Thoughts : Revelation Space

I recently delved my way through the final book of Alastair Reynold's 'Revelation Space' universe, and I must say I have been taken through a brilliantly and imaginatively constructed sub-reality.  It was such a thrilling journey that I am compelled to write something in response, I don't think that's too far out of line of the focus of this blog, which is on stories after all. The series was engaging from beginning to end, always brimming over with fresh ideas. There was no lack of beautifully vivid descriptions, but they were always kept slightly off-kilter by their juxtaposition with unsettling, sometimes quite horrific, circumstances.

The cross references between the books made the series another notch more enjoyable and culturally believable. There was such a powerful sense of history and place, despite the stories being set on other planets, in lighthuggers or in the distant future. It is grandiose in scope, beginning from the first human forays into space and the Conjoiner Transenlightenment, ranging all the way into the distant future, the rogue Greenfly terraforming agent. I love the realistic tone that the series has, for example, doing away with faster-than-light travel and exploring the social and political consequences of the massive starships gliding, isolated, in the vast emptiness of interstellar space.

Part of why the series was so appealing was its constant quality of pushing the speculative limits of technology. I find, well... I suppose this is quite obvious, but I find that for the most part fiction can only look ahead to future technologies that are just beyond the fringe of what we know. We certainly couldn't expect H. G. Wells to write convincingly about nanotechnology and relativistic time dilation in the same way as a modern science fiction author would. I suppose Reynolds is advantaged in this respect by his knowledge of astrophysics, so he can forge ahead based our most recent understanding of the universe's fundamentals. And golly... what technologies he envisions : marvels of human and alien engineering abound in the novels, their exact mechanics teetering on the brink of what we could consider possible. Enhanced mental and physical physiology, extensive smart materials, alpha-level simulations, cryo-arithmetic computing, alien neutron star computers and augmented reality, to name a few.

Societies in the Revelation Space saga are just as impressive as the technology; the post-human Conjoiners, the ruined Demarchists, the exotic Ultras. While the picture he paints of humanity's future is grim and bleak, there is still a strong thread of ingenuity, tenacity and courage that plays with my hopes for restoration and recovery, a coming period of prosperity after the storm. I should be glad to relive the experience of this riveting narrative again. The dynamic moods shifting from intense activity to quiet pensive lulls, the poignant vision of a largely unpopulated lighthugger in the solitude of an all-embracing night, the truly alien, inhuman life apart from Homo sapiens sapiens and the fortitude of the characters in the midst of it all.