Available in the collections, Beyond the Aquila Rift and Deep Navigation.

Finally it seems that Alastair has gotten the multi-universe theory nonsense bug out of his system, had a good reboot and got back to his sensible story telling.   We thank thee oh gods of literature.

Yes folks, it back to some good old Alastair short story telling. Not much sci-fi going on in this, more a human nature thing.   But it's all good and i enjoyed it.

Next up in Alastair's bibliographic time line is Thousandth Night, which is the first book in the House of Suns trilogy.   I'm certainly looking forward to a bit of long-form Alastair after all these shorties.

Merged review:

Available in the collections, Beyond the Aquila Rift and Deep Navigation.

Finally it seems that Alastair has gotten the multi-universe theory nonsense bug out of his system, had a good reboot and got back to his sensible story telling.   We thank thee oh gods of literature.

Yes folks, it back to some good old Alastair short story telling. Not much sci-fi going on in this, more a human nature thing.   But it's all good and i enjoyed it.

Next up in Alastair's bibliographic time line is Thousandth Night, which is the first book in the House of Suns trilogy.   I'm certainly looking forward to a bit of long-form Alastair after all these shorties. ( )

Basically space opera. Faster than light travel is assumed, the scenarios on invented planets.
I prefer "Hard" SF where the Laws of Physics still hold. ( )

I bought this because I knew it contained at least one novella I hadn't read that wasn't easily obtainable elsewhere. I now wish I had waited for the UK edition which has a much better cover. I also wish that the editors had done a better job - by which I mean who-ever was responsible for ensuring a high quality, accurate text. This edition contains a large number of mistakes involving wrong word order, missing words or incorrect homophones. I don't know if the UK edition is any better in this respect.

There's some great stuff in this collection but as with any other short story collection, there's some variation in quality. On this front what concerned me was a trend towards poorer efforts as the book goes on. Since they are in publication order, does this mean Reynolds is getting worse?

That said, this is still a great introduction to Reynolds for those unfamiliar with him and is worth the price for Diamond Dogs alone. ( )

I remember [b:Galactic North|89188|Galactic North|Alastair Reynolds|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171150277s/89188.jpg|1113882] 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! ( )

I thought this was all of his short stories - it's certainly hefty enough at 646 pages (inc notes) - but it doesn't include some I've read already, so it's merely a highlight of some of his previously published work with a few new ones. But they're all good. Most are very good, and a few are excellent indeed. They all feature Reynolds' trademark hard sf - no known physics laws are violated - and usually on the darker end of the spectrum of people's motivations as are his novels. Given the limitations on space travel that hard sf imposes, AI and robotics as well as distributed intelligences feature in a lot of the stories. Part of the fun is always in working out which if any of the characters are actually human - depending on how far you want to stretch that definition.

A couple of the opening stories are set in the Revelation Space universe giving a little back story to Calvain and Felka's time on Mars. Also featuring are House of Suns, (the short story here is better than the novel I think) and one from the Blue Remebered Earth, although with a very different cast and mindset.

A good introduction to Reynolds' writing if you haven't come across it before (shame on you go and look p the other 60 odd works he's had published.) and a worthy and fascinating read of further explorations if you're already familiar. ( )