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Chasm City (2000) – Alastair Reynolds

Chasm City is is another book written by Alastair Reynolds in the Revelation Space universe. It chronologically takes place prior to the events of the first book, but I don’t believe it would make a lot of sense to read it first. So far this series has been the culmination of everything that I want out of a science fiction space opera. Similar to the first book it gives a very imaginative world with a vast scale in both the time and distances involved. The world building and atmosphere give a good balance of wondrous yet bleak outlook on the future.

“How long would you have to live; how much good would you need to do, to compensate for one act of pure evil you’d committed as a younger man?”

The book is told from the reference of three separate time periods including the past, the distance past and the present. The author manages to transition between all these time periods in what I found to be a very clever way, but considering the nature of dreams and what is essentially a memory inducing brain virus it leaves the story open to an obvious unreliable narrator. I found this to make the twist ending to be a little more obvious than it could have been. Overall I enjoyed this book as much or more than Revelation Space. One of the time periods the story takes place in is during the period where humanity was sent from Earth on generation ships to a new home. The setting of being hundreds of years from Earth in the middle of interstellar space provides an almost horror-like mystery that I found very thrilling. Combined the with present day narrative of Chasm City itself being a once grand city that is now falling apart due to a virus that infects nano-machines gives a mental image of a world unlike any other than I have read before. Ultimately I believe this story to be about the main characters greatest mistake and his impossible quest to redeem himself. Alastair Reynolds has yet to not impress me and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Revelation Space (2000) – Alastair Reynolds

One of my favorite themes in a science fiction space opera is the wildly imaginative solutions to the Fermi paradox. Another book that I found to have a similar feeling of a bleak and hopeless future is The Dark Forest, the sequel to Three Body Problem. Both ultimately deal with the Fermi paradox and why we as humans have never encountered any intelligent life outside of Earth. Revelation Space takes place long after humanity has left Earth and in a society where humans have achieved near immortality alongside all manner of body and mind modifications. In a way it feels more cyberpunk in that regard that anything else I have read. Another fascinatingly unique aspect is that the balance of power is heavily in favor of small groups of what are essentially technology pirates rather than any larger military or government. Entire worlds are essentially at the mercy of these individuals and their whims due to their vastly superior technology and firepower. The scale of the universe and its usage of relativistic speeds through space and its effects on time and the characters were brilliant. The only other book that I recall that used the concept of relativistic speeds was Project Hail Mary and we never actually get to see the impact that this has on time between people that have their frame of reference in time become vastly different. The scale of time and the scale of death and destruction are also difficult to fathom.

“The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero.”

The book starts off slow and takes a long time to pick up pace and have the pieces of the galaxy spanning mystery fall into place. The main protagonist is an arrogant archeologist whom is attempting excavate a world that was discovered to have had sentient life that suddenly got wiped out more than nine hundred thousand years ago. I never got the impression that there was any characters that were morally just in their actions. Everyone seemed to be devious to downright evil at times, but that is part of what I found to be compelling. There doesn’t appear to be any inherently good course of action to take and ultimately there is no telling whether the events that occurred were for better or worse.

I am looking forward to reading Chasm City next which is a prequel or at least occurs chronologically prior to the events of Revelation Space so I can move on to Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. These books are very long and I found the narrator of the audiobook to be subpar so I am reading through them slowly.