Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds

Published by Orbit on January 16, 2024

Blending the genres of crime story, thriller, and science fiction, Machine Vendetta is the third novel to feature Tom Dreyfus, a prefect employed by the Panoply, enforcers of the Common Articles (something like a federal constitution) that bind the artificial habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Habitats make and enforce their own laws, although nearly every public policy decision is decided by ballot. The Panoply protects an overriding interest in democracy by maintaining polling computers and assuring that habitats don’t interfere with the right of their citizens to vote. In other words, you won’t hear much about stolen elections in the Glitter Band.

The Dreyfus novels are set in Alastair Reynolds’ impressive Revelation Space universe. The criminals that most concern Dreyfus are two rogue Artificial Intelligences, Aurora and the Clockmaker. Aurora was once a human, although she no longer has any regard for people of flesh-and-blood. In an earlier novel, Dreyfus made a secret alliance with Aurora, giving her access to Panoply’s computer systems, so that she could wage a war against the Clockmaker. He has lived with guilt ever since.

Difficult moral choices make for compelling fiction. Dreyfus’ choice comes back to haunt him in Machine Vendetta when it seems that the balance of terror he orchestrated can no longer be maintained. When he confides his secret to another prefect, she faces a moral dilemma when deciding whether to rat him out, as duty requires.

Apart from adversarial AIs, the criminal of immediate concern is a Panoply officer who used the weapons on his ship to destroy part of a habitat, apparently seeking vengeance for the habitat’s historical mistreatment of hyperpigs — genetically altered pigs who have taken humanoid form. Racial bias in Reynolds’ future have been replaced by bias against hyperpigs, Haters gotta hate, they just need to find some justification for hating anyone who seems different. In any event, the habitat fought back and the officer died in the ensuing battle. But was the motivation for that crime something other than it appears to be?

Another Panoply officer, Ingvar Tench, is thought to have committed suicide by entering a habitat that harbors a strong anti-Panoply sentiment without taking appropriate precautions. Ingvar’s daughter Hafdis wants to join Panoply after learning of her mother’s death. Her existence comes as a surprise to Dreyfus and everyone else at Panoply. Perhaps she also is not what she appears to be.

The two strangely behaving officers are linked in a way that Dreyfus must discern to solve his bigger problem. Tench was investigating something important to the ongoing war between Aurora and the Clockmaker. Dreyfus needs to learn what she discovered to prevent one AI from gaining an advantage over the other. The story is filled with self-sacrifice as Panoply officers put duty ahead of safety to protect the Glitter Band and its democratic values.

Reynolds is always creative, but his novels balance clever imaginings of the future with stories that are fundamentally about people. They explore what it means to be a human (even if the human is a pig) and illustrate behaviors and choices that make people better humans. Themes of sacrifice and courage are common to science fiction, but few modern writers incorporate them into storylines as skillfully as Reynolds. Combined with a thoughtful yet action-filled plot, Machine Vendetta brings this series to a fitting end. It is is one of the most enjoyable novels sf fans are likely to encounter this year.

RECOMMENDED

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Orbit on August 2, 2022

During the early chapters of Eversion, I wondered whether Alastair Reynolds had departed from his career as a science fiction writer to tell a seafaring adventure story. By the midpoint, it becomes clear that the novel is not what it seems. By the last quarter, a surprising reveal brings science fiction to the forefront of the story. Kudos to Reynolds for his masterful misdirection.

The story in Eversion is told by Silas Coade. Silas has been hired as ship’s surgeon to serve on the Demeter. The ship is sailing near the coast of Norway, following a map to a structure that characters dub the Edifice. The Demeter is a sizable vessel, carrying a hundred crew members, although only few characters are significant to the story. The ship’s captain is Van Vught; the man who arranged and funded the expedition is Topolsky. Dupin is a scientist and Ramos is in charge of security. Countess Cossile is a snarky linguist/journalist who makes it her mission to annoy Silas and everyone else with her self-assured belief in her intellectual superiority. She is particularly critical of the science fiction potboiler that Silas is writing.

