Coalescent

Name: Coalescent
ISBN: 0345457854

A Novel (Destiny's Children)

by Stephen Baxter · first published 2003

6mentions

2recommended by

3HN commenters

2009–2022first – last mentioned

67% recommend33% neutral

Science Fiction Fiction & Literature

Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting-edge scientific speculation into pure, page-turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war-torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy. . . .Destiny's Chil

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akkartik · Dec 23, 2009 · Recommends

It's science fiction, but (the better) half of Stephen Baxter's Coalescent (http://www.amazon.com/Coalescent-Stephen-Baxter/dp/034545785...) is set in 4th c. Britain. Nothing else has given me that sense of being there when the wavefront of the empire receded.
on “Call this a recession? It isn’t the Dark Ages” ↗
Anthony-G · Feb 20, 2022 · Recommends

…Alan Moore - Dune by Frank Herbert - Immortality by Milan Kundera - first 3 books in the The Dark Tower series by Stephen King - The Dark Half by Stephen King - The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman - Coalescent by Stephen Baxter - 1984 by George Orwell - Animal Farm by George Orwell - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite fiction book?” ↗
Anthony-G · Sep 9, 2019 · Recommends

…alternative time-line and cover inter-planetary journeys (Mars and Titan), involving the use NASA technology. Both books seem very well-researched and true-to-life. Another book I really enjoyed was Coalescent [2]. It’s a blend of historical and science fiction: the historical part tallies with my own understanding of the late Roman Empire in Western Europe while the science part is more speculative – a human…
on “Goodreads Is Broken” ↗
akkartik · Sep 30, 2009 · Recommends

"..anyone interested in the intersection of science fiction, Catholicism, and the Church functioning as external storage for the memory of the human race.." Another recommendation: the Coalescent-Exultant-Transcendant trilogy by Stephen Baxter.
on “Will the Manhattan Project Always Exist?” ↗
Anthony-G · Jun 23, 2022 · Recommends

This aligns with what (little) I know about this historical period. For an accessible – albeit fictional – depiction of the collapse of 5th-century Roman Britain, Stephen Baxter does a good job of it in Coalescent¹. In the first part of the book, he describes how the crossing of the (frozen) river Rhein in 406² precipitated the political and economic destabilisation of Northern Gaul and then Roman Britain. The…
on “New Tolkien book, The Fall of Númenor, to be published” ↗
spiralx · Apr 6, 2021 · Mentions

Stephen Baxter's book Coalescent shows how a human hive mind could form via an set of circumstances that could be enforced or simply arise due to the environment. His "eusocial evolution" is a pretty damn creepy idea! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalescent
on “Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface” ↗