Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Ace Books (New York, 2003). Ace mass-market edition, 1st printing. 694 pages. $7.99.
Description
Named one of the best novels of the year by both Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle, Alastair Reynolds's debut Revelation Space redefined the space opera. With Chasm City, Reynolds invites you to reenter the bizarre universe of his imagination as he redefines Hell...The once-utopian Chasm City-a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet-has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted-from the people to the very buildings they inhabit-only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a lowlife postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member LisCarey
Chasm City is set in Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, a century or so after the events of The Prefect and Elysium Fire. Or, put another way, some years after the end of the Belle Epoch, the golden age of the height of human civilization in the Yellowstone system, where Chasm City on the
The Melding Plague infects all nanotechnology, including nanotech implants in human beings, and causes it to mutate and distort in ways that in machinery is disturbing and dangerous, and in humans is horrific. The near-utopian life of the Belle Epoch civilization in the Yellowstone system depended on that nanotech and what it made possible. The wealthy who were able to get their implants out, or who sealed themselves into high-tech coffins that allow them to live lives with the tools and pleasures of implants, live in relative comfort in the Canopy of Chasm City. The non-wealthy live in much less desirable areas lower down, and the lowest and worst of those areas is the Mulch.
The main character is Tanner Mirabel, or at least, he sincerely believes he is. He comes to Yellowstone from the world of Sky's Edge, and he's hunting the man who killed his friend and employer, Cahuella, an arms dealer and, by many accounts, a sadistic monster. Tanner has a better opinion of him than many others, indeed thinks of him as being in some ways a good man. Cahuella's wife tells Tanner he's better than Tanner realizes, that he was better than his reputation when she met him, and has continued to improve since.
Tanner is one of the two narrative voices in the book, the other being Sky Haussmann, born on a slow colony ship from Earth to the intended colony world of Journey's End. The ship has a crew of about 150, and a cargo of tens of thousands of sleepers, who will be awakened on arrival at their new home. We meet Haussmann as a young boy, and follow him as he rises through the crew, by intelligence, hard work, and, oh yes, treachery. He becomes both the hero and the villain of the story of how the planet--now called Sky's Edge--was successfully settled.
He also becomes a religious figure, inspiration for a cult, and his followers have created a virus that gives those infected visions of his life.
Tanner's home is Sky's Edge, and he has become infected with the virus.
Tanner leaves Sky's Edge and goes to Yellowstone, after Cahuella and his wife are killed, pursuing the killer. Without FTL, the trip takes fifteen years, and it's during those fifteen years that Yellowstone goes from the very height of civilization to collapse under the effects of the Melding Plague, and struggling to preserve any civilization at all. The Glitter Band is now the Rust Band, and only parts of Chasm City are civilized and pleasant--and even that part has a bloodthirsty edge that perhaps was just no so apparent before. Along the way, he meets the religious order that cares for those who awake from cold sleep with their minds not yet fully reintegrated, the entrepreneurs who, for a price, will remove your implants, hopefully before the Melding Plague gets you. He meets some interesting people, some of whom are part of one of Chasm City's more bloodthirsty sports, and some very attractive women who may or may not be his friends.
His sleeping visions of the life of Sky Haussmann become more frequent, more intrusive, and start to depart from the official version of Sky's life.
In his waking hours, outside the visions, he starts to learn some confusing and disturbing things about himself and those around him.
And we start to ask ourselves, as he is, who is Tanner Mirabel, really?
There are twists on twists, here, and the answer may not be what you think.
Tanner, Sky, and the people Tanner meets, are interesting and compelling characters, not necessarily likable, and not necessarily who you think.
It's an absorbing and exciting book.
I received this audiobook as a gift.
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planetary surface, and the Glitter Band, made up of thousands of orbital habitats, offered the near-idyllic life of your choice, until the Melding Plague brought it crashing down.The Melding Plague infects all nanotechnology, including nanotech implants in human beings, and causes it to mutate and distort in ways that in machinery is disturbing and dangerous, and in humans is horrific. The near-utopian life of the Belle Epoch civilization in the Yellowstone system depended on that nanotech and what it made possible. The wealthy who were able to get their implants out, or who sealed themselves into high-tech coffins that allow them to live lives with the tools and pleasures of implants, live in relative comfort in the Canopy of Chasm City. The non-wealthy live in much less desirable areas lower down, and the lowest and worst of those areas is the Mulch.
