Beyond the Aquila Rift

Beyond The Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds, Jonathan Strahan Ed.- How you whittle such an inspiring body of work down to one book is an ambitious task for any editor. You can never satisfy everyone- they'll always be someone lamenting what's got left out. I've always rejected the "Best of" titles as publisher's promise and rather focused on the stories there in. Here, if you haven't read Alastair Reynolds mind-bending super space opera, you are definitely in for a treat. And, if you're like me, quite familiar with this mesmerizing tour, you can visit old friends and maybe find new ones to dazzle you. My favorite Reynolds novel is "House of Suns", and here we have a prequel of sorts in "Thousandth Night", a story of humanity millions of years in the future. The title story "Aquila Rift" is a story of humans using old, discarded alien tech to travel the stars, (which reminded me much of Frederick Pohl's "Gateway")- you never know how things will come out in the end. "Great Wall of Mars" begins the Revelation Space stories and introduces Nevil Clavain to the space opera universe. I could go on, but I think you get the point, this is a great collection and the wonderful job Subterranean Press always does with their editions makes it something special. Don't miss it.

What I expected:
I think this is a set of extract from Alastair Reynolds (AR's) best books. I'm hoping to pick my next catch-up read from this particular book.

What it was:
Actually this was a collection of AR's short stories and I had already enjoyed at least one of them. The full list of stories is:-
Great Wall of Mars Weather Beyond the Aquila Rift Minla’s Flowers Zima Blue Fury The Star Surgeon’s Apprentice The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter Diamond Dogs Thousandth Night Troika Sleepover Vainglory Trauma Pod The Last Log of the Lachrimosa The Water Thief The Old Man and the Martian Sea In Babelsberg Story Notes The stories are all different. Some have links to other novels written by AR, others, as far as I am aware, don't. It was good to read a story and think, "Hey I know that name, that links to a story I already read; and that back-fills some of the history for me" it was also good to re-read short stories that I had previously read and glimpse new insights on a second reading.

AR's stories are very diverse, this is a good way for a reader to get a taster of his style and discover if his writing might be for them. I'm sure once this book is read, the need to read more of AR's books will kick in.

Very interesting collection of stories. A must read for any scifi reader.

Beyond The Aquila Rift is a collection of short stories from acclaimed sci-fi author Alastair Reynolds. I’ve seen a couple of these stories in collections before, but there’s quite a few which have not been previously collected (and I’ll put a table of contents at the end, in case that helps).

So, let’s talk about the worlds on display here. Constructing a universe on a grand scale has always been a strength for Reynolds, and the imaginative talent on display here is, if I’m honest, pretty dazzling. There’s explorations of humanity that touch on the cultural, as with the titular story. There’s breath-taking temporal leaps, and feats of stellar engineering so vast as to shatter both expectation and the narrative lens. The broader sweep, across the stories, is of a confident, imaginative writer, bringing the reader into a complex and un-documented playground. That some of the toys may well be lethal is rather beside the point. In amongst his evocations of the wonderful and the terrible, which is done with characteristic élan, Reynolds brings the reader into more intimate focus. The shattered grandeur of Martian terraformers from The Old Man and the Martian Sea is contrasted with the gently poignant relationship between that man and a young woman briefly in his care.

In the same vein, the travails of another young woman, in a Newcastle once more locked into an ice-age, are thrown into definition by the thronging, recuperating world around her, as well as intimations of a wider threat. Reynolds has always been able to give us a sweeping vista, as vast as the reader can conceive; these stories combine that with a sense of the familiar, a sense of the human, even when mixed with the infinitely more unknowable, which creates a bond with the reader and makes each story relatable, whilst enhancing the strangeness laced throughout the prose.
There’s great range in place here – from enigmatic, claustrophobic puzzle boxes, to a world broken by nuclear fire, to our very near future. Each seems to leap fully-formed from the page, a well-realised idea, stretching the bounds of the imagination. In summary, the world building is top notch.

The characters. Well, I’ve spoken well of Reynolds more recent characters, having occasionally felt their predecessors received less attention than the worlds which they inhabited. On some cases, it stills feels like this is the case – the characters driving a plot within a world, but not quite forming part of it themselves. On the other hand, this may well be intentional in some stories, and is entirely absent in others. Minla’s Flowers, for example, is a long, slow study of the way in which two individuals change, and what they are willing to do in pursuit of a goal. That shift, that fluidity and rigidity of character, is constructed with horological precision – and it’s both effective and affecting.

