Galactic North

[sawyl]

Another book of short stories, or probably more properly novellas, this time Galatic North by Alastair Reynolds. Here are a few thoughts.

The first few stories, each of which is set in the Revelation Space universe, add depth to the early history of the two main factions, the Conjoiners and the Demarchists. The next two stories are both shipboard, one a romance and the other a sinister mystery, involving stowaways and dangerous diseases. The final stories are all tales of dark obsession: a collector driven by his desire to obtain a unique specimen; a group of ex-soldiers determined to bring a war criminal to justice, no matter where the trail leads; and a pair of former friends turned deadly enemies, engaged in vast pursuit across thousands of years.

All the stories are good and the tone is pretty consistent — impressive, given that the earliest story was written in 1989 — but three, presumable the ones written specially for the collection, shine like things of beauty.

Weather, the story of a lost Conjoiner woman, who crashes into the previously regular life of Inigo the shipmaster and finds that she's inadvertently snagged his heart. The romance is deftly handled and the characters are rather charming, but the knowledge of their mutual differences and the constant threat of a pursuing pirate ship hang like a sword over their growing relationship.

Grafenwalder's Beastiary, set in orbit around post-plague Yellowstone, follows a collector in his attempts to out-do an upstart rival. During their game of one-upmanship, he finally comes across his ultimate prize, a semi-mythical human-alien hybrid from Europa. What really makes this story is the sense of doomed fate that floats around Grafenwalder like a cloud and the way that he gradually, inexorably, pushes himself into into the pit of his own damnation. A superb gothic shocker of a tale.

Nightingale, set on Sky's Edge, follows a group of soldiers as they board an abandoned medical ship. Confronted with their own bad memories of the ship — all had been patients at some point during the war — they're ill-prepared to find the ship rather less dormant than they'd hoped. The point, when it comes, is viciously sharp and rather thought provoking.

If I haven't enthused about the other stories, it's not because I didn't enjoy them — I did — it's more that the three that I've slavered over blew the top off my evaluation curve.