Century Rain - Alastair Reynolds

   2004; 623 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Hard Science Fiction; Murder-Mystery.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Paris, 2266 AD.  In a setting devoid of any life, archaeologist Verity Auger leads a team looking for priceless relics from a bygone age: a page from a newspaper, a piece of a map, or perhaps even a bit of printed matter ripped from an ancient (21st century) book.

    Risks are inherent in the toxic environment.  But when one of her underlings nearly dies in an ill-advised mishap, Verity finds herself facing a trial where, if she’s lucky, all she’ll lose is her job and career.

    Paris, 1959 AD.  Private detective Wendell Floyd (call him “Floyd”) and his partner André Custine are asked to investigate the death of an American tourist named Susan White (from Dakota) who died after a 5-story fall from her apartment balcony.  The police call it an accident.  But maybe she was pushed.  Or maybe the balcony railing was defective.

    Well, since the person wanting to hire them is the landlord of the apartment, let’s hope that that last scenario is not the cause.

    But the space-time continuum can be a quirky thing.  The paths of Floyd and Verity are about to cross, with confusion running amok since they have different agendas for resolving the mystery of Susan White’s demise.

    And of course, it doesn’t help that someone’s trying to kill both of them.

What’s To Like...

    Alastair Reynolds is a top-tier “Hard” Science Fiction writer, and Century Rain is clever blending of Murder-Mystery with his forte genre.  There’s even a bit of Romance in the story, but don’t worry, this is first and foremost a Sci-Fi tale.  It takes a while for Verity and Floyd to meet up, and until then the storyline flips between the two perspectives.  There’s also a kewl mystery that involves trying to figure out why someone wanted three giant, precisely-fabricated aluminum spheres set up – one in Berlin, one in Paris, and the third in Milan.

    You’ll run across a slew of acronyms and catchphrases.  The former includes ones like “UR” (Universal Restorative). “USNE” (The United States of Near Earth), and my favorite, “ALS” (Anomalous Large Structure).  The latter includes The Forgetting, The Nanocaust, Silver Rain, Neotenic Infantry, and the fascinating “Amusica Virus”.  Reynolds usually defines each of these when he introduces them, but jot them down anyway, because he expects you to remember what they mean when they pop up again 50 pages later.

    I thought the world-building was fantastic and delightfully detailed.  The 23^rd-century solar system is divided into warring factions: the Slashers and the Threshers, and it is also obvious that some vastly technologically superior beings were here many millennia in the past.  You’ll enjoy the “language app”, a nanobotic way to instantly learn a new language, although it degrades with time (a tip of the hat to Flowers For Algernon?).  And you’ll discover what Guy de Maupassant thought of the Eiffel Tower, and how he expressed his feelings about it.

    The book is written in “English”, not “American”, and I always enjoy that.  Cuss words are common in the dialogue, as would be expected in the real world.  As with any Hard Sci-Fi novel, Alastair Reynolds spends a lot of time explaining the Quantum Physics of the 23^rd-century cosmos.  I found it mesmerizing, but if you find technical tangents tedious, a book in the  Space Opera subgenre may suit your fancy better.

    It won’t take you long to notice some anomalies in the 1959 Paris, so it’s not a spoiler to say this is also an Alternate History tale.  Yet all the genres fit together nicely for an epic story.  This is a standalone novel, and is not set in Reynolds’ signature Revelation Space cosmos.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Quincunx (n.) : an arrangement of five objects, with four at the corners of a square or rectangle, and the fifth at its center.

Others : Spivvy (adj.); Neotenous (adj.); Penury (n.); Blancmange (n.); Syrinx (n.); Cladding (n.).

Excerpts...

    “The moons offer the perfect strategic platform for defending the planet against Slasher incursions.  Given the existing security measures already in place, they’re also a perfect venue for conducting any sensitive business that might come our way.”

    “Do I count as sensitive business?”

    “No, Auger.  You count as a pain in the ass.  If there’s one thing I hate more than civilians, it’s having to be nice to them.”

    “You mean this is you being nice?”  (pg. 114)

    ”According to the late Mr. Blanchard, and judging by what I saw when he let me into her room, your sister had a mania for collecting things.  Her room was a holding area for huge numbers of books, magazines and newspapers, maps and telephone directories.  It looked as if she collected just about anything she could get her hands on.”  Floyd waited a beat.  “Pretty odd behavior for a tourist.”

