I jotted this title down to buy November 2022, came across it in a book store in October 2023, looked it up online and noticed it was a dollar at Amazon. Was curious to see what Baxter is attempting here. He’s written fascinating stuff and stuff that didn’t work for me, and he seems to have phases in topics of interest. This time it’s an interesting mix of two main story lines, and zooming out to enormous timelines. The notion of having some people move far forward in time as feedback loops to maintain humanity is interesting. Plays around with the notion of emergent mind at 10 trillion or so connected nodes, whatever type of node it is. Interesting political splits too, as well as a take on conservatism as a mistake. And now I wonder if a sun can have mind.

The prison at the end of the universe…. human evolution and science is at a dead end, the sun is changing and forcing rapid evolution everywhere else. This book made an impression on me, twisting multiple times and adding yet another layer to the world building and the story. A gripping story in a highly oppressive setting. I appreciate Tchaikovsky’s SF a lot.