Reviews of Revelation Space (2000) and related work
- Spin-off: Chasm City (2001)
- Sequel: Redemption Ark (2002)
- Sequel: Absolution Gap (2003)
- Spin-off: The Prefect (2007)
Revelation Space (2000
)
Alastair Reynolds (writer).
Read in 2024.
In the 26th century, a somewhat transhuman archaeologist pursues the mystery of a lost alien species before coming to question his motives.
An excellent space opera with unusually low levels of tendentious narcissism. It resembles The Reality Dysfunction (1996) in that the archaeologist—Dan Sylveste—is an apparently lucky bastard, living in a diverse and mostly peaceful human/transhuman multi-planet society, who gets pulled into a struggle against an existential threat to humanity with Abrahamic religious overtones: The winged Amarantin as “fallen angels” with Sun Stealer as their Lucifer engaging in demonic possession. A couple of sequences are close enough to gothic horror that they would have fit into Dysfunction or even the 40K universe, but that’s where the similarities end. Reynolds’s worldbuilding is full of nuance and balance in its gentle cynicism, its real trend is toward Lovecraft rather than Jesus, he makes good use of his professional training in astrophysics, and the plot runs deep enough to justify the page count. It’s not hard science fiction, but it’s definitely science fiction. The characteric narcissism of fantasy fiction is thankfully absent here, and so is the religious allegory. Deep thought and a solid thriller take their place. The Lovecraft influences range all the way from Clarke’s-third-law super-ancient aliens to “Cool Air” (1928).
The character writing is good but not brilliant. The trio of Ana Khouri, Ilia Volyova and Pascale Sylveste is both badass and funny enough, without Dysfunction’s sexual objectification. The technological and political worldbuilding is a little loose, but almost free from MacGuffins. The ending is reminiscent of both Solaris (1961) and Roadside Picnic (1972). Overall, Reynolds manages to strip the genre of almost every dull cliché without losing any of its entertainment value.
‣ Chasm City (2001)
Alastair Reynolds (writer).
Read in 2025.
A veteran of the war on Sky’s Edge comes to the source of the Melding Plague, which has turned nanotechnology against its users.
This entry is almost in the style of contemporary Warhammer 40,000. It’s got a weird cult, the deathwishful upper classes hunting the poor for kicks like it’s Necromunda, and a deeper cynicism than Revelation Space. It even has stronger crypto-Christian mystical symbolism: Sky Haussmann’s crucifixion and Tanner Mirabel’s stigmata. The cynicism is a little dull and the double-triple thriller plot is convoluted beyond the point of making sense (Haussmann is Mirabel is a third guy but they don’t have the same psychology), and Mirabel is too much like the first novel’s Ana Khouri, but it’s still charming, especially when the hard-boiled detective plot relatively briefly and skillfully touches on the large-scale worldbuilding of the setting.
References here: Pushing Ice (2005).
‣ Redemption Ark (2002)
Alastair Reynolds (writer).
Read in 2025.
In the early 27th century, a couple of the series’ antiheroes are already tired at the prospect of defending intelligent life from the emerging Inhibitor threat. They seek redemption in the opening battle.
Returning to the main plotline after the spin-off that was Chasm City, Reynolds has gotten rid of all the flaws typical of a first novel and has not yet accumulated the flaws typical of a long-running series. The Conjoiner faction reminds me of the most awesome transhumans of Schismatrix (1985), with Galiana and the post-Scottish Clavain in particular successfully fusing the dysteleological worldview of Reynolds’s astronomical background with his growing powers of literary characterization. The author is also more confident with the rare intertextual jokes here: There is a gas giant named after the German band Tangerine Dream, and an off-hand reference to a stereotype of in-universe space opera, which is that lasers in ship-to-ship fighting are invisible to build tension. The joke is of course that in the space operas of the early 2000s, the cliché was exactly the opposite, that lasers and other direct-energy weapons are spectactularly visible. Reynolds re-inverts that particular cliché, explaining why lasers would sometimes be indirectly visible in space battles, without dumbing anything down.
The series is increasingly a space opera, with more uplifted animals and other plucky heroes facing more threats of apocalypse. The baseline morality of the protagonists includes caring for a large amount of civilians, putting them on the titular “ark”, but no part of the story is told from the perspective of these ordinary people. Still, as space operas go, it’s a clever one. The motivations of the Inhibitors are laid out in one of many fine lore-drops, the gothic elements are still amusing, and the worldbuilding continues to mesh with the deep and multi-threaded plotting in excellent form.
References here: The Prefect (2007).
‣ Absolution Gap (2003)
Alastair Reynolds (writer).
Read in 2025.
