Available in the collections, Beyond the Aquila Rift, Zima Blue and Other Stories and the anthology, Love, Death + Robots: Volume One.

Another one of Alastairs moments playing with life suspension while in space flight.   For those who have read all of the Revelation Space series you’ll know that this can cause really fucked up dreams and states of mind when you’re coming back out of suspension.   Mix this state of mind with a spacers’ rumour that one day you’ll go so far you’ll end up beyond the Aquila Rift and you can really get a good head fuck going: with a nice twist at the end as well.

And the next book in Alastair’s publishing order will be Zima Blue.

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Originally published in Godlike Machines, and also available in the collection, Beyond the Aquila Rift.

The story starts with an escapee from a mental hospital in Siberia desperately trying to reach the local town.

The escapee was one of three cosmonauts sent to investigate an alien vessel that had appeared in the solar system years before.

The story bounces back and forth between the escapee trying to reach someone in town and when he was a cosmonaut at the alien vessel.

Quite a good twist in the tail of this one as well.

Another good novella from Alastair, a master of short fiction as well as the super long stuff too.

Next up on Alastair’s timeline will be Sleepover.

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A rather strange mix of steampunk and sci-fi with a hint of fantasy thrown in.   All in all, a rather good mix.

This is another one of Alastair’s trilogy in a single novel book, so if you aren’t in for a long haul then don’t bother.   But if you don’t mind a thousand Kindle Loc points of reading to get through this’ll keep you going.

While i didn’t find it anything like the normal page turners that Alastair generally puts out, i did keep coming back to it twice a day for a little read and soon got through it.

So, while not the greatest thing that Alastair has ever written, and personally wishing he’d just stick to the sci-fi that he’s so brilliant at, it’s still a fairly good read.

Next book in Alastair’s timeline is Troika.

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It had been a bit of a wait since Galactic North but now that Inhibitor Phase has arrived, was it worth the wait?

Well, ok, i’m gonna get my rant out of the way before i go any further.

To begin, we find ourselves on one of the few remaining human colonies that the Inhibitors haven’t got to, that of Sun Hollow.   We’re lead to believe that the people of Sun Hollow live inside a star scoured planet where resources are incredibly tight and the struggle to survive is always right on the edge.

Ok, that’s fair enough.

So why, oh why, oh why the fuck, does Alastair have to put sheep farming into this already over-stretched and under-resourced ecosystem?   This is the most imbecilic thing that is possible to write into this situation.   Where, for a start, do the sheep get their feed from?   Surely, if there are resources enough to keep a viable gene pool of sheep going just so these idiots can taste mutton every day then Sun Hollow must be a paradise to live with resources and space aplenty.

I put the question to anyone who disagrees with me: how many calories of plant foods does it take to make a calorie of mutton?

And as there is absolutely no nutritional need for Homo sapiens, or any other monkey/ape to eat dead animals, why would the people of Sun Hollow be throwing good plant food (that humans do need to eat) away like this?

Yes, Alastair, you screwed up royally on this one.

Anyway, rant over.

The rest of the book is good though, picking up after the events upon Hela that we left off in Absolution Gap, we get to meet Scorpio and Aura again with a new bunch of interesting characters thrown into the mix.

And best of all is that the ending certainly leaves things well and truly open for further books in the series: which i do look forward to as long as Alastair realises that there is no place for animal agriculture in the future of humanity because Homo sapiens have no nutritional needs that can be met by eating dead animals, and animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to environmental destruction on the planet Earth so it certainly won’t be part of any future space colonies that we set up, unless we want them to fail miserably.

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This is bizarre.   After three trilogy length novels — two spanning decades and one a few centuries — going into glorious detail and getting the reader really involved with the characters and their situations, we now have a story spanning tens of millennia that’s only a short: WTF?

It all feels extremely rushed, utterly lacking in depth and just seems like Alastair threw it together before breakfast to meet some publisher’s needs before he went on holiday.

Ho hum, we can’t really expect all of Alastair’s books to be excellent.   This one’s very disappointing.

Anyways, this is the last story in the whole series for now.   Just a bit of a wait until Inhibitor Phase is released on 26th August 2021.

It’s certainly been a blast reading the whole series in one go, it was just under 3 months ago when i began Great Wall of Mars.   And no inbetweenies due to boredom: this is one of those series that you just want to keep on reading without any other books getting involved.

Available in the collection, Galactic North.

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