Bone Silence, Alastair Reynolds

This is the third and, for now, concluding novel in Reynolds' spaceships and pirates mash-up series. What seemed (to me) an incongruous and implausible basis for even a single book has now successfully skirted the treacherous shoals for a complete trilogy.

It picks up directly from its predecessor, which concluded with the series' leads, the Ness Sisters, unwittingly triggering a financial disaster that reset the values of the solar system's mysterious currency, quoins. Now even more on the run, and with still larger prices on their heads, their voyage intersects with that of a fugative alien who promises answers in exchange for safe passage. All of which triggers a swashbuckling chain of adventures that ultimately reveals much more about the solar system and its history than the Ness Sisters had bargained on.

A very enjoyable and satisfying "end" to the series. It does tend to accelerate the revelations towards the end, probably not giving them their due, but it's nice to have some mysteries resolved. However, given the novel resolves one suite of mysteries with a "solution" that suggests many new ones (in addition to those, like the Ghosties and Skulls, that still remain), I doubt this is really the last we've seen of Adrana and Arafura. Good!

Recommended, even if you find the pirates-in-space premise absurd.

Crime-lit Rebrand

Elysium Fire, Alastair Reynolds

A return to Reynolds' Revelation Space series, and an unexpected sequel to a previously standalone novel, The Prefect. That was an enjoyable and superior tangent to the main sequence of novels, but with this it seems that a rebranding as science fiction / crime crossover is in the offing. Not unwelcomely, and though it's not as novel as its predecessor, it's still pleasant to be back in the company of Dreyfus and his hyperpig deputy, Sparver. The tale itself, centred around depravity in elite circles and control of the democracy of its setting, Yellowstone and the Glitter Band, has some surely-intended Brexit echoes, and it fairly ticks along. But it's a little short-changed by its lazy use of the twins cliché, and its sidelining of key storylines from the earlier novel that also underscore the lower stakes this time around. But solid Reynolds.

The Iron Tactician

The Iron Tactician, Alastair Reynolds

Despite a novel's price tag, actually a little novella. Without me realising it at first, it's part of an intermittent series I've read by Reynolds on-and-off, about a character named Merlin, navigating the stars on a mission of revenge in a ravaged future galaxy. Usually these tales appear in short story collections, but here it's a separate, super-thin (but full-priced) volume. Leaving aside the pricing policy, this was a pleasing, if brief, read, telling the tale of Merlin's discovery of a damaged hulk, its sole surviving crew member, and how he gets inveigled in, and helps resolve, a nearby solar system's multigenerational war. Easy and enjoyable, though definitely cheekily priced.

Revenger

Revenger, Alastair Reynolds

A welcome, if unexpected, return to form for Alastair Reynolds. A whole new story, in a whole new subgenre (pirate-SF fusion), set in a whole new universe (and what a universe!), and all wrapping up sufficiently in one volume. I expect he'll be back to raid it again (appropriately enough), but as this is his best in several years, it deserves it.

Poseidon's Wake

Poseidon's Wake, Alastair Reynolds

A disappointing conclusion to a minor trilogy by Reynolds. Stuffed full of boring or annoying characters, dulled by long-winded step-by-step plotting, and rendered immediately forgettable by the squandering of its own mysteries. None of which is helped by its packaging up of a basic fact of life ( = the universe is meaningless and finite) as a much-talked-about plot device, The Terror. Douglas Adams did that much better - and much funnier - with his Total Perspective Vortex.

Blue Remembered Earth

It's been a while, but I'm finally back to Alastair Reynolds. And, once again, he's pulled a new universe out of ... well, out of wherever it is that he pulls his imagined futures from. Unusually, this one, Blue Remembered Earth, is explicitly labelled as the start of a new sequence of novels. Bar the first outings of his Revelation Space series, Reynolds has gotten into the (good) habit of standalone novels - even when they are still set within his favoured future - so this is a bit of a change. But a change for good or ill?

It's the 2160s. Climate change is largely resolved (Kilimanjaro has snow once again), the developing nations of the early 21st century are now its new technological titans, humans are both augmented and peppered throughout the solar system, and Africa still - miraculously - has elephants. Opening with the studies of the latter by its chief protagonist, Geoffrey, the novel quickly establishes his "black sheep" status, a shirker-scientist within a powerful family. But the mysterious death of his reclusive explorer grandmother, Eunice, on her private space station changes everything, ultimately sending him on a journey across the solar system. Along the way he engages the help of his sister, Sunday, who also lives in semi-exile from their family in a libertarian, anti-surveillance commune on the Moon. Between them, they slowly piece together their grandmother's renegade life from clues she appears to have deliberately left for them to find. Clues which point to a radically different biography for Eunice, new physics that will transform life in the solar system, and distant secrets around other stars.

