precisely for these reasons, the two stories that have stuck in my mind, and to which I might return in future, are ‘Mayflower II’ (dealing with a stage where mankind has become triumphant and has started exploring again, for the sake of discovery) and ‘The Siege of Earth’ (mankind loses everything, but childhood & innocence remain there, perhaps awaiting freedom from virtual space). Now, it’s your call.
Trying to summarise the stories would essentially give away vital plot-points of the sequence, and readers who are yet to encounter that sequence in the form of the novels might find such a summary as utterly ‘killjoy’. Hence, I would refrain from that, and would confine myself to offering the following observations:
1. This is mostly a bleak book. When you keep in mind the time-frame of the chronologically arranged stories (1st story AD 5301, 19th /final story AD 10,00,000), you are bound to feel depressed because, from our perspective, even a decade seems to be inordinately long. Also, the modifications that humanity undergoes during this time-span are not just physical (unlike other space-opera or ‘hard’ SF), but mostly emotional, and that is not very inspiring.
2. While wars and wanton savagery (both resulting not just from tactical quest for resources, but primarily due to intolerance & suspicion towards anyone or anything ‘different’) have already started ravaging our planet, to read about a future where mankind becomes less ‘humane’ than aliens and carries out such savagery on a universal scale to ensure that the species becomes a monolithic parasite intent on exploiting everything indefinitely, is positively depressing.
Precisely for these reasons, the two stories that have stuck in my mind, and to which I might return in future, are ‘Mayflower II’ (dealing with a stage where mankind has become triumphant and has started exploring again, for the sake of discovery) and ‘The Siege of Earth’ (mankind loses everything, but childhood & innocence remain there, perhaps awaiting freedom from virtual space). Now, it’s your call.
March 6, 2010
It's a collection of short but consecutive stories that describe events in Baxter's universe he layed out in the previous three Destiny's Childrens books. I'm not usually a fan of short stories but this is really reads like one story, just running different characters most of the time. Not messy or complicated, it actually helps understand the previous volumes.
February 13, 2018
I've just read my way through the entirety of the Destiny's Children series and I feel pretty depressed about our future as a species. I've read the books previously, and I don't think my take away from them was the same, although I don't exactly remember, hence the re-read.
The book itself is well written, but suffers too much from repetition of themes; the many short stories in the book continually cover the primary theme of humanity-at-war, which given that the focus of these novels is squarely humanity's ascension and eventual fall to the Xeelee, shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. With that said however, I do feel that the repetition of humanity's focus on repressing individual expression and focus on glory via death to be a tad depressing.
In some of the other Xeelee sequence novels, I've felt that there was a universe being created complete with enough room for individual adventures, within which the Qax occupation and overthrow was but a single thread. These novels are about nothing but war, focused around the overthrow of the Qax, the stasis that the Coalition holds mankind within, and the misery that's endemic when we suppress our empathy for one another.
There were some good stories though, so it wasn't all doom and gloom, but since most stories use either a war as a backdrop or as a jumping off point to start a story, and since they are short stories, there isn't always room for exploring intriguing plot points or novel ideas in the same way there might be with a longer format story.
Overall, I'm glad I re-read the four books - they've given me a refresh on the Xeelee sequence, penned in a lot of detail on the origins of that universe, and laid bare a number of things that were left unexplored in the primary material. That said, I think I might read something a little more light hearted to take my mind off the next million years of humanity!
The book itself is well written, but suffers too much from repetition of themes; the many short stories in the book continually cover the primary theme of humanity-at-war, which given that the focus of these novels is squarely humanity's ascension and eventual fall to the Xeelee, shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. With that said however, I do feel that the repetition of humanity's focus on repressing individual expression and focus on glory via death to be a tad depressing.
In some of the other Xeelee sequence novels, I've felt that there was a universe being created complete with enough room for individual adventures, within which the Qax occupation and overthrow was but a single thread. These novels are about nothing but war, focused around the overthrow of the Qax, the stasis that the Coalition holds mankind within, and the misery that's endemic when we suppress our empathy for one another.
There were some good stories though, so it wasn't all doom and gloom, but since most stories use either a war as a backdrop or as a jumping off point to start a story, and since they are short stories, there isn't always room for exploring intriguing plot points or novel ideas in the same way there might be with a longer format story.
Overall, I'm glad I re-read the four books - they've given me a refresh on the Xeelee sequence, penned in a lot of detail on the origins of that universe, and laid bare a number of things that were left unexplored in the primary material. That said, I think I might read something a little more light hearted to take my mind off the next million years of humanity!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2023
I find the writing of Stephen Baxter somewhat perplexing. Without doubt, he knows his science, as he should, having degrees in maths and engineering, and this comes through very plainly when he gets into the hard science stuff. In fact, he gets so stuck into it, that he occasionally makes the same mistake other ASF writers do and have done; that is, to explain the science in terms that his peers would understand, but not the general reading public, at least not so deeply.