The main character is Tanner Mirabel, or at least, he sincerely believes he is. He comes to Yellowstone from the world of Sky's Edge, and he's hunting the man who killed his friend and employer, Cahuella, an arms dealer and, by many accounts, a sadistic monster. Tanner has a better opinion of him than many others, indeed thinks of him as being in some ways a good man. Cahuella's wife tells Tanner he's better than Tanner realizes, that he was better than his reputation when she met him, and has continued to improve since.
Tanner is one of the two narrative voices in the book, the other being Sky Haussmann, born on a slow colony ship from Earth to the intended colony world of Journey's End. The ship has a crew of about 150, and a cargo of tens of thousands of sleepers, who will be awakened on arrival at their new home. We meet Haussmann as a young boy, and follow him as he rises through the crew, by intelligence, hard work, and, oh yes, treachery. He becomes both the hero and the villain of the story of how the planet--now called Sky's Edge--was successfully settled.
He also becomes a religious figure, inspiration for a cult, and his followers have created a virus that gives those infected visions of his life.
Tanner's home is Sky's Edge, and he has become infected with the virus.
Tanner leaves Sky's Edge and goes to Yellowstone, after Cahuella and his wife are killed, pursuing the killer. Without FTL, the trip takes fifteen years, and it's during those fifteen years that Yellowstone goes from the very height of civilization to collapse under the effects of the Melding Plague, and struggling to preserve any civilization at all. The Glitter Band is now the Rust Band, and only parts of Chasm City are civilized and pleasant--and even that part has a bloodthirsty edge that perhaps was just no so apparent before. Along the way, he meets the religious order that cares for those who awake from cold sleep with their minds not yet fully reintegrated, the entrepreneurs who, for a price, will remove your implants, hopefully before the Melding Plague gets you. He meets some interesting people, some of whom are part of one of Chasm City's more bloodthirsty sports, and some very attractive women who may or may not be his friends.
His sleeping visions of the life of Sky Haussmann become more frequent, more intrusive, and start to depart from the official version of Sky's life.
In his waking hours, outside the visions, he starts to learn some confusing and disturbing things about himself and those around him.
And we start to ask ourselves, as he is, who is Tanner Mirabel, really?
There are twists on twists, here, and the answer may not be what you think.
Tanner, Sky, and the people Tanner meets, are interesting and compelling characters, not necessarily likable, and not necessarily who you think.
It's an absorbing and exciting book.
I received this audiobook as a gift.
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LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
An enjoyable space opera of the modern door-stopper variety of a la Reynolds, Peter Hamilton, and M John Harrison . The narrator is on a mission of revenge which takes him (eventually) to the city of title. Fairly early on he begins to have dreams that tell a completely different story of the
I recall only one scene, involving a space elevator, that went in for the out-scaled theatrics typical for this subgenre. That's fine by me, since I found such scenes irritating when E E Smith did them 80 years ago, and I find them even more annoying given the improved quality of writing found today. For the most part the action in this novel stays in one relatively small spatial region for extended periods of time, split over the two interwoven narratives. Characterization is minimal but sufficient. Recommended for modern space opera fans.
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colonists coming to settle the planetary system. All eventually weaves together. I recall only one scene, involving a space elevator, that went in for the out-scaled theatrics typical for this subgenre. That's fine by me, since I found such scenes irritating when E E Smith did them 80 years ago, and I find them even more annoying given the improved quality of writing found today. For the most part the action in this novel stays in one relatively small spatial region for extended periods of time, split over the two interwoven narratives. Characterization is minimal but sufficient. Recommended for modern space opera fans.
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LibraryThing member EricaKline
I would call this an epic "space opera"; packed with adventure, plot-twists, incredible descriptions and a believeable imaginary world. A "page-turner"; great.
