#alastair reynolds

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Main Bracket !

Round 1 Poll HHH

(Gentian)

[owlbear33]

I've on occasion said that the best sort of spaceship is one that acts as a shared house for 3 to 10 ish weirdoes to find found family in, plus all the usual spaceship gubbins

vaguely gesturing in the direction of Ebon Hawks, Sereneties, Be Bops, Tempests, and the like

little ships, sorta in the 40-150m range

but there's nothing in that description that precludes multi-kilometre behemoths complete with generous cargo space, an extensive cache of WMDs, and an onboard arboretum

the crew on the other hand

[psybrepunk]

Hey @doppelgangerleaverite I made a compilation of tweets that encapsulate how I feel about Sky Haussmann

[beedokart]

Some very silly crossover doodling for Trigun and Terminal World.

Got to love those sci-fi westerns set on dying worlds that have something deeply unsettling about how they work.

[beedok]

If you ever find yourself in an Alastair Reynolds novel: try transitioning.

It will increase your survival odds from ~3% to as high as 25%.

[tonsillessscum]

The Doctor kept an eye on the Master as the Praxilions readied the craft for flight. He remained comatose, breathing slowly but re-gularly. As vulnerable, in his way, as when he had been inside the Infinite Cocoon.

‘If our positions were reversed,' the Doctor whispered, 'what would you do? Smother me? Something worse? Or accept that there's a part of me in you, a part of you in me?'

Alastair Reynolds, Doctor Who - The Harvest of Time

[figcatlists]

Bleak and disturbing science fiction reading list

A list of science fiction novels and short story collections with dark themes and gloomy settings. The selection includes dystopias, post-apocalyptic and climate fiction, as well as unsettling sci-fi horror. See the full list on my website for more titles and links to Goodreads and Wikipedia.

[catofadifferentcolor]

“I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.” 

― Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space

[humbababa]

The moment I knew I'd love the Revelation Space books is when, to save herself from falling to death through a several kilometer long elevator shaft, Volyova flies the ship up and down until her falling speed is close to zero when she gets back to solid ground.

This requires trial and error, of course, so it was a very abrupt up and down. She still made it out with only a broken leg!

Her attempted murderer, however, was crushed to goo in the hallway he threw her from.

Crushed to goo via spaceflight. Wonderfully brutal

[lhs3020b]

Eversion, by Alastair Reynolds

Let's try reviewing a book, shall we?

I just finished "Eversion" by Alastair Reynolds, and I have thoughts.

Oh, and everything will be spoilers after the cut...

Dr Silas Coade is the physician aboard the sailship Demeter, which is venturing north to investigate a mystery.

No, Dr Silas Coade is the physician aboard the steamship Demeter, which is sailing south to investigate a mystery in deepest Patagonia.

But no, no, Dr Silas Coade is the physician aboard the airship Demeter, which is shortly due to enter a fissure into the Hollow Earth to investigate a mystery far below the surface of the not-entirely-physically-plausible bauble-planet...

But no, no, no ... this isn't it, is it SILAS? You need to wake up before time runs out, entombed here below the ice-crust on Jupiter's moon Europa - Silas? Silas are you listening? Silas are we about to do this again, and what do you mean Dupin hasn't solved the eversion problem yet -

Cut

As quickly becomes apparent, Silas is apparently stuck in some sort of fantastical loop. Said loop appears to be linked to a story that he is attempting to write, in all iterations of it. The structure of the setting varies - the technology level goes up over each loop, but the nature of each loop is less plausible than the one preceding it. The very first loop is something that could believably have happened. The second loop is starting to stretch things a little - how did this crappy ship get all the way down to Patagonia? - but it's not quite jumped the shark, at least not yet. While it's subtle, the behaviour of gravity inside the Hollow Earth is wrong (there shouldn't be a "down" inside a uniform self-gravitating hollow spehere). Oh, and the shell-planet is also self-evidently absurd, though no-one living there sees it as such. The last, and obviously-delusional, loop is straight out of a '40s SF pulp magazine. (In fact it bore more than a passing resemblance to bits of Triplanetary Patrol by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, which I'm pretty sure was deliberate on the part of the author!)

There are several common features to each loop. Silas is always the ship's physician. Ramos has always suffered some manner of head injury. The Demeter, whatever class of vehicle it is, is always voyaging toward a mysterious destination that can only be reached through a fissure, though the nature of the fissure changes each time. In each stage, Dupin, the young mathematician, is always ill and is always working on a problem related to the concept of "eversion". Dupin's condition also progresses - he visibily deteriorates between each cycle, even though the delusions themselves reset. When the Demeter traverses the fissure, they find a bizarre, menacing construction called the Edifice, which appears to be of inhuman origin and whose purpose is not clear. They also find the wreck of another ship, the Europa, which apparently got there first. The crew of the Demeter discover they have been lied to. Disaster swiftly follows, ending with Silas's death.

