Stephen Baxter

"Mankind's future in this galaxy could be all but infinite.... There are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, lasting trillions of years--and their planets can be habitable for humans. Such is the world of Proxima Centauri. And its promise could mean the never-ending existence of humanity. But first it must be colonized, and no one wants to be a settler. There is no glamor that accompanies it, like being the first man on the moon, nor is there...

Four hostages are finally released, but they face a world suddenly inundated as vast amounts of water is released from the earth's mantle. As the world's cities and countries disappear under the rising seas, humanity faces unimaginable global disaster.

"1916: The Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive--some say mad, others allege dangerous--scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through...

The Next--the hyper-intelligent post-humans--realize that the missive they received from the center of the galaxy contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence knows as The Machine. But to build this computer the size of an Earth continent, they must obtain help from the more populous and still industrious worlds of mankind.

Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history. Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance? Bisesa's questions...