(I actually read this book way back in February 2004, but only now finished the review. Surely some kind of record?)
Revelation Space
Alastair Reynolds
614 pages
published in 2000
Alastair Reynolds’ is the Netherlands most famous science fiction writer –even if he is British. He works for the European Space Agency in Noordwijk and has lived here since 1991 you see, which may not make him Dutch but it sure means we’ll claim him as a writer. If Canada can claim everybody who has even flown over the country as one of their own, so can we. Revelation Space is his first novel; I’m not sure why I didn’t pick it up earlier. Reynolds started getting published in the early nineties, in Interzone and later became a regular in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies. It is therefore not a great surprise that his first novel is remarkably accomplished with none of the weaknesses of the typical first novel.
Revelation Space itself is an attempt to write semi-realistic Space Opera, without the miracle technology and artifacts of classic space opera, which mainly means no faster-than-light space travel. There’s still plenty of other, more “political correct” miracle technology on display though, like artificial intelligence, nanotech and handwaved quantum mechanic stardrives. Each of these technologies may be just as unlikely or be breaking as many laws of physics as FTL travel, but those haven’t been fetishised
as taboo, you see.
