Revelation Space Trilogy by Alastair Reynolds
Books:

• Revelation Space
• Ark of redemption
• Absolution gap

Reynolds dreams big. There is much to appreciate about an author who writes with a scope large enough to encompass the entire cone of human light. Reynolds gives us most of human history, as he imagines it, in interstellar space. The literal size of this scope is undeniably impressive.

While my astronomy is not strong enough to know this for sure, it seems reasonably accurate with its stellar position, relative to Earth at or near the center of the human expanding sphere. It is not the most difficult of “hard” science fiction, but it is very firm. Not that something like this should surprise us coming from an author with a Ph.D. in astronomy. Where the facts end and Reynolds begins to extrapolate, it is with a scientific eye for detail and a powerful imagination that fills the story.

Set in three separate novels, the Revelation Space story is a space opera of the grandest scale. Though different in feel, the overall size has echoes of Frank Herbert’s epic Dune. In Herbert’s case, an imagined version of the galaxy that left enough notes for his son to write at least twice as many books on the Dune universe as his father.

Revelation Space, which we will refer to as the RS trilogy, is no less large, although Reynolds limited the size of the human sphere to the speed of light. This gives your stories a great layer of complexity with relativistic time effects while keeping the implausibility factor of faster-than-light travel to a minimum. The RS trilogy begins by posing a problem for the galaxy:

Where is the intelligence?

Along the lines of Drake’s equation and Fermi’s paradox, given so many stars in the galaxy with so many planets, it is increasingly unlikely to find intelligent life almost everywhere. But the galaxy in the trilogy has no more intelligence than that of humans. At least none were left alive.

Scattered throughout the worlds humans have colonized are strange remnants of civilizations that simply ceased to exist. Also, certain irregularities in the galactic arms where physics suggests that star systems should be an indication that something big happened sometime in the past. The Dawn War is the name given by Reynolds to the struggle for power and dominance between emerging interstellar intelligences. At the beginning of the galaxy’s history, sentient species emerged, expanded, and came into conflict. Due to inherent incompatibility, the War of the Dawn dominated millions of years of galactic evolution. This war consumed and involved most of the intelligent creatures in the galaxy until there was only a dominant amalgam of biological and mechanical intelligence in the universe.

Revelation Space introduces us to some of the main characters of this epic. We learn about the Ultras, humans who pilot interstellar ships that travel at a few tenths of a percent of the speed of light (light huggers). Ultras glide through decades of “world time” thanks to the relativistic effects of near-light travel. They are also dysmorphic and opt for intentional body modifications.

Another faction mentioned in Revelation Space and correctly introduced in Redemption Ark are the Conjoiners, humans who have augmented their minds with implanted computers to transcend normal human intelligence. They are responsible for the design of the massive but essentially incomprehensible engines that allow interstellar spacecraft to travel a fraction below the speed of light.

Inhibitors are the dark nemesis in the Revelation Space trilogy. They are the relics or descendants of the victors of the War of the Dawn. They are fierce alien creations left to monitor the galaxy and suppress emerging interstellar intelligence. Inhibitors are organized but have no intelligence of their own.

Hyperpigs are a variant of pigs genetically crossed with humans, originally bred to be compatible human organ donors, possess sensitivity and the ability to speak. There are also normal human elements in this story, although they are mostly minor characters to the more epic character classes that are fighting for this story.

At over 2000 pages, it is not a light read, but it is compelling and very fascinating. The plot is strong enough to attract the reader and Reynolds has a great knack for developing his story for reveal. Where the stories really fight are the endings. They are not good. In the first two novels, hopefully, they are largely just preparing the works for the next book. As independents, they don’t do that well, but as part of an emerging story, Revelation Space is good and RS + Redemption Ark work really well together.

The third novel, Absolution Gap really jumps in from a different place and with a different focus. He abandons some of the characters we’ve gotten to follow from the first two books, kills some of them, and gives us a whole new set of characters. This is fine, and done with a better set of characters, this could have been really effective. But as written, it seems artificial and unnecessary. Reynolds develops good characters and very good opponents. It seems useless to abandon all those interesting plot lines to go in a different direction. Although it changed the focus of the characters in Revelation Space to a new set in Redemption Ark, it kept a core from RS to AR and that helped create continuity.

In Absolution Gap, he really ditches all but some of the AR characters and kills the interesting dynamic relationships he’s developed. He then introduces us to a whole new set of individuals and keeps only the simplest skeleton of AR characters. This might work to keep the novel fresh, but it comes off a bit short. Rather than having a compelling drama that takes us through AG, we’re largely confused by a new set of characters and the remnants of RA sit mostly on the sidelines of “the action” and we’re too introspective.

This is an odd choice for an author who is writing a space epic. Why would we be interested in following tangential characters away from the epic final battle? This is my biggest frustration with AG. Throughout the novel, he seems to be moving toward some kind of confrontation and reckoning between the humans and the Inhibitors, who are trying to exterminate his presence using absurdly advanced alien technology. But as we get closer to the end, the reckoning is further and further away.

Instead, he goes totally police in the last 50 pages and ends this epic story with a deus-ex-machina to wrap the problems of humanity with a small bow. It is the biggest disappointment for such a large book. Reynolds actually establishes a universe that is firmly bounded by the physics of Einstein and Newton and then goes on to violate all those rules when he sees fit. It is frustrating to see the strict rules of physics violated when Reynolds devotes much of the book to establishing this as a key aspect of his universe.

In the end, you realize that this happens a few times throughout history. There are different events that happened that change the balance of power and influence and mostly involve finding alien technology or communicating with the future. This “magic” and violation of causality is probably the only way to deal with an alien threat like Inhibitors, but it questions why the rest of the book was so firmly grounded in science and plausibility.

Good fiction is based on good human drama. It doesn’t matter what kind of science fiction, fantasy, technology or everyday life you want to insert into the story. If you don’t have good drama, then it’s just sword fetish or laser pistol fetish or something. The Revelation Space trilogy largely avoids this problem; it has good human drama that is interesting. Most of the time, technology is just a starting point and doesn’t interfere much with the story. But in the end, Reynolds succumbs to his fetish and has the technology to save the day. It’s a shame that such a clever story ends up in such a sad and pathetic mess.

Endings can be the hardest thing to get right. The good endings will finish their story while opening a small window to the next chapter. They can leave you wanting more and that’s a lot to ask for ten pages at the end of 2000. Reynolds struggles here and really seems to be opening the door to more books along these lines, rather than closing the story of Revelation Space. While the trilogy is worth reading, I think Absolution Gap would have been better if it had been written as a standalone book rather than the ending of the Revelation Space story.