Short Fiction Month: Scales - Alastair Reynolds

A new year starts with an Alastair Reynolds review on Random Comments. The man has written dozens of short stories so there is plenty to choose from. For a more detailed look at his short fiction check out the reviews of the collections Galactic North (2006) and Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006). Scales has been published online in two places and has been included in two anthologies. It has yet to appear in one of his collections, which is one of the reasons why I picked it.

Scales is one of those stories that only works in the short length. Reynolds writes it in a circle so to speak ending where he started, and uses that to deliver a very unsettling tale. It opens with the main character waiting in line to sign up for the military and gain citizenship (a distinct echo of Starship Troopers here). As a tangible reminder of why this is necessary, a captured soldier of the enemy, a reptilian looking alien whose species has attacked the Earth unprovoked, is held in a cage nearby to be tortured by the people waiting in line. Soon after signing up, the main character finds out the war is not quite what it seemed.

Reynolds takes us from the very physical confrontation with the captured alien to ever increasing levels of abstract reality. The war is fought on planes of existence, for lack of a better word, that most people never imagined existed. It distances the character ever more from to brutal reality of what is going on in the universe as we perceive it. He does so without ever questioning or stepping back to gain a wider perspective of the situation. In a way, he is the perfect soldier, single-minded in his purpose to kill the enemy, flawlessly carrying out orders. He finds enemies behind enemies, and eventually sheds everything that makes him human.

There are echoes of Heinlein in this story but also a bit of The Matrix. The way the main character leaves his body behind and progresses onwards very much reminds me of that movie. Beyond the choice to sign up there is no going back though. There is no red pill or blue pill, the main character is not presented with a view of what awaits him. The way that what happens to him appears inevitable makes this story very disturbing. The combination of a main character who is both blind and powerless to shape his future, and willing to go along with whatever is presented to him, is very troubling indeed.

Dark futures are not uncommon in Reynolds' work but in this story he takes it very far even by his standards. It is a well written tale. I appreciated the structure of the story, how it progresses and then comes full circle. It is too brief to really do much with the main character though. He is a pawn and that is all there is to it. As such, it may not satisfy all readers.

Story Details
Title: Scales
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Language: English
Originally published: The Guardian website, June 23rd, 2009 (audio)
Read in: Lightspeed Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams
Story length: short story, 1931 words
Awards: none
Available online: The Guardian (audio), Lightspeed

Zima Blue and Other Stories - Alastair Reynolds

A new year on Random Comments traditionally opens with a review of one of Allastair Reynolds' books. This year I picked his short story collection Zima Blue and Other Stories. The first edition of this collection was published in 2006 by Night Shade Books. In 2009 an expanded British edition appeared from Gollancz. I have read the Gollancz version of the collection which includes four additional stories. The stories in this collection are all set outside his Revelation Space universe. Most of the short fiction in that universe can be found in the collections Galactic North (2006) and Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003). Several of the stories are linked though. The collection contains the three Merlin stories for instance, as well as two stories featuring the character Carrie Clay and two stories set in a many worlds interpretation of Cardiff.

The collection opens strong with The Real Story (2002), the first Carrie Clay story. She is a journalist chasing the crew of the first manned mission to Mars. One that went horribly wrong but turned into a heroic tale of survival. The crew disappeared shortly after but is rumoured to still be alive. It's a story about survival mechanisms, about the creation of legends and about the burden they put on the people that are the source of legends. It's heroic and tragic at the same time. Emotionally very powerful.

Beyond the Aquila Rift (2005) features an abandoned alien transport system that enables travel faster than the speed of light. Nobody really understands how the system works. It is highly reliable but every once in a while something goes wrong and a ship ends up in an unexpected place. The Blue Goose is such a ship and its captain has a hard time dealing with it. This story reminds me of Frederik Pohl's Gateway (1977). Beyond the Aquila Rift is a bit of a mindfuck, constantly pulling the rug from under the main character. He deals with issues of guilt but also has problems accepting his situation. It makes clever use of a first person perspective to keep the reader guessing.

The next story is the oldest in the collection and one of the very first stories Reynolds managed to sell. Enola (1991) deals with artificial intelligence. It features a warmachine that manages to evolve beyond its original programming and function after it becomes apparent there is no reason to fight on. Going beyond design and/or physical capabilities using extensive modifications is an idea that Reynolds would use later on. In the afterword he professes to be fond of this story but compared to the other material in this collection it is not a particularly strong piece.

Signal to Noise (2006) and Cardiff Afterlife (2008) are two linked stories, bases on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, an idea that Reynolds uses in other stories as well. In these stories it is possible to briefly make contact with alternate realities that have just branched off from the timeline of the observer. The further these futures drift apart, the harder it gets to maintain contact.  In Signal to Noise the main character's wife is killed in an accident. He gets to spend a week with her in a different reality before that door closes forever. It's a very sad tale, with a bitter sweet ending. Cardiff Afterlife is a much shorter piece. It gives us a brief look at a Cardiff destroyed by a terrorist attack. A very relevant theme these days. It is so brief it doesn't achieve the depth of the first story in this setting however. Reynolds' short fiction tends to work better if it's long.

The next three stories, Hideaway (2000), Minla's Flowers (2007) and Merlin's Gun (2000) are linked as well. They are the kind of signature space opera that most readers associate Reynolds with. Stories set on the vast canvas of space, in far futures, usually featuring technology that Arthur C. Clarke would think of as magic. They are presented by internal chronology in the collection. Of the three, Minla's Flowers is by far the strongest. It's a tragedy in which the main character Merlin arrives on a planet that has just reached the stage where aircraft have begun to appear. He knows that in a few decades the planet will be destroyed. To save the people on the planet, technology will have to develop to the space ages fast.

Early in the story Merlin meets the young girl Minla, whom he presents with an exotic flower every time they meet. As the story progresses and Minla ages, she develops into a leader who will sacrifice millions to help a handful of people escape the approaching catastrophe. Characterisation is usually the weaker element in Reynolds' novels but in this collection he manages to hit the bull's eye a few times. The relationship between Minla and Merlin is very well done. This story may well be the strongest in the collection.

At this point I felt the collection was running out of steam a bit. The next two stories didn't do much for me. Angels of Ashes (1999) is a story that mixes religion and quantum mechanics. The religious part turns out to not quite be what one of its priests expects. A cynical view on prophets I guess. Not really my cup of tea. Spirey and the Queen (1996) is the only story in this collection I had read before. It was included in John Joseph Adams' anthology Federations (2009). It's full blown space opera in which we encounter artificial intelligence based on social insects. It's a fairly fast-paced pieces, with plenty of interesting ideas on space exploration, war in space and robotics. An entertaining read but not the strongest in the collection.

Understanding Space and Time (2005) is one of the longer pieces in the collection and in my opinion one of the highlights. It a story about a man stranded on Mars. He is forced the watch as the population on earth is wiped out. When his last companion on the station dies, he realizes he may well be the last human left alive.Just when it looks he has gotten himself killed in a pointless trip outside the station, aliens arrive to rescue him. It's a story about madness, loneliness and isolation but also one about seeking understanding. Structurally, I liked this story best. Reynolds end the story where he started, albeit millions of years later. The process of expanding his mind to probe the mysteries of space-time ever deeper and then going back to his origins runs parallel to a theory in cosmology that predicts than the universe will fall back in on itself again. I wonder if Reynolds had than in mind when he wrote it.

The final three stories in the collection didn't really grab me. Digital to Analogue (1992) is one of his earlier pieces. It mixes music with a new disease that spreads though certain sounds. Seen though the drugged and increasingly desperate main character, I found it to be a confusing read. Everlasting (2004) is the only story in the collection that isn't strictly speaking science fiction. It uses the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, but only to illustrate the unstable state of mind of one of the main characters. It leaves the reader with the question what if he was right? In Zima Blue (2005) we end where we started the collection, with journalist Carrie Clay. This time she meets with one of the galaxy's most famous artists who is not quite what he appears to be. It's a story about art and artificial intelligence and the question of they will be able to learn to be creative. I didn't time the artist was as interesting a character as the astronaut in The Real Story.

