Skip to main content

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (SF) - Alastair Reynolds ***

Every author is allowed a title that isn't up to their usual quality, and for me this book is a low point in the output of the usually reliable Alastair Reynolds. The reasonably slim volume contains two novellas from 2003, set in the Revelation Space universe.

The first of the song-title named pieces, Diamond Dogs describes an exercise in futility, when two former friends and a number of mercenaries attempt to get through a deadly inverted escape room known as the Blood Spire. This 250-metre high structure consists of room after room - hundreds in all - each separated by a metal door with a mathematical puzzle to unlock it. These start simple and grow increasingly complex. Solve the puzzle and you get to the next room. Fail and there's a punishment that initially has the potential to maim and later to kill.

The motley crew set off to attempt to get to the summit of the spire. This seems mostly 'because it's there', though legend has it that there is something of immense technological value at the top. I have three problems with this. The action is too limited, rapidly becoming repetitive. It's hard to imagine why anyone would risk almost certain death with no guarantee of there being any benefit. And while most of the mathematical puzzles are far too obscure to be comprehensible, the first is simply wrong.

I know people have put themselves through extreme effort and considerable risk, say, to be first to the South Pole. But this is way beyond any such challenge. There are just too many, too difficult problems. To make matters worse, the doors get smaller and smaller, so continuing requires extreme body modification. Nothing's worth what the participants go through... and then the novella just ends with no real outcome. As for that dodgy puzzle, it involves prime numbers. We are told the first four primes are 'one, three, five and seven.' Unfortunately, they are two, three, five and seven. We're then told that eleven 'is the next one in the sequence. Thirteen's one prime too high...' So there's a prime between eleven and thirteen? Hmm.

The second part, Turquoise Days is significantly better. There's only one minor reference that links the two novellas - this one is set on one of the Pattern Juggler planets, where the ocean has been taken over by an alien structure that archives people's minds and can sometimes change a swimmer's brain to add capabilities from others. The narrative has a very slow start, but the second half picks up pace and is a genuinely interesting addition to the Revelation Space canon as Pattern Jugglers are frequently referenced, but are rarely given a deep dive (if you'll pardon the pun).

Revelation Space lovers will welcome any trifle that adds to the overall picture, but for everyone else it's only so-so.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Random Universe - Andrew Jaffe *****

This is an absolutely fascinating book for anyone interested in the way that science really works, bearing in mind the difficulties of having to base our models and theories on induction. Andrew Jaffe introduces the difficulties we face when trying to take a scientific view because largely we are dependent on induction: predicting the future from what has previously been observed. He explores what probability is, the two key ways of looking at it (frequentist and Bayesian) and how scientists use (or misuse it) to work out the implications of their experiments for hypotheses. This is then expanded into looking at the nature of scientific models and the philosophy of science before heading out to entropy, quantum randomness and attempting to achieve meaningful cosmology with its potential dearth of evidence.  The topic might sound a little dry, but in fact Jaffe does it with good humour and a very readable style. For example, he uses measuring his daughter's height by making marks on...
Post a Comment
Read more