House of Suns (SF) - Alastair Reynolds ****

Alastair Reynolds is a reliably enjoyable author of high quality science fiction, and in this 2008 novel he lives up to expectations. Each section of the book starts with an excerpt from the life of Abigail Gentian, then skips forward six million years to a point in time where her thousand clones have travelled vast numbers of light years, in stasis during their long voyages: they have very long lives, but most of the time they are not conscious - so see slower living civilisations come and go.

The clones, known as shatterlings, meet up after taking a circuit that last many tens of thousands of years: the present time chapters alternate between the viewpoints of two of the clones, Campion and Purslane, who have semi-illegally paired up. This is the starting point for classically vast quality space opera happenings, from genocide to repairing a stardam that prevents a supernova from wiping out its surroundings. As things develop, secrets from deep history are uncovered and the whole of humanity is at risk of destruction.

Reynolds does a great job of imagining a collection of far-future technologies, plus various human variants, including some that never stop growing. What he is particularly skilful at is keeping a whole lot of far-future balls in the air, without it ever being difficult to follow what's going on - lesser SF writers can easily leave the reader lost in such circumstances. The threat faced by the main characters is deeply engaging, and the political machinations enable Reynolds to go beyond basic space opera, making the whole something significantly more interesting.

The book was a little long at 500 pages, and I did get a touch bored with the flashbacks to Abigail's time when the action took place in an immersive fantasy VR game. Also, the ending is a little rushed - but these are the only things that prevents this from being a five star book.

Though not Reynolds' best, it certainly is one of his most imaginative titles.

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 free here

Comments

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

Search This Blog