Take Your Science Fiction Good and Hard

Redemption Ark (Revelation Space)

Author: Alastair Reynolds

Publisher: Ace (2004)

Binding: Mass Market Paperback, 704 pages

A few months ago I got an unexpected package in the mail from my father. It contained a paperback book and a note: «Thought you might like this book.» It took me a little while to get around to it, as my book-list eyes are bigger than my book-list stomach.

My only regret about reading Redemption Ark is that it is apparently third in a series of Alastair Reynold's novels with many of the same characters and set in the same fictional future. The novel stood on it's own very well, but again and again I found myself feeling that I was being fed a brief recap of events complex enough that I wouldn't understand what was being described without going back and reading the earlier novels. 

Redemption Ark is a good example of what is now being called «hard» science fiction. «Hard» sci-fi is science fiction with actual science in it. The science is entirely fictional, of course, but is conjecture based on what is already known or believed. This term distinguishes a certain type of novel from Westerns set in space and less-plausible futuristic fantasy writing, much of which is valuable, but has little focus on the science in science fiction.

The story's greater arc is an alien invasion story. Apparantly the entire Revelation Space series of novels (and several short stories) relates to this invasion story. In it, ancient machines have been programmed to search for signs of intelligent life and destroy it wherever it appears. We are given a brief glimpse into the possible reasons for such machines to exist but only enough of a glimpse to bring up new questions.

These machines, called «Inhibitors» by one group of characters and «Wolves» by another, have learned of the existance of humanity at some point three or four hundred years in our future (described in another of Reynolds' novels) and are coming to get us. That's really as much as I can say without spoiling the plot.

Reynolds starts the novel with three storylines, and takes a good long time to progress them to a point where it looks like they might converge. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the storylines don't take place simultaneously. However, once the plots start to relate to one another, the book becomes very engaging. Redemption Ark started out difficult, but the effort was rewarded with a compelling, hard-to-put-down story. The first two hundred pages took some time to read, but the last five hundred flew by in a couple days.

I'm interested in the loose ends I was left with—both those in the future and the past. Though I was tempted to run out and find a copy of Revelation Space, the first book in the series, I ended up getting a collection of Reynold's short stories, Galactic North, thinking I'll get a better feel for Reynolds as a writer and see more perspectives in a shorter time. If, once I'm done with the collection, I'm still as interested in Reynolds' universe, then I'll go back to the very beginning and see how it all started.