Interestingly, in every cycle Silas has experienced some form of psychotropic disorder. Usually this presents as an addiction, which he is hiding from the crew (laudanum, then morphine, then the "Radium draught" from the Hollow Earth episode), though later on it takes the form of a supposed indoctrinal machine called the Plastic Educator. It is clear from these episodes that Silas does not have the full facts of his situation - or, perhaps, is hiding from them - though what exactly the real problem is remains unclear.

Also, there is always lightning.

Enter Ada Cossile. The mysterious woman is not present in absolutely every iteration of the cycle - she's notably absent aboard the Interplanetary Patrol spaceship - but when she is present, she acts both as a critic and somewhat of a temptress-figure to Silas. She critiques his writing, often quite harshly, but she also implies (or outright states) that the world that Silas occupies is a lie. She seems to know more than she should.

It slowly emerges that Cossile is trying to draw Silas back to reality, or at least what she views as reality. They are indeed on board a vehicle called the Demeter, except it is actually a lander from a spacecraft, currently trapped below the ice on Jupiter's moon Europa. It is close to an alien artifact known as the Edifice, and there is another wrecked ship - also called the Europa - nearby, as it appears that a second expedition was launched without the knowledge of Demeter's crew. Also, the crews of both have been abducted and are now trapped inside the Edifice, which is stated to be slowly mind-draining them toward death, and it's up to Ada and Silas to save them.

But the reality of the situation is simply too much, and Silas keeps fleeing from it into a hallucinatory fugue-state.

These are not the only revelations, though I have deliberately not mentioned a few points, so as not to spoil every surprise :)

Eversion is a page-turner - I found it hard to put down. The underlying mystery is interesting, and it poses some hard questions about loss and sacrifice - how much sacrifice is justified to save others? As is often the case with Reynolds novels, there's a theme of forbidden knowledge. It would have been better for everybody if they'd simply ignored the Edifice in the first place and no expedition to Jupiter had ever been launched. When Silas learns the truth, it doesn't make him happy, and in fact he's at his happiest at the very end when he abandons reality for the final time and goes to live permanently in what's implied to be his final fugue-state.

There are also - possibly - some unanswered questions. I'm not 100% convinced we've had the entire truth about who or what Ada Cossile was. There could be some hints that she too either does not know the full facts of her situation, or is presenting an edited version. There's one, brief scene in which Silas perceives her as something monstrous rather than alluring. Also, she's very keen that someone has to remain behind inside the Edifice and she's also very keen for the eversion problem to be solved - and who else might be interested in both these outcomes? After all, the eversion seems to be linked to whatever process via which the Edifice became damaged in the first place - a solution to the eversion could also be beneficial for the Edifice. One can wonder if perhaps it realised that the escape of some of its prisoners was inevitable, so instead it devised a "controlled crash" scenario where it's still able to get at least some of what it wants. (Dupin remains entombed within, and the Edifice has control of the wrecks of both the Europa and the Demeter. And with eversion solved, perhaps it can heal itself.) In this model, one has to wonder whether perhaps Ada has been influenced by the Edifice, or may indeed be an avatar of it? It's interesting that Silas seems to keep feeling a need to flee from her, even while he remains fascinated by her - perhaps on some level, he's sensed that something is "off" about her. It's also notable that Ada has a colour-motif associated with her - yellow! - and this is in a novel that is not generally heavy on strong visual imagery. (I also find myself reminded of the famous King In Yellow, a well-known proto-Lovecraftian work, though perhaps this might be a bit of a reach.)

Anyway, none of this is proved - perhaps Ada's story actually is the truth! - though I think a case can be made for it.

Overall I'd say that Eversion is an interesting, challenging novel, and definitely one worth reading.

[ohmywhatamarvoloustune]

I found The Expanse (the first time) while also reading Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynold. I am so into space opera's and having my brain broken by science and technology. Their compatible. Yay Space! I could go on but there just so good.

Alastair Reynold has lots and lots of good books but Blue Remembered Earth is the most accessible one.

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Main Bracket !

Round 2 Poll NNN

(Gentians and carrots)

[gollancz]

April 2023 Audio and eBook Deals!

We have some DEALS! CHEAP BOOKS! Roll up, roll up!

🎧Audible UK🎧

Price Deals!

The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin - £2.99 between 16th and 22nd April

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2-for-1 - 6th-15th April

Red Country, Joe Abercrombie

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2-for-1 - 23rd-30th April

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Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo

[psybrepunk]

It sucks that there's no official visual representation of Sky Haussmann so I can't make a meme with his image + "I got 99 problems...and I caused all of them"

[beedokart]

[beedok]

You’ve heard of:

Enemies to Lovers

You’ve probably heard of:

Enemies to Found Family

Now it’s time for:

Enemies to Headmates