You’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
It’s looking like all of Alastair’s early writings were short stories, and this is another one in the long list. You certainly get to see how Alastair worked on his craft as a writer, cutting his teeth on these sci-fi ideas neatly wrapped up within a few hundred Kindle Loc Points.
Spirey and the Queen was written at a time when Alastair was just beginning Revelation Space and there’s certainly aspects of self aware machine vs human going on within this. It’s a really good story, but, and it’s a big but, the beginning is all rather all over the place in terminology and nomenclature. It’s like you’re thrown into this completely blurred out reality and slowly, over time, like in an opticians appointment, Alastair gradually finds the right lenses and all gradually becomes clear.
In Zima Blue and Other Stories, Alastair comments at the end of this story, that he’d like to come back to Spirey at some point in the future and explore what happened afterwards: which i would really look forward to reading.
So while i do feel this could have been better served had Alastair given it a novella length and explained things a lot more as we went along, i won’t throw the baby out with the bath water, it’s still, certainly, a good short story.
Coming next in the Alastair Reynolds reading list wil be Stroboscopic.
You’ll find this in the anthology, Deep Navigation.
In this short we’re off to an Antartic research station, in Marie Byrd Land: oh yeah, you get to learn about real stuff with Alastair.
Anyway, someone’s been playing with quantum entanglement and has totally messed all kinds of things up for the people at “Byrd Land Six”, and also on the Moon, where the other half of the entangled pair is residing.
Once again, super good sci-fi from a real physicist: we like!
Next up in the Alastair Reynolds timeline is Spirey and the Queen.
Once again, we’re treated to more Seventies kitsch sci-fi with bizarre humanoids added to the mix of bizarre non-humanoids: there’s even vampires in this one.
On top of the bizarre creatures we are now treated to a never ending list of utterly unpronounceable names, obviously to make sure that you understand that this is real sci-fi, not some lame sci-fi with easy names that humans can pronounce. To be honest Larry finds all kinds of ways to ruin a really good story and concept, and if it wasn’t for the fact that this is such a good story with such a good concept i would have stopped reading long ago.
But instead of stopping i’m going to carry on with the next book, The Ringworld Throne, just because it is such a good story, and i’m already bracing myself for even more jibbledy babbledy names and even more fucked up Seventies kitsch sci-fi creatures.
Ho hum, the trials and tribulations of the sci-fi reader. To be honest, i’ll be glad when this Ringworld series thing is over and i won’t ever be reading Larry Niven ever again.
Available in the collections, Five Ways to Forgiveness and The Unreal and the Real.
Available in the collections, Five Ways to Forgiveness, The Found and the Lost and The Birthday Of The World and Other Stories.