Another curate's egg this one. On the positive side, Reynolds does a good job (again) of building an interesting new universe, and populating it with striking concepts, not all of which rely on outer space thrills. So we have, among other gems, augmented elephants, their miniaturised lunar cousins, an AI Eunice as a self-aware art project, and artificially evolved Martian robots. But Reynolds sacrifices most of these to the expediencies of a fast-moving plot, particularly deleteriously in the case of the augmented elephants, where an emotionally interesting subplot concerning interspecies murder gets pretty rudimentary treatment. More disappointing, however, is this fast-moving plot itself, which gradually reveals itself as a succession of MacGuffins that simply serve to move Geoffrey and Sunday from point A to point B to point C. That they have all been carefully put in place by a secretive Eunice gives them a veneer of intrigue, but ultimately they boil down to a chain of cryptic breadcrumbs that the grandchildren can follow without thinking too hard along the way. As such, the novel's ostensible twists and turns feel far too canalised, and, as a reader, I was less thinking about what was to come, and more just wading through to the next breadcrumb.

So, overall, not a particularly satisfying read. Lots to like, but strung together in something less than the sum of its parts. That it's a planned series of novels seems unfortunate - like that of another favourite author read recently. But Reynolds has form in working imaginatively within a series, so I won't write the series off yet. We'll see.

Angelic science fiction

As alluded to previously, birthday/Christmas 2010 yielded me a new Alastair Reynolds novel. In what's becoming quite common for Reynolds now, Terminal World is another set outside of his Revelation Space series, and another that creates and fills its own universe. So, what's the universe like this time?

Quillon, a doctor working in a morgue in the last human city Spearpoint, is an angel. Or, rather, he was an angel. Sent in disguise by his fellow angels from the towering, high-tech heights of Spearpoint to its lower, and low-tech, levels, he was tasked with infiltrating the humans there to act as a spy. Rebelling against his angelic masters, he was forced to disappear into the society he was sent to undermine, making a living as a coroner known for strangeness, but with an interest in the occasional angel corpses that fall from above. The delivery of one such body to Quillon, one who is less dead than he first appears, reveals that the angels above have not forgotten about him, and forces Quillon to break his cover and escape from Spearpoint. Through shady contacts made during his time in the lower levels, Quillon is paired with the business-like Meroka who acts as his guide and protector as they descend through the zones of Spearpoint and head for the surrounding territory.

But the adventures of Quillon and Merkoa don't end once they have escaped Spearpoint and the attention of the angelic Ghouls sent to kill them. Instead, in the badlands that ring the city, where technology mysteriously no longer functions, they encounter Skullboys, members of a violent and terrorising gang, Vorgs, organic cyborgs with an interest in human brains, and the Swarm, a flotilla of airships that once served as Spearpoint's military. They also encounter a persecuted mother and child, Kalis and Nimcha, who both seemingly bear the mark of the Tectomancer. This mark purportedly grants the bearer supernatural powers, and instils fear and suspicion in the inhabitants of the badlands. Quillon is more skeptical, but his attention is drawn when Nimcha saves their lives using inexplicable means.

Meanwhile, back at Spearpoint, a shift in the zones that shape the technological landscape causes disaster. Now captured/rescued by the Swarm, Quillon persuades Ricasso, their dilettante commander, to mount a rescue mission to deliver much-needed supplies. But Quillon also believes, and Ricasso concurs, that Nimcha's powers hint at connections between so-called Tectomancy, Spearpoint and the byzantine technological zones that divide their world. The return journey involves intrigue aboard the airship flotilla, tantalising hints about the history of earlier, high-tech societies, and a full Skullboy onslaught. And the troubles continue on arrival, with treacherous gangsters now running Spearpoint, Ghouls still on the lookout for Quillon, and unexpected revelations in the deep core of the city.

To answer my opening question, this universe is pretty cool. As Reynolds has shown again and again and again, he has no trouble conjuring up original and distinctive visions of alternative futures. His creation of Spearpoint is no exception, and he does a pretty masterful job of keeping it largely under wraps and only slowly letting the reader find out what's really going on. To the extent that, at first, it reads a little more like a baroque fantasy novel, with the Angels standing in for the elves, and the Skullboys filling in the role of Orcs. Until the revelation count picks up in the latter third, only the occurrence of high-tech weapons, and the appearance of the distinctively science fiction Vorgs, reminds the reader that physics rather than flimsy mythology underlies Reynolds' world.

In passing, but on the subject of Reynolds' deft hiding of details, it's only now that I've had a look at the novel's Wikipedia article that the penny's finally dropped about the actual location of the novel. There are hints throughout (where are the oceans?), but I never thought deeply enough about them to realise that Reynolds was pulling an impressive fast one with the setting. He leaves rather clever clues dotted through the novel, but I don't think that it ever once breaks cover and baldly makes the point (though, obviously, I'll be pretty embarrassed if it actually does and I just missed it). My cap is most definitely doffed.

