The verdict
Dense, gothic and genuinely unsettling, with the best answer to the Fermi paradox in modern space opera.
Quick facts
- Author
- Alastair Reynolds
- First published
- 2000
- Publisher
- Gollancz
- Series
- Revelation Space universe, book one
- Best for
- Space opera with real ideas behind it, if you are willing to work a little
- Skip it if
- You dislike holding three storylines at once
Author Alastair Reynolds
Revelation Space is Alastair Reynolds’s 2000 debut novel, and it is a book built on an uncomfortable question: if the galaxy is old enough for civilisations to rise and fall many times over, where is everybody? Reynolds answers it with an archaeology story set across centuries and light years, in a future that is baroque, decaying and much older than any of the people in it.
The idea behind it
Three threads run through the novel and they are all the same thread. An archaeologist on a backwater planet is digging up a civilisation that destroyed itself, and finding evidence that it did not act alone. A starship crewed by people who have lived far too long is carrying something that has already killed a world. And an assassin has been hired for a job whose real purpose she is not being told.
Reynolds is a scientist by training, and the scale is what makes this different from ordinary space opera. The story spans decades of travel at a fraction of light speed, which means the people who set events in motion are frequently dead before anyone understands why. Deep time is the real subject.
The story, spoiler-light
Dan Sylveste leads the excavation of the Amarantin, a species that achieved spaceflight and then vanished. His findings have made him famous, paranoid and difficult, and the ship that comes for him is a lighthugger called the Nostalgia for Infinity, whose crew have their own reasons for wanting him alive and their own catastrophe to manage.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. The novel is dense and does not explain itself quickly, which is characteristic of Reynolds and occasionally trying. And the horror in it is cosmic rather than personal: the antagonist, when it becomes clear, is not a villain but a process, and the indifference is the point.
What makes it science fiction
The answer to the Fermi question is the science fiction, and Reynolds builds it as an archaeological conclusion rather than a twist: something has been keeping the galaxy quiet, on a timescale that makes human history look like an afternoon. Everything strange in the novel, from the plague that welds machinery into flesh to the ancient structures buried under Resurgam, is a consequence of the same fact.
It is also a gothic novel in space. The ships are enormous, old and haunted by their own history, and the far future is not shiny: it is layered, damaged and full of people living in the ruins of things their ancestors built. That texture is why the book is so often imitated and so rarely matched.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
Read it if you want space opera with real ideas behind it and you are willing to work a bit. It rewards attention, and it is one of the few novels that manages to be genuinely bleak without being a misery.
Give it a miss if you dislike having to hold three storylines at once, or if you want characters to be warmer than the universe they live in. Nobody here is a hero in the usual sense, and the prose is more interested in ideas than in feelings.
Where to start, and what to read next
Start here, because it is the beginning and because the later books assume it. The Revelation Space universe is shared rather than strictly sequential, but this is the novel that establishes what is at stake.
The two to pick up next are Chasm City, which is set in the same universe on a different world and is the best standalone entry after this one, and Redemption Ark, which picks up the story from this novel directly and is where the wider conflict becomes explicit.
The rest of the sequence, for reference: Absolution Gap closes the main arc, and The Prefect, Elysium Fire and Machine Vendetta follow a detective in the same universe at an earlier point. Galactic North collects the shorter fiction.
The verdict
Dense, gothic and genuinely unsettling, with the best answer to the Fermi paradox in modern space opera. Read it slowly and it pays off.
Frequently asked questions
Is Revelation Space the first book in the series?
Yes, and the usual place to start. The later books share the universe, and a few of them can be read standalone, but this one establishes the situation.
Is it hard science fiction?
Partly. It obeys the speed of light for travel, which shapes the whole plot, but it also includes technologies that are speculative rather than extrapolated. Reynolds has a scientific background and it shows in the constraints more than the gadgets.
Do I need to read them in order?
For the main arc, yes: Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap follow one another. Chasm City and the Prefect novels are set elsewhere in the same universe and can be read whenever.
Is it too bleak?
It is cold rather than grim. There is real horror in it, and no comfortable resolution, but the tone is awe as much as dread, which is the reason it is admired rather than merely endured.
Where can I buy it?
It is available in paperback and as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.