Erica Kline, 12/12/2002
Erica Kline, 12/12/2002
LibraryThing member topps
In this worthy follow-up to his well-received first novel, Revelation Space (2001), an especially intelligent far-future foray, British author Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale. Honor requires that Tanner Mirabel, a weapons specialist/bodyguard, track
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down and destroy the man who killed his boss. Tanner's pursuit takes him to the planet Yellowstone, where a nano-plague has mutated the glittering human cultural showcase of Chasm City into something bizarre, dark and extremely dangerous. He's aided or threatened or both, at different times by a host of human and not-quite-human characters. Relying on his own combat skills and hard-boiled attitude, Tanner keeps seeking revenge even though he begins to wonder why he's doing it, especially after intrusions of other people's memories lead him to suspect he's not who he thinks he is. Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points. Presented in a sustained burst of weirdness, the novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context, and the loose ends eventually tie neatly together. The narrator's tough-guy stance works too, both as an expression of Tanner's personality and as a defensive reaction to the setting's intimidating strangeness. Think of a combination of the movie Blade Runner and one of Jack Vance's ironic SF adventure novels. If the ending feels a bit flat, that's probably inevitable after the exuberant display of wonders earlier. Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
It was worse than you are thinking. If the plague had only killed our machines, millions would still have died, but that would have been a manageable catastrophe, something from which we could have recovered. But the plague went beyond mere destruction, into a realm much closer to artistry, albeit
It was a time of horror.
It is not yet over.
Most of the new arrivals to Yellowstone have been in cold storage for the voyage between the stars, so their knowledge of their destination is years or decades out of date. They expect to find themselves in the sophisticated society of Yellowstone’s belle époque, not knowing that Chasm City is in the grips of the Melding Plague, and that the once fabulous habitats in orbit around the planet have been so ravaged that the Glitter Band is now known as the Rust Belt.
Security consultant, assassin and ex-sniper Tanner Mirabel arrives in Chasm City from Sky's Edge on the trail of a murderer. After being infected by a virus created by a religious cult on his home world, he also finds scenes from the life of Sky Haussmann (the revered and reviled founder of Sky's Edge) playing out in his dreams. It's over 200 pages before Tanner actually makes it down to the surface of Yellowstone, having managed to get himself into plenty of trouble already, on a space elevator, in a hospice and in the shuttle down from orbit. From then onwards, the pace picks up as he finds himself in a warped landscape of mutated buildings, in danger from the low-life of the Mulch and game-playing aristocrats from up in the Canopy as he tries to track down his quarry.
From the start I found Tanner surprisingly unsuspicious and unobservant for a supposedly highly trained assassin, ex-sniper, bodyguard and security chief, and noticed a lot of inconsistencies in things people did and said. For once I was paying attention to all the clues and managed to work out what was going out before it was actually spelled out, although at one point I was misled by remembering how Dieterling had turned down the loan of Tanner's night-sight goggles before I got back on the right track.
The first couple of hundred pages did drag somewhat. but once I started to unravel the mystery of what exactly was going on, I got more involved in the story, but there were some things that still didn't really hang together properly.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***
When I read about the ambush in which Tanner's boss was killed, I couldn't believe how unsuspicious Tanner and Cahuella were after finding the imposter in their midst. They knew that he could only have been made to look and behave so much like the real Rodriguez by the Ultras (off-world traders with a much higher technological level than the inhabitants of Sky's Edge), but they just assumed that it was probably a coincidence and that maybe the Ultras had not known that Reivich intended to use the imposter to kill Cahuella. For some reason, it didn't occur to them that if the Ultras were helping Reivich against Cahuella, maybe Reivich's group were not where the tracking devices said they were, and the Ultras might also have betrayed Cahuella's movements to Reivich. If it was me I would have broken camp and moved away as fast as possible, leaving any Ultra-supplied equipment behind so that no-one could use it to track me. But no, they just set guards as normal and everyone else went to bed, expecting that Reivich would walk into their ambush the next morning as planned! Whoever's point of view the reader was seeing these events from, this just doesn't make sense! Someone should have been more suspicious, definitely Tanner and more than likely Cahuella too. I was also unconvinced by the ease of Sky's sudden promotion to head of security and subsequent rise to Captain of the Santiago. Even though he managed to manipulate events to make other people appear to be guilty of his misdeeds, he was suspected, and mud sticks - especially when it happens more than once.
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an artistry of a uniquely perverted and sadistic kind. It caused our machines to evolve uncontrollably - out of our control, at least - seeking bizarre new symbioses. Our buildings turned into Gothic nightmares, trapping us before we could escape their lethal transfigurations. The machines in our cells, in our blood, in our heads, began to break their shackles - blurring into us corrupting living matter. we became glistening larval fusions of flesh and machine. When we buried the dead they kept growing, spreading together, fusing with the city's architecture.It was a time of horror.
It is not yet over.
