They have measured the slow pulse of the seasons as the Earth spins its stately annual dance. Their memories stretch back across the million-year cycles of the ice sheets.

Their stories tell of the making of the world. And as the millenia have passed, their legends have served them well.

And a thousand years from now, on a different world, they will be the difference between life and death, between extinction and a future as long as the past.

This new edition collects three of Stephen Baxter's early books together for the first time.