History Literature / XeeleeSequence

* FascistButInefficient: ''Subverted''. Yes, if you view the [=ICoG=] under the lense of a modern human society, its abillity to provide welfare to its citizens is, to put it lighly, ''horrendously ineffecient''. But that in itself is a problem isn't it? As the [=ICoG=] is ''NOT'' a normal human society. It is a ''posthuman'' one and the Coalition was ''never'' built originally to be a utopia for mankind. Rather, the goal of Druz's Coalition is to prevent humanity from evolving at all cost, exterminate all potential existential threats of humanity and to unite and give humanity purpose for the first time in millennia no matter how monstrous the steps needed to take in achieving it. In that case, the Coalition proves to be both Fascistic ''and'' effecient to a ''horrifying degree''. So once the Xeelee finally high-tailed it, the original goals of Druz became completed. And as such, [[spoiler:the Coalition collapses almost immediately after the Xeelee withdrew from the galaxy as there were ''no reason'' for the Coalition to exist]].

** To the tiny Starfolk that inhabit the neutron star in which ''Flux'' takes place, "air" is the neutron superfluid in which they live; "plants" and "animals" are, respectively, the sessile and mobile indigenous lifeforms of the star (the "plants" are in turn divided into "trees" and "grasses"); "wood" is the building material made from the "trees"; "leaves" are the edible appendages of the "trees"; "wheat" is the "grass" cultivated for food ("bread"); "air-pigs" are the main "animals" used as livestock; "air-boars" are the wild cousins of the air-pigs; and there are also "animals" called "spin-spiders" and "rays".

* FullBoarAction: The 'Air-boars' that inhabit the neutron star in ''Flux'', which are described as savage cousins of the Air-pigs used by the transhuman habitants as livestock. One of them kickstarts the plot of the story by goring Adda, forcing Dura and Farr to seek work in Parz City to pay for Adda's treatment.

* FuturePrimitive: In conditions that do not change and where innovation is not necessary or taboo, humans have a tendency to breed intelligence out of themselves; for example, the [[spoiler:Shipbuilders in ''Between Worlds'' and transients (mortal human crew) on the ''Mayflower'' generation ship are little more than beasts that can nonetheless maintain their ships out of instinct because that's their way of attracting sexual partners]], the Coalescent hive that appears at the end of ''Coalescent'', the fish-like posthumans that briefly appear in ''Transcendent'', the savage 'drones' in ''In the Un-Black'', among others.

* GenreShift: Unlike every other Xeelee story, ''Coalescent'' is a work of historical fiction instead of a distant-future high-concept space opera; it is set in the past and has little science fiction elements until the end.

* GodIsGood: The Transcendence' ultimate purpose is to redeem any and all forms of human suffering that has ever existed, could've existed, or possibly will exist. [[spoiler:Deconstructed as even the slightest moment of discomfort any single human experiences in any timeline causes unfathomable mental agony for the Transcendence, so it comes to the conclusion that it must ensure humanity never existed to begin with, to spare every human timeline possible pain.]]

* LongevityTreatment: Anti-Senescence technology, which repairs genetic damage due to age via nanobots. The treatment has a 99% success rate, though failures typically end with a terminal illness. Lifespan with AS treatments theoretically has no upper limit, though in practice the treatments begin to break down at 400-500 years.

* MadGod: [[spoiler:The [[DeityOfHumanOrigin Transcendence]] ultimately desires to erase all suffering in the past, thereby ensuring that every human that could have existed does so. But since this is seen as too great a task, the Transcendence is prepared to reach back in time and stop humans from ever existing, thereby "erasing" the suffering that they intend to redeem. Now that's a ''messed up'' god.]]

* RecursivePrecursors: The very first of them are the spacetime-defect creatures ([[spoiler:ancestors of the Xeelee]]), who dominated the universe before during the grand unification epoch, which ended 10[[superscript:-36]] seconds after the Big Bang. After them came the quark-gluon based lifeforms, who flourished during the first millionth of a second of the universe. And finally there are the quagmites, who lived for thirty times that period before another cosmic transition lets baryonic life like humans inherit the universe.