Leaving aside Reynolds' new world, how does the rest of the novel stack up? Overall: pretty well. But much as with his last novel, House of Suns, Reynolds starts well, finishes very impressively, but rather sags in the middle. Annoyingly, he does so for very similar reasons too - an extended, and largely tangential digression, into dull detail and characters. While the Swarm are definitely an interesting invention, and come off somewhere between the RAF and an honourable band of good-natured pirates, the delving into their internal politics is almost completely beside the point. Paradoxically, it's also where Reynolds somewhat pushes fast-forward on the revelations, but he does so by introducing Ricasso, and allowing him to converse at length with Quillon on the nature of their world.

Reynolds repeats his pattern of an exponential flux of revelations near the end of the novel, also from House of Suns. In only a few short pages, the reader is shown a great deal of what underpins Spearpoint, although Reynolds still (pleasingly) leaves tantalising loose ends. This is a getting to be a bit of a habit for Reynolds' non-Revelation Space novels, but it's one that I quite like. The alternative, where the novelist lays all of the cards on the table by the end, affords some immediate satisfaction, but leaves the cupboard uncomfortably (and, arguably, unrealistically) bare of mystery. Reynolds' approach also leaves a good deal of breathing space should he ever need to clamber onto the sequel train, but thus far (and creditably) he's resisted the temptation (except, obviously, with Revelation Space). That said, I'm sure that some readers will be put out by what are really quite significant unresolved threads.

Overall, a very enjoyable addition to his canon. Clearly not without its flaws, but they occur in the middle portion of the novel, so are largely forgotten by the end, and aren't exactly terrible either. Just unnecessarily long-winded and beside-the-point (IMHO). So, once again, I'll definitely be waiting for his next novel. And will be wondering what sort of world he'll be creating next.

No Revelations

It's 2011 now, but I've a stack of books to write-up from 2010. This is going to be a little cursory, but here goes anyway. First up is a short story collection from blog-favourite, Alastair Reynolds. Not from his Revelation Space series this time, but a series of stories from across his career, 1991 through to 2008, Zima Blue.

Unlike earlier collections, this one is largely made up of discrete stories that aren't united in a common universe, though there are a few that share the same future and a few characters. Considering that Reynolds is probably most famous for his interstellar Space Operas, most of the stories are rather surprisingly low-key, with some even taking place within a recognisable (and very British) near-future.

They range across hopeful post-apocalyptic yarns (Enola); Martian sloths (The Real Story); galactic journeys gone wrong (Beyond the Aquila Rift); explorations of many worlds in Wales (Signal to Noise); an investigation of space-time accompanied by an Elton John AI (Understanding Space and Time); and quantum immortality (Everlasting).

My favourite was the eponymous story, Zima Blue (obviously), which concerns a planetary-scale artist, Zima; the shade of blue that his work utilises; and how he gradually remembers the origin for this aesthetic preference. Which probably makes it sound ridiculous or seriously boring, but I felt that it had some real existential heart. It also pleasingly reminded me of the French artist, Yves Klein, whose rather vivid work we first came across in Barcelona (or was it Nice?), and who invented a particular shade of blue that features prominently in his work. I imagine that Reynolds must also be a fan.

Anyway, while there were one or two stories I was left scratching my head at the end of ("is that it?"), most were really quite good. As well as Zima Blue, I particularly liked Aquila Rift's premise of a routine space voyage gone vastly and terrifyingly wrong, and its introduction of an alien Samaritan picking up the pieces. Reynolds' "many worlds in Wales" tales were really nicely thought through too (a strange fusion between the corresponding works of Greg Egan and Iain Banks), though the Welsh setting made them seem rather mundane to me. It's probably true for other people too, but I tend to be aesthetically prejudiced against UK-set science fiction. It needs to be set somewhere "exciting" and "exotic", like Los Angeles ...

Overall, more solid fare from Reynolds. I'm already looking forwards to getting back to him before too long courtesy of a recent present from C: Terminal World.

Clone love

In my last review, I noted that, unlike my fiction diet, I routinely return to graze in the same authorial pasture when it comes to science fiction. Here we are again. This time with Alastair Reynolds and his latest novel, House of Suns.

Set in a distant future in which humanity has broadened into a multitude of subspecies distributed throughout an otherwise empty Milky Way, the only "fixed stars" in this universe are the Lines. These quasi-trading organisations are composed of clones, shatterlings, who travel the galaxy doing good works and acquiring information, before meeting up at regular periods to share their memories and compile their collected information into a "trove". Because of the size of the galaxy and the immutability of Einstein's universal speed limit, these meetings take place every 200,000 years, essentially geological intervals. This gives the Lines a view of galactic life in which non-Line civilisations rise and fall, then rise and fall again, time after time. They call this "turnover" and it is as natural a process to them as we'd judge the microscopic successions in the plankton. But despite collecting information over geological ages, even the Lines don't know everything - their biggest problem is the "disappearance" of the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy.

