Diamond Dogs

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A novella. Introduction by Stephen Baxter.

Richard Swift is a failure; a brilliant thinker and theorist on alien intelligence who has been excluded from the most significant project of his era due to a bitter family dispute. Bored and restless, he is shocked by the return of his oldest friend – the supposedly dead Roland Childe.

Once, Swift and Childe entertained each other with intricate games and challenges. Now Childe proposes that they – and a small number of other experts – tackle the greatest challenge of all: gaining entry into a sinister alien structure on a nameless world light years from Swift's home.

But Swift and Childe are not the first to attempt this task. Others have come before them and failed. Their bones litter the ground, testifying to the appalling punishments that the structure has inflicted on those who would dare to better it.

No one sane would take Childe up on his offer.

But there is nothing Swift likes better than a challenge.

Category: Science Fiction Space opera

Release date 2001

Details updated August 30, 2021

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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.