Most of the new arrivals to Yellowstone have been in cold storage for the voyage between the stars, so their knowledge of their destination is years or decades out of date. They expect to find themselves in the sophisticated society of Yellowstone’s belle époque, not knowing that Chasm City is in the grips of the Melding Plague, and that the once fabulous habitats in orbit around the planet have been so ravaged that the Glitter Band is now known as the Rust Belt.
Security consultant, assassin and ex-sniper Tanner Mirabel arrives in Chasm City from Sky's Edge on the trail of a murderer. After being infected by a virus created by a religious cult on his home world, he also finds scenes from the life of Sky Haussmann (the revered and reviled founder of Sky's Edge) playing out in his dreams. It's over 200 pages before Tanner actually makes it down to the surface of Yellowstone, having managed to get himself into plenty of trouble already, on a space elevator, in a hospice and in the shuttle down from orbit. From then onwards, the pace picks up as he finds himself in a warped landscape of mutated buildings, in danger from the low-life of the Mulch and game-playing aristocrats from up in the Canopy as he tries to track down his quarry.
From the start I found Tanner surprisingly unsuspicious and unobservant for a supposedly highly trained assassin, ex-sniper, bodyguard and security chief, and noticed a lot of inconsistencies in things people did and said. For once I was paying attention to all the clues and managed to work out what was going out before it was actually spelled out, although at one point I was misled by remembering how Dieterling had turned down the loan of Tanner's night-sight goggles before I got back on the right track.
The first couple of hundred pages did drag somewhat. but once I started to unravel the mystery of what exactly was going on, I got more involved in the story, but there were some things that still didn't really hang together properly.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***
When I read about the ambush in which Tanner's boss was killed, I couldn't believe how unsuspicious Tanner and Cahuella were after finding the imposter in their midst. They knew that he could only have been made to look and behave so much like the real Rodriguez by the Ultras (off-world traders with a much higher technological level than the inhabitants of Sky's Edge), but they just assumed that it was probably a coincidence and that maybe the Ultras had not known that Reivich intended to use the imposter to kill Cahuella. For some reason, it didn't occur to them that if the Ultras were helping Reivich against Cahuella, maybe Reivich's group were not where the tracking devices said they were, and the Ultras might also have betrayed Cahuella's movements to Reivich. If it was me I would have broken camp and moved away as fast as possible, leaving any Ultra-supplied equipment behind so that no-one could use it to track me. But no, they just set guards as normal and everyone else went to bed, expecting that Reivich would walk into their ambush the next morning as planned! Whoever's point of view the reader was seeing these events from, this just doesn't make sense! Someone should have been more suspicious, definitely Tanner and more than likely Cahuella too. I was also unconvinced by the ease of Sky's sudden promotion to head of security and subsequent rise to Captain of the Santiago. Even though he managed to manipulate events to make other people appear to be guilty of his misdeeds, he was suspected, and mud sticks - especially when it happens more than once.
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LibraryThing member FerociousOxide
One of the very best Science Fiction novels ever published, this work (set in the Revelation Space universe) is perhaps Alastair Reynolds' highest achievement. Gripping and taught in its entirety, Reynolds succeeds in tying this adventure into the rest of his Revelation Space universe. Small nods
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are waiting for those who have read his other works, yet his characterization, plot pacing, and dialogue do not suffer. Without reservation I give Chasm City a wholehearted recommendation. Show Less
LibraryThing member SwampIrish
Alastair Reynolds is a tremendous science fiction writer. This book has detective noir, a devastating plague that attacks machinery (including the machinery that humans have implanted to enhance themselves), and a virus that causes the infected to have paranoid visions of a long dead psychopathic
Reynolds writes the science parts with precision and intelligence without making the reader feel like an idiot. He draws the reader in to the story and then mind-blowingly turns everything completely around.
This is the second book I have read in the Revelation Space universe and I can't see waiting around very long to read the rest.
Great read!
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cult leader. This book may not have it all, but what it has is incredibly cool.Reynolds writes the science parts with precision and intelligence without making the reader feel like an idiot. He draws the reader in to the story and then mind-blowingly turns everything completely around.
This is the second book I have read in the Revelation Space universe and I can't see waiting around very long to read the rest.
Great read!