Zima Blue and Other Stories offers a good overview of what Reynolds has produced in the 1990s and 2000s outside the Revelation Space universe. There is some of his signature big canvas space opera but also a few pieces that show he can write more varied material than that. As with most collections, I didn't like all stories it contained equally. On the whole it is a solid collection though. One that fans of Reynolds' novels will appreciate. Most of his short fiction from after 2009 remains uncollected. Maybe it is time for a new collection. I would certainly be interested in reading it.

Book Details
Title: Zima Blue and Other Stories
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 455
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-08455-1
First published: 2006, 2009

Slow Bullets - Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds has been producing novels at a steady pace now since the turn of the century. He's also written quite a few pieces of short fiction. Slow Bullets is a new novella, published by Tachyon in June. The publisher was kind enough to provide me with an advance copy. It looks like they decided to keep with the old cover style. His UK publisher Gollancz recently changed the cover style for his novels. They kept the font but the dark covers have been dropped. Slow Bullets is uncut space opera and doesn't appear to be related to any of his other works. I also found it to be light on physics that are included in many of Reynold's other works. It could be considered a good starting point for readers wanting to explore his works.

An interstellar war is coming to an end but the fighting is confused and not quite finished. Scur, a soldier recruited against her will, finds herself in the hands of the enemy. Word of a ceasefire has reached them but the enemy soldiers are not quite done settling scores. When Scur's side comes looking for her, they are forced to cut their fun with her short and leave her to die. When Scur wakes up, she is healed and on board a spaceship. When she gets out of her pod, it is clear things are not right. She spots a group of people in pursuit of one of the crew members and decides to act. A decision with far-reaching consequences.

Slow Bullets feels like a story that grew in the telling. Reynolds puts in enough material for a novel and at one point, quite abruptly cuts off a few storylines so he can focus on the one of the main character. Reynolds has his reasons to do this but when I had finished it, I was left with the feeling that I had read a condensed novel rather than a novella. As such, it is structurally not the prettiest novella you'll ever encounter. Reynolds himself did better with Troika for instance. Or Diamond Dogs for that matter. Some of the things Reynolds didn't pursue in the story make me wonder what a novel about the inhabitants of the ship would have looked like.

The stuff he does deal with is very recognizably Reynolds though. It's space opera on a large canvas. Interstellar war, advanced space ships, and aliens that are so far removed from human experience as to be incomprehensible. The only thing that is missing really is the exotic physics that show up in many of his works. Which might indeed have been a bit too much for such a short work. The descriptions of the aliens reminded me a bit of the unfolding proton Cixin Liu comes up with in his novel The Three-Body Problem.

The entire novella is told from the point of view of Scur, who is also the narrator of the story. What she is mostly concerned with, besides surviving, is passing on knowledge. The ship they are on is slowly losing memory. It contains a vast amount of knowledge. More than can possibly be stored by more old-fashioned means. How to survive is not the real dilemma she faces. They have more than enough resources for that. What to take with them is the real issue. These people are from a time when information is stored in huge quantities. All the soldiers on the ship carry a storage device in their body that registers their exploits. To be reduced to writing or rely on memory is to give up a large part of their past and identity. For Scur, who has accepted the fact that she will not return to her old home again, this is the ultimate sacrifice to be made for survival.

Reynolds raises an interesting point here. With our increasing reliance on digital data storage, several experts have been warning in recent years that we are facing a huge loss of data. How long before our CD-ROMs or DVDs no longer work? How long before the software to process them is no longer available for the newer machines? Digital storage has advantages, especially in terms of physical space required and the possibilities for quick data retrieval, but it is vulnerable in its own way. Then again, is it really so bad  if we lose all the nonsense people are putting on their Facebook pages or Twitter feeds? Or the bazillion hazy holiday pictures quickly snapped with a crappy digital camera? Does losing that profoundly affect your identity? There is data and data, as Scur soon realizes. What to save when storage capacity is limited is another question that bugs Scur. Especially because the inhabitants of the space ship are from different worlds, with different world views and religions. A choice that is bound to cause conflict.

Perhaps it is fitting that Scur falls back on the oldest form of storytelling for her tale. She appears to tell it from memory. It is rough in a way, lacks detains in some places, but does manage to convey Scur's thoughts and emotions very effectively. A sharp contrast with the accurate data storage and rational analytic tools the ships computer works with. Having Scur tell the story this way is in effect a very interesting twist on the unreliable narrator technique.

Slow Bullets is a very enjoyable novella. Reynolds makes some bold choices over the course of the story and not everybody will like those. In the end I think it turned out quite well. The novella does not quite have the beauty of some of Reynold's other novellas but in a way the rough structure fits the story. It is different enough from much of Reynolds' other works that it will be interesting reading for people who have read his novels, but also contains enough recurring elements that to make it a decent entry point for new readers. It might not be the very best Reynolds has produced but it is not that far off either. You could do worse than pick up this novella.

Book Details
Title: Slow Bullets
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Pages: 192
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-61696-194-7
First published: 2015

Blue Remembered Earth - Alastair Reynolds

As usual I'm starting the new year with a review of one of Alastair Reynolds' works. After writing a number of standalones, Reynolds began a new series with the publication of Blue Remembered Earth (2012). It is the first book in the Poseidon's Children trilogy. The second volume, On a Steel Breeze, has already been published and in October, Reynolds announced that he had a complete draft of the third volume. I guess we can expect that one to be published later in 2015. Blue Remembered Earth takes a bit of a different approach to science fiction than we've seen in Reynolds' older work. I guess it is not going to be universally loved among his fans but I thought it was a pretty good read.

Tanzania 2061. The legendary Eunice Akinya, the matriarch of the powerful Akinya family, has passed away at the age of 130. As her family convenes for her funeral, rifts among the children and grandchildren become apparent. Siblings Geoffrey and Sunday never wanted much to do with the family business or its wealth. Geoffrey is a biologist studying elephants, while Sunday pursues a career as a sculptor. It puts them at odds with their cousins Hector and Lucas for whom family and the family business is everything. When they ask Geoffrey to make a trip to the moon for them to settle a bit of unfinished business their grandmother left behind, he discovers the first piece of a puzzle that casts light on their Grandmother's final journey into space, more than sixty years ago.

The novel is a bit of a scavenger hunt in space. Eunice has left a lot of obscure hints that only someone of the family would be able to decipher. It keeps Geoffrey and Sunday busy for most of the novel. There are hints that there is more at stake than Eunice annoying her family from the grave however. Throughout the story Reynolds points out that humanity is on the brink. That there is an opportunity to make a great leap forward and that it will have to be done soon. It's the underlying message of the whole novel and probably what is going to tie the three books together.

Reynolds doesn't just limit it to technology, physics and space exploration either. Geoffrey for instance, is involved in research into what he calls the inner universe: research into the workings of the brain. Implants into the human brain are commonplace and thanks to them, external devices are no longer needed for communication. Everybody can be monitored and reached almost anywhere on Earth. Now, Geoffrey is taking on the next great challenge, making neural contact with another species.

This technology has another, some would say darker, side to it too. When faced with the upheavals of man-made climate change, radical solutions were implemented. Humanity could no longer afford to fight its wars or ignore the abuse heaped on the planet's ecology. Whole nations were emptied of people, research into more durable sources of energy was given priority, adaptable seawalls were created to hold back the rising water, and war, criminality and violence were ruthlessly rooted out by means that would be Big Brother's wet dream. Surveillance is inescapable and genetic engineering is employed to rid society of unwanted criminal impulses in the population. Reynolds' solutions to the problems the planet is facing are radical to say the least.

