Three weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the final
book signing event for Alastair Reynolds new Dr Who novel ‘Harvest of Time’ in
Bath. He had done a small tour around
small independent book stores and this one was held at the excellent ‘Topping
& Company” store – a small intimate shop that I know I could lose myself in
for hours on end, browsing, and then coming out having spent a small
fortune.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and Alastair was very
interesting as he read a couple of extracts from the new novel, talked about
the process involved in writing the novel and had a question and answers
session, before winding down with a signing session. He didn’t rush anybody and was happy to talk
to everybody for as long as they wanted.
For me personally it was a superb learning experience to hear how a full
time novelist goes about his work and he gave me some excellent advise for the
editing part of the process – try and edit out 10% of the first draft – which
he learnt from Stephen King which in hindsight is probably fairly obvious and
makes a lot of sense, due to this weaving out sections of waffling and
repetitive writing.
This evening also tied in nicely to the end of my journey
through his ‘Revelation Space’ series in chronological order which involved
reading the ‘Inhibitors Trilogy’ (‘Revelation Space’, ‘Redemption Ark’ and
‘Absolution Gap’), the two stand alone novels ‘The Prefect’ and ‘Chasm City’,
the two novellas ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Turquoise Days’ and the eight short
stories that make up ‘Galactic North’. I
used a loose chronological order that I had found on the Internet but some of
the stories intertwine date wise without having much effect on each other.
WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
For me, ‘Revelation Space’ is the greatest future history
series that I have read. We weave
through a future of dystopian societies, various human factions fighting over
their own ideologies, against a backdrop showing the rise and fall of mankind
through a destructive part computer/part biological virus, to an almost
extinction brought on by a one billion year old machine race, finally ending
with the final strains of humanity running away from their own created doomsday
event.
All this is done within the constraints of the laws of
physics and features a lot of legitimate theories with Alastair using his own
knowledge and experience from his career as a space scientist. Interstellar travel is done at speeds below
lightspeed with steady accelerations at the beginning of twenty year voyages,
and steady de-accelerations at the end with time dilation a very real effect of
travelling close to the speed of light.
Nanotechnology is in abundance as mankind uses it to help prolong their
lives and help them in every day life.
Space battles take weeks to be completed and minute debris are a very
real danger for the huge ‘lighthuggers’ that make the journeys between the
stars, due to the energy shield only being the stuff of fantasy.
This is ‘hard sci’fi’ at its very best. But he does still include elements of ‘space
opera’ with big expansive narrative structures, planet hopping, a billion year
old war and a machine race looking to stop any culture or race moving out of
the stars due to a galactic wide catastrophic event billions of years in the
future.
At times, his vision of humanity in five hundred years is
bleak, hard and with a wider class structure.
With no central government, colonies are left to create their own societies. From the success and grandeur of pre ‘melding
plague’ Chasm City, to the long suffering territorial war on Skys Edge, to the
on off revolutions of the archaeological colony of Resurgam and back to the
post ‘melding plague’ era of Chasm City where society has almost been destroyed
and the ruling classes have experienced huge life changes due to the plague and
technology has inverted back to almost 19th century industrial
revolution levels in places.
In amongst this are several prominent factions. There are the hive-like conjoiners who are
connected by their implants and have an increased intellect. The Ultras who crew the lighthuggers and due
to long years spent in the radiation filled climate of outer space have
exchanged almost all of their human elements with machine parts to protect
themselves. Then there are the pigs,
genetically engineered biped pigs with borderline human like intelligence, who
have a huge chip on their shoulder for reasons obvious to the reader Strangest of all though, are the base humans who haven’t done anything
to themselves!
There is no black or white in this series with most
characters covering a very grey area of good and evil, all seeking redemption
of one kind or another. Characters that
on paper, may be good, have parts of their personality that may hide a darker
past. On the flip side characters that
are blatantly evil also have a fair, and good nature and redeem themselves near
the end of their story arks. There are
also genuine tragic moments – who can honestly say they aren’t moved when
Clavain is killed by his best friend Scorpio due to this being the only way to
save a baby who is the key to humanities survival.
A common theme in the series is some truly horrific moments
(not his writing as he replied to me, after I had pointed this out to
him!). He said he couldn’t write a
horror story, but there are some scenes and moments in the series that frankly
disturb and scare me. I have a chill
going down my spine just thinking about the scrimsaw suit in ‘Absulution Gap’
where you are trapped in a metal suit, with only a centimetre of space between
you and the suit and deprived of all your senses for years on end whilst being
kept alive. Or the ending in his short
story ‘Nightingale’ which makes the movie ‘Human Centipede’ seem like an
everyday occurrence in kindergarten!
The brutal, obsessive bodily alterations in his novella ‘Diamond Dogs’
also comes straight to mind as well.
This is almost the complete opposite of the future history depicted in
Star Trek or in Iain M Banks ‘Culture’ novels.
As I end my thoughts on the ‘Revelation Space’ series I am
trying to think of one defining or favourite moment; The tragic realisation of
who Tanner Mirabel really is comes straight to mind from my favourite book in
the series – ‘Chasm City
