Revelation Space
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Revelation Space |
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| Author: | Alastair Reynolds |
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| Publisher: | Ace Books |
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just when it was on the verge of discovering space flight. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld, what caused the species’ destruction is of little more than academic interest. Even after colonists discover an almost perfectly preserved city on the planet, only the archaeological community seems interested. But one scientist, Dan Sylveste, is convinced that solving the Amarantin riddle is vital to the survival of humanity.
Desperate to get at the truth—but with few resources—Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. Walking weapons, the ship’s cyborg crew could easily become a very real danger to Sylveste’s life—but they could also be his only hope to find the answer he so zealously seeks.
As Sylveste closes in on the secret, he learns that one of the cyborgs was sent to kill him. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason—and if that reason is uncovered, the universe—and reality itself—could be irrevocably altered.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Alastair Reynolds’s first novel is “hard” SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old—when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.
Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defenses: “a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy.” Now an intuition he doesn’t understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.
Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity’s tiny crew have hidden agendas—Khouri the reluctant contract assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity—and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal, and ingenious lies.
The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defenses to challenge the Infinity’s planet-wrecking superweapons.
At the heart of this artifact, the final revelations detonate—most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. —David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