%%* SequelHook:%%Quotes are not acceptable context. Explain how these are examples.
%%** ''Timelike Infinity'' ends with this paragraph (which indirectly leads up to ''Ring''):

%%** ''Formidable Caress'' also ends with one (which leads to ''Vengeance''):
%%--->[[spoiler:Even after the Xeelee had finally won their war against humanity, the stars continued to age, too rapidly. The Xeelee completed their great Projects and fled the cosmos. Time unravelled. Dying galaxies collided like clapping hands. But even now the story was not yet done. The universe itself prepared for another convulsion, greater than any it had suffered before. And then-- "Who are you?" "My name is Michael Poole."]]

* StarterVillain: The Squeem, the first aliens that pose a true threat for the humans. They manage to conquer the Solar System and enslave humanity for 51 years, but it later turns out that they are not especially intelligent or advanced, and are dependent on scavenged technology from the Xeelee, like the hyperdrive. After the overthrow of the Squeem, the humans gain access to Xeelee technology for the first time, which opens up a new expansion era, while the Squeem themselves become DemotedToExtra.

* TheBadGuysWin: [[Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality Sort of,]] but if you want to go by technicality than the Photino Birds are the great antagonists and they end up winning the war.

* BrainwashedAndCrazy: The above quote in the Nightmare Fuel page should be a good enough hint to showcase how absolutely loco the Coalition has turned humanity into. This is a regime that turns ''children'' as young as ''six'' into psychotic machines design to kill and ''kill only''. One side character for example, almost comitted suicide just from the ''mere thought'' of doing something non-doctrinal. The main character from Exultant even sufferred a minor existential crisis on what he would do once the Coalition finally drives off the Xeelee; that his life would become meaningless without perpetual bloodshed and genocides. That is how indoctrinated an average human has become. To say the Coalition is a broken society made up of broken people, creating an environment that churns out ''even more broken people'' is an understatement.

** To the tiny Starfolk that inhabit the neutron star in which ''Flux'' takes place, 'Air' is the neutron superfluid in which they live; 'plants' and 'animals' are, respectively, the sessile and mobile indigenous lifeforms of the star (the 'plants' are in turn divided into 'trees' and 'grasses'); 'wood' is the building material made from the 'trees'; 'leaves' are the edible appendages of the 'trees'; 'wheat' is the 'grass' cultivated for food ('bread'); 'Air-pigs' are the main 'animals' used as livestock; 'Air-boars' are the savage cousins of the Air-pigs; and there are also 'animals' called 'spin-spiders' and 'rays'.

* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: In ''Hero'', the amazing powers of the eponymous superhero comes from his suit.

* [[DarkerandEdgier Darker and Edgier]]: To ''Series/DoctorWho'', another universe that is very time travel heavy. Whilst Doctor Who does indeed have its dark and messed up moments, even the worse Doctor Who moments fail in comparison to the absolute horror that is, the Sequence.
** Also to ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. As some have considered 40k to be a [[ALighterShadeofBlack A Lighter Shade of Black]] compared to the Sequence. [[AlwaysaBiggerFish Which should tell you the type of universe you are stepping into]]. The memetic description by 1d4chan in the YMMV page isn't that far from the truth.

* LightWorlder: The inhabitants of the generation ship ''Nord'' have slim bodies, arms only a little shorter than legs, and long toes, not as long as fingers but capable of grasping and manipulation -- a body built for zero gravity.

* ShownTheirWork: When the author of the series has a degree in mathematics and engineering, this is bound to happen. Although a few of the theoretic physics is now outdated (i.e. Great Attractor) and paleantology not being Baxter's strong suit. Overall, the series still holds up incredibly well; from how time travel works, to how dimensions should properly behave via quantum mechanics. The Sequence is still chock full of applied and theoretical physics on both the very small and the very big.

** The anti-Xeelee is an artificial intelligence created by the Xeelee billions of years ago (or billions of years ahead, in the far future) to ensure their great projects would be completed. The anti-Xeelee is an incorporeal entity made of probability quantum wave functions that fill the universe like a spiderweb. The anti-Xeelee awareness is spread across the entire universe and is not bound by the restraints of time or space. It is also acausal -- in the sense, there's no beginning or end to it, it's always there in some form or another. As a particle with a negative vector in time, its main job is to travel backward in time.

