Promotional Information

Tomorrow's landmark SF, here now with sensational new cover designs Science Fiction on the grandest and most commercial scale: huge scope; big, exciting ideas; an unputdownable story Established Alastair Reynolds as one of Britain's most exciting new SF writers 'Gonzo cybergoth space opera: intensely compelling, darkly inmtelligent, hugely ambitious' Paul McAuley, winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award 'REVELATION SPACE heralds the arrival of a major new talent' Amazon.co.uk 'The most stunning and original alien artefact in modern science fiction' Stephen Baxter

About the Author

Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. He spent 12 years working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. Since 1991 he has lived in the Netherlands, near Leiden, with his wife.

Reviews

This distant-past/far-future, hard sci-fi tour de force probes a galaxy-wide enigma: why does spacefaring humanity encounter so few remnants of intelligent life? Excavating the 900,000-year-old Amarantin civilization on its home world, Resurgam, archaeologist Dan Sylveste discovers evidence of a splinter cult that abandoned Resurgam for the stars but returned, only to be swallowed up by a mysterious cataclysm that destroyed all the Amarantins. Aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity, a vast light-hugger ship in interstellar space, the ominous Triumvirate of cyborg starfarers seeks Sylveste to heal its captain, afflicted by the deadly Melding Plague, which turns once-humans into their own semisentient spaceships. In Chasm City on the slum-ridden world of Yellowstone, assassin Ana Khouri joins the Nostalgia's crew intent on killing Sylveste. Clearly intoxicated by cutting-edge scientific research in bioengineering, space physics, cybernetics Reynolds spins a ravishingly inventive tale of intrigue. Hard SF addicts will applaud the author's talent for creating convincing alien beings and the often uneasy merging of human and machine intelligence, depicted here as nearly too frighteningly real for comfort. Others, however, may find these human-cybernetic hybrid characters chilling, dispassionate (except for their built-in drives toward revenge and murder) and foreboding. Reynolds's vision of a future dominated by artificial intelligence trembles with the ultimate cold of the dark between the stars. (June 12) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.