The Revelation Space Universe.

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. 

Bath is around two and a half hours from me, but with the event coming during a two week holiday from work; it seemed a good excuse to explore a town I’ve never been to before.  Plus the wife liked the idea of a nice meal before the event (I had concerns it may be too much for her as she was 5 months pregnant, but she insisted!)

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 19^th 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’.  The sad death of Clavain; a man of integrity who stands by his beliefs (right or wrong) throughout.   But for me great science fiction must have a ‘wow factor’ in it, a moment that makes you just sit there and go ‘Wow!’ This would probably the be moment the Inhibitors are unleashed.  Or the aforementioned Tanner Mirabel reveal.  Or any of the series really.