Against this galactic-scale backdrop, the novel focuses on two clones of the Gentian Line, Campion and Purslane, who, contrary to the codes that govern their Line, have fallen in love and now travel the galaxy together. A clone reunion is approaching fast, and Campion and Purslane are pondering how their Line will judge their relationship. However, before they can join their fellow shatterlings, a series of chance events brings them into contact with Hesperus, a member of the "machine people", a robotic civilisation. The shatterlings rescue Hesperus from imprisonment, but his memory has been partially wiped and he can no longer recall the mission on which the machine people sent him. Delayed by this encounter, the shatterlings arrive late for their reunion, only to find the event in disarray, with the Line almost totally destroyed by some outside agent. Fleeing this genocide of their Line, Campion and Purslane retreat to the safety of Neume, a distant rendezvous point for the Gentians. Here they meet the remaining fragments of the Line and mull over the disaster that has befallen it. They are assisted by the capture of some enemy agents, members of other Lines, but why would different Lines gang up on the Gentians? And why does the destruction of the Gentian Line appear to be linked to Campion and his trove?

Much like Century Rain and Pushing Ice, House of Suns is separate from Reynolds' Revelation Space books. I've remarked previously that this frees up Reynolds nicely to do a spot of world-building, something he's really good at. However, unlike those earlier titles, Reynolds isn't as sure-footed this time round. The initial set-up of the novel's universe is done well, and the role of the Lines and the nature of the galaxy they orbit are teasingly well-introduced to the reader. The relationship between Campion and Purslane isn't well-drawn or convincing (for much of the novel, I assumed that their coolness was plot-crucial, but it was really just weak writing), but this is a science fiction novel, so I'm prepared to let characterisation slide a bit.

Things start to go more significantly awry when Campion and Purslane wash up on Neume. The pace, which had hitherto been building up nicely, is ramped right down again. A whole host of new characters, mostly unpleasant ones, are introduced, and the novel becomes a bit of a "talkie", as the shatterlings bang on about the loss of their Line. It also takes on, rather unconvincingly, the well-worn and contemporary topic of prisoner torture, as the captured enemies are (unsuccessfully, obviously) pressed for information. Unfortunately, this section of the novel drags on for a significant fraction of the book, and though it's leavened with introduction of an ancient swarm intelligence called the Spirit of the Air and some revelations about pre-human artificial intelligences, Reynolds' editor really dropped the ball here.

Then, suddenly, the novel is off again, and the protagonists depart Neume in a near-light speed dash to a distant part of the galaxy. Although this portion of the novel takes the most time as measured from a rest frame, it passes in relatively few pages and ups the plot revelation-rate somewhat. However, as I was reading this portion, I was conscious that I was running out of pages [*] and, sure enough, Reynolds employs a deus ex machina (quite literally, given the protagonist involved) to explain quite large portions of the backstory in the novel's closing pages. I'm somewhat torn here, since I found these revelations very interesting, but their sudden release in literally a handful of pages is clumsy storytelling.

On the subject of clumsy storytelling, a plotline I've not mentioned above is the shuffled backstory of the Gentian Line which follows the life of the original individual, Abigail, who cloned herself to begin it. This is a good plotline of itself, but it's told gradually in a way that makes it appear much more central to the "current events" than it actually turns out to be. It might actually have made for a good novella in isolation from this novel. Reynolds has made good use of the shorter literary forms to fill in details of his universes before.

Overall, something of a mixed experience. Great set-up and some very interesting ideas throughout the book. But hamstrung by poor pacing and rather unconvincing characterisation. Perhaps a bit of a rush-job? That said, I'll still be clamouring for his next book, his form's been reliable and even this novel does have much to like about it.

[*] This is one way in which novels lose out to films. Unless one has both noted a film's duration and is checking one's watch, it's not obvious how much time a film has left, with the result that it can remain exciting before wrapping itself up in super-quick time. With a novel, one is well aware of how much is left, and if there appears to be a lot of ground still to cover (as there was here) a creeping sense of dread starts to coagulate (at least in this reader).

Back to the Glitter Band

Another posting, another science fiction novel. The Prefect is a further Alastair Reynolds novel, again set within his Revelation Space universe, albeit at an earlier point in its history. While the last of his novels that I reviewed, Chasm City, took place against the backdrop of a ruined Glitter Band, Reynolds' The Prefect takes place at an earlier time when the Band is still fully operational. For reference, the Glitter Band is an orbital ring of 10,000 separate habitats (space stations) around the planet Yellowstone.



