Will my compass really work in outer space?

Some­how I skipped writ­ing my report on this one. I know I read it after Redemp­tion Ark, but I’m not sure whether it was before or after Heat Wave or Tip­ping Point. So you get my apolo­gies for an out-of order book review.

I was enough impressed by Reynold­s’s Redemp­tion Ark that I went look­ing for more of his work. I want­ed to start with his first nov­el, Rev­e­la­tion Space, but I could­n’t find an eread­er ver­sion of it so instead I picked up this col­lec­tion of his short sto­ries, all tak­ing place in Reynold­s’s imag­ined future. Some sto­ries had char­ac­ters who appeared in Redemp­tion Ark and filled in some of the back­sto­ry I’d missed. I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed Great Wall of Mars, the events of which were ref­er­enced repeat­ed­ly in Redemp­tion Ark.

My favorite from this col­lec­tion has to be Weath­er. It’s the sto­ry of a woman from a cyber­net­i­cal­ly linked soci­ety (the Con­join­ers) res­cued from a pirate ship (a pirate spaceship, of course) and her res­cuer who tries to break her out of her own iso­la­tion and tries to con­vince her to help save his own ship. Dila­tion Sleep and Nightin­gale are both sto­ries with the kind of twists that make sci­ence fic­tion worth reading.

These sto­ries lack the grand scale of Reynold­s’s nov­els, but that is to be expect­ed from short sto­ries. Though not as com­plex or far-reach­ing as Redemp­tion Ark or Rev­e­la­tion Space (I did pick it up in paper­back but I’m not done with it yet) this does pro­vide a great sam­pling of Reynold­s’s writ­ing and makes for an enter­tain­ing jaunt around the galaxy with­out the invest­ment of time Reynold­s’s nov­els require.