The Water Thief is another example – looking at the way character can be hammered into or out of someone by circumstance. Here the question is not around actions, but decisions – when an individual will decide to take a stand. It has a nuanced portrayal of its protagonist, a man on the edge of hope and despair, holding to a notion of himself. There’s other questions of course – the story Fury takes us down the rabbit hole of memory, as does the languid, mildly horrifying Zima Blue. In exploring what makes a sentient a person (and perhaps vice versa), Reynolds does well. As always, I wanted to spend more time with the characters, to know them better, but there was enough meat on their bones to make the characters, as a whole, effective and believable individuals.

The plots…well. As ever, no spoilers. But they range from melancholy discussions of the human condition, to tense investigations, to the kind of creeping horror which makes the reader shudder, but turn the next page. There’s deliberation in these pages, ruminations, decisions, and the stakes are high enough, both personally and absolutely, to keep the book in hand. Some rocket along, and some are less frenzied, more considered – but I can’t say the plot of any of them was a disappointment.

Is it worth reading? If you’re new to Reynolds, the breadth of talent on display here demands your attention. He has a penchant for the grand and high concept, dovetailed with the personal throughout this collection. If you’re coming to this for your next Reynolds fix, then be assured – it’s as weird, and clever, and awe inspiring as his best work. Definitely give it a try.

Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds by Alastair Reynolds My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I remember Galactic North fondly, but I must be honest here. This collection, while it picks up two stories from the previous collection, namely Great Wall of Mars and Weather, everything else is new to me. Alastair Reynolds is easily one of the best SF authors writing today. He's not sneaky about it, either. This isn't any kind of artsy-fartsy writing. This is Space-Opera filled with so much imagination and planning and detail and truly wide vistas of thought, time, and space, that I'm surprised I don't hear fanboys and fangirls screaming his name from the rooftops.

Well, maybe they do. I've usually got my earbuds in my ears so I find it hard to hear them. :)

Let me tell you: These stories of his are SO COOL. I mean, like glittering jewels of complete mind-blowing and written with real talent and clear vision, dense and perfect world-building and a plethora of seriously interesting characters.

I'll try not to spoil anything, and I'll skip a few directed reviews for some of the stories, but there were a few that you should really pay close attention to. (And I doubt you'll have any problems doing so, because they're also fun as hell.) Most of them are placed outside of his Revelation Space universe, but there are a handful that is firmly ensconced. Diamond Dogs is a who's who of places and peoples and a really sharp cut. :)

But mostly, I'll focus on the pure creations:

The story that bears the name of the novel. Beyond the Aquila Rift. It's a mindfuq. Clever and interesting space mechanics and a really cool surprise. No more spoilers. :)

Minla's Flowers was an awesome telling/retelling of Merlin and a bootstrap raising of a civilization... Also with a twist.

Zima Blue is was probably my favorite story out of the entire collection. And yes, it had a twist.

Fury could have been the start of one of my most loved novels ever, but no, it was just a novella, and very much a homage to Asimov. :)

The Star Surgeon's Apprentice was scary and delightful at the same time, and dare I say horrific? Oh yes. A dear story.

Skipping a few stories, I get to Troika, and don't miss out with a little listening time to the original music as you read this beauty. There's a bit of reality modification, but mostly it's very Russian. :)

Sleepover really grew on me by the end until I was completely giddy with the implications and the imagery.

Trauma Pod was an absolutely delicious body-mod Punk-AI horrorshow and I just had to laugh.

Las Log of the Lachrimosa will be fun along with Diamond Dogs for those of you still devoted to the Revelation Space books. I know I enjoyed them.

The Old Man and the Martian Sea was a fine capstone to the stories and I think it might have been better moved below Babelsberg, but I still liked them both. :)

In some ways, this short story collection is better than at least 3 or 4 of his full length novels. That's pretty impressive since he writes truly mean novels. :)

Thanks goes to Netgalley for this wonderful opportunity to read one of the greats of SF!