#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

[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.

[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"

[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

[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%.

[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.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[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

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Main Bracket !

Round 2 Poll NNN

(Gentians and carrots)

[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.

[beedokart]

[psybrepunk]

The way the Melding Plague is described at the beginning of Chasm City goes so hard.

"But the plague went beyond mere destruction, into a realm much closer to artistry, albeit an artistry of a uniquely perverted and sadistic kind. It caused our machines to evolve uncontrollably - out of our control, at least - seeking bizarre new symbioses. Our buildings turned into Gothic nightmares, trapping us before we could escape their lethal transfigurations. The machines in our cells, in our blood, in our heads, began to break their shackles - blurring into us, corrupting living matter. We became glistening, larval fusions of flesh and machine. When we buried the dead they kept growing, spreading together, fusing with the city's architecture."

- Excerpt from an introductory document for newcomers, freely available in circum-Yellowstone space, 2517 (Pages 3-4, Chasm City)

[riemmetric]

I finished House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds yesterday and there are a lot of thoughts in my brain. Most of them are about how much I loved the romance in it and how surprised I am by this.

Abigail Gentian lived six millions prior to the start of the story and shattered herself into 999 pieces (read cloned), which she sent across the galaxy to explore, observe and record. Some of the clones are men, some are women, and they all have different personalities, they are not exact copies of an original person. The main characters of the novel are a man and a woman, Gentian shatterlings (a word which I loved, to be honest) and they are in love. The shatterlings travel alone around the galaxy and meet every 200,000 years to exchange memories and build the collective trove of knowledge about the Milky Way. But these two are a couple, which is frowned upon in the community, and travel as a pair.

Is this incest? There is honestly not enough information in the book to decide. The history and traditions of the Gentian Line (these 999 clones) is never thoroughly explained. The narrative itself doesn't make it sound like a bad, illegal thing, and we are clearly supposed to root for the protagonists when they face adversity.

That being sad, I loved the way Reynolds wrote this relationship.

Whenever there's romance in a Sci-Fi novel written by a man, I'm nervous. Sometimes it features overly descriptive sex scenes I could personally do without. If the relationship is developing throughout the plot, then there's always the danger of having ridiculous grand gestures from the characters involved, big declarations of love that come after way too little time spend together. There's always the danger of an annoying breakup for conflict, or the trope of hiding information from each other with the purpose of protection, that nevertheless backfires, or some stupid argument, or jealousy. What Reynolds wrote here has none of these things. This is, in broad terms, a story about humanity learning how to deal with artificial intelligence, and how to face its own demons. It's a mystery and it has lots of action, and it has a pair of characters who are in an established relationship and experience the plot together. They are together as often as they can be. Sometimes their different responsibilities force them apart and they are perfectly able to exist without each other, but they are always each other confidant, the first person to know what the other goes through and what the other is thinking. They are each other's most trusted person and they never betray each other. They make love, but they also embrace, and kiss and hang around balconies looking out at the world together. They hold hands whenever they're close, they find each other in crowds, they sit next to each other at breakfast even when surrounded by their peers. They give each other space and they give each other support, and there is such a sense of trust and solidarity in everything they do.

It was so sweet. They were so cute. I can't stop thinking about them. The casual hand holding sold me their love better than any of their big declarations at the end. There was as much softness in their interactions as was passion and I simply fell for it.

[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