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LibraryThing member gbill
Alastair Reynolds’ tome ‘Chasm City’ isn’t my usual fare, but I gave it a try because it was so highly recommended by an old colleague, and I have to say, it made for enjoyable reading. The story is really two parallel stories; in the first, a professional assassin is chasing another man
I loved how realistic the novel was in its characters, none of which are simply good or evil, and also for humanity, who we see still being cruel to one another hundreds of years in the future. The technical advancements conceived by Reynolds have that element of truth to them, and he’s highly creative in extrapolating what advances in genetics and nanotechnology could lead to. Unfortunately he gets mired in some stilted dialogue at times, questionable character motivation, and an ending that isn’t completely satisfactory, though one part of it is very cool, and the stories do come together. Overall, quite solid, and worth reading.
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across a vast amount of space, from one world to another, because of murders committed in the past. The world they get to has been decimated by a virus which caused all of the various micro-machines in society, including those within buildings and bodies, to go haywire, and lawlessness now reigns. The assassin suffers from partial amnesia and his own life is gradually revealed to him quite effectively by Reynolds, and it goes far beyond simply recalling forgotten things. The second story from centuries before is told in flashbacks he sees possibly because of the virus, and is about how the first of those worlds was colonized by Earth, starting with a flotilla of spaceships making a multi-generational flight across space. The ships become rivals over the years, there are creepy secrets they come across in space, and the son of one of the ship’s officers grows up innocently enough at first, but turns marvelously dark along the way. The first time we see a character known as Clown advising him is truly chilling, and great.I loved how realistic the novel was in its characters, none of which are simply good or evil, and also for humanity, who we see still being cruel to one another hundreds of years in the future. The technical advancements conceived by Reynolds have that element of truth to them, and he’s highly creative in extrapolating what advances in genetics and nanotechnology could lead to. Unfortunately he gets mired in some stilted dialogue at times, questionable character motivation, and an ending that isn’t completely satisfactory, though one part of it is very cool, and the stories do come together. Overall, quite solid, and worth reading.
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LibraryThing member jkdavies
fantastic re-read, as ever, the unfurling of how the city grew up is wonderful in it's details, and the stories of the machine race chilling and yet seemingly inconsequential here but foreshadowing the later books in the universes and adding depth.
The lost memory trick works here as a story device
The lost memory trick works here as a story device
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precisely because it is so multi-levelled, not a singular plot denouement. Show Less
LibraryThing member jcopenha
Just as good as the other stuff I've read by him. He creates awesome worlds and is a master at tying multiple stories together. Couldn't put it down for the 3 days it took me to read it.
LibraryThing member RobertDay
Though a stand-alone novel set in the same universe as his earlier 'Revelation Space', it does help to have read the earlier novel so as to have some idea of the environment and history. But the story is involving and well-realised, even though I began to see the eventual outcome from about
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half-way/two-thirds in. The hero, Mirabell Tanner, is a fallible man who has done just that - let his employer down, big time, in his last job and allowed firstly himself to become involved with the employer's wife, and then, through inattention, allowed her to be killed. But things are, of course, more complex than that. The settings are well-drawn and vivid. Held my attention on a long journey across Europe despite competing attractions! Show Less
LibraryThing member cnrivera
Chasm City was my first Alastair Reynolds novel, and it definitely turned me into a fan. I loved almost everything about this story--the characters, the setting, and the history. There are a lot of twisty-turny plot elements that you might not see coming, and the bits that tie into Reynolds's other
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books from the Revelation Space universe are really interesting as well. His descriptions are detailed and his world-building is pretty amazing. My only quibble is about the ending--it was a bit out there and just a little confusing. But other than that, I really enjoyed this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member ricaustria
Nice idea book. Kept me going on to the end. Resolution left me cold though but eager enough o read more Reynolds.
