Belladonna Nights and Other Stories
Dust jacket and endsheet illustrations by Marc Simonetti
Alastair Reynolds has continued to publish short fiction throughout the thirty-odd years of his professional career. This fourth collection gathers material mostly written by the former space scientist in the last decade, even as a number of stories — such as the title piece, set in the universe of House of Suns — revisit earlier environments.
The scope of settings is wide, ranging from the contemporaneous Earth to the near future and out to the furthest realms of the galaxy, and taking in such diverse topics as the perils of immortality, cybernetic encounters in the Wild West, uncanny skateboard parks and the flocking behaviour of birds. There is horror here, but also hope — and not a little black humour.
The collection includes “Open and Shut,” “Night Passage,” and “Plague Music,” a long, previously unpublished story, all three set in the Revelation Space universe.
Contents:
- Introduction: Winter Did Come
- Belladonna Nights
- Different Seas
- For the Ages
- Visiting Hours
- Holdfast
- The Lobby
- A Map of Mercury
- Magic Bone Woman
- Providence
- Wrecking Party
- Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee
- Death’s Door
- A Murmuration
- Open and Shut
- Plague Music
- Night Passage
- Story Notes
Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds (born in 1966 in Barry, Wales) is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera and noir toned stories.
Reynolds spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read Physics and Astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland. In 1991, he moved to Noordwijk in the Netherlands where he met his wife Josette (who is from France). There, he worked twelve years for the European Space Research and Technology Centre, part of the European Space Agency. About half of his time in ESA he spent working on S-Cam, the world's most advanced optical camera. In 2004 when he left ESA to pursue writing full time. He returned to Wales in 2008 and lives near Cardiff with his wife. They like horse riding, birds, long walks in the woods, good curries and old films.