Where in previous books Reynolds focused on space exploration grounded in the hard sciences, this book takes a look at our planet that far exceeds the attention he has given to it in his earlier works. It feels a bit like the approach of Kim Stanley Robinson really. Reynolds is having a look at sweeping social changes, creating factions along ideological lines rather than geopolitical ones. National interests are still present but appear to be fading as humanity expands into the solar system.The novel is driving for change at a great many levels.

The Akinya family is from Africa. Reynolds is not too clear about their exact origin, old national boundaries are no longer relevant after all, but if I were to venture a guess I'd say Tanzania. Just how much has changed in the world can be seen just by looking at the setting. In the west Africa is still seen as a continent of warlords, dictators,  post-colonial conflict, disease and famine, while the spectacular economic development taking place there is hardly ever mentioned. The west doesn't really want to acknowledge their role in the mess left behind after decolonization, nor does it care for the ways in which the continent is trying to move beyond the past. War, disease and poverty notwithstanding, things are moving there and in Reynolds' story, the continent rises to prominence. Africa has become an economic powerhouse, the western nations are hardly mentioned in the novel at all. An optimistic view on Africa's future from a western author. I don't think I've come across science fiction like that before.

All this is mostly background to the story however, and I must admit, the novel is probably a bit too long for the story it contains. Unlike Robinson, Reynolds doesn't expose the readers to long sections on social developments, politics, religion or science. Most of the novel is taken up by the search conducted by Geoffrey and Sunday. It takes us to various places in the solar system and allows Reynolds to once again show that he is very good at writing science fiction set in space. The feel of Reynolds' descriptions of the moon or Mars can't quite cover for the somewhat unbelievable secret they take over 500 pages to unearth. Keeping a secret like that very violently clashes with the society Reynolds depicts in which everybody is monitored all the time.

The somewhat unbelievable plot is a bit of a shame as Reynolds outdoes himself with the two main characters. Characterization has never been the strong point of Reynods' novels but Geoffrey and Sunday are two of the best developed characters I've come across in this book. Their drive to make a name for themselves independent of their family's legacy drives many of their actions. It leads them to do rash things but also reflect on personal matters such as the loss of someone close to them and their place in the family to more philosophical topics as humanity's place in the universe.

Overall I quite liked this first book in the Poseidon's Children series. Despite being a bit too well padded, Blue Remembered Earth is one of Reynolds' better novels. I very much appreciate the way he focuses on Earth a bit more in this novel, as a starting point for what undoubtedly will develop into a deep space adventure later on in the series. The plot itself may be a bit weak but in other respects the novel has a lot to offer to the reader. It's probably a book that requires a bit of patience from the reader, especially since, being the first in a series, it doesn't try to answer all our questions, but I suspect that once the third volume is out, it will turn out to have been worth it. In other words, I'm quite looking forward to reading On a Steel Breeze.

Book Details
Title: Blue Remembered Earth
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 505
Year: 2012
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-575-08827-6
First published: 2012

Terminal World - Alastair Reynolds

As usual an Alastair Reynolds review to kick off the year. I've progressed to his 2010 novel Terminal Word, which turns out to be an odd one in his oeuvre. It's not part of any series, although the ending is such that a sequel can't be ruled out in the future. Reynolds has stated he doesn't intend to return to this world though. For the moment we'll consider it a standalone. The book is advertised as a Steampunk novel. I'm not entire sure if that is a fitting label but I guess readers of that subgenre will enjoy this novel. For established readers of Reynolds' work it is a bit of a gamble. Personally I liked to but I also think it is a bit rushed.

The city of Spearpoint is a tower rising up from the surface of the planet into space. The city is at the mercy of zones, a set of physical conditions that allows technology to work only to a certain level of sophistication. At the foot of the tower, only the most basic technology works. On the Celestial levels technology has allowed a post-human society to develop. The boundaries are hard to cross, the exact a physical price on the traveller that can prove fatal without medical supervision. One day, Quillion, once a post-human angel but now a pathologist is the moderately advanced Neon Heights, finds one of his former compatriots on his dissecting table. It is the start of an adventure that will take him beyond the boundaries of the city, out into a dangerous and dying world. He learns disturbing things about his world, matters that need to be addressed for its continued survival.

I was surprised at the pace of this novel. Despite it being almost 500 pages long, Terminal World is a very fast read that doesn't really allow the reader to catch their breath along the way. In a number of earlier novels Reynolds occasionally had trouble with the pacing. Terminal World clearly doesn't suffer from that problem. Quillion is only very rarely able to reflect on what is going on, especially since his insistence on adhering to his personal moral code lands him trouble more than once. For readers who like a good adventure, I don't think Reynolds could have done much better. It is a very sharp contrast with his earlier novels that are firmly founded in the hard sciences though. I also think that he doesn't really do justice to the worldbuilding he's done for this novel. There is so much of it in this novel that is rushed past in this story that it seems like a waste not to explore it further.

The zones do receive their share of attention as they are vital to the plot. They divide the city of Spearpoint but also rule the rest of the planet. Crossing boundaries is problematic everywhere but especially outside Spearpoint, especially since the infrastructure to produces drugs known as antizonals is not in place. Quillion soon finds out it is a lawless land, with various groups trying to survive at the cost of others. Quillion ends up with Swarm, an armada of airships -  hence the Steampunk label that is attached to this novel - making their way across the planet, always on the lookout for fuel and resources to keep the fleet running. Swarm is the place were the most interesting things in the book happens. Their exposure to much of the planet gives Quillion a much deeper insight in his world and the mysteries it contains. Reynolds weaves a bit of politics into Quillion's journey too and really ramps up the tension in his story.

Swarm is one of the many levels of technology that show up in Terminal World. Airships carry quite a bit of technology and are therefore limited to the zones that can support them. In some zones almost noting technological works at all and people go at each other with swords (Reynolds has a thing for swords in this novel, note the character names) and crossbows. In others high energy weapons are working just fine. Quillion travels by electric car, steam train, horse and airship for instance. The people of Spearpoint accept these differences as a matter of course and that gives the story a bit of a fantastical atmosphere. This huge variety in available technology will stretch most readers' preconceptions of Steampunk a bit but it is definitely not straight science fiction either.

Reynolds doesn't abandon science altogether but it is an element that is underexposed in a way. The problems of the Spearpoint can be explained at the quantum level and one of the characters has an intuitive understanding of what is happening. He explains it using a checkers board but it is clearly based on quantum mechanics. As near as I can figure out it has something to do with different values for the Planck constant. It isn't much further explored than that though. I think I would have preferred if it had been but I guess that would have gotten in the way of a good adventure story. Essentially, although we do get an explanation of what is going on with the world, the problem it faces is not really solved or even fully understood by the characters.

One of the big mysteries of the book is the origin of the world. It is referred to as Earth but is clearly not our world. Throughout the book there are hints that the world Spearpoint is built on is a smaller planet. Distances are measured in leagues, which Reynolds doesn't define but assuming he is talking about the English one, thee miles, he gives the reader enough information to calculate a circumference. Some people have actually bothered to do this and, form this evidence and other tidbits scattered throughout the book, arrived at the conclusion the author might have used Mars for a model. Personally I think that Reynolds took a few liberties with the vertical scale of the planet is that is the case but it does fit with the slowly escaping atmosphere of the planet among other things. He also describes landscape features that could be linked to the volcanoes on Mars and the Vallis Marinersis. It is an interesting puzzle worked into the story.

It does lead to the question of how the planet was terraformed and what purpose the huge structures that can be found on it served. Here the novel turns a bit unsatisfactory for me. The history is barely explored at all. Apparently the Chinese have something to do with it but their purpose remains shrouded in mystery. There are hints of a purpose, hints of origins, hints that a disaster that befell Spearpoint had consequences felt beyond a single planet. There is so much that points at a set up for a series things that are not resolved in this volume, that if you look beyond the fast paced adventure story, the novel doesn't work that well as a standalone.