* MultiEthnicName: The initial crew of the ''Great Northern'' are named Serena Harvey Gallium Harvey Milpitas, Mark Bassett Friar Armonk Wu, Louise Ye Armonk and Garry Benson Deng Uvarov.

* {{Dystopia}}: One of the bleakest examples in literary history, which is considered one hell of a feat. The sheer levels of nihilistic destruction, trauma on a cross-generational scale, time-travel abuse, and tyrannical despotism on a multi-millennia and multi-galactical scale rivals the likes of ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' and ''[[Literature/IHaveNoMouthandIMustScream I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream]]''. It is of no surprise that 1d4chan considers the Xeelee, alongside '''84'' and ''I Have No Mouth'' as the Holy Trinity of Dystopias. Nightmare Hellscape, indeed.

* TerribleTrio: Out of universe, the Xeelee Sequence is considered as an equal to [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]] and IHaveNoMouthandIMustScream in terms of being the trifecta of Dystopias. If anything, these three literature pieces is sometimes debated on which is the most depressing, bleakest and nihilistic works ever written into fiction.

** On the flipside, the Sequence also heavily deconstruct the HumansAreWarriors trope. The [=ICoG=] and the Transcendence, two of the most well known and successful human polities, are treated as utterly unhinged, self-destructive and tyrannical. The Sequence is what happens when one use that trope and drive it to its own logical conclusion. Children are expanded as disposable flesh to the meat grinder. Girls from Mars are turned into [[Main/BreedingSlave Breeding Slaves]]. Any and all forms of resources and ingenuity are wasted on war, causing societal stagnation. All aspects of human joy and happiness are erased including the concept of family. ''Entire human sub-species are bred to commit mass suicide''. The Sequence shows that such a trope is nihilistic in its inherent self-destructive nature that should never, ''ever'' be praised.

* GenreDeconstruction: Some view the Sequence as a whole, to the CosmicHorrorStory genre. The Eldritch Abominations in the Sequence aren't depicted as a all-consuming apathethic cosmic evil. Each of the ancient races follow a pattern of rationality within their own mindframe. As alien as they are, they all seek a common purpose to survive. The titular Xeelee even had enough compassion to save as many baryonic races as possible. Even for the Photino Birds, one can argue that they are terraforming the entire multiverse so that their own offspring can survive without any intentional malice. If anything, it is the ''humans'' and lesser aliens that are depicted as the utterly depraved ones.

** ''There was no place. There was no time. A human observer would have recognised nothing here: no mass, energy, or force. There was only a rolling, random froth whose fragmented geometry constantly changed. Even causality was a foolish dream. The orderly spacetime with which humans were familiar was suffused with vacuum energy, out of which virtual particles, electrons and quarks, would fizz into existence, and then scatter or annihilate, their brief walks upon the stage governed by quantum uncertainty. In this extraordinary place whole universes bubbled out of the froth, to expand and dissipate, or to collapse in a despairing flare. This chaotic cavalcade of possibilities, this place of nonbeing where whole universes clustered in reefs of foamy spindrift, was suffused by a light beyond light. But even in this cauldron of strangeness there was life. Even here there was mind. Call them monads.''

** ** The term ''photino bird'' is one, as these creatures are obviously not birds, or even matter at all.

* [[DystopiaJustifiestheMeans Dystopia Justifies the Means]]: I mean, if the above quote from Hama Druz isn't already a ''hint'' on how utterly f*cked the Sequence is, then the sheer scale of despair on an ''epochal'' scale should be a good indicator. It cannot be ''understated'' how ''horrible'' the Coalition is, even by the already horrific standards of the Sequence.

Overall, the [[InsistentTerminology Sequence]] is a loosely connected series, covering literally ''billions'' of years of history, with later stories expanding the scope to include literally the entire history of the universe, from beginning to end. The main connecting thread throughout all the novels are the Xeelee's enduring presence and influence on the history of the universe and mankind. The series has a definite chronology, but the novels and short stories were published in AnachronicOrder. However, all of them can be read as individual stand-alone stories.