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and how I spent today, and yesterday:
Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space is amazing. It uses derivations of the word 'dizziness' too often but oh dear god it is amazing.
It is hard sf, and while the plot eventually overtook the science the setup was mostly about special relativity and whatnot, not least about how goddamn slow the speed of light is in terms of the scale of the observable universe. And Revelation Space is made of scale. I figure anyone who's even slightly nerdy about physics is capable of being turned on by scale, yet I don't recall reading any book that evokes the idea so thoroughly as this one. Even on its more human level it deals with the very old and the very vast, and with the most extreme environmental conditions you can wrap physics or biopunk around.
And there's time dilation and clinical immortality; when I grow up I want to be an Ultranaut insomniac like Volyova and it's beautiful how, among so many details that get followed up in depths, there is no why of her or anyone else. (Total aside, but I have thought for a rather long time now that one of fandom's problems is that it massively overrates characterisation. THERE ARE OTHER VITAL ELEMENTS TOO, BOTH IN THE STORIES YOU ARE INTO AND THE ONES YOU ARE WRITING YOURSELF.)
That she doesn't sleep in deep space like the others isn't something that the book even draws attention to - it's just not-there, insomnia inferred by the absence of cryogenic sleep. Because there's way too much else for her to do. I would so go for that. Also, Volyova and Khouri are totally fucking.
There's the deliberate analogies between organisms and data, the imperfect replications and the difficulty of saying what resides where. (see: biog!Calvin talking about being the real Calvin). There's the Juggler sea and Captain Brannigan, who managed to be one of my favourite characters in spite of never, like, actually being awake ever. There is the meta-level win of the events of the first half of the book occurring in an order that would make no goddamn sense if it wasn't a book about special relativity, and we're told that Pascale's book also works the same way. There is the way the plot is drawn out detail by detail and (at least until close to the end) it is all logical enough that you can get ahead of it, sometimes.
I feel kinda small and lost just trying to review it, really. SO REALLY IF YOU LIKE SCIENCE AND LIKE GOOD STORIES YOU NEED TO READ THIS, RIGHT NOW, I MEAN IT.
So now I only have one job to worry about (though I am getting more shifts there so am not out by THAT much moneywise) and the pollen is finally receding, so I need to get walking again. By 'receding' I mean that the pollen count has dropped down to the mid-700s. I am told that over 120 is considered 'very high' in places that are not here.
The worst pollen count so far this year was 5733, recorded on April 7th. No, really.
It is hard sf, and while the plot eventually overtook the science the setup was mostly about special relativity and whatnot, not least about how goddamn slow the speed of light is in terms of the scale of the observable universe. And Revelation Space is made of scale. I figure anyone who's even slightly nerdy about physics is capable of being turned on by scale, yet I don't recall reading any book that evokes the idea so thoroughly as this one. Even on its more human level it deals with the very old and the very vast, and with the most extreme environmental conditions you can wrap physics or biopunk around.
And there's time dilation and clinical immortality; when I grow up I want to be an Ultranaut insomniac like Volyova and it's beautiful how, among so many details that get followed up in depths, there is no why of her or anyone else. (Total aside, but I have thought for a rather long time now that one of fandom's problems is that it massively overrates characterisation. THERE ARE OTHER VITAL ELEMENTS TOO, BOTH IN THE STORIES YOU ARE INTO AND THE ONES YOU ARE WRITING YOURSELF.)
That she doesn't sleep in deep space like the others isn't something that the book even draws attention to - it's just not-there, insomnia inferred by the absence of cryogenic sleep. Because there's way too much else for her to do. I would so go for that. Also, Volyova and Khouri are totally fucking.
There's the deliberate analogies between organisms and data, the imperfect replications and the difficulty of saying what resides where. (see: biog!Calvin talking about being the real Calvin). There's the Juggler sea and Captain Brannigan, who managed to be one of my favourite characters in spite of never, like, actually being awake ever. There is the meta-level win of the events of the first half of the book occurring in an order that would make no goddamn sense if it wasn't a book about special relativity, and we're told that Pascale's book also works the same way. There is the way the plot is drawn out detail by detail and (at least until close to the end) it is all logical enough that you can get ahead of it, sometimes.
I feel kinda small and lost just trying to review it, really. SO REALLY IF YOU LIKE SCIENCE AND LIKE GOOD STORIES YOU NEED TO READ THIS, RIGHT NOW, I MEAN IT.
So now I only have one job to worry about (though I am getting more shifts there so am not out by THAT much moneywise) and the pollen is finally receding, so I need to get walking again. By 'receding' I mean that the pollen count has dropped down to the mid-700s. I am told that over 120 is considered 'very high' in places that are not here.
The worst pollen count so far this year was 5733, recorded on April 7th. No, really.