Skip to main content

Century Rain (SF) - Alastair Reynolds *****

A recent discovery for me that dates back to 2004, this is Alastair Reynolds at his very best. It’s described in places as a space opera, and it certainly has a vast canvas - but in reality it’s a far more sophisticated novel than that pigeonhole suggests. There’s nothing I love more than a book where, after a few chapters I’m still thinking ‘What on (or more accurately off) Earth is going on?’ - and the early parts of Century Rain have this in spades.

The first few chapters alternate between a not-quite-our-Earth 1959 Paris and a future archeological expedition to Paris, which is now uninhabited, covered in ice and infested with deadly nanobots. After a while the two threads come together, but even then, for a long time it’s not clear why things are happening (in a good way).

In the 1959 Paris, a pair of private detectives are trying to solve a murder in what seems to rapidly be becoming a police state. But there is something mysterious about the dead woman they need to uncover. Meanwhile, it the future reality, there are two factions of humans: some have rejected nanotechnology after what happened to Earth, the others embraced it and have become post-human. The leader of the Paris expedition, potentially on trial for losing a young man to the nanobots, is given the option of instead undertaking a dangerous mission, travelling through a form of hyperspace link built by some ancient, unknown civilisation.

Reynolds pulls together several key ideas, all very effective SF, and weaves them into an action adventure with repeated levels of peril for the main characters that even Alistair Maclean might have found over the top - but it certainly keeps the reader turning the pages.

The book is, to be honest, too long. It’s over 500 pages of small print in my paperback and a few sections dragged a little and could have benefited from an edit down. And the key premise that explains the alternative settings is distinctly far-fetched. But that doesn’t stop it from being a brilliant book.

One interesting 'hard science in SF' aspect is that Reynolds makes use of gravity wave detection more than 10 years before it was actually done. The approach taken owes rather too much to the failed early attempts (though arguably the technique that worked in the real world couldn’t have been fitted into the narrative).

Apart from the key human characters, big parts go to Paris and, in an indirect way, the movie Casablanca: if you've not seen it or can’t remember the detail, it’s worth watching the film to pick up on a number of references in the novel. All-in-all an excellent slice of SF. 

Before I read it, I was rather pleased that it was standalone - science fiction is so oriented to series that it’s a pleasant surprise these days to get a standalone novel. But I enjoyed this sufficiently that I would have liked a sequel, particularly if it focused on Verity/Cassandra. Interesting stuff.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email for free here

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more