A character dies early in Eversion and reappears in a later chapter, no worse for the death. Other characters do not seem to notice. I thought perhaps I had lost my place in the novel and was rereading unremembered pages before the death, or that I was mistaking one character for another. But then a mast that toppled is back in its place and only one character remembers that it fell. Still later in the book, the Demeter has become a different kind of vessel and the location of the Edifice has changed. In each version of the story, the characters encounter a wrecked ship called the Europa and become angry with Topolsky for not revealing his knowledge of the vessel. Silas and Ramos eventually recall different parts of the stories that have come before, as if the memories were of dreams.

The novel’s title refers to turning a sphere inside out. Dupin is a bit obsessed with the idea of eversion. The title is apt, as the story turns itself inside out before it reaches a conclusion. As the reader grasps for hidden truths, it becomes apparent that the truth is known to Cossile, who insists that it is also known to Silas, if only he would face it. “The truth is a raw nerve” and Silas flinches and retreats whenever he touches it. But what is the truth that Silas refuses to accept? Perhaps he has been gripped by madness. Perhaps the truth will make him descend into madness, again and again. Reynolds plants clues to the truth here and there, bits of the story that don’t seem to matter until they do. The plot is both a journey toward truth and a reminder that it is difficult to accept discomforting truths about ourselves.

Reynolds builds a moral dilemma into the story, the old question of whether killing one person to save more than one other person is morally justified. Does the equation change if the killing can be accomplished with kindness? Does it change if the killer is a doctor who has sworn to do no harm? Some of the novel’s dramatic tension arises from the characters’ disagreement about how to answer that question.

The moral issue adds another layer of depth to a complex story of courage and sacrifice. Reynolds even adds an offbeat love story to the mix. Eversion is my mid-year favorite science fiction novel of 2022. I suspect it will still be my favorite at year’s end.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds

First published in Great Britain in 2021; published by Orbit on October 12, 2021

Over the last 20-plus years, Alastair Reynolds has set several books and stories in the Revelation Space Universe, a troubled place where humanity is always at risk of extinction. Inhibitor Phase is the most recent of four novels, beginning with Revelation Space, that tell an ongoing story within that universe. Reynolds claims that Inhibitor Phase can be read as a standalone, but I think a reader who at least reads Revelation Space will find more meaning in Inhibitor Phase. For example, the significance of Conjoiners (humans with neural implants) and the role that Nevil Clavain played in a war between Conjoiners and non-enhanced humans might be puzzling to someone who isn’t familiar with at least some of the novels. For readers who want to begin at the end and don’t mind spoilers, Reynolds includes a chronology at the end of the book that will catch the reader up on Reynolds’ future history of humankind, including events that occur novels outside of this sequence.

Inhibitor Phase begins in the late 28th century with a fellow named Miguel who doesn’t realize he was once a different man, a man named Warren. Now he’s leading a community of humans living beneath the surface of a planet, trying to protect them from Inhibitors by keeping the humans hidden and quiet. Inhibitors, a/k/a Wolves, are machines that want to destroy and assimilate raw materials used by organic races, very much like the Borg of Star Trek fame. Miguel faces an early moral dilemma (is it acceptable to kill more than 5,000 people to keep 5,000 people hidden and safe?) before he’s taken against his will by a formidable woman named Glass. After Glass tweaks Miguel’s brain, he begins to recall that he was once a soldier (a Sky Marshal, actually) who took on the Conjoiners before he battled his brother. That part of the plot isn’t exactly Antigone, but if a writer is going to borrow ideas, borrowing from the classics is usually smart.

Glass has a plan to take the fight to the Wolves. The plan requires traveling to one planet to gather some stones, to another planet to acquire information, and to another planet in search of a ship that carries a secret weapon. Like much space opera, Inhibitor Phase is sort of a Homeric Odyssey (borrowing from the classics again) as each segment of the journey introduces new perils that the hero must overcome.

Some chapters flash back to Warren’s time as a soldier, when he participated in a clandestine invasion of Mars to free his brother, back when they seemed to be on the same side, before Warren became someone else. Later in the novel Warren becomes someone else still before making a final transformation. Identity is a fluid thing in the Revelation Space universe.

