Galactic North

7.76 8

Locus Award nominee 2007.

Set in the Revelation Space universe – the first short story collection by "one of SF's best and most ambitious novelists." (SFX)

With eight short stories and novellas – including three original to this collection – Galactic North imparts the centuries-spanning events that have produced the dark and turbulent world of Revelation Space.

Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence – beyond its natural limits – has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down.

The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space... because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

Category: Science Fiction Space opera Short stories

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Release date October 2006

Details updated August 23, 2022

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.

Reynolds wrote his first short stories in 1990, while still a graduate student. In 1991 Reynolds graduated and moved from Scotland to the Netherlands to work at ESA. He then started spending much of his writing time on a first novel, which eventually turned into Revelation Space. In 1995 his story ”Byrd Land Six” was published, which he says marked the beginning of a more serious phase of writing.

Reynolds's first published novel was Revelation Space (2000), which was shortlisted for the BSFA and Arthur C Clarke awards. His second novel, Chasm City (2001), won the BSFA award in 2002. A number of his other novels and stories have been shortlisted for the BSFA and Clarke awards.

Reynolds' works reflect his professional expertise with physics and astronomy, included by extrapolating future technologies in terms that are consistent, for the most part, with current science. Reynolds has said he prefers to keep the science in his books to what he personally believes will be possible, and he does not believe faster-than-light travel will ever be possible, but that he adopts science he believes will be impossible when it is necessary for the story. Most of Reynolds's novels contain multiple storylines that originally appear to be completely unrelated, but merge later in the story.

Five of his novels and several of his short stories take place within one consistent future universe, usually now called the Revelation Space universe after the first novel published in it, although it was originally developed in short stories for several years before the first novel. In this universe, extraterrestrial sentience exists but is elusive, and interstellar travel is primarily undertaken by a class of vessel called a lighthugger which only approaches the speed of light

Reynolds's future worlds are notable in that human societies have not departed to either positive or negative extremes, but instead are similar to those of today in terms of moral ambiguity and a mixture of cruelty and decency, corruption and opportunity, despite their technology being dramatically advanced. The Revelation Space universe contains elements of Lovecraftian horror, but, the main storyline is essentially optimistic, with humans continuing to survive even in a universe which seems fundamentally hostile to intelligent life.

Revelation Space :: Series

Series contains 4 primary works and has 11 total works.

The Revelation Space universe is a fictional universe which was created by Alastair Reynolds and used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories. Its fictional history follows the human species through various conflicts from the relatively near future (roughly 2200) to approximately AD 40000 (all the novels to date are set between 2427 and 2727, although certain stories extend beyond this period). It takes its name from Revelation Space, which was the first published novel set in the universe.

The main trilogy (also known as the Inhibitor trilogy) consists of 1) Revelation Space, 2) Redemption Ark and 3) Absolution Gap, and deals with humanity coming to the attention of the inhibitors and the resultant war between them.