The eponymous Prefect is Tom Dreyfus, a senior operative working for the Glitter Band organisation known as Panoply. Working in large part to coordinate the complicated democracy of the Glitter Band, Panoply is the closest it has to a police force, although security is only an occasional task for Panoply and its remit prevents it from acting against the often perverse internal activities of Glitter Band habitats. The novel opens with Dreyfus investigating two seemingly unrelated crimes, the first an infringement of Glitter Band democracy, the second the destruction of one of the Band's habitats. Both first appear as open and shut cases, but the latter lacks a credible motive, a fact that Dreyfus latches onto and doggedly pursues. While his investigations gradually uncover deeper machinations, the conspiracy that links the two crimes is accelerated, and powerful forces are unleashed into the Glitter Band. Faced with an overwhelming enemy, and hampered by both the restrictions placed on Panoply and a mole operating within it, Dreyfus is forced to revisit the events surrounding an earlier Panoply debacle, and to the realisation of his involvement in it. There he finds a dark secret from history, a key into his own past and an unlikely ally in the fight to save the Glitter Band.

Similarly to Chasm City, The Prefect makes good use of settings and events that are only alluded to in other Revelation Space novels. Also similarly, The Prefect is an isolated one-off novel with a fresh cast, and so avoids the flaws of the main sequence of his Revelation Space series. Structurally, the novels have less in common: The Prefect is more conventional than the time-split narrative of Chasm City, and instead has a simple, forward time-stream broken into a small number of strands that follow major characters.

By its setting at a much earlier point in the history of Revelation Space, The Prefect allows us to see the Glitter Band at its highest point, completely free of the Melding Plague that would later engulf it. Reynolds writes the Glitter Band as a democratic but anarchic mixture of societies, one that includes habitats where occupants can volunteer to be enslaved or fatally hunted. That such places exist in the Glitter Band allows Reynolds to explore just how far democracy can and should go, while also providing one of his antagonists with a defensible motive for the "sensible" actions that he takes.

The setting also allows Reynolds to have some fun with technologies that the Melding Plague would later render extinct because of their dangerous limitations. The most obvious of these is so-called Quickmatter, a nanotech material that can quasi-intelligently organise and repair itself, and from which even clothing is made. Reynolds also directly tackles his Alpha- and Beta-level simulations of people by featuring three as major characters. That Tom Dreyfus is, at least initially, sceptical of the sentience of Beta-levels allows some digression into this aspect of Glitter Band technology.

Overall, another worthy addition to Reynolds' canon. Both entertaining in its own right and, much like Chasm City, fitting in nicely with the rest of Revelation Space.

Use of Revelations

Another visit to the Revelation Space universe, this time with Alastair Reynolds' novel Chasm City.



Tanner Mirabel is out for revenge. As a security operative on the war-torn world of Sky's Edge he protected Cahuella, a merciless arms dealer, and his wife, Gitta. But when Reivich, a victim of Cahuella's trading, comes calling for revenge, Mirabel is unable to save Cahuella, and accidentally causes the death of Gitta. In pursuit of Reivich, Mirabel leaves Sky's Edge and heads for the distant planet of Yellowstone, a shining jewel of human achievement. However, before he gets there, Yellowstone is struck by the Melding Plague, a nanotechnological scourge that mutates its infrastructure, cripples its economy and creates an ugly society of haves and have-nots. Worse, when Mirabel arrives, he discovers that he has been infected by a virus spreading a religious cult formed around Sky Haussmann, the notorious Machiavellian founder of Sky's Edge, and must periodically succumb to flashbacks from Haussman's life. Penniless, and losing Reivich's trail, Mirabel throws himself into the underworld and overlords of Yellowstone's capital city, Chasm City. Along the way he encounters aristocrats hunting paupers, a drug craze related to the Melding Plague, and the suspicion that his Haussman flashbacks are telling him a lot more than the Sky's Edge history books do.

Structurally, the novel is divided into three narrative strands. The first is the (relatively) straightforward tale of Mirabel's pursuit of Reivich from Sky's Edge to Yellowstone and Chasm City. The second stream follows the events on Sky's Edge leading up to the deaths of Cahuella and Gitta. The third, which occurs as apparent flashbacks for Mirabel, replays sections from the life of Sky Haussmann as he travels from Earth to the world later known as Sky's Edge. While the third strand at first appears separate and distinct from the other two, it becomes clear that none of the strands are quite what they appear, and the relationships between them are gradually revealed as the novel unfolds. By the end of the novel, the reader's expectations have been completely overturned not once but twice, as various revelatory events occur. While both make for an exciting rollercoaster ride, the second of these is extreme and the novel rather glosses over the implications of it (see the "spoiler" section below for further discussion).

Although part of the Revelation Space universe, and involving some of the larger scale elements from the main sequence of novels (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap), Chasm City is fairly self-contained, with no obvious groundwork for direct sequels. Reynolds does a good job of integrating the places, events and characters of the other novels into this one, such that Revelation Space veterans can derive a lot of added value from this novel, but without introducing elements that would be confusing to a novice reader. I was really quite impressed in places at the dovetailing between footnotes from the main sequence of novels and the events described here.