In the end I thought Terminal World was a very readable and at one level enjoyable book. If you read it just for the adventure it works just fine. Reynold's readership will probably expect a bit more from it though. It is a departure from the rest of his oeuvre and I very much doubt his established readers have been unanimously supportive of it. He took a chance here and it only partly paid off. It's an interesting experiment, showing that Reynolds is capable of writing stories outside his usual solar system or even galactic settings and personally I wouldn't mind if he returned to it. As it is the novel has a bit too many loose ends to be really satisfying though. It's a fun read but ultimately a mild disappointment.

Book Details
Title: Terminal World
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 490
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-08850-4
First published: 2010

House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds

A new year so time for an Alastair Reynolds review, albeit a bit later than usual. House of Suns is another one of Alastair Reynolds' standalone novels. There is short fiction loosely related to this universe but the novel reads just fine without having read that. As with just about everything Reynolds wrote he doesn't rule out doing another work in this universe but for now it seems his new Poseidon's Children trilogy and an upcoming Dr. Who novel are keeping him occupied. Like the other novels by Reynolds I've read it is a science fiction on a massive scale. In terms of showing us how large and strange the universe is, he takes his readers to new extremes in this novel and then ends it by showing us he's barely begun. The novel is stuffed with wonder of the galaxy and nearly unbelievable technology. In a way, it proves Arthur C. Clarke's overused statement that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Six million years in the future mankind has spread across the galaxy. Civilizations have risen and fallen and humanity is now a species with a very varied appearance. One of the very few stable factors in this constantly changing universe are the lines. Gentian Line is one of them, founded by Abigail Gentian who sent a thousand clones, or shatterlings, of herself into space to explore the galaxy. One every two hundred thousand years they meet to exchange their experiences. The shatterlings Purslane and Champion are on their way to the next reunion. Late and knowing they will be disciplined for 'consorting', something the Line frowns upon, they try to find a way to limit the damage. When they stop in a solar system no Gentian has visited in aeons, they stumble across Hesperus, one of the Machine People. He might just be their ticket out of this mess but as they approach the reunion system a distress call reaches them that will turn their universe upside down. After six million years, someone has decided to take Gentian Line down a peg.

This novel is not the first in which Reynolds explore the implications of the speed of light as a fundamental constant for human space travel. In the Revelation Space novels for instance, relativistic speeds, time dilation and story lines that stretch across decades are an important part of the plot. Here, he takes it just about as far as things will go. Shatterlings travel the universe just below the speed of light, spending a lot of their time in suspension. They may not have experienced the full six million years of their life, but they are old enough to have seen civilizations rise and fall many times over. They speak of years as we would of days and think nothing of not seeing each other for millennia. It's hard to wrap your head around sometimes.

The time scale of the story isn't the only think epic about it. Reynolds describes technologies to refuel suns running our of hydrogen, stardams capable of containing the energies released by a supernova and space ships capable of accelerations in excess of a thousand gees and still able to keep their human cargo alive. There are clones and artificial intelligences, humans in every conceivable shape and size. Humanity is capable of manipulating the galaxy on a huge scale. If you are a reader looking for that sense of wonder that characterized some of the best of the best of the golden age novels, then this will probably be to your liking. Fans of Reynolds' usually strong scientific underpinnings may find it contains a bit too much handwavium though.

The structure of the story is a bit more straightforward than some of his other novels. There is a limited number of points of view and the plot is focussed on unravelling the reasons behind Gentian Line's misfortune. It contains plenty of twists but nothing that distracts from the business at hand. The book read pretty quickly compared to some of Reynold's denser Revelation Space novels. Surprisingly quickly for a five hundred page novel even. It wasn't quite what I was expecting but it was definitely a fun read. The previous novel I'd read by Reynolds, Pushing Ice, published in 2007, was marred by an unlikely plot and characters that generally made very little sense. This story may be equally unlikely but manages to keep my suspension of disbelief intact.

I do think that Reynolds packed perhaps a bit too much ideas into this volume though. The implications of most things we see are usually only glimpsed at. He simply doesn't have enough space in this book to properly explore them. The pace of the story simply won't allow it. I find myself torn between the sheer enjoyment on being dragged along with the story and the nagging voice telling me Reynolds is glossing over the details. It is a much smoother read than some of his earlier novels but in the process, it has lost some of what I liked about those as well. It is an intriguing novel and a thoroughly absorbing read, but when you get right down to it, there is quite a bit of unfulfilled potential in the book as well. Personally, I can't entirely shake that feeling and completely lose myself in the book. House of Suns is entertaining, thrilling even, but not all it might have been. For the fan of space opera, it is still a very fine read however. One I would definitely recommend to fans of the sub genre.

Book Details
Title: House of Suns
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 502
Year: 2009
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-08237-3
First published: 2008

Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds

A new year, that means new year's concert by the Wiener Philharmoniker, ski jumping in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and an Alastair Reynolds review on Random Comments (for no other reason than that I say so). I'm afraid I missed the first two (anybody know who won the ski jumping?) but I thought I'd make it one out of three at least. Pushing Ice (2005) is a standalone novel. It is not set in the Revelation Space universe and as far as I can tell it is not related to any of his other works either. On his website (see FAQ), Reynolds mentions that there may one day be a sequel though. The universe may not be familiar to the reader, it is space opera on an intimidating scale. Fans of the Revelation Space novels, will recognize a lot of those books in Pushing Ice. Unfortunately, I don't think this novel gets close to the best the Revelation Space universe has to offer.

The year is 2057 and humanity has escaped the Earth's gravity well. The outer planets and asteroid belt are frequently visited by mining ships, of which the Rockhopper is one. When Saturn's moon Janus inexplicably leaves orbit and heads out of the solar system in the direction of Spica, a star in the constellation Virgo, the Rockhopper is the only ship close enough to have any chance of intercepting the moon. Their fuel situation is precarious however, they might have enough for the return trip but it'll be tight. The crew has to make a difficult decision. Seize the chance of a lifetime to explore what can only be an alien artefact, or play it safe and return home. The majority of the crew feels the chance cannot be wasted and the Rockhopper sets out on a journey that will take them far beyond their wildest expectations.

Especially early on in the novel, the story is very technical. It's clearly influenced by Arthur C. Clarke and goes into detail about such matters as propulsion, fusion engines and data traffic over vast distances. A bit later on relativistic effects also make an appearance. One thing that doesn't get explained, or maybe I just missed it, is the sustained 5G acceleration the Rockhopper experiences in the wake of Janus. The way they find out about is is very ingenious but what happened to inertia is unclear to me. The technical side of this novel has many existing scientific theories behind it. You can't just treat is like Star Trek techno babble and that makes it an interesting novel for a hard science fiction fan. In other novels Reynolds mixes in elements of Noir, (Century Rain and The Prefect) or Steampunk (Terminal World, a novel I have yet to read). Not in this book, it is pretty much uncut (new) Space Opera.

It has to be said, there is more than a bit of soap opera in Pushing Ice. A bitter conflict between the ships captain Bela Lind and her friend, confidante and Rockhoppers chief engineer Svetlana Barseghian erupts early on in the novel and carries on throughout the entire story. I liked the way Reynolds used it to show the reader that data doesn't always reflect reality in the way we think it does early on in the novel. Later on however, sheer stubbornness takes over and both ladies do such profoundly stupid things that I wouldn't have been surprised in if Bela's evil twin sister had made an appearance. Rest assured, she doesn't.

As usual, the scope of the novel is impressive. It reaches into the far future and introduces several alien species. I guess you could say Reynolds offers another explanation for the Fermi Paradox (if the chances of intelligent life developing elsewhere in the universe are so large, why haven't we found them?), which is central to the plot of Revalation Space. By keeping strictly to the human point of view who, despite the distance they travel, remain very sheltered for most of the novel, it never develops beyond a theory though.

