Chasm City: Alastair Reynolds

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So he changed from someone who would torture a subordinate to death for a well-intentioned mistake, to someone who would still kill and kill, but now occasionally has twinges of conscience. The science is plausible and invariably explained as a natural part of the story, though occasionally he kept me waiting for the explanation rather longer than I wanted. It slogs, and turns its wheels for about 200 pages in the middle, but I see now why it was necessary, and it ultimately pays off in strides.

Cahuella learns that Reivich means to kill him, so the arms dealer and his security chief go on alert and prepare for the attack. I started off publishing short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone in the early 90s, then eventually branched into novels. Pline de clișee, aceste umbre sunt mânate de colo-colo, fără ca acțiunile lor să fie motivate în vreun fel din punct de vedere psihologic.I fully recommend the novel and the whole Revelation Space series to fans of Science Fiction in general, but especially if you don’t mind a bit of darkness in your fiction. The one time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Din păcate, ca în multe cărți hard SF, personajele sunt deficitare, mai mult niște umbre ce populează mărețul spațiu imaginat.

Reynolds touches on several of the typical reactions to the manipulation of memory—how, thanks to that manipulation, Tanner is no longer the man he was or the man he is pretending to be but actually a new person altogether. I also found the build up nice and suspenseful, and I quite liked the resolution even though it didn’t come as a big surprise. Such an interesting place, partly dominated by steampunk and primitive trade and barter economy, some areas ruled by gangs of hybrids, and wait what is lurking in the abyss. Interesting characters (with ridiculous layers of hidden personalities and memories that only get triggered at certain times and and and).There are quite a few scientists who are writing sf but (IMO) Reynolds is the best story teller and prose stylist among them. And what makes Chasm City (the book) so excellent is that the sci-fi noir experience doesn't end at the rim of Chasm City (the city).

Possibly one of the darkest future city planning scenarios, it reminded me of China Mieville and shorter descriptions of decay and madness in other Sci-Fi works, but both the sheer range and the plot importance in the series and its other parts make it outstanding. Chasm City was the largest settlement on Yellowstone, easily dwarfing Ferrisville, the second largest. Chasm City has many of the same issues as Revelation Space – paper-thin characters and overly expository dialogue chief among them – but it’s still a pretty enjoyable dark sci-fi adventure, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the story of the main trilogy with Redemption Ark. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city¿s inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. This comes primarily from the Melding Plague that has attacked the Glitter Band of 10,000 space orbitals that inhabit the Epsilon Eridani system.g. body mods, memory implants, nanotech, DNA manipulation, immortality, reefersleep to travel through time and space). En cuanto a la historia, es un libro con tantos giros y cambios de punto de vista que se necesita tiempo y tranquilidad para su lectura.

While Chasm City is not any shorter at around 700 pages, it makes much better use of those pages with a fast-paced plot, complicated and dark but intriguing characters, and flashbacks that form a gripping story of their own. Scenes of Tanner's murderous quest alternate with scenes of Sky's life, which Tanner sees whenever he nods off.While the story is not epic in scale as it mainly focuses on the protagonist’s adventures it is set in a brilliantly imagined universe. A city that experienced a 200 year utopia known as the Belle Epoche where technology advanced to the stage where implants and nanotechnology made immortality viable. Following an attempted sabotage on one of the starships, a man named Sky Haussman becomes the vessel's head of security. Normally that sort of thing doesn't sit well with me but it works much better in a dark context than in a humorous or other lighter context.