Reynolds gives space opera fans the kind of futuristic action they enjoy while adding enough science to make the action plausible. When a ship flies into the “molten shallows” of a star, Reynolds explains how manipulating “the basic informational granularity of local spacetime” to “swindle the incorruptible bookkeeping of classical and quantum thermodynamics” prevents the ship from melting. For all I know (and I don’t know much), this is gibberish, but gibberish is better than ignoring the unendurable heat of even a star’s photosphere. Other imaginative moments include a weapon concealed in blood that the heroes release by bleeding; a water planet inhabited by entities that function collectively as information storage devices; biologically engineered weapons called ninecats (just as fast and even more fierce than regular cats but a lot less cuddly); and a variety of alien races, the most interesting of which builds nests.

The universe is a big place and it’s been around a long time, even if humankind has not (relatively speaking). Inhibitor Phase is a long book, but a small part of a larger story. It doesn’t complete the story of humanity’s clash with the Wolves, or even advance it much. It does provide the surviving characters with an opportunity to take the fight to the Wolves, something that might happen in the next installment.

Still, Inhibitor Phase does the things that space opera should do. Reynolds offers the usual space opera menu of courage, sacrifice, perseverance, and fighting against long odds because that’s what it means to be human. Perhaps because the themes are so familiar in classic science fiction, the story does not seem particularly fresh. Yet Reynolds occasionally makes the story relevant to the reader’s life, as when he describes an alien race that justifies its atrocities by pretending they never happened (or, in the jargon of modern America, by dismissing their transgressions as “fake news”).

Characters are inclined to give inspirational speeches, as is the custom of space opera heroes. The speeches themselves are too predictable to be meaningful, but I did appreciate the development and evolution of Warren’s character. Before or soon after he became Miguel, he blocked his memories of the horrors of war that he endured and inflicted. When he returns to himself, he must confront moral judgments that he made and ask whether they were correct, whether he can find a path to redemption. That’s the kind of dilemma that science fiction, by stripping away the constraints of realism, can confront more directly than most literary fiction. The story works as an action novel, but it also builds depth from the arc of Warren’s life.

RECOMMENDED

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

Published by Orbit/ Victor Gollancz Ltd on January 1, 2016

Revenger is a space opera with some unexplained elements that border on fantasy. It’s a good story for young adults. I didn’t know it was YA fiction when I started it but the story held my interest so I stayed with it. The third novel in the series came out this year, which is why I decided to read the first one. I doubt that  I’ll read the next two because, like most YA fiction, the novel explores themes that appeal to young adults. I'm not young. Revenger lacks the complexity that appeals to more mature readers.I was also bothered by story’s failure to explain so much of the universe in which it exists. That’s common in fantasy and in YA fiction but adult science fiction fans demand to know why things are the way they are.

The story takes place in a future characterized by at least a dozen epochs that historians characterized as Occupations. There was a major war between the Second and Third Occupation, perhaps a war between aliens. A good bit of knowledge and technology from the past has been lost. Many worlds were settled during the Occupations. Some of them are artificial habitats. They are collectively known as the Congregation. Various editions of the Book of Worlds have cataloged them but books are in short supply when Revenger begins.

Laced among the habitats are worlds called Baubles. The Baubles are only accessible at certain times; they “open” for certain periods. Scavengers can find all kinds of treasure from past Occupations behind locked doors inside Baubles, but they need to get in and out before the Bauble closes or they’ll be stuck there, fated to die when their oxygen is depleted.

To find and exploit Baubles, scavengers need a specialized crew. One member needs to read the signs to predict when a Bauble will open. Another needs to open the doors they find in the Bauble. An assessor decides what’s valuable. Then there’s a captain and pilot and someone who deploys the sunsails. The most difficult position to fill is that of Sympathetic, also known as a bone reader. The bone reader plugs headphones into a skull and is able to communicate with other ships. Most people can’t read the skulls and those who can lose the ability as they enter their twenties. The skulls are ancient technology and are getting difficult to find.