LibraryThing member salimbol
An excellent, densely-layered, noir-flavoured sci-fi novel. The multiple plot threads were masterfully wound around each other, the setting was intense and deeply atmospheric, and clever revelations abounded (some of which I guessed in advance, but many were a great and delightful surprise. Of
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course, I probably would have benefitted from reading it in a more compressed timeframe, as I forgot too many details!). I will definitely be looking up more books by this author. Show Less
LibraryThing member stubbyfingers
Set several hundred years in the future, people are now capable of copying their memories to computers, changing their appearance, and artificially prolonging their lifespans. As such, they tend to get bored easily and hang on to grudges for very long amounts of time. This book had a convoluted
I was also somewhat disappointed because I felt like some of the most interesting characters were glossed over and didn't get their due. Sky Haussman's subplot was by far the most interesting, and yet its ending was definitely a let down. Constanza could've done a lot more. And how about Sleek? This psychopathic dolphin barely made an appearance, but when he was first mentioned I thought there would definitely be cool things in store for him. And Gideon? Was there even a point to Gideon's character? Perhaps the characters will have more of a role in other books set in this universe, but in this book they were disappointing
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plot of mistaken/hidden/changing identity. The story was interesting and held my attention easily, but at times it felt rather contrived. For my tastes, there was a bit too much of people holding other people at gunpoint and pausing to explain their lifestory and motivations before finishing the job. I was also somewhat disappointed because I felt like some of the most interesting characters were glossed over and didn't get their due. Sky Haussman's subplot was by far the most interesting, and yet its ending was definitely a let down. Constanza could've done a lot more. And how about Sleek? This psychopathic dolphin barely made an appearance, but when he was first mentioned I thought there would definitely be cool things in store for him. And Gideon? Was there even a point to Gideon's character? Perhaps the characters will have more of a role in other books set in this universe, but in this book they were disappointing
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LibraryThing member charbutton
My second Reynolds of the year. After a few months of little sci-fi, I plunged back in with a 600 page space opera set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe.
Unfortunately Chasm City is not as successful as Revelation Space or Redemption Ark, the second in that series. R Space and R Ark have a
Although it takes a similar long view of history and the impact of long past events, Chasm City focuses on the story of only one man, Tanner Mirabel, who has come to Chasm City to seek revenge for the death of a woman he was tasked to protect. Chasm City was once a centre of wealth, opulence and progress. Arriving seven years after the end of a devatsating plague, Mirabel is confronted with a city of decay and amorality.
There's no doubting that this book is as absorbing as the other Reynolds I have read. Unfortunately the story of one man, however complex, is too little to fill the large number of pages and it started to get predictable towards the end.
Unfortunately Chasm City is not as successful as Revelation Space or Redemption Ark, the second in that series. R Space and R Ark have a
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grand, sweeping feel taking in several groups of people whose histories and future are linked.Although it takes a similar long view of history and the impact of long past events, Chasm City focuses on the story of only one man, Tanner Mirabel, who has come to Chasm City to seek revenge for the death of a woman he was tasked to protect. Chasm City was once a centre of wealth, opulence and progress. Arriving seven years after the end of a devatsating plague, Mirabel is confronted with a city of decay and amorality.
There's no doubting that this book is as absorbing as the other Reynolds I have read. Unfortunately the story of one man, however complex, is too little to fill the large number of pages and it started to get predictable towards the end.
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LibraryThing member santhony
After I read the author’s Revelation Space, I was conflicted as to whether to proceed to Chasm City, which is listed a volume two of a series. Revelation Space was maybe the “hardest” science fiction work I’ve read in the last ten years (maybe some Charles Stross works approach it), and the
While Chasm City is set in the same “universe” as Revelation Space, it is far more approachable and enjoyable, in my opinion. Part of this may be the underlying familiarity provided by the earlier book, but it is also definitely less reliant upon an underlying knowledge of quantum mechanics. Make no mistake, there is an abundance of hard science fiction in this work, as much as I’ve read almost anywhere, however, not the the extent of Revelation Space, and that’s a good thing.
While this is volume two, and set in the same universe, there is very little tie in with the events of Revelation Space. You could certainly read this as a stand-alone novel, but while it is far better, it probably benefits the reader to be familiar with the setting as provided by the earlier work. In any event, I am somewhat shocked that I never read these books earlier (they are roughly 2000 vintage), as I have read hundreds of science fiction books, and this is certainly very well written science fiction.
I would question some of the author’s choices as it relates to life in the far distant future. For example, several characters in his universe chain smoke cigarettes. While I don’t doubt that the future will have its share of narcotics and mood altering drugs, I highly doubt that burning cigarettes in a space environment will make the leap into far distant planetary systems. That these were written prior to the advent of vaping does not excuse the author from what I think it a pretty silly extension of current custom. Other such “mistakes” include the existence of paper money, wrist watches, coffee and leather. Many science fiction writes of even older vintage have done away with all or most of these current items.
