Another Prefect Dreyfus story from the glitter band, which we’ve been waiting a while for, but it was worth the wait.
For me, one of the best bits of the whole Revelation Space series are the stories within Yellowstone and the Glitter Band, and this story didn’t disappoint.
Alastair at his very best.
And lets all hope that there’ll be a few more Yellowstone and the Glitter Band stories to come still.
Next up in the Revelation Space series it’s Diamond Dogs.
All stories copyright 2012.
Available in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
Elton John inspires the last human to learn all about space and time.
This is obviously Alastair the physicist having some fun: quite an enjoyable novella.
Next up on Alastair’s timeline is Tiger Burning.
Available in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
Alastair wrote a love story: awwwwwww.
And . . . . . . it’s rather good.
Although . . . . . . i’m not really a fan of all this parallel universe nonsense, because it is nonsense, just like flat earth nonsense.
But . . . . . . done right, like Alastair can, you can find some good stories in a parallel universe as long as you ignore all the nonsense bits.
All that aside . . . . . . next up in Alastair’s bibliographic timeline is The Six Directions of Space, which i’ll be eagerly devouring in the next week or so.
Available in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
Oh dear, just when i thought it was safe to read Alastair again he had to go and start writing parallel universe nonsense stories once more.
Oh please someone assure me that this is the last of Alastair’s delusions that parallel universe stories are any good, or that the theory holds any water at all. Seriously, it’s just utter twaddle.
Anyway, next up in Alastair’s publishings will be Terminal World, let’s hope that isn’t more parallel stuff twaddle nonsense.
Alastair is back with one of his great little stories.
This time Alastair has conjured up a racing league where the races circumnavigate small moons and such within the solar system. This is about one race, the race around Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Super geologically active, you’d have to be insane to be racing around this. It kind of reminds me of all the old stories of early motor racing, before actual race tracks and before the FIA came along and sanitized everything.
So if you like a good motor racing story, or like Alastair’s short fiction, you’ll enjoy this one.
Now i go back to eagerly awaiting Alastair’s next book.
Bye for now.
Have you ever fell asleep in a dream and in that sleep you start dreaming, only to fall asleep in that dream and start dreaming again. But then you wake up from that final dream and a new day begins, but it’s just soooo fucked up you can’t understand what’s going wrong with the world: because you thought you’d actually woken up because you forgot you fell asleep within a dream within a dream and you haven’t actually woke up, woke up, you just woke up within the next dream level up, you’re still dreaming. And it takes a while to realise what the fuck is going on. If that’s never happened to you then you’re really missing out a wonderful mind fuck.
It’s just like what happens in the film Inception, they go to sleep and dream, then go to sleep and dream and then go to sleep and dream, in order to get so far down the rabbit hole in order to get the thing they want.
And yes, you can fall asleep in dreams and then dream in that sleep and so on. It’s freaky!
Why am i telling you this? Because Silas Coade, our protagonist within Eversion, appears to be doing the same thing. So if you liked that idea in Inception you might just really like this one as well, because this is just as good but in a much different way. I can’t tell you why it’s different because it would totally ruin the story, you just have to believe me that it’s really good and read it for yourself.
This is currently Alastair’s last published novel and i’ve read everything else he’s written apart from the young adult, nonsensical, Revenger trilogy, which i just couldn’t cope with. So now i sit eagerly awaiting the next great story from this master of science fiction: let’s hope it’s not too long in appearing.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
And here’s me thinking that i’d read all the Revelation Space stories, and then i find this one. Admittedly, it was published after i had read most of the Revelation Space series, so i’ll forgive myself for not reading it in the chronological order of Revelation Space.
But, anyway, it’s always nice to get another Revelation Space story thrown into ones life now and again.
This one takes us back to Chasm City, after the plague has mangled it, following a clean up crew on the lower levels. I really enjoyed it. Once again, as most things by Alastair, extremely well written and brilliant sci-fi.
Now all i have to do is wait for the next Revelation Space story, which i hope won’t be too long in coming. I love this series.
If you haven’t read Revelation Space then i suggest you follow it in chronological order and read everything — it’s really, really good.
Bye for now.
A super good time travel novel without all the annoying paradoxes within which some writers seem to get themselves messily tie up in knots.
I can’t really say much more without ruining the story. So i’ll just say, even if you don’t usually enjoy the temporal sci-fi stuff, read this, it’s good.
Next up in Alastair’s literary journey is Polished Performance.
Bye for now.
Available in Made to Order: Robots and Revolution — Anthology.
A really good story set aboard a sleeper ship that is flown and managed by robots while all the wealthy humans sleep the long cold sleep.
But something goes wrong with the cooling system for the sleepers and the robots become worried that they’ll be core wiped to cover up the mess when they get to their destination. Thus begins the cunning plans of the robots to avoid annihilation.
Next up in Alastair’s literary journey is Plague Music, which is actually a Revelation Space story set in Chasm City.
Bye for now.
This trilogy is twaddle. I gave it a good a go but gave up on book two, didn’t get around to reading this.
Hopefully Permafrost will have Alastair back to grown up books and may he never attempt young adult stuff ever again, he really isn’t very good at it.
Bye for now.
I tried, i really did, but i just can’t take any more and i’ve given up on this stupid trilogy. It’s all too much young adult for me and, worse than that, it’s not even very good young adult. It’s just totally unbelievable nonsense.
A child is playing silly games with grown ups, the grown ups know the child is playing silly games with them but they keep letting the child have its way even though the child is probably going to get them killed. Yeah, right!
Alastair should stick with what he does best, sci-fi for intelligent grown ups.
