Raft
- 272
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Raft”, Baxter’s debut and the first book of the Xeelee Sequence, impresses most with its strange, inventive world. Its survivors live in a universe where gravity is far stronger than ours, and the setting reveals itself gradually. Some readers find the characters thin and the story slow to engage; others are drawn in once the bizarre world opens up. The Xeelee do not appear, so it stands on its own.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Raft is a 1991 hard science fiction book by British writer Stephen Baxter. Raft is both Baxter's debut novel and the first book in the Xeelee Sequence, although the Xeelee are not present. Raft was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992.
Reading order · Xeelee Sequence
Full order & progress →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 79 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 35% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 6.8 | 10 | 13% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 69 | 87% |
Frequently asked
How long is Raft?
It has 272 pages — shorter than 83% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