The limited point of view may be a bit of a let down for some readers. Where in the Revelation Space books Reynolds develops a detailed future history, the one in Pushing Ice remains very vague. Contact with the rest of humanity is lost early on and the exact location of the Rockhopper's crew is in question for a lot of the novel. The alien cultures they encounter are not that eager to divulge such information either, if they possess it themselves. Motives, histories and capabilities remain very uncertain. The universe is a dangerous place, so much is obvious, but it remains a very mysterious place as well. I guess Pushing Ice is not a book for people who like their stories neatly tied up. There is more than enough unexplored territory for the a sequel.

Pushing Ice was an entertaining read, a remarkably quick one in fact. I usually have to take my time with Reynolds. Entertaining is not the same as good though. The first half of the novel is a very interesting read read for fans of hard Science Fiction but the second part, when long term survival starts to look more likely, is overshadowed by problems with the characterization and the ever lurking danger deus ex machina at the hands of mysterious alien races. The novel simply doesn't even get close to works like Chasm City, or the more recent novella Troika. Entertaining yes, but nowhere near the best Reynolds is capable of.

Book Details
Title: Pushing Ice
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 517
Year: 2008
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-08311-0
First published: 2005

Troika - Alastair Reynolds

With the space shuttle program almost concluded there seems to be a sense that that window of opportunity for the human exploration of space is closing. There is no successor for the Space Shuttle, NASA's budget is shrinking, the US is dependent on other nations to get people up to the International Space Station and exploration of the solar system has completely shifted to robotic probes and Mars rovers. The premise of whole libraries of science fiction novels appears to be increasingly unlikely and that clearly worries a lot of people in the field, including former ESA astronomer Alastair Reynolds.

Personally, I think the drama over the last space shuttle missions is rather US-centric. It can't be denied that the space race between the USSR and the US is over and out competing the other super-power no longer gives the US space industry a boost, but there is a lot going on in other nations. In a multi-polar world, the nature of space exploration has changed. Interest in space exploration won't disappears overnight, even if the US is no longer the leader of the pack. Whether or not we can spare the resources in the long run is another matter. In a way, Reynolds deals with both these matters in his Hugo-nominated novella Troika.

In the near future the USSR has made a comeback. It is once again one of the leading nations in space exploration and when a mysterious alien object appears in the solar system, it is one of the few nations capable of investigating it. The structure of the object and the way it suddenly appeared in the solar system baffle the scientific community. When probes have discovered everything they can, there is only one way left to find out more. Go out and have a look. Three Cosmonauts are sent out on a long mission to explore the object. A mission that will face its share of problems.

There are two main story lines in this novella. The first introduces us to a man recently escaped from an institution for the mentally unstable, which in this second USSR includes people who say things the government would rather not hear. He is on his way to the nearest city where he hopes to find a disgraced astronomer. This story line is a classic example of an unreliable narrator, carefully designed to make you doubt whether or not he has lost his mind.

The significance of what this man tries to achieve is mostly worked into the second story line. This one takes us back a number of years to the manned mission to the alien object. This part of the story, Reynolds approaches as classic of the science fiction genre, a Big Dumb Object story. I use approaches here, because unlike classics like Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, we do eventually find out the purpose of the object's visit to the solar system and its message is alarming.

There is a tremendous sense of loss and missed opportunities in this novella. Especially in the story line dealing with the escaped patient, it appears to be completely irrelevant whether or not his mission succeeds. He knows nobody is interested in his message. He is mostly doing it for his own piece of mind. It's not surprising he doesn't like Prokofiev's Troika playing on the radio. Too much of an upbeat composition. Prokoofiev's music and the plot of this novella contrast in interesting ways.

The more cynical reader will probably consider this novella a bit of propaganda for space programs in general, and manned space flights in particular. It's warning us that turning our backs to space, despite the economics of its exploration, is a serious mistake. As the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky once put it: "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever." Whatever your opinion of the matter, it won't settle the question whether or not space exploration is worth the billions invested in it, especially since there is plenty of work still to be done on Earth.

Troika certainly provides food for thought along those lines and it does so in style. This novella is carefully crafted and works to an interesting twist in the plot at the end of the story. It's well-written and most certainly well-timed piece of writing. It's a novella that celebrates sense of wonder science fiction but also wonders if that drive to explore, through science as well as fiction, has perhaps passed. For me, Troika worked very well, both as a warning and a piece of literature. It faces some stiff competition for the Hugo but I think it would make a fine winner.

Book Details
Title: Troika
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Pages: 114
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-59606-376-1
First published: 2011

Century Rain - Alastair Reynolds

First review of the year. Since I started last year with an Alastair Reynolds book I decided to make it a tradition. I exhausted his Revelation Space works, which currently comprises five novels and two volumes of shorter fiction, so it is time to have a look at Reynold's work in other settings. Century Rain (2004) is the first novel Reynolds published outside the Revelation Space setting. It combines elements of noir, hard science fiction and time travel with a dash of romance. Reynolds experimented with noir elements in Chasm City and also incorporates it in The Prefect. That last one I think of as the best novel he wrote (mind you I still have a few to go). In Century Rain I don't think the melding of noir and science fiction works too well however, this book is not one of Reynold's stronger novels.

The novel opens in the late 23rd century with archaeologist Verity Auger leading two students through the ruins of Paris. Earth has been destroyed by an event referred to as the nanocaust during the 2070s. A host of tiny machines, released to correct the centuries of abuse heaped upon the earth by humanity, turns against it's creators and kills all life on earth. By that time, humanity has established a foothold in space, which is the only thing that saves them from extinction. Verity is looking though what is left of the earth to find historical records, printed material, not susceptible to the nanobots' corruption. While retrieving a newspaper, a treasure trove of information for archaeologists, her expedition meets with an accident. One of the students under her care dies. Verity is in trouble.

Before Verity can face a tribunal, she is snatched away by a top secret organisation in the human faction she belongs to. They have a very dangerous job for her, for which her skill as an archaeologist will be invaluable. Somewhere light years away from earth, a copy of the planet has been found. Right now, it is the year 1959 on that world, and history has diverged a bit from our own time line. One of the agents sent in to investigate, Susan White, has been found dead after falling out of a window. Verity is sent in to retrieve Susan's notes. Once in the alternate 1959 city of Paris, she quickly runs into Wendell Floyd, a private detective who doesn't believe Susan's death was accidental.

Century Rain is not a time-travel story in the traditional sense of the word. It is more like a copy of earth has been rebooted and reset to the mid 1930s. In Floyd's version of Paris, the Germans never managed to occupy France. Hitler's offensive stalled in the Ardennes and he was subsequently ousted from power. Reynolds gave quite a bit of thought to what this would have meant for the development of science. Things like computers, nuclear technology and rockets were given a great boost by World War II. Floyd's world is lagging behind compared to our own. Unfortunately Reynolds does not mention the territorial consequences of Hitler's failure. What about the partitioning of Poland? The occupation of Czechoslovakia, der Anschluß, the fascist regimes in Italy and Spain? We do end up in Germany during the story so there was some opportunity to at least look at the situation there. I must admit a lot of these details are strictly speaking not necessary for the story but for the real fans of alternate history, this novel is probably a bit too focussed on science.

I did quite enjoy Reynold's depiction of this alternate 1950s Paris. It is changed in quite subtle ways from the city as we know it. There's a decidedly xenophobic wind blowing through the streets of the city, something that the American Floyd is keenly aware of. The author paints a dark picture of the city, with an increasingly corrupt police force and violence threatening, it is not a place Floyd ought to stay for much longer. His preference for Jazz, a kind of music viewed with suspicion in the French capital, helps build a bit of a dark, moody atmosphere. People who know the city may get more out of these sections, I've never been closer to Paris than the Route Périphérique and that was quite a long time ago.