Against that background, two teenage sisters are given the opportunity to become bone readers. Adrana and Arafura Ness are looking for adventure. They seem to find it on Captain Rackamore’s ship. When they encounter a future version of a pirate, a legendary and seemingly long-lived woman named Bosa Sennen, the girls become separated. Fura spends the rest of the novel trying to get back onto a ship and to find Adrana. But both girls change over the course of the novel; by the end, neither is what the other expects her to be.

The background is interesting and, to the extent that it isn’t always well explained, perhaps there’s no reason it should be. Fura narrates the story and she has no way to explain things she doesn’t understand, like why Baubles exist or how they operate, or why communications devices are made from skulls, or what “ghosty” technology is all about. On the other hand, I suspect that Alastair Reynolds didn’t bother to invent explanations because he knew that a young audience wouldn’t demand them.

The simple themes of good versus evil, sisters separated but still devoted to each other, and young people who are eager to leave home and make their own lives will appear to a YA audience. I think Alastair Reynolds is a much better writer when he markets his fiction to adults, but I’m recommending Revenger to the YA audience for which it is intended.

RECOMMENDED

Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Orbit on January 23, 2018

Elysium Fire is a sequel to The Prefect, set in the universe known to Alastair Reynolds fans as Revelation Space (the title of the first novel set in that universe). Elysium Fire is basically a detective novel, but the detecting occurs in the detailed and intricate setting that consists of Chasm City (the title of the second novel in the Revelation Space universe) and the Glitter Band, orbiting habitats that have largely lapsed into decay. The Panoply, a law enforcement agency, maintains a sort of political and social order. Ordinary crime is left to local police agencies, but the Panoply addresses big issues, including preservation of the Athenian democracy that comes from letting inhabitants vote on just about everything that might concern them via implants in their brains.

Thalia Ng is a Prefect with the Panoply. With the help of her robotic whiphounds, she begins the novel by cutting off the head of a fellow who is apparently having a seizure. She isn’t told why she was given that order, but soon learns that people are dying, apparently due to overheated implants, and the only way to gather evidence is to preserve the head before the brain melts. The hope is to download memories that can be booted so the deceased can be quizzed about the circumstances that might have caused their implants to go haywire. That isn’t going well, and deaths (code-named Wildfire) seem to be increasing at an exponential rate, perhaps threatening everyone in Chasm City and the Glitter Band.

Thalia’s partner is a talking pig named Sparver Bancal. In the meanwhile, a senior investigator named Dreyfuss is questioning the backup memories (called betas) of the deceased about a white building called Elysium Heights that seems to link some of the deaths. Dreyfuss is additionally occupied with an antagonistic fellow named Devon Garlin, who views himself as a revolutionary. Dreyfuss also has an old nemesis on his hands, an Artificial Intelligence named Aurora who purports to seek an alliance for the purpose of battling Wildfire, although her real motivation involves a foe of her own, known as the Clockmaker.

Devon Garlin is part of the Voi family, which is responsible for the impenetrable system of wireless democracy by which Chasm City is governed. His exact role in that family is not immediately revealed. Flashbacks focus on two Voi children, Caleb and Julius, who are learning to manipulate quickmatter (from which nearly everything inorganic is now constructed) while being groomed for an oversight role regarding the machinery of democracy. The full background of Julius and Caleb is something of a mystery until the reader learns the truth about them, and about their connection to Devon Garlin.

As is always true of Reynolds, an enormous amount of thought went into Elysium Fire. The background details are just as interesting as the story. The primary characters (Thalia, Sparver, and Dreyfus) respond to conflicts in admirable ways, making them easy to like despite their faults. The younger members of the Voi family are portrayed in a way that makes it possible to understand and even sympathize with their feelings of alienation and anger. The plot works as a mystery, challenging the reader to piece together the novel’s various components to make sense of Wildfire, Elysium Heights, and the connection among the victims. The story also works as an action novel from time to time, although this is a cerebral story more than a shoot-’em-up space opera. The novel is long (as Reynolds’ novels tend to be) but the pace is steady and the tale is never dull. I’m giving Elysium Fire high marks as an entertaining entry in Reynolds’ fascinating Revelation Space universe.

RECOMMENDED