The Revelation Space Universe

Born in Barry, South Wales in 1966, Alastair Reynolds spent his early years in Cornwall (south west England) and returned to South Wales where he spent his school years. He studied astronomy at university and then did his doctorate in the subject.

He's not only academically qualified to write science fiction but he also worked for many years for European Space Agency in the Netherlands.

He has now returned to live in Glamorgan, South Wales.

Chasm City, the second novel set in the Revelation Space universe, is the story of a trained killer, Tanner Mirabel, who wants revenge on Reivich for murdering a client. He pursues the murderer from the planet, Sky's Edge, across a 15-year interstellar gap to the Yellowstone world and its tawdry and dangerous Chasm City, a sinkhole of vice and degradation where the melding plague has caused mutations in the inhabitants.

The plot twists and turns, making it essential to read 'just one more page' to discover how Tanner Mirabel, as hard-boiled as any Raymond Chandler private eye, discovers the truth.

This book won the British SF Association Award.

The third SF novel in the series continues the story begun in Revelation Space, with some links to Chasm City.

Control of the cache of hell-class weapons introduced in the first novel is an issue while the alien intelligence also plays a major role. Known as the Inhibitors, they want to eliminate all civilizations capable of space travel and use planets to build the machines to destroy them.

We meet Ana Khouri and Ilia Volyova again as well as the captain of the Nostalgia for Infinity who has become part of the ship due to the melding plague. The planet Resurgam and its current inhabitants are also a main part of the plot.

In the universe, humanity has split into two main groups: the mechanically enhanced Conjoiners and the Demarchists.

The Conjoiners know about the Inhibitors and are trying to build starships to escape from them. We meet a pig-man, as tough and ruthless as they come, with a distrust and hatred for all humans.

The destiny of the main characters resolves in Resurgam's planetary system, a target for the Inhibitors...

This novel completes the story which began in Revelation Space and Redemption Ark.

Although the novel introduces new characters whose tales form a large part of the book, we soon become fascinated by the strange planet Hela, another world with an ancient extinct civilization. A prophet infected with a religious virus has infected others. Now the main activities are the planetary treks of mobile cathedrals across the surface of the world. Their aim is to watch the sun, Haldora, to see if it 'blinks'. This is an event that occurs periodically but has recently become more frequent. It is seen as a portent of the end of the world.

Rashmika Els, a young girl native to Hela, manages to infiltrate the main cathedral to discover the fate of her brother who has disappeared after leaving home to join it. She becomes the instrument of disaster for the religious fanatics and helps to resolve the mystery of the 'blinking sun'.

Our heroes from the earlier novels come to the planet seeking answers to the problem of the Inhibitors. After they arrive, they must face a dilemma between eventual extinction or the possibility of something just as bad.

A Prefect is a kind of policeman in the force called the Panoply and this one, Tom Dreyfus, is the best.

Still in the Revelation Space universe, his jurisdiction covers the utopian society of the Glitter Band, a huge swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, site of Chasm City, but before the events recounted in the earlier novels so it is free of the melding plague.

When an attack against a Glitter Band habitat takes place, it becomes clear that it isn't as simple as it first appears when Dreyfus starts investigating. He discovers the involvement of powerful people including the sinister Aurora who may once have been human.

We follow the engrossing and thrilling investigation as secrets are revealed and the plots twists and turns.