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complexity was a little over the top. However, I’d already purchased the first three volumes, so I proceeded to volume two, and I’m glad I did.While Chasm City is set in the same “universe” as Revelation Space, it is far more approachable and enjoyable, in my opinion. Part of this may be the underlying familiarity provided by the earlier book, but it is also definitely less reliant upon an underlying knowledge of quantum mechanics. Make no mistake, there is an abundance of hard science fiction in this work, as much as I’ve read almost anywhere, however, not the the extent of Revelation Space, and that’s a good thing.
While this is volume two, and set in the same universe, there is very little tie in with the events of Revelation Space. You could certainly read this as a stand-alone novel, but while it is far better, it probably benefits the reader to be familiar with the setting as provided by the earlier work. In any event, I am somewhat shocked that I never read these books earlier (they are roughly 2000 vintage), as I have read hundreds of science fiction books, and this is certainly very well written science fiction.
I would question some of the author’s choices as it relates to life in the far distant future. For example, several characters in his universe chain smoke cigarettes. While I don’t doubt that the future will have its share of narcotics and mood altering drugs, I highly doubt that burning cigarettes in a space environment will make the leap into far distant planetary systems. That these were written prior to the advent of vaping does not excuse the author from what I think it a pretty silly extension of current custom. Other such “mistakes” include the existence of paper money, wrist watches, coffee and leather. Many science fiction writes of even older vintage have done away with all or most of these current items.
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LibraryThing member felius
Gritty, fun. Need to pick up more by this author.
LibraryThing member vladmihaisima
Amazing dark space opera, with a story spanning large time period and exploring very baroque places. The story has a lot of unexpected twists and characters are very believable, vivid and evolving on their way. It almost feels like there are powerful, mysterious and unstoppable forces pushing the Alien civilizations, memory loss and recovery, viruses that infect buildings all are intertwined to make a great story
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action forward. The story is about a mercenary, Tanner Mirabel who is on a mission to avenge his former employer. Besides his mission, he also starts getting strange dreams about the expeditions that settled his home planet, in the early days of space colonization. Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
How far down can you bring the science in science-fiction before it becomes simply fiction? For instance, if we image a world were exploration of the moon never ceased, and wherein this exploration led to development and a permanent society but stayed within the context of current existing
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technology, is this science-fiction? Or is science-fiction simply described as anything different than what actually exist technologically? Where does a military drone, with A.I. on the level of the most advanced video game fall? Where does that which is imagined in contemporary fiction end and science fiction begin? At the same time I love (some) Arthur C. Clarke novels as much as I love (some) Alastair Reynolds. One will teach you something incredibly important and clever and the other will use every ounce of illusion to provide blistering entertainment of the kind that has every right to be regarded as significant as any SF. Cosy SF is pointless. It is based on taking an arbitrary point in development and stopping there as if no advancement is made past that point. It is more artificial to create Mundane than futuristic because there is no evidence technology will come to a stopping point. I read SF to be inspired with the grand and the yet to be. If I want what is and has been I can read History. One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait until you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence. A lot of the "I-want-Space-Opera-vastness" turns out to just be a cry for something as simple as, say, Alentejo, or maybe Trás-os-Montes, but painted in very big letters and blocks; the lives of quadrillions of people who speak a billion languages are not more interesting than the lives of million of people who speak thousands of languages; for story purposes they're the same thing with six more zeros. Good Space Opera is not so much about plausibility as it is about ceasing to mindlessly buy into tropes that have been extant for 60 years or more. You don't want FTL? Fine. You don't want "Wait Calculation"plot devices in your SF (Sky Haussmann's spaceships periodically receive data from their point of origin with details on how to upgrade their ships and engines, i.e., later launched ships beat the earlier launched ones is a pretty standard SF trope)? Fine too. Are you sure cryosleep can even work? What are you going to do if it doesn't? You don't think aliens can eat carrots, or “ever” live on Earth even though they breathe oxygen, because microorganisms will clog up whatever they use for lungs? Cool. GO MAKE UP SOME NEW SHIT. Stop depending on those old old old ideas as though they were a suit of clothes or a reliable classic car. What baffles me when I think of Alan Turing, is that he wanted to create a machine that could think and be smart, he thought of that in a world where there was none of that, he created machines and started that road of discovery. Today, we have computers and smartphones, and the only think that I find closer of what Alan Turing was pursuing, are the algorithms that detect your pattern of likes and dislikes in a web browser and make suggestions to you. We are so far in having that Artificial Intelligence that still the "Turing Test" is valid. I wonder if he were to be alive in this era, how disappointed he would be, the machines that can think only exist in SF. The same happens with the Space Elevator that both Clarke (and Reynolds) use. In Reynolds' case the stupid first chapter almost made me abandon it. A space elevator? 