/lit/ - Literature

Am I the only fucking person on this site who has read this trilogy all the way through?

Revelation Space is weird.

I read Chasm City before, so I was used to Reynolds rather churlish writing style, and the predictable "what a twist!" moments.

Off the bat I think Chasm City was better, but I think is just a general critacism of both. Reynolds writes nice tech, and nice worlds too. The universe he makes is certainly solid, not as extensive as some others (Simmons, 1989) but with enough weight to rather carry the book.

Where he flops is the actual stories. I almost feel he writes the endings first and goes back. But they're not detective novels, so... There's just too many stupid twists and turns to keep track of, not enough to make it unreadable, but too many to ever really feel motived to read on by anything other than "well how's he going to sort this out." And fuck me SO many deus ex machina, mainly in the form of alien species he's mentioned maybe once or twice before in the entire book.

Also a lot of downright boring moments. And tons of really cool ideas he really doesn't work with.

I could go on, but I tink these are the main problems with RS and also CS desu. Sylveste was a cunt, Ilia was too boring an action hero, and Khouri was just dull.

7/10 I'll probably read redeption ark

"Revelation Space" - Alastair Reynolds, 2000

This novel is the first of a series set in the Revelation Space universe. The notable characteristics of this universe are: a lack of FTL; sublight drives are a rarity; cryogenics; no contacted aliens; cyborgs; AI; terraforming; anti-aging treatments; Fermi Paradox.

The story begins on a remote planetary colony with an environment that is hostile to human life and sounds suspiciously like Mars. The protagonist is identified as an xenoarchaeologist named Sylveste who has just found a notable alien artifact. This is immediately followed by some colonial political drama that really isn't interesting unless you'd really like a rehash of "Total Recall".

The story shifts perspective to a derelict interstellar warship that seems to be an artifact itself of some earlier epoch, as its crew of Russians appears to operate it through various hacks and modifications. The crew are mostly cyborgs and spend nearly all of their time in cryostasis with the exception of the ship's engineer. The story follows this character's perspective for a time to show that the ship is on a quest to find a person to heal the captain, who has been infected with a plague that melds organic and inorganic material. The Russian engineer likes to stay thawed for the endless transits between cosmic destinations, for no apparent reason other than it's hard to write exposition from a character point of view if the character is a fishstick.

The story then shifts again to what will be the last character perspective. This person is an assassin of sorts who was once a soldier but due to a logistics mistake was shipped out to the wrong planet. A stranger approaches her after she is defrosted and offers her a job as an assassin: she accepts because her fiance who was also a crack trooper didn't get placed alongside her in the freezer so the cruel fact of relativistic time means camoChad has long since shacked up with some other elite warrior princess of Mars. This bit of bad luck means she's now down to exterminate strangers for cash.

spaceSlavs are looking for Sylveste, who they had previously encountered on the assassin's planet. They get the bad news that he's long gone offworld. Meanwhile, the assassin has been forcibly hired by another party to kill Sylveste. As luck or some bad pizza for Alastair would have it, spaceSlavs are short a gunnery officer so the assassin's new employer arranges to have her hired aboard.

Is this series any good?

The Revelation Space series is cyberpunk meets sci-fi. I'm pretty sure you'd like it.

>What you readin?
The Revelation Space Series is good. I've only read the first book but it's quite different from most of the others I've read.

>What's your favorite religion from SF and Fantasy?
Sith

Thread Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZB86xIVLM

Why is [pic related] so highly regarded? The sci fi was good, but damn the writing was terrible and ruined it almost completely for me. It makes everything sound boring, the book should have been half as long and just how many times do I have to read several pages long descriptions of the captain as well as every other insignificant detail.

Pretty much anything by Reynolds is 10/10 for me.

The 'Revelation Space' series by Alastair Reynolds. Best sci-fi I've read so far.

Just finished Revelation Space (by Alistair Reynolds). It was good but all of Volyova's lines were forced earthy, where she had some smug remark lined up for every catastrophe they saw. Are his other books any better or worse?

Thoughts?

I want to start a new series that is grand in scope with weird concepts with some gritty science. I'm aware of the culture books but they are largely stand alone.

Anyone read any Hard Sci-Fi novels lately that they would recommend?

Is there anything more like this? That is hard space sf with no ftl.

As long as it is Ilia, I am okay with this.

Haven't read that yet OP, but I would heartily, heartily, HEARTILY recommend Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. Chasm City is a bit of a drop in quality, but the rest are pure gold, especially the first book and The Prefect.

>dat hard sci-fi
>uuuuuuungf

Revalation Space series motherfucker.

Probably counts.

Thoughts?
I just finished it. Enjoyed it immensely. The end was a bit too Deus Ex Machina for me, and I literall rolled my eyes when [spoilers]Khouri flew off the neutron computer like a bird[/spoilers] but aside from that I thought it was great.

I enjoy Revelation Space and Chasm City.
Recommended books?

Picture related, but warning to anybody who wants to read any of Alastair's books. He skips between 4-5 thick stories in almost all of his books, so be prepared for that.