House of Suns: Alastair Reynolds (GOLLANCZ S.F.)

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Mechanical Lifeforms: The Machine People, a race of human-looking androids with a little bit of clockwork features thrown in for flair. The novel is set in the same fictional setting as Reynolds' novella "Thousandth Night", which appears in the anthology One Million A. The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them, and why - before their ancient line is wiped out of existence, for ever. But hey, if the cyborgs look exactly like the parents, they could assist them and the important bonding and conditioning on certain faces is still there, so where could be a problem?

But the wayward shatterlings get more than the scolding they expect: they face the discovery that someone has a very serious grudge against the Gentian line, and there is a very real possibility of traitors in their midst. They still keep on going, pumping so much energy into the planet that it literally just expands from the heat and disintegrates in a slow-motion kaboom. Post-human intelligences and the Machine People still have their grounding in science, but there’s an almost Golden Age of Science Fiction feeling to elements of the world building – not quite comforting and cosy, but certainly less grim than the Revelation Space sequence and its spin-offs, and slightly less tied down by bothersome reality.Full too of pathos but also hope, an underlying belief that humans can and will survive, become something more than immature apes bent on destruction and go out and become part of the wider universe. Sci-fi is commonly castigated (perhaps unfairly) as overly masculine in terms of authors, readers, and the characters within. We could build cities like that… But we haven’t… and now they’ve left their mark on deep time, whereas we’ll be doing well to be remembered a circuit from now. Full of intrigue and plots and sub plots, every time I thought I knew what was coming next there was another twist.

Also, at least in the case of the Gentian Line, the Line progenitor is one of the Line member, but deliberately got their identity wiped out. Set Six million years in the future, this story is set in a universe vastly different than anything you have ever read before. Despite efforts to stop the hijacked ship from reaching the concealed wormhole by local civilisations, the robot Cascade succeeds in opening the "stardam" enclosing the wormhole and travelling through it to the Andromeda Galaxy. On board Silver Wings of Morning, Hesperus reveals to Campion that while he managed to destroy Cadence before they could leave the Neume star system, Cascade survived and he and Cascade had engaged in a marathon battle, several thousand years. Next Reynolds is most likely Terminal World, as a friend recommended it to me, although it might end up being Inhibitor Phase depending on when I pick up the paperback!

Part of the challenge of reviewing (or even talking about) Alastair's work lies in the fact that if you talk about it, you run the risk of rather spoiling the book. The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them, and why – before their ancient line is wiped out of existence, forever. The above passage from House of Suns serves to illustrate the author's grandiose scheme for this book. They aren’t a massively divergent bunch, but millenia of wildly differing adventures and interactions have clearly left their impressions on every member of the Line. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.

This is apparently a big no-no, and considering how significant it was in the story, I found the reasons unconvincing. It's not often that I feel indifferent to a book for as long as I did with this one but then end up absolutely loving it, but that's exactly what happened. Campion and Purslane—two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences—must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence.right over my head, this is to be expected as I have difficulty figuring out how dental floss works.