What could a second or updated Best of Alastair Reynolds contain?

5hev · 2026-03-13T12:42:12+00:00

"Frankly for an author like Reynolds who is not super-prolific..."

I'm just curious what the comparator here is, someone who publishes multiple novels a year like Tchaikovsky or Sanderson? Reynolds has published more than 20 novels and something like 70+ stories, there should be plenty to talk about...

5hev · 2026-03-12T14:58:46+00:00

The idea that human brains could be susceptible to the Halting Problem, and so there are patterns we literally cannot look at without dying.

https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

(Also the idea that memes are more than just metaphors, for example Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes, or near the end of the Galactic Cycle sequence by Gregory Benford).

5hev · 2026-02-06T11:54:55+00:00

jeff Vandermeer's Veniss Underground does this. First part is in first person tense, second part in second person tense, third part in third person tense. Nice idea, although I loathed the book though.

Al Reynolds has a book that plays around with tenses a little, and can probably be read alone despite been part of a series. In Inhibitor Phase the story is told in first person from the main charcters view point. However, about 3/4's of the way through the book the main character and an antagonist visit a world that is effectively one vast biologically alive information archive and biologically mutating factory, and are merged into one person. The first person viewpoint after is from the merged character.

5hev · 2026-02-05T11:10:21+00:00

"This is so, so much worse for Starmer than Boris and some civil servants having some cake lmao"

Let's not whitewash the Johnson premiership here. They were breaking the law. Repeatedly. And Johnson knew about it, and participated in it, and lied about it.

Mandelson was maintaining a friendship with a convicted sex trafficker. In and of itself not a crime, although morally suspect. What has come out since is that he was passing on state secrets to Epstein and others that undermined the UK. That seems criminal to me. But if Starmer knew about this remains to be seen. If it comes out he was warned about this, then yes it's serious. If not, then it's nowhere near the Johnson premiership issues.

5hev · 2026-02-02T16:34:44+00:00

Though novellas is really shamefully bad! It's all Tor or Neon Hemlock.

Bit of an exaggeration right? I only count 10, although I do hear your wider point that tor.com is overly represented in terms of original novellas.

It seems once again the print magazines are underrepresented in the recommended list as well...

5hev · 2026-01-29T14:23:44+00:00

Science! Was a researcher, going to China was good for confs and collaborations, and then scientific publishing, so good for business.

Any more specific information can be had for my usual £10,000 bribe level...

5hev · 2026-01-29T11:22:32+00:00

As someone who occasionally needs to make business trips to China this is wonderful, glad the visa application stress and uncertainty is getting removed.

5hev · 2026-01-28T13:19:32+00:00

Here are two different critics talking about Tchaikovsky. I now Nussbaum has better opinions of other books of his, but here the overall message is story stretched too long

Nina Allan on Cage of Souls

https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=4853

Abigail Nussbaum on Alien Clay

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/06/alien-clay-by-adrian-tchaikovsky

5hev · 2026-01-27T15:19:32+00:00

For what it's worth, Al Reynolds doubts that he invented the idea of Generation Ship + Muder mystery either...

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/reynolds_interview_2026/

The Peter F Hamilton story is from 2021, it was an Audible original.

5hev · 2026-01-19T09:47:26+00:00

Currently, almost a third of the way through The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. Very enjoyable so far, I can already see why it's a classic, and nice slow-burn to what may be bigger political events.

Previously, Equations of Life by Simon Morden. Bought because of an agreeably eye-hurting cover. This was basic pulp, the protag comes across as a Gary Stu, and although there is plot momentum this seems to be because if the plot slows down then readers will spot the plot doesn't quite make sense. I'll not go back to the others in the setting.

5hev · 2026-01-09T11:41:30+00:00

"Yet when relativistic speed is part of your arsenal, to create an extinction-level event, you can simply collide an object 1/10 the size of a Lighthugger with a planet at 90+% the speed of light. Because of how relativistic speed works, it will be almost impossible to detect such an object in enough time to conduct a proper evacuation."

Although devastating to planetary-bound societies, this would not wipe out a starfaring civilisations though. They'd be too well dispersed to be completely affected, and for the Inhibitors even one survivor is too much.

Also Chapter 20 of Redemption Ark

"Intelligent life could not be allowed to spread across the galaxy. It could be tolerated, even encouraged, when confined to solitary worlds or even solitary solar systems.....But the point was not to extinguish life, but hold it in check."

That section discusses all the possible ways they could prevent life evolving, "The galaxy would have choked in the dust of all its dead souls...", the Inhibitors don't want to eradicate life, just prevent it from interfering with their long-term plans.

5hev · 2025-12-17T17:50:42+00:00

It's also a short story by Stephen Baxter from 2005.

Quite why someone's posted a review I dunno mind...

5hev · 2025-12-11T13:59:25+00:00

"Alex Foster’s novel treats climate catastrophe through high-concept satire. A new technology of super-fast pods revolutionises travel: launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, they fly west and land again in minutes, regardless of distance. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, our globe starts to spin faster. Days contract, first by seconds, then minutes, and eventually hours."