The scenes set in the 23rd centuries are interesting in their own way but I did feel that towards the end of the novel much of the space devoted to the future part of the story was filled with info dumps. The reader needs to be told some things about the general shape of history and Reynolds uses Floyd's ignorance of the situation as an excuse to enlighten the reader. They are not a punishment to read but it probably could have been done a bit more gracefully. Quite a bit can be figured out from earlier portions of the book. It makes the latter part of the novel a strangely structured piece of writing with all the action, chases and last minute rescues one would expect in the climax of a tale like Century Rain, intermixed with long explanations of how things came to be. Thematically these sections do contain some intriguing questions though. The dangers of fully relying on digital information storage for one thing.

The characterization in this novel is also a bit problematic. Reynolds can do certain types of characters really well, the world wise detective being one of them, but in some other areas he has problems. Floyd also has a love interest in this book and in that area the author is less successfully. Rationally I understood there was a connection between the characters but Reynolds could not really make me feel it. The emotionally charged scenes always seemed a bit bland to me. Which is a shame, it could really have added something to the story.

I don't think Reynolds quite managed to really connect the noir and science fiction elements of the story. Century Rain is an interesting novel, one that certainly succeeds in creating a dark atmosphere, but when it comes to the right mix of elements I think it falls short of the level of Chasm City or The Prefect. The novel simply has too many problems to be called good. I still enjoyed reading it, its not a book I would consider putting away after a few chapters, but it won't end up at the top of favourites lists either.

Book Details
Title: Century Rain
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 532
Year: 2005
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-07691-4
First published: 2004

Redemption Ark - Alastair Reynolds

Like last weekend I'm supposed to be social today and tomorrow. Since I am not quite done with my next book and it doesn't look like I will manage a review tomorrow, I decided to make good on my promise and move the missing review of Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series over. It turned out the January 2009 original was a bit sloppy so I a had to do some editing. Still not the best I've ever written but I hope it'll be informative at least.

I read Reynolds’ first novel, Revelation Space, some time ago and thought it an interesting book but one that on several points it leaves something to be desired. Reynolds has written four more books set in the same universe, as well as a number of shorter works. Three of the books should be read in publication order, Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. Chasm City and The Prefect are standalones. Allthough Chasm City is the second book in publication order, I decided to skip that for the moment and complete the trilogy first. Redemption Ark is an immediate sequel to Revelation Space and in many ways a major improvement over the first book. It does however delve rather deeply into exotic physics, even more than with Revelation Space you have to enjoy hard science fiction to like this book.

The Hell class weapons stored on the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity have sent a signal back to their makers without the knowledge of Illia and Ana who still control the ship. Light years away in another solar system the builders of the weapons, a human faction called the conjoiners, people who have incorporated technology to enhance their lives and create a kind of shared consciousness, have picked up the signal. Until recently they have been distracted by a war with another faction, the Demarchists. Now that the conjoiners are winning this war resources can be spared to retrieve the weapons.

In the mean time in the Resurgam system, and I use this term for the sake of clarity only, due to the problems of sub light speed travel though the galaxy Reynolds’ time line is quite complicated, Illia and Ana become aware of another threat. Sylvestre’s actions in the previous book must have set off some galactic burglar alarm. They have attracted the attention of the alien entity responsible for the extinction of the Amarantin species a million years ago. The Inhibitors as Ana and Illia think of them, are Reynolds’ answer to the Fermi paradox, have begun preparations to sterilize the system again. And this time they mean to be more thorough. Illia and Ana see no other option than to use their ship to evacuate the entire population of Resurgam, some two hundred thousand people and employ the Hell class weapons to strike at the Inhibitors.

The highest circles within conjoiners faction are also aware of the Inhibitors. They have encountered them as well and think of them as the Wolves. Skade, a high ranking conjoiner, is tasked with their response to this new threat. One approach she means to try is retrieve the Hell-class weapons for use against the Wolves. To get them back she employs the help of Nevil Clavain, one of the oldest conjoiners alive. Skade does not tell him the complete strategy of dealing with the Wolves however, and when Clavain finds out he defects. The two conjoiners parties race for the Resurgam system to retrieve the Hell class weapons while the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity desperately tries to get the evacuation of the planet started.

As I mentioned in the introduction Reynolds throws in a great deal of physics into the book. During the galactic car chase between Skade and Clavain both factions use technology that reduce the inertia of their spacecrafts, making it possible to attain higher accelerations than the human body could possibly survive. He goes into quite a bit of detail on how this works and what the consequences of this lowered inertia would be. There is a theoretical basis for what he describes, the author is a trained physicist and astronomer after all, but I will admit this kind of physics goes way over my head. Reynolds makes sure to explain the more counter-intuitive consequences of relativity and the absence of inertia though. For me the physics didn’t interfere with the readability of the book but some interest in these matters is absolutely required to enjoy it.

In my Revelation Space review I mentioned the characterization and dialogue left something to be desired. Reynolds has made great progress there. While the first book featured a lot of cynical bastards he puts in quite a bit more emotion in this book. Clavain in particular struck me as an interesting character. He is someone who seems haunted by his past, I will have to read the short stories about him sometime. It isn’t limited to him however, the characters who featured in the first book attain a new depth in Redemption Ark. With a more diverse cast and better characterization this novel gets going a bit sooner than Revelation Space. It is still quite a heavy read though. My copy is printed in an extra wide format making the six hundred or so pages of the book seem quite long. There are also a number of places where the characters are mistrustful of each other and take too long to come to a compromise. Especially the scene in Chasm City, where H proposes a plan to reach Resurgam in time to stop Skade drags a bit.

I liked Revelation Space, I like Redemption Ark even more. Better written and faster paced than the previous book this novel will please the fans of uncut space opera. If you've come this far in the series reading Absolution Gap is simply not optional. The author leaves his characters with some serious problems to solve in the next part of the series. I suppose it is a bit of a middle book in that respect but there is a clear promise of a spectacular finish in the final book. Reynolds is one of those writers I need to read with generous breaks between the book to let it sink in and I do think the standalone Revelation Space novels are a little bit better than the trilogy but it is quite clear than Reynolds has created something special with the Revelation Space trilogy.

Book Details
Title: Revelation Space
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 646
Year: 2003
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-07384-5
First published: 2002

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

I did not quite have enough reading time to finish a second book this week so I've salvaged another older review again. I started this blog with a review of Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. It's a bit odd to have only the last book in a trilogy on the blog so I moved the first part today and will probably move the second part sometime in the near future. This review was written in July 2008, I've done some minor polishing but it is mostly in original shape.

The first book of the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds and his début novel. It’s also the first book I have read by this author and I must say I am impressed. Not that the book is flawless but there is a lot of potential here. I understand the author was still working at the European Space Agency when he wrote this novel, before giving up his job to pursue a full time writing career. Not surprisingly Revelation Space is hard science fiction on a grand scale. Not light reading but once you get into the story definitely rewarding.

Set in the 26th century mankind has escaped the solar system and settled many planets. Despite scientific theories that claim the opposite, they find the galaxy relatively empty of intelligent life, apart from the remains of societies that were destroyed ages ago. One man who is interested in this apparent lack of intelligent life is archaeologist Dan Sylvestre, leader of an expedition to the now lifeless planet of Resurgam. Resurgam was once home to the Amarantin, a species that appeared to be on the brink of archiving space flight. They were destroyed in what archaeologists now call “the event”, a cataclysm that took place almost a million years ago. Sylvestre is dead set on finding out what caused their extinction, in fact, he believes that such knowledge is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity. Unfortunately for Sylvestre not everybody agrees with him. After decades on the inhospitable planet there are those who want to terraform the planet and give up the search for the Amarantin secrets. They stage a successful coup and Sylvestre spends much of the next decade in prison. Imprisonment is not the problem Sylvestere face either. He seems to have made quite a few enemies along the way and some of them are now hunting for him.