Overall, another worthy addition to Reynolds' canon. Although set firmly within his well-established future history, it benefits greatly from being standalone and not simply being part of the main sequence of Revelation Space novels. This allows Reynolds to exploit his existing Revelation Space creation, but do what he's best at: the set-up. Reynolds' next novel in the series, The Prefect, similarly avoids the main sequence, so I've high hopes for that too (of which, more in the future).

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Spoiler warning

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As I've hinted above, Chasm City contains a number of revelations that undercut the reader's expectations in this novel. The identity of the protagonist goes through two significant revisions, the latter of which, in particular, casts a long shadow over the protagonist. The first revelation, that Tanner Mirabel is actually Cahuella, is not irrecoverable, since Cahuella, while not a nice man, is not appalling. The second revelation, that Cahuella is actually Haussmann, doesn't stand up to the same scrutiny.

From the start of the novel to its end, the protagonist is painted in a relatively sympathetic light, and it's clear that Reynolds wants the reader to empathise with him. But the transformation from Haussmann to Cahuella is tacked on too briefly at the end of the novel, so there's no sense that Haussmann realises the error of his ways and reforms himself. The plot device that Reynolds seems to be using to achieve this is simply amnesia: Mirabel-Cahuella-Haussmann has edited his memories so extensively, he's no longer any of these people, but is actually someone much better. But there's no suggestion that this has been a conscious decision, or that it forms part of Haussmann's redemption.

Almost the same idea was used in Iain Banks' much superior Culture novel Use of Weapons. However, in Banks' novel, the redemption, or attempted redemption, of the central character is a fundamental component of the narrative, even if the reader is not aware of this until the end of the novel. In Chasm City, we're expected to make a similar jump unassisted. That we're supposed to do this (i.e. perhaps Reynolds instead wants a despotic character?) is clear from the support Mirabel receives from other characters even after his true identity is revealed. In passing, Banks' novel additionally handles the revelations more successfully. By relying on a stronger narrative structure (one narrative runs forwards, the other backwards), Banks avoids Reynolds' clumsily explicit device of memory alteration to pull off the same trick.

Still, not many novels are as successful as Use of Weapons, so I'm being a bit hard on Chasm City here.

Novellas, or long short stories?

In what seems like more of a marketing thing than anything else, two "novellas" of Alastair Reynolds are bundled together in Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. A rather unimaginative title for the collection given that it merely incorporates the titles of the two Revelation Space-set novellas. Anyway, they seem just like long short stories to me, but ...


The first novella, Diamond Dogs, follows a group of adventurers brought together under mysterious circumstances by an evasive renegade, Childe. He takes them to an unexplored world, devoid of any interesting features bar an artificial tower. The tower's origins are unknown and it communicates to visitors solely by setting them mathematical puzzles. If they get these correct, they are allowed to proceed further into the tower. If they get them wrong, the tower exacts a punishment. At first the puzzles are straightforward and the punishments mild, but as the team advances through and up the tower, things take a turn for the macabre. Gradually, the team is whittled down until abandoning the quest seems the only sane response, but Childe is never giving up.

This is one of those stories where you're expecting one sort of payoff (an explanation about the tower), but get quite another one (why the team has been assembled). It's not an entirely satisfying trade, and though the novella is constructed well and draws you in, ultimately it is something of a frustrating experience.

The second novella, Turquoise Days, is set on one of the worlds that harbour the so-called Pattern Jugglers, massive seaweed-like colonies that interface, and can change, minds that swim among them. These have been described in several of Reynolds' other novels, but the novella takes in a detailed journey with them. The story involves two sisters who study the Jugglers, and the visit to their world by a team of scientists from a distant colony. When this visit is first announced, several years before it actually arrives, the sisters undertake an ill-advised swim with the Jugglers. Both have swum before, but both have become infected by their contact with the Jugglers. This is often a sign that a person is of particular interest to the Jugglers, and on this occasion one of the sisters, Mina, does not return. Naqi, the other sister, does return and, though nursing grief at the loss of her sister, continues with her studies of the Jugglers, becoming involved in a project to attempt to isolate a sub-colony of the Juggler biomass. Eventually the visitors arrive, but they are not what they first appear to be and instigate chaos on the planet. Threatening the very well-being of the Jugglers, Naqi must again commune with them to attempt to contact her lost sister.

The parameters of this novella are somewhat more straightfoward, and there's no sense of disappointment in how it unfurls. It's actually quite good to finally meet the aliens that one has only heard snippets about in Reynolds novels. Well, "meet" in a special sense. The Jugglers remain mysterious, but their mode of interaction with visitors is now much clearer. I suspect that Reynolds is saving further revelations about them for later works.

Overall, while both novellas are perfectly acceptable stories, they feel like they should be part of a larger collection, and neither is satisfying enough to make this collection worthwhile. A marketing decision indeed. Still, for a primer on the Pattern Jugglers, the collection is worth reading.

