Revelation Space Trilogy by Alastair Reynolds

Books

• Revelation Space
• Redemption Ark
• Absolution Gap

Reynolds dreams big. There’s a lot to appreciate about an author who writes in the scope large enough to encompass the whole of humanity light cone. Reynolds gives us the majority of human history, as he imagines it in space. Literally size of this scope is undeniably impressive.

Although astronomy body is not strong enough to know this for a fact, he seems pretty accurate with his star status, with respect to the ground in or near the center of the sphere of human expansion. It is not quite the hardest of the “hard” science fiction, but it is very rigid. Not that something like this should be surprising coming from the author of a doctoral degree in astronomy. If the facts go away and Reynolds begins extrapolate, it is with an eye for detail scientist and powerful imagination fill in the story.

Set in three separate novels, the story is the revelation Space Space Opera grandest scale. Although different in feel, the sheer size has echoes Dune Frank Herbert’s epic. If Herbert is an imaginary version of the galaxy enough left a note for his son to sign at least twice as many books about Dune universe as his father did.

Revelation Space, which we will henceforth refer to as RS trilogy, is also large, although Reynolds limit the size of the human sphere of the speed of light. This gives his stories a great layer of complexity with relativistic effect of time while keeping the implausibility factor faster than light travel to a minimum. The RS trilogy begins by posing a problem for Galaxy

Where is intelligence

along the lines Drake equation and Fermi Paradox, given so many stars in the galaxy, with so many planets, it becomes increasingly unlikely find intelligent life almost Al farms. But the Galaxy trilogy has no brains more than men. At least no one left alive.

littered the home that humans have colonized, there are strange remains of civilizations that simply ceased to be. Moreover, some irregularities in the Galactic arms in physics suggests the star system should be a point to prove something big to happen at some point in the past. The Dawn War is the name given by Reynolds in the struggle for power and control the floating space analyzed. Early in the history of the Galaxy, sentient species emerged, expanded and came to conflict. Because of the inherent incompatibility is Dawn War employ millions of years of evolution of galaxies. This war consumed and join the majority of intelligent beings in the galaxy there was only one dominant amalgam of biological and machine intelligence in the universe.

Revelation Space introduces us to some of the main characters in this epic. We learn about the Ultras, who pilot a spaceship traveling within a few tenths of a percent of the speed of light (lighthuggers). The Ultras escaped decades “World time” thanks to relativistic effects near light travel. They also dysmorphic eye for deliberate modification of the body.

Another faction mentioned in Revelation Space and presented properly Redemption Ark are Conjoiners, who have maintained inspection brain computers and transcended normal human intelligence. They are responsible for designing massive but really incomprehensible machine that allows space ship to travel at a fraction under the speed of light.

The inhibitors are dark nemesis in the Revelation Space trilogy. They are relics or descendant winners from Dawn of War. They are fierce alien creation left to monitor the Galaxy and suppress floating space intelligence. Obstacles are organized and do not have the intelligence of their own.

Hyper Pigs are varieties of transgenic pigs checked the men, originally bred to be human compatible organ, they are Sentience and ability to speak. It is a normal human elements in this story as well, although they are mostly supporting characters more epic character classes who are struggling with this story.

In more than 2,000 pages, it is not an easy read, but it is a compelling and highly entertaining. The plot is strong enough to pull the reader and Reynolds has a great ability to develop his story to light. Since stories are truly struggling endings. They are not good. The first two novels, this is to be expected, they are mostly just to put on a play for the next book. As a standalone, they do not do well, but as part of the growing story, then Revelation Space good and RS + Redemption Ark work very well together.

The third novel, Absolution Gap really jump off from a different place and a different focus. It leaves some of the characters we’ve come to follow the first two books, kill a few of them off and gives us a whole new set of characters. This is all right, and done better group of characters, this could have been very effective. But as written, it seems contrived and unnecessary. Reynolds develops some good people and very good opponents. It seems pointless to leave all the interesting plot lines to go in another direction. Although he did change the focus of the characters in the Revelation Space to a new set of Redemption Ark, he core of the right to RA and it helped to create continuity.

a sin Gap, he leaves really all but a few of RA characters and kills off interesting dynamic relationship he developed. He then introduces us to a whole new set of people and just the skeleton received letters from RA. This may work to keep fresh novel, it falls somewhat short. Instead of having a compelling drama to carry us through AG, sit largely confused by a new set of characters and carryovers from rheumatoid arthritis mostly on the sidelines of “action” and are too introspective.

This is an odd choice for a writer who is writing space epic. Why should we be interested in the following interfaces of characters from the epic ending battle? This is the biggest obstacle with my AG. All of the novel, it seems to be building toward some sort of confrontation and calculation between men and inhibitors, which are trying to eliminate their presence with ridiculous and advanced alien technology. But as we approach the end of the calculation is further and further away.

Instead cops he totally out of the last 50 pages and ends this epic story with a deus-ex Machina tissue problems humanity up with a neat little bow. It is the largest kind of disappointing for such a large book. Reynolds really sets up the universe is tightly bounded by Einsteinian and Newtonian physics and the leaves of violating any of these rules when he chooses. It is frustrating to see the iron-clad rules of physics violated when Reynolds spends so much of the book this establishment as a key factor in his universe.

In the end, you realize that this happens several times throughout history. There are different events that happened that encourages a balance of power and influence and they include mainly found alien technology or communicate with in the future. This “magic” and causality violation is probably the only way to deal with the alien menace as barriers, but it draws into question what the rest of the book was so firmly based in science and credibility.

Good fiction is based on the strong human drama. It does not matter what kind of science fiction, fantasy, technology or life that you want to put into the story. If you do not have good drama, it’s just idolatry for swords or laser guns or anything like that. The Revelation Space trilogy largely avoid this problem, it does have a good human drama that is interesting. Most of the time, the technology is just a jumping off point and does not interfere much with the story. But in the end, Reynolds succumbs to his fetish and has the technology to save the day. It is too bad that such an intelligent story ends on a sad and lame mess.

Endings can be difficult to do well. Good endings must set up your history to open a small window into the next section. They can leave you satisfied while wanting more and it is much to ask ten pages at the end of 2000. Reynolds struggle and in fact seems to be opening the door to more books in this vein, rather than closing the Revelation Space story. While the trilogy is still well worth reading, I think Absolution Gap would have been better if had been written as a standalone book rather than at the end of Revelation Space story.