Ilia Volyova is one of the hunters. She is an ultranaut on the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity, one of the great spaceships that travel between the inhabited systems in the galaxy at speeds slightly below the speed of light. The Ultras rarely go down to a planet and spend a lot of their time in reefersleep, a kind of cryogenic preservation of their body. The ships captain is a centuries old Ultra who’s body barely contains living flesh. He is mostly cybernetic. Sylvestre’s father has saved him some decades ago from death but now he is infected with the melding plague and nothing seems to be able to stop the disease from spreading. Ilia is determined to find Sylvestre to save her captain. Apart from a dying captain the lighthugger has other problems. Their gunnery officer has gone insane and Ilia has had to kill him. He needs to be replaced. When the lighthugger visits Yellowstone, Sylvestre’s last known location, another of Sylvestre’s hunters, a mysterious character referred to as the Mademoiselle, uses this opportunity to place the assassin Ana Khouri on board. Posing as gunnery officer Ana’s real mission is to kill Sylveste, no matter the cost.

It took me an awful long time to figure this out but one of the important themes in this novel is the Fermi paradox, a proposition by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi who wondered why if the conditions for intelligent life to evolve must be common we still haven’t found any signs of it. Reynolds solves the paradox by introducing a force than suppresses the evolution of space faring civilizations. It is a pure coincidence of course but I recently read 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Arthur C. Clarke does just the opposite, an alien intelligence tries to steer evolution towards intelligent life in those books. From a scientific point of view Reynolds’ approach probably makes more sense.

As I said, this book has potential but it also has flaws. Especially early in the book it is a chore to keep the time frame of the various story lines straight. Travel faster than the speed of light has not been invented (it seems Reynolds is with Einstein on this one) so the journey of Ilia and Ana starts several decades before the storyline of Sylvestre to enable them to cross the vast distance between Yellowstone and Resurgam. Reynolds mentions a date in the chapter title but since he changes point of view in his chapters frequently those are not always a good guide.

A bigger problem with the book is that Reynolds takes an awful lot of time to get to the point. He takes his time describing the settings (Chasm City looks intriguing by the way), detail the history of the galaxy and of course elaborate of various astronomical phenomena the characters encounter. In the end all three of our main characters are being manipulated by others but he reveals it ever so slowly, which results in a lot of explaining at the end of the novel. I wouldn’t call the final chapters of the book disappointing but the way he wraps the story up is not flawless. Another minor irritation is that especially towards the end of the book all characters become increasingly cynical. It leads to some awkward dialogue,Sylvestre’s wife Pascale seems to suffer most from this.

Definitely room for improvement but in the end this book is well worth reading. It is a book that requires some patience though. It takes a while for the pieces to fall into place. So sit back end enjoy the ride. Reynolds certainly adds enough interesting sights to the book to keep the reader entertained. His professional background clearly shows, I very much liked his descriptions of star systems. I also liked the central theme of this book, once it became clear to me. All in all a good début for Reynolds and a solid basis the continue to explore the Revelation Space setting. It has definitely put the direct sequels Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap on my to read list.

Book Details
Title: Revelation Space
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 545
Year: 2000
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-85798-748-5
First published: 2000

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds

I read Revelation Space, the first novel in what has become known as the Revelation Space universe in June 2008 and have been steadily working my way through Reynold's work since. The author had me hooked. Last week I read the last two novellas in this setting that were still on the to read list. These multi-volume projects take me a while but I get there eventually. This is most likely not the end of the journey. There is one more story in this setting I haven't read, it has not been included in one of Reynolds' collections yet, and there are plans for more Revelation Space stories. For now it looks like his current project, a trilogy that will cover humanity's development over the next eleven thousand years, will keep him busy for a while yet. Time to check out some of Reynolds' other works.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days contains two novella length pieces of which you will have guessed the titles by now. The two are set in the same universe but otherwise not connected. There is one minor reference to Diamond Dogs in Turquoise Days but they can be read independently and without any knowledge of the novels. Diamond Dogs, the first of the two was originally published in 2001, the year Reynold's second Revelation Space novel Chasm City was released. Turquoise days was first published a year later.

I thought Diamond Dogs the stronger of the two novellas. It had me captivated from the opening line.

I met Childe in the monument to the Eighty.

At first glance not a remarkable bit of prose. It does contain two clues to the rest of the story though. Childe is a reference to the epic poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning, one of the few pieces of English Romantic poetry I have read and only because it was published in the back of the last book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The second is a reference to one of the experiments in digitalizing human consciousness that has gone horribly wrong. So do we get a gunslinger in space then? No, not exactly. We do get a tower and a fair bit of obsessive behaviour though.

Richard Swift is contacted by a former friend he thought long dead. Childe has recently reappeared in the system and is quietly rounding up a group of people with very specific talents to study an alien artefact on a remote planet. The tower is clearly artificial, perhaps even alive and it offers access to the higher levels only if the person entering it first solves a riddle. These puzzles get progressively harder and the punishment for failure gets progressively more severe. The surroundings of the tower are strewn whit the bodies of those who failed. Yet the challenge is undeniable. Childe will get to the top, whatever it takes.

So how far will you go to reach the top of the tower? Technology in the 25th century offers plenty in the way of useful expansions of the human mind and body and it seems Childe's desire to reach the top knows no boundaries. Diamond Dogs is a pretty dark story, science fiction/horror hybrid. I very much enjoyed to way the author deals with the theme of obsession in this story. It's one of the best pieces of short fiction by Reynolds I have read.

Turquoise Days is quite a different story. It is set on Turquoise, a Pattern Juggler world. The planet is mostly covered by a vast ocean containing an alien marine micro-organism that stores and rearranges data. It can record a whole mind of people who swim in the ocean but whether or not they actually are self-conscious or intelligent is a matter of fierce scientific debate. One evening in 2541 a young scientific by the name of Naqi finds out that a Lighthugger is approaching their normally isolated system. She does not know if the two events are related but the Pattern Jugglers seem to respond to this imminent arrival. It's the opportunity of a life-time. Her sister and colleague insists they take a swim and find out what is going on, even if they are not qualified to do so. Naqi's sister drowns, an event proving to be a turning point in her scientific career.

The Pattern Jugglers are mentioned a number of times in the series but in the novels there is rarely reason to look at them as closely as Reynolds does in Turquoise Days. There are a number of other instances where Reynolds uses his short fiction to explore events of factions referenced in the novels. I must admit that it took a while for this novella to grow on me but once the Ultras arrive the story gets going. Although it has a very exciting finale, this novella did not quite touch me as much as Diamond Dogs did. Maybe the relatively long description of the final days of Naqi's sister unbalanced the story just a bit. It is still a very good story but it suffers slightly from being compared to the excellent Diamond Dogs I guess.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days offers two great novellas that can be read as a fine example of short form science fiction or as pieces that deepen the reader's understanding of the Revelation Space universe. However you choose to look that them, these novellas are very much worth reading. I think I liked this volume even better than Galactic North, which collects most of the remaining Revelation Space short fiction. If I haven't convinced you to try Reynolds by now you're hopeless. Go read some!

Book Details
Title: Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 231
Year: 2003
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-07516-0
First published: 2003

The Prefect - Alastair Reynolds

The Prefect is Alastair Reynolds' most recent novel in the Revelation Space setting. Apart from the novellas Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days and a short story that hasn't been included in a collection yet, I've read all the earlier material in this stetting. To read The Prefect that is not required however. Reynolds has hinted that he will follow up on this novel but it works just fine as a standalone. Chronologically it is the first of the novels (there are some shorter pieces that are set before this novel) so it is not going to spoil any of the other books for you. The best reading order for the Revelation Space novels is something that is quite as straightforward as it might seem however. You can read this one at any time but my personal opinion is that is probably best to read it last. I'm going to have to write a separate post on this topic sometime.

In 2427 the Demarchist societies around Yellowstone are right in the middle of their Belle Epoque. Yellowstone itself is sparsely populated but in orbit around the planet are over ten thousand habitats ruled by the strangest social experiments you can think of. The only constriction is that the inhabitants must be allowed to cast their votes. In the democratic-anarchistic system every issue is decided with a vote. Something that would take so much time that a lot of people have delegated this task so special software able to predict their vote and cast it for them. To ensure the voting process is not tampered with, a system wide police force known as the Panoply is tasked with overseeing the process and bring those who illegally influence the vote to justice.