The "Christmas Effect"

Christmas is a time of giving. And receiving! Consequently, book-reading post-Christmas is dominated by a load of new books, often stacked up because of the pre-Christmas embargo on new purchases. Anyway, as a result, I've another Alastair Reynolds to document. Unlike my previous posting on this author, this book, Century Rain, has nothing to do with Revelation Space. It's free-standing and, like the similarly disconnected novel, Pushing Ice, it's all the better for it.


The novel begins unconventionally for a science fiction novel with a jazz-playing private detective, Floyd, who works in Paris in the late 1950s. An ex-patriot American, Floyd has been brought in by a wealthy patron to investigate the mysterious death of an unusual visitor to Paris, an ostensibly American woman with an obsession for collecting newspapers, books and music records. Originally discounted as a suicide, her death, and her suspicious behaviour, leave behind too many unanswered questions for Floyd. His efforts to resolve the mystery increasingly attract the attention of the local police, hitherto uninterested in the case, but also that of some very strange children. Before long his path crosses with that of the "sister" of the now apparently murdered visitor.

That's the first strand. The second involves a future historian, Auger, exploring the remains of Paris for valuable artifacts. The Earth has been destroyed in a holocaust driven by nanotechnology, and humanity has split into two opposing groups, the Threshers and the Slashers, the former opposing nanotech, the latter still keen to use it to recover the Earth. After devastating wars, the two groups have come to an uneasy accommodation. With their more advanced technology, the Slashers have begun to access an alien-built wormhole-like transit system that allows them to explore the galaxy. Auger, after being disgraced in an accident in Paris, is given a chance to make amends by continuing the work of a recently deceased colleague. Sent down the entrance of one of these alien portals in Phobos she emerges somewhere familiar but different.

The intersection of both of these narratives within the covers of same novel makes it obvious that they will come together at some point. When they do it's actually not quite as satisfying as one might like, but by then the novel has built up enough of a head of steam to carry it off to the end.

One particularly deleterious aspect of the latter part of the novel are a series of interminable action sections that take place in Auger's "world". The early novel is carefully paced, with its structure gradually, and skillfully, put together. The late novel contains a number of long-winded descriptions of rather uninteresting sequences involving a lot of action. Action, while working well on the screen, rarely works well on the page. It's just difficult to hold choreographed action in your head for more than a paragraph or two. Wearing my "scientific reviewers" hat, I'd have suggested that the novelist trim these action portions down, perhaps instead focusing on the reality-disjoint experienced by the detective Floyd when he discovers that his reality is not at all what it appears. The novel is also a bit thin on the reason events take a turn for action at the end - I was never entirely clear on why the Slashers were up to what they were up to.

An interesting decision made by Reynolds is not to explain, or even really explore, the reason that Floyd's world exists. The reader is given only tantalising glimpses of what the purpose of Floyd's world is, and its creators (who also appear to have built the handy portal system) are almost completely off-stage. That they are not completely off-stage may suggest that Reynolds intends to visit this fictional universe again. Although, interestingly, the motivations of the aliens who created the worlds, of which Floyd's is an example, don't appear to be a major concern of any of the novel's characters. Perhaps they've just decided that, in the seeming absence of the aliens, it's too big a mystery to tackle in their lifetimes.

Anyway, despite my misgivings about the action sequences, this is another great novel by Reynolds. What I've not remarked on so far is the style of the writing in the early sections involving Floyd. Reynolds does a great job bringing noir sensibilities to this world. Floyd seems (in a good way) to have stepped straight from a Raymond Chandler novel. This extends to the relationship that Floyd gradually forges with Auger. Reynolds also does a good job presenting a slightly different 1959 to that we've experienced. WW2 hasn't happened in this world, and the consequences are nicely and subtly drawn out (including a fleeting crossing-of-paths with, I presume, an aged Adolf Hitler).

Finally, this novel again shows that Reynolds works best in creating a new world, much like in Pushing Ice. While there are definitely ways that Reynolds could take this fictional universe forwards (more, in a way, than with Pushing Ice), it might be better if he left its possibilities tantalisingly unrealised.

Shorter is better

More Alastair Reynolds. But short stories rather than a novel this time, Galactic North. All set within his Revelation Space universe, but only some with direct connections to existing narratives set there. However, those that aren't directly connected usually shed light on parts of this future history that have hitherto only been hinted at.


Short stories are definitely a strong point for science fiction. They allow the author to explore an interesting idea without the expectation of character development. Several of the stories here go one step further in a way by allowing the author to dispense even further with characterisation since several of the characters are known to readers already (though this does create potentially interesting trade-offs between new and familiar readers). Anyway, the stories here represent excellent examples of the short story form while additionally being satisfying for readers already familiar with Reynolds' Revelation Space.