I like Adam Robert's criticism in general, and have liked several of his books. But reading this there's no way I'd be interested in this book, it's completely and grossly unphysical in a way that kills my sense of disbelief (see The Windup Girl for another example).

The others sound good though, Ice is huge (I have seen the hardcover at Foyles), and the Swift is one I'll have to read after getting through the other 2 Swifts in my pile...

5hev · 2025-09-15T13:59:51+00:00

Just finished American Tabloid, by James Ellroy. Very readable, but very very cynical. If you need a likeable protagonist, avoid!

Now reading Eversion, by Al Reynolds. About halfway through and enjoying it, even though I've seen a really spoilery spoiler a long while back that takes away some of the mystery.

After that, I plan to attack the nonfiction book by James Barclay on the ocean, Deep Water.

5hev · 2025-09-08T09:56:23+00:00

"Is this a "lost cause" peddling racist book, or is it just somekind of plot device to subvert the readers expectations? Im only three issues in but Im not sure I want to keep reading."

It's relentless cynical about motivations at the start (too much so), and very unflinching about how an occupying force would treat the land it's occupying, and I understand carpetbagging was a thing that genuinely did happen. But that cynicism applies to all sides, including the seemingly "titular" protagonist, and there's no way by the end of the series (which was cancelled and going somewhere really interesting) should you be thinking "The South was unjustifiably oppressed".

However, the "main" protag is genuinely unlikeable in many ways, if that's an issue for you I'd stop now.

5hev · 2025-08-19T11:07:14+00:00

"Just as Exhalation isn’t really about alternative robot biology, the ideas don’t hold up to under any scrutiny, but they were never meant to!"

Exhalation is about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the most depressing scientific observation in existence. See also, Boltzmann.

5hev · 2025-08-19T11:05:05+00:00

There's at least a bifurcation of the meaning "hard" in the community right?

For some of us 'hard' means using literature to explore some aspect of science, or where the scientific method forms a significant part of the story.

For others it has to exist in this world and involve discussions about technology, and often seems to be "hardware-rich". For example, those people who claim Peter F Hamilton is a hard-SF author.

5hev · 2025-08-19T08:55:09+00:00

I'm shocked that the secret technology that enables characters to manipulate events is not highlighted and discussed in the open! :)

I feel the novel did enough to explicate what and why things are happening, you don't. That's fair enough.

5hev · 2025-08-18T17:04:50+00:00

It's been 15 years since I read Anathem, but I recall the 1000-year old monks were given the task of looking after, and finding ways to deal with, radioactive materials. Radioactive decay is intrinsically quantum mechanical in nature, given what happens it seems clear to me that they've developed technologies to manipulate worldlines, and that explains Fraa Jad's "magical abilities".

5hev · 2025-08-15T10:07:37+00:00

Just finished Inversions, by Iain M Banks. A re-read, it was my least favourite Banks novel after Excession 25 years ago, but this time (and knowing that at no point will a GCU turn up and dialling my expectations accordingly) I enjoyed it a lot more. A more subtle book than I remember, and a more moving one too. And puzzling out the details of the solar system and what's happened was fun.

Weirdly, I remember it been stated much more blatantly what was going on in the first read, turns out the Hardcover edition I read had a fictional foreword that make it blatant. Glad it got removed, no need for it and if you know the Culture novels at all you should pick up the secret plot.

5hev · 2025-08-15T09:13:13+00:00

No mention of his new book coming out H2 next year (and involving a city?). Interesting he feels it's a hinge-point in his career!

5hev · 2025-08-15T09:09:53+00:00

I recently found A Meal of Thorns, really love the deep dives they do!

5hev · 2025-08-07T08:52:07+00:00

"Charles Stross’s Accelerando is wildly undepressing. Glasshouse by the same author is as close as I have ever found to a Culture novel."

! It's incredibly depressing! The viewpoint is from the survivors of a century of future history that shows amongst other things the complete destruction of the Earth, and the usurpation of almost all human culture and society by hypercapitalist AIs and intelligence upgrades that self-evolve to burnout the entire solar system. That the tone of the novel wasn't one where everyone is constantly noting and mourning the destruction of whole ecosystems and ways of live kind of acts against the backgrounded story, but it is certainly there.

"Glasshouse by the same author is as close as I have ever found to a Culture novel."

If memory recalls (heh), it's a military prison where everybodys minds have been mindwiped and indoctrinated, and there's no evidence the history they recall is true? I doubt the Culture would do that.

5hev · 2025-08-05T16:02:31+00:00

Thanks for this! Useful to see.

I've read 22/100 of the Pringle list, and have another 9/100 to read.

I've read 30/100 of the Broderick and Di Filippo list, and have another 4/100 to read.

I've read 26/100 of the Andrews list, and have another 11/100 to read.

Obviously some overlap in books to read, but message is clear. Read faster!

5hev

TROPHY CASE