So, unfortunately, my quest to read everything by Alastair Reynolds has come to an end. I’m not reading the rest of this trilogy unless someone pays me £1000.
So, skipping ahead, the next book in Alastair’s literary arsenal is Permafrost. Let’s hope he’s back to normal and it’s as good as his usual stuff.
Bye for now.
Not the greatest story Alastair has ever told. It’s all very young adult-ish stuff, and it’s really not anything like what i love about Alastair’s usual sci-fi.
But, i suppose, every writer may wish to have a try at some YA stuff occasionally. I just really hope that Alastair doesn’t ever do it again, thank you.
I mean, let’s be serious, a child who isn’t even old enough to leave home, escapes and takes on the system’s most feared and devastating pirate? Really? And adults just fall over themselves to do her bidding?
But, as i’m committed to reading the whole of Alastair’s writings, i must continue with this farcical trilogy and see where it leads.
So next up it will be Shadow Captain.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
What happens when we finally become virtually immortal and we’ve done everything we wanted to do and we’ve gotten completely bored with life? Play Russian roulette with portal doors, setting them for a 1 in 1000 random chance of them killing you when you use them. And when you really get fed up you dial it up to a 1 in 10 chance of them killing you.
But maybe you have friends who don’t want you to die quite so soon, friends that want you to give life another chance.
Good story.
Next up from Alastair will be the Revenger Trilogy, beginning with Revenger. But first i’m going to have to read a few other books from other writers. Back with Alastair soon.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
A really good sleeper ship story. The drive’s blown and there’s no way of slowing the ship down when it reaches its destination planet, they’re just going to sail right on past.
But then one of the crew has a great idea to find some purpose to the whole trip. Except things just don’t turn out like they hoped they would have.
Next up from Alastair is Death’s Door.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Vol 4.
Another of Alastairs proxy body stories. This time a caretaker is stranded on an automated sailing ship and needs help. It comes in the form of a proxy robot, and the caretaker isn’t too taken with it’s driver’s attitude.
But, more is soon revealed as we go through the story and attitudes change.
A really good little story. And maybe a good reminder to all of us not to judge people on their first impressions, sometimes you can be very wrong.
Next up from Alastair in Providence.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Vol 3.
Really good. If you enjoyed The Medusa Chronicles for it’s wonderful exploration of the Jovian atmosphere and it’s ecosystem, then you’ll really enjoy this as well.
It’s also got a nice hint of Enemy Mine sprinkled in with it.
Next up is Different Seas.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
This is quite impossible to do a review of without loads of spoilers. So i’ll just say it’s a really good little story and well worth a read.
Next up from Alastair will be Holdfast.
Bye for now.
Available in Tales from the Edge: Escalation.
A little story that Alastair wrote for the Maelstom’s Edge Universe.
You don’t need to know anything about the Universe other than a maelstrom of energy is travelling up the spiral arm of the galaxy wiping out everything in its path. Systems are being evacuated and there’s lots of different factions with different views as to how to deal with things.
This story covers a journey back to one of the evacuated planets.
Rather good.
Next up from Alastair is Visiting Hours.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
Kamala Chatterjee is defending her PHD paper in front of three judges, with sixteen questions to get through.
This really isn’t Alastair’s finest work. I think it’s another one of those stories of his that just didn’t work out but he threw it into a collection to fill the pages with.
You mileage may vary though.
Rolling on through Alastair’s books, next up is Remainers.
Bye for now.
This time Alastair teams up with Stephen Baxter to write this interesting yarn, taking us from an alternative history of the Apollo missions all the way into the deep heart of Jupiter, hundreds of years later.
As usual with anything Alastair Reynolds, it’s just great all round writing. What i really liked about this one is the recreation of Jupiter with a whole eco system going on all the way down to the core of the planet.
Once again we’ve plenty of AI stuff going on, and going wrong on a cosmic scale (rapidly approaching an Earth near you, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock and hadn’t noticed), and a solar-system wide war with a cyborg, running/wheeling/flying around, trying to make peace between everyone.
It’s a really good novel, and whether you believe me or not, i don’t care. If you don’t want to read it, just because i think it’s really good, then that’s your loss, not mine.
Next up from Alastair is Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee, which i’m diving straight into in my quest to read everything by Alastair before the AI’s take over and destroy everything of value that ever existed and turn the Earth into a volcanic wasteland (which won’t be long, according to some people).
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
Not one of Alastair’s best stories, i’m left at the end not really understanding what is happening in the outside world and therefore why any of this research is being done. But if you enjoy a good murmuration of starlings then you might enjoy it just for the good descriptive writing of such things.
Let’s hope The Medusa Chronicles is better.
Bye for now.
At the end of a major war, the worse of the worse, from both sides (known as the Dregs by the crew), are put onto a sleeper ship and sent off to a far flung corner of the galaxy.
One by one the Dregs awaken: and find that something has gone horribly wrong with the ship. With it’s systems failing, the ship has ended up where it should have been but a very long time in the future.
A really good story with the Dregs having to learn to put their differences aside and work together to survive, but some differences need settling first.
Next up in Alastair’s list is A Murmuration.
Bye for now.
Available in Belladonna Nights and Other Stories.
An interesting look at how future AI’s will view primitive machines: plenty of food for thought.
Next up is Slow Bullets.
Bye for now.
Another AI story.
This time an AI turns up around Kapteyn’s Star, a red dwarf a very long way away from Earth.
Basically the whole story is the AI’s transmission back to Earth, which i won’t go into because it would spoil the punch line at the end.
Really good. Maybe one day only the AI’s that we’ve sent out into the galaxy will be all that’s left of us, and i wonder what other species will make of them.
Next up on Alastair’s list is Wrecking Party.
Bye for now.