Tom Dreyfus is one of the best Field Prefects the Panoply employs. At the opening of the book he is engaged in what seems to be a routine lock down. One of the habitats has exploited a flaw in the voting software to swing votes and now suffers the consequences. Soon after his return from the habitat a major crises unfolds. The Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble has been destroyed, killing all 960 inhabitants. Again this seems a straightforward case. All forensic evidence point in the direction of an interstellar spaceship belonging to the Ultra faction. The relationship between the Demarchists and the Ultras have been tense lately, it may look straightforward but it is still a delicate matter. Soon Dreyfus uncovers a number of inconvenient clues. The matter may be more complicated than he first suspected.

At first glance Dreyfus is not a very original character. From the synopsis on the back cover you may think The Prefect Inspector Morse in space. A moody, ageing cop without much of a personal life fighting a number of personal demons and trying to hold long enough to solve this one case. He even has a trusted sidekick that knows when to ignore orders. In some ways John Thaw would make a fine Tom Dreyfus. The whole book is clearly influenced by some of the darker crime novels. Reynolds plays by the rules and provides the reader with all the clues to solve the riddle. You need to be a lot smarter than I am to actually see it coming though, the plot is complicated and has more than a few twists. If anything this novel shows that originality readers (and reviewers) are constantly looking for is overrated. The same stories get told again and again, it's the way you do it that really counts. And that is where Reynolds scores full points for this novel.

This novel is the first detailed look at the Demarchist Belle Epoque. The other novels are all set after the Melding Plague struck and changed the Glitter Band into the Rust Belt, an event that may not have been quite as much of a surprise as we previously thought. In 2427 the Demarchist society is still in full swing and after seeing it as a ruin, I very much enjoyed this perspective. Although Reynolds does not go out of his way to show us the individual societies the Glitter Band is composed of, we do come across a number of strange social experiments. There is the Persistent Vegetative State (which is exactly what you think it is), a state almost entirely dedicated to the voting process and several voluntary tyrannies (that one only sounds like fun to me if you get to be the tyrant). Just about everything a human could desire is possible given the advanced technologies available to the Demarchists. Inside the habitats just about anything goes. By contrasts the actions of the Panoply are closely monitored and subject to severe restrictions and miles of red tape. It gives the reader a feeling of a decadent society, very much turned in on itself.

That is not to say the politics in this book are tame however. Technology has created a number of monsters in the past and Yellowstone is far from done with this legacy. In Revelation Space we are introduced to the story of the Eighty and in The Prefect it turns out to be an important plot element. Reynolds' books are set in a high-tech environment but his is not afraid to show the downsides or horrors this technology can turn into. Some profoundly unethical applications are on display in this novel, giving the book a very dark atmosphere. It's not quite as heavy on the exotic physics as the earlier Revelation Space novels, making it a bit more accessible to those who prefer to avoid the hard science fiction parts of his novels.

When compared to his earlier books, Revelation Space in particular, Reynolds has grown a lot as a writer. This book is better written and more tightly plotted than anything else I've read by him. It is the perfect mix between hard science fiction, space opera and mystery. Depending on whether you like crime novels this book may be the best of the series. I haven't quite made up my mind about it but it certainly gives Chasm City a run for it's money. I ordered a copy of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days last night, the last bit of Revelation Space I have yet to read. I hope to fit that in sometime next month. After that I'm going to have a look at some of the novels in other settings. Reynolds got me hooked. Go read one of his books!

Book Details
Title: The Prefect
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 502
Year: 2008
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-08218-2
First published: 2007

Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds

I began last year's reviewing with an Alastair Reynolds review, I began Random Comments with an Alastair Reynolds review so I figured I might as well start 2010 with an Alastair Reynolds book as well. Not that he did anything to deserve it but apparently I associate his book with beginnings. Chasm City is his second novel and it's set in his Revelation Space universe. Unlike Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap, which have to be read in that order, this book is a standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge of the Revelation Space universe. I enjoyed Chasm City tremendously. Had I finished it last year it would probably have been on the best of 2009 list.

When we meet Tanner Mirabel he has quite a history as a soldier, mercenary and security specialist behind him. His planet, Sky's Edge, has been at war pretty much since its colonization and is considered something of a backwater by it's neighbours. Technology is behinds centuries if it doesn't have military applications. Tanner is not interested in the war though, he is on a manhunt. His target is a local aristocrat who's family has been wiped out using weapons Tanner's boss Cahuella sold to a third party. That they were not intended for Reivich's enemies is no mitigating factor, a vendetta is born. Reivich has managed to kill Cahuella and his wife Gitta, whom Tanner sworn to protect. Tanner is still alive though, an oversight Reivich is going to regret.

His hunt takes Tanner to another system. When he he is woken from cryogenic suspension after a fifteen year trip he suffers from amnesia and despite a desire not to let the trail grow cold he is forced to take at least some time to recover. A virus created by one of the religious orders, or perhaps one should say personality cults, on his home planet is further complicating matters. It is engineered to inspire religious feelings in those who contract it by letting them relive the life of the object of their worship, a man named Sky Haussmann, in their dreams. Tanner struggles to regain his memory and keep Haussmann's personality at bay but his objective remains clear. He needs to find Reivich.

What struck me most about this book is the vast improvement in the writing. Reynolds' first novel Revelation Space was a good read but it had some pacing problems as well as a number of awkward dialogues. There is no trace of that in Chasm City. It is something of a different beast though. Where Revelation Space is a space opera with a large scope and equally large cast, Chasm City is basically Tanner's story. If you're a big fan of Space Opera five hundred pages on one main character may be a bit too much.

For me Tanner was a great character however. I can't go into too much detail without major spoilers but Tanner certainly faces some stiff challenges in this book. The combination of amnesia combined with the viral infection making hem relive another man's life turn his life into a struggle to maintain his identity. On top of that he is dropped into a strange environment without preparation. Certainly, he has heard of Chasm City and its orbiting band of Demarchist habitats a place of wonders, decadence, vast riches and advanced technology. By the time he arrives the melding plague, a major plot element in the Revelation Space trilogy, has struck and the Glitter Belt has been renamed Rust Belt.

Chasm City has changed beyond recognition. With all advanced technology failing the city has had to rely on simpler and older forms of technology to keep the planet's hostile environment at bay. The city is largely powered by steam engines powered by the rising heat and gasses from the planet's interior. The buildings, once infused with technology have taken on grotesque forms. It gives the whole city a bit of a steampunk atmosphere. Even if Tanner hits rock bottom in a city where the rich live in the clouds, we don't quite get to see the hard, dark place Scorpio remembers in later books.

Before turning to writing full time, Reynolds worked for ESA. His expertise in physics and astronomy clearly shows in his books. Chasm City does not contain quite as much technical details as other books I have read by Reynolds. In part this is because the story does not have quite so much space travel in it. The scenes we see of Haussmann's live contains most of the science I suppose. In the Revelation Space trilogy the physics got sufficiently exotic that I was unable to distinguish it from technobabble at some points, only to find out later that there was indeed a theoretical basis for it. In Chasm City Reynolds goes easy on us. Not that there isn't still quite a bit of physics hidden here and there in the book, but a lot of science is more biology and physiology. Things I find easier to understand at the intuitive level.

I have a few of Reynolds novels still on the to read list but at the moment Chasm City is the best of the bunch I have read. A standalone but set in his best known setting, this novel is also a very good place to start if you haven't read any of his books. Not quite as dark as some of his other books, it does still incorporate a suspense/mystery element as well as a lot of hard science fiction and closer look at one of his most interesting locations and it's society. If you only read one Alastair Reynolds novel, Chasm City has to be it. A highly recommended read.

Book Details
Title: Chasm City
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Publisher: Ace Books
Pages: 524
Year: 2002
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-441-00912-3
First published: 2001