The first two stories deal with the character Nevil Clavain and his "defection" to the Conjoiner faction of humanity. The stories slot nicely into gaps in Reynolds' novels and flesh out relationships between various characters. They're also good stories in their own right, particularly the second one which approximates a good whodunnit on an alien world. The final story in the collection, Galactic North, initially takes place during the Revelation Space novels but, through time dilation, takes in a much broader sweep of history. It reveals the long term outcome of the conflict between humanity, the Inhibitors and the human-made Greenfly. Possibly a mistake on Reynolds' part to lay out in some detail what might have made for a good novel down the line. Still, he's certainly left himself wriggle room, and I'm sure he's smart enough to milk his future history some more.

Other stories in the collection take the form of a love story set in Revelation Space, Weather; a spy story dealing with modified humans used as slaves in the oceans of Europa, A Spy In Europa; the undoing of a collector of rare and exotic animals, Grafenwalder's Bestiary; and an adventure aboard a ghost ship with a conscience, Nightingale.

For readers unfamiliar with Revelation Space, the stories will likely be particularly exciting since they draw, teasingly, on a rich and carefully thought-through history and geography. However, there's a lot here for readers, such as myself, who are more familiar with this universe. Being short, and not forced to create a grand narrative, they also avoid some of the problems of fatigue that Reynolds' novels suffer to a degree from (Pushing Ice being a notable exception). Avoiding detailed characterisation also works to Reynolds' advantage here (much as it has done for other science fiction authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov).

Anyway, I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for further volumes like this one by Reynolds.

Something harder

While Neal Asher's science fiction owes something to the medium-hard (or medium-soft depending on one's personal science fiction "Mohs scale") work of Iain Banks, another recent discovery, Alastair Reynolds, is far more in the mold of harder writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Gregory Benford. Anyway, the books to be consigned to the charity shop are ...

Pushing Ice, Alastair Reynolds, 2005, science fiction
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds, 2000, science fiction
Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds, 2002, science fiction
Absolution Gap, Alastair Reynolds, 2003, science fiction

While Pushing Ice is a standalone novel, the other three novels are part of Reynolds Revelation Space series, and requires something more by way of description.

This series is (again) set several centuries into the future, and in neighbouring solar systems to that of Sol. The setting is a universe with plenty of evidence for alien civilizations, but a distinct absence of aliens (bar some odd phenomena that hint at hiding aliens). In Revelation Space, humanity has expanded from the Earth and, on a planet called Resurgam, is living alongside the ruins of an apparently "recently" extinguished species (only 1 million years dead). The novel follows the exploits of an archaeologist set on uncovering the truth behind this extinction regardless of the cost. Many other characters and subplots are brought it, but the crux of the novel is the gradual revealing of the fate of the previous inhabitants of Resurgam. The latter two novels explore the consequences of the revelations of the first. In essence, machinery put in place by early civilizations in deep time (early galactic history) acts to extinguish emerging civilizations to spare yet-to-come civilizations from a predicted future calamity. Humanity has been fortunate to arrive on the scene during a calm period, but its actions have triggered the emergence of the civilization-curtailing machines (one of whom even features as a character at one point).

As with many fictional series, the first novel is by far the best. The set up and gradual revealing of a carefully thought-through universe is always fun. Diminishing returns, however, set in relatively quickly here. Mostly, I think, because Reynolds forces his characters through some very odd contortions (I'm thinking of the enmity between Clavian and Skade here). These don't ring true, and distract from the wider events.

In keeping with many science fiction writers from the latter few decades of the 20th century, Reynolds tries to grant his characters plausible emotions and personal evolution (as set against earlier novelists who focused solely on plot or ideas). To my mind, however, he's not terribly successful on these points. Some characters work and their changes fit the events surrounding them; others seem unhinged or respond unconvincingly to events. Not enough to markedly damage the novels, but enough to somewhat strain credulity (always dangerous in science fiction, where credulity is routinely strained). Part of this stems from using more or less the same cast in the novels. I thought he might try the trick of completely switching cast each novel such that one gets to see the consequences of familiar events through new eyes (which allows gradual revelation as a plot device again), but unfortunately not.

Still, despite these negative remarks, the underlying science fiction is very exciting, and rather plausibly drawn (no faster-than-light travel, etc. here). As with Asher, I'll doubtless keep checking up on Reynolds, but Revelation Space isn't as captivating as The Culture, the Galactic Centre saga or the Eight Worlds.


Having said all of the above, I should add that Pushing Ice is a much, much better novel than any of the Revelation Space titles. It follows the fate of a single spacecraft and its crew after they are sent to check up on the strange behaviour of one of Saturn's moons. The "moon" turns out not to be a moon at all, and winds up taking the crew on an extraordinary journey. While somewhat similar to Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, the novel is populated with interesting and engaging characters that, this time, do seem plausible and behave that way. Interpersonal conflicts are set up, and they evolve in a believable way. And it's all set alongside a cracking plot that gradually reveals a very interesting universe, and some very engaging aliens. Like the original Rendezvous, the reader is left at the end with both a widened sense of perspective and a ton of questions still dangling (while a sequel would be gobbled up, it might not be for the best; c.f. Revelation Space).