Like seeing Resurgam for the first time, again

I’m con­tin­u­ing to enjoy my run of Alas­tair Reynolds read­ing by going back to his first nov­el. Rev­e­la­tion Space is the kind of sci­ence-fic­tion I enjoy. More mys­tery than west­ern-in-space, the tech­nol­o­gy and physics are plau­si­ble and if it does­n’t quite ask the big ques­tions, it does ask the pret­ty big ques­tions, spoec­u­lat­ing about the nature of our uni­verse and the future of humanity.

I’m afraid I spoiled this for myself by read­ing Redemp­tion Ark first. Of course, I had no way of know­ing it at the time, but a good part of the mys­tery was blown by know­ing the events and cir­cum­stances that were to arise in the lat­er book. There are a cou­ple oth­er nov­els in this series, so I’m curi­ous what it will be like to re-read Redemp­tion Ark in its prop­er context.

Rev­e­la­tion Space cen­ters loose­ly around the arche­o­log­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion into an alien civ­i­liza­tion that went extinct almost a mil­lion years ago. While that mys­tery, already revealed in the lat­er book, was not hid­den to me, it was still a plea­sure to watch it unfold.

One thing Reynolds han­dles smooth­ly is the time scale. The sto­ry takes place over the course of more than forty years, but through much of that time the major char­ac­ters are either in cryo­genic sus­pend­ed ani­ma­tion or expe­ri­enc­ing the time dila­tion of trav­el­ing close to the speed of light. Chap­ter head­ings indi­cate the year and loca­tion of the scene that fol­lows, but it’s best not to pay too much atten­tion to the time­line because it jumps around quite a bit. Essen­tial­ly, the sto­ry is told in the per­ceived time of the char­ac­ters, so one scene and the next might span two decades, but hap­pen at about the same time rel­a­tive to lat­er events—events when the char­ac­ters would meet up—according to each char­ac­ters’ expe­ri­ence of the pas­sage of time.

If that sounds con­fus­ing, it’s because it is. The way Reynolds sequences his scenes makes the most sense from a nar­ra­tive per­spec­tive. It’s pos­si­ble to go back and assem­ble an absolute time­line from the chap­ter head­ings, but then the sto­ry would­n’t make as much sense. It’s best just to keep the con­stant­ly jump­ing time­line as a triv­ial fact and take the nar­ra­tive in the way it is pre­sent­ed, as it makes sense from a human perspective.

I’m rat­ing Rev­e­la­tion Space as a half-star low­er than Redemp­tion Ark. That has to do with the depth and devel­op­ment of the char­ac­ters and with the bal­ance of the sto­ry’s pace ver­sus pro­vid­ed detail. My guess is that Reynolds honed his craft in the inter­val between the books. I’d still rec­om­mend that any­one look­ing to get into the Rev­e­la­tion Space series start right here, with Rev­e­la­tion Space itself.