1st floor: Perfumes, 2nd floor: Ladies Footwear, ..., 5th thousandth floor: Roof top Observation Deck and Smokie Joe's Cigar Emporium and Smoking Area. Ever play "crack the whip" as a kid? A wind storm, even a moderate one, at the base would whip that thing around and snap everything off at the top. Plus. You can't use centrifugal force at that height with the (Earth or any other planet or structure) rotating as slowly as it does. Attach vast ball of string to same? Let earth's gravity pull on the ball and it will thus unravel as it descends? Intrepid astronaut-to-be catches flailing end of string and commences climb. (Where's a patent-office when one needs one?) Nope. The string has mass unfortunately. How long does a piece of string have to be before it snaps under it's own weight? A lot less than 23,000 miles...The original space elevator proposed by Arthur C. Clarke (Kim Stanley Robinson has also used elevators to low earth orbit in his Mars trilogy) has the center of mass at the geostationary orbit. For the cable to be able to support itself and the payload, the weight needed depends on what material the cable is made of. For steel, the weight needed exceed the weight of the known universe, for carbon fiber, the weight is about the weight of the moon. For nanotubes and graphene sheet, the weight is only a few thousand tons. We still have a long way to go to manufacture a real cable using these new materials. I'm not saying SF shouldn't use far-out concepts, but please. When I was fourteen and walked into the Praça de Chile library and saw Clarke's "The City and the Stars" it was the entirely abstracted city that caught my eye. I say nay to the strictures of delimiting. Let that hyperdrive fire up, Buck. Let's FLY...I prefer thinking "Chasm City" is all about redemption to avoid getting tangled up in the details.... Show Less
LibraryThing member Paul_S
The story within a story is fantastic. The 5 ships on the interstellar journey being brought down by pointless and self-destructive war is pretty much the pure distillation of human's tribal nature which I'm prepared to believe would not die out just because we mastered rocketry.
LibraryThing member wishanem
A straightforward revenge story interrupted by flashbacks, asides, and diversions, then dressed up like a Space Opera, with a heavy sprinkling of cyberpunk grit. The book features weird drugs, serious body-modification, and a society as broken-down as the hacked tech that makes it work.
The book's
The book's
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main protagonist only manages to be fractionally less unpleasant than his antagonists, but he's got enough layers that he's still an interesting character when he's doing bad things. Show Less
LibraryThing member aarondesk
Alastair Reynolds writes another great novel. This is an odd book in the Revelation Space series, as it is really 'optional'. The plot at times was a little disjointed and meandering, and things just seem to fall into place for no apparent reason. But Alastair is such a great writer and has such
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cool concepts, that it more than makes up for any potential flaws. Show Less
LibraryThing member JudyGibson
Boy, this book was long.
LibraryThing member Karlstar
This book had one great thing going for it, I did not want to put it down. It reminded me of some of Peter F. Hamilton's scifi - complicated, advanced science set in a complex and colorful world. This is really the story of one confused man, pursuing a vendetta against another across space and
Overall, I found this to be a very interesting sci-fi thriller, with some societal commentary thrown in. At times I was puzzled about why he'd put Chasm City together the way he did and I'm not certain I bought his redemption theory, but it definitely was fun to read.
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time. The setting, Chasm City, is a domed city on a world with a hostile atmosphere but a strangely convenient canyon that provides easily available atmosphere to those living in the dome. It is also the site of a strange cyber-biotic plague that destroys cyber enhancements or makes them go berserk. Chasm City is a highly divided society - the poor do without cyber in The Muck while the rich manage to deal with the plague in The Canopy.Overall, I found this to be a very interesting sci-fi thriller, with some societal commentary thrown in. At times I was puzzled about why he'd put Chasm City together the way he did and I'm not certain I bought his redemption theory, but it definitely was fun to read.
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Awards
British Science Fiction Association Award (Shortlist — Novel — 2001)
Locus Recommended Reading (2001)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2001-05
Physical description
694 p.; 6.6 inches
ISBN
0441010644 / 9780441010646