In the late 27th century through to the early 28th, humans fight a losing war against the Inhibitors. They consider calling in an external faction.
Right on schedule, Reynolds accumulates the flaws typical of a long-running series. The Inhibitors turn out to be little more than the Borg of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), minus the icky anthropomorphic cyborgs. They have the defensive learning ability and the lack of personality, to the point that they also resemble Terry Pratchett’s Auditors. Scorpio the pig, who is anthropomorphic, gets all the personality this time. He takes centre stage and acquits himself well; he’s still a little bit whimsical with his tiny shoes, his trotters, his snout and his obsession with his race, but he is well characterized and also develops well.
There is a lot of other stuff that Reynolds does well. Quaiche, a character introduced in this novel, has an early space battle that is brilliantly realistic, in that he’s blacked out for most of it. The much more romantic story of the rest of his life is mostly very good gothic/grimdark SF, but there’s a problem. Quaiche instrumentalizes a doctrinal virus to gild his sense of purpose with a numinous edge, keeping himself motivated. This decision shows that, at the same time and to a degree that feels completely arbitrary, Quaiche is also a rationalist. This paradox is a plot convenience that Reynolds can tune as needed without openly contradicting himself. Similarly, Aura, another new character, is a transcendent oracular genius telepath, but at the same time, she is, as time progresses, a foetus, a baby that talks like the toddler Jesus in Valis (1981), a fairly regular kid just restating her age, and a young-adult heroine who spends nine years thinking she is someone else entirely. Like Quaiche, Aura oscillates between power levels as needed to sew up the plot. It’s a problem. I assume it’s also a solution to a problem: The problem of writing credible SF with hyperintelligent characters in a dynamic, very-large-scale plot where, as the narrator puts it, “vast destinies hung in the balance”.
There are more refugees—regular humans—than in the preceding novel, but they are still a faceless mass, a set of moral tokens. The book’s demons, the Shadows, remind me again of the moral dichotomy of The Reality Dysfunction (1996). Reynolds is still almost entirely chaste, but in a ludicrous plot twist, Skade from the previous novel kidnaps Ana Khouri’s foetus, moving it into her own womb. In the scene where this plot twist is revealed as a soap-opera moral dilemma, Skade is wearing boob-plate armour. Right there, Absolution Gap creeps up to the typical levels of tendentious narcissism in space opera.
‣ The Prefect (2007)
Alastair Reynolds (writer).
Read in 2025.
In the 25th century, before Revelation Space takes place, the Glitter Band is the cusp of democratic human civilization. Prefects police its voting system.
This is a solid implementation of formula. The chief protagonist, Tom Dreyfus, is a stereotypical good cop: Tireless, an uncompromising moralist, and a brilliant detective, refusing to be promoted out of field work. The setting around him is the most glamorous and optimistic in the franchise, which is fun to see, but there is nothing saccharine about it. Reynolds brings the horror as usual.
At the novel’s heart is a sense of insecurity about lotus-eating, recognizable from Star Trek (1966) and a thousand other science-fiction franchises distantly based on Christian ideas. Conflict between Dreyfus and a secondary antagonist concerns moral judgement—and government control—over lotus-eating. Dreyfus lands on the side of liberalism but, for security reasons, all of the protagonists are personally unable to experience virtual reality (“abstraction”). They do not see the utopia they live in as its other citizens see it. Instead, their heroism consists in part of abstinence from the lotus, like the naval officers of Star Trek. It is hard not to read this as a sign of anxiety about freedom from toil, but it does also help the reader stay afloat in the already heavy worldbuilding.
This vision of the future is also carefully tuned to preserve some human agency in the face of unsentimental realism. Facing one hostile transhuman superintelligence with a human face, Dreyfus goes to bargain with another superintelligence and discovers that it, too, is transhuman. It is human enough that its voice is characterized as “avuncular”. It is partly alien too, and I am glad that Reynolds did not use the cheap Star Trek trick of inventing a new alien species for the “enemy of the week”, but the enemies in The Prefect are as human as anything in Red Dwarf (1988), and almost literally dei ex machina. When the dramatic tension is strongest and Dreyfus is about to be tortured to death by the secondary antagonist, an ally appears literally ex machina, but all the eucatastrophes are carefully planned and planted.
A “hyperpig” like Redemption Ark’s Scorpio, or Porco Rosso (1992), shows up in this novel too, underlining that this is a return to an established setting. Reynolds’s usual sewing up of seemingly unrelated plotlines is muted. The unusual mashup of a gumshoe yarn with a military space opera also feels muted, and familiar, in a way that Revelation Space was not. The Prefect is a couple of steps closer to The Reality Dysfunction (1996), but it is not a fantasy where humanity triumphs by its will.