     "She liked souvenirs.”

    “By the ton?”  (pg. 313)

 “(Y)ou don’t know a wormhole from your butthole.”  (pg. 429)

    The ending is good but not complete.  The main plotline issue – why did someone kill Susan White? – is answered nicely (the “whodunit” aspect is resolved fairly early), but several threads are left dangling.  The Verity/Floyd relationship is not over, Custine still has the cops on his tail, and the Slashers and Threshers have an uneasy truce at best, all of which is surely good fodder for several more books’ worth of thrills and spills.

    Alas, per Wikipedia, this is a one-off novel, and Alastair Reynolds has stated that there will be no sequel.  So the Furies, the Censor, and the Hyperweb will not be explored any deeper, and the other loose threads will not be tied up.

    I, for one, am disappointed, since I thoroughly enjoyed Century Rain.

    8½ Stars.  Subtract 1 star if you prefer the “Science” in Science Fiction to be downplayed.  Add 1 star if Alastair Reynolds changes his mind and pens a sequel.

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

2000; 585 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Sci-Fi.  Laurels : nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (2000); and the BSFA (2001).  Rating : 7½*/10.

    On a faraway planet, archaeologist Dan Sylveste is excavating ancient (900,000 years old) ruins that he thinks indicate that a civilization on the brink of achieving space travel was wiped out in a cataclysmic event.

    Spaceship pilot Ilia Volyova has other plans.  She intends to kidnap Sylveste and force him to work on healing her starship captain.  Ana Khouri has a straightforward aim.  She wants to assassinate Sylveste.  To save the universe.

What's To Like...
   Set in the 2500's, Revelation Space is a good example of "hard" (technologically plausible) sci-fi.  Among other things, Reynolds' universe abides by the "you can't go faster than the speed of light" principle.  This is the first book of a series of either 3 or 5 books, depending how you view it, but it is also a stand-alone novel.

    The three main characters are well-developed, and we have lots of time to get to know them as they start off light-years apart from each other.  Ana and Ilia hook up pretty quickly, but we're halfway through the book before they reach Sylveste's planet.  None of the three is completely likeable, and I like that.  But we warm to all of them as the events unfold.

    There are some quibbles.  Revelation Space is a slow and difficult read, mostly because of Reynolds' technological asides.  Being a scientist, I didn't mind.  But non-techies might.  The non-linear chapter dates can be confusing at first, and there are a number of loose ends left untied at the end of the book.  I presume these are addressed in the sequels.  Finally, if you're a secondary character, your odds for survival are slim, and your demise will probably be arbitrary.

Kewlest New Word...
Svinoi : a pig-breeder; or just a pig itself.  (Russian, pejorative)

Excerpts...
    "State your identity," the woman said.
    Volyova introduced herself.
    "You last visited this system in ... let me see." The face looked down for a minute.  "Eighty-five years ago; '461.  Am I correct?"
    Against her best instincts, Volyova leaned nearer the screen.  "Of course you're correct.  You're a gamma-level simulation.  Now dispense with the theatrics and just get on with it.  I've wares to trade and every second you detain me is a second more we have to pay to park our ship around your useless dogturd of a planet."
    "Truculence noted," the woman said, seeming to jot a remark in a notebook just out of sight.  (pgs. 84-85)

    "A splendidly inept thing," Sylveste said, nodding despite himself.
    "What?"
    "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.  Admit it.  None of us feel a damn about these people."  (pg. 323)

The trouble with the dead ... was that they had no real idea when to shut up.  (pg. 17)
    Revelation Space reminds me both of Arthur Clarke's "2001 - A Space Odyssey" and Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy.  It is a bit less "sweepingly epic" than the latter, but then again, there are four more books (and a number of short stories) to go.

    I personally liked the "hard science" parts - discussions of the history of the universe, and of Fermi's paradox (if interstellar flight is theoretically plausible, why haven't we been visited yet?).  But the storyline at times seems disjointed and could have been more compelling.  And there a couple jaw-dropping cases of deus ex machina.

    Still, this is really quite good for a "first effort" (there are nine Alastair Reynolds novels now, with a tenth due out in 2012), and makes for a fascinating introduction to a new and complex universe.  7½ Stars.