However, it is his actual story-telling which sometimes lets him down, in my humble opinion, that is. The introduction to the next book I have just started, written by Paul McAuley, ranks his space opera series about the Xeelee up there with Heinlein, Anderson, Stapledon and Niven and even mentions it as "this grandest of space operas. Well, in my view, he doesn't stand at the same level as any of these and also nowhere as high as those other three space opera grandmasters, Reynolds, Pratchett and Banks.
His telling of the actual story is often written as it he is in a hurry to get this part over and done with, so that he can return to the pure science, although there are times when he gets carried away with a character that it becomes boring, such is the depth he goes into.
No, he is not bad, but does not deserve to be up there with the greats and his books are such that I will not be going back to read them again, as I do with Banks, Reynolds and co.
However, it is his actual story-telling which sometimes lets him down, in my humble opinion, that is. The introduction to the next book I have just started, written by Paul McAuley, ranks his space opera series about the Xeelee up there with Heinlein, Anderson, Stapledon and Niven and even mentions it as "this grandest of space operas. Well, in my view, he doesn't stand at the same level as any of these and also nowhere as high as those other three space opera grandmasters, Reynolds, Pratchett and Banks.
His telling of the actual story is often written as it he is in a hurry to get this part over and done with, so that he can return to the pure science, although there are times when he gets carried away with a character that it becomes boring, such is the depth he goes into.
No, he is not bad, but does not deserve to be up there with the greats and his books are such that I will not be going back to read them again, as I do with Banks, Reynolds and co.
November 28, 2023
This collection was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, with some high highs and low lows. A future history in the vein of Vacuum Diagrams (one of my all time favorites), this time Baxter focuses on humanity’s militaristic evolution to a wartime species for many thousands of years. Overall I think this military focus is what weakened the Destiny’s Children series for me, as I’m just not all that interested in military sci-fi. That being said, there were still some notable highlights in this collection for me, mostly towards the end of the book after the coalition was dissolved and exploration was once again a focus (which is why I love the Xeelee books so much in the first place). I particularly loved the last three stories which fortunately allowed me to finish this long and sometimes arduous book on a high note.
September 4, 2017
I enjoyed this book. A collection of short stories that spans much of the universe Baxter has developed (in time and in location). I like this way of interacting with a known universe, and could have read dozens more of these stories.
I can't say that the "ending" was satisfactory, though. An unfortunate side effect of this style, perhaps. Even so, this book almost stands alone and was a fun read.
I can't say that the "ending" was satisfactory, though. An unfortunate side effect of this style, perhaps. Even so, this book almost stands alone and was a fun read.
November 24, 2025
Disappointing. I am a big fan of the Xeelee sequence generally but haven't read any of the Destiny's Children series.
The addition of detail around the Qax occupation was good, and similarly for the Silver Ghost storirs. The endless post-Qax war and Qax-style authoritarian regime was quite tedious, although probably believable.
The addition of detail around the Qax occupation was good, and similarly for the Silver Ghost storirs. The endless post-Qax war and Qax-style authoritarian regime was quite tedious, although probably believable.
June 18, 2021
Some good, some dull. Not as consistent as other collection of short stories. 'Vacuum Diagrams' was much better. But some interesting and far out concepts nonetheless.
January 6, 2025
Accidentally read this one first out of the sub series, but never got around to finishing the rest. Holds up fine on its own, especially if you've read some of the Xeelee short stories
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October 25, 2025Why you might like it: Xeelee arc vignettes; vast scope. Rubric match: not yet scored. Uses your engineering/rigor/first-contact/world-building rubric. Tags: xeellee, collection
July 22, 2015
A short story collection that knits together the various events of the various chapters of the Destiny's Children universe (though being primarily being set in the far future the contemporary/ancient world set Coalescent doesn't get much of a lookin). Like most of these types of books the quality can vary here & there, though there isn't a story I can highlight as being a particular dud. Mayflower 2, is probably my favourite story of the bunch, it feels the most unique (a lot of the others are grouped together because they correspond to a theme & they blur a little) it explores interesting concepts about how human society transforms over the course of millennia long space flight. I personally found the last story a little anti climactic but as a whole it's a strong collection. Something for the reader that like their sci fi a bit out there but accessible.
August 2, 2012
A massive saga covering the whole of human history plus a few thousand years into the future comes to an end. I thought it was a bit long, a bit dull in places and not as good as the others and seemed to crawl along then suddenly finish in a sprint, but a somewhat jerky bitty finish and not altogether satisfying.
June 23, 2012
Fantastic! The scale of the universe imagined by Baxter is astounding! This is a great book, filling the gaps in the massive Xeelee series.
October 2, 2015
A breathtaking scope of future history. Longer review to come. Hard to imagine what to read next to follow this series of stories that think conceptually in passing millenia.
December 19, 2016
Nah. Could only get through 2 chapters. Too convolutred.
August 4, 2020
I liked "Ghost Wars", "Breeding Ground" and "Between Worlds"
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews