Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Publisher Unknown
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. Thriller. HTML: From the author of the Revelation Space series comes an interstellar adventure of war, identity, betrayal, and the preservation of civilization itself. A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur�??and for humanity�??peace is not to be. On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. Passengers�??combatants from both sides of the war�??are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her ow… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member AnnieMod
The novella is the native genre of science fiction - even though nowadays most books are a lot longer, that is the length that allows the storytelling to shine - not too short (short stories are great but they rarely have enough space to expand on the story), not too long to need padding and
Slow Bullets are used as recording devices for the soldiers in a war - they hide in their bodies, they cannot be removed without killing them (or it is very hard anyway) and they contain information about who they are (like high-tech version of dog tags except carrying a lot more information). Their name comes from the way they are put there - they are injected and then the AI bullet finds its place to the middle of the body, carefully skirting any areas where it can cause damage. But they are not that harmless either - they can be ordered to kill (or really do anything else depending on what the person programming them wants to do). And hat duality is what Reynolds uses to build his story.
Scur is a soldier at the end of a war that had devastated the worlds (of course all is happening in space and on a lot of planets - this is Reynolds after all). And just when she believes she is done with the war she is captured by one of the worst from the other side - a man that is considered a monster from both side; a man that is heading to the war tribunals no matter who wins. The irony of the fact that the war is over and the Scur should not have been in the war to start with is just part of it; the fact that she is going to die is the bigger problem. Although her being the narrator, we already know that she somehow survives - although for a minute here I did wonder if she will end up being trapped in a bullet or something.
She does survive - just to wake on a half-dead ship, bound to military prison and the war tribunals. Where she does not belong. And while protesting her innocence, she realizes that it does not matter - technology backfired a bit and she and everyone on the ship are the last chance of humanity to survive an alien threat. Of course the story takes its time revealing the pieces of it and how things happened - there is enough material in that story to cover a trilogy (and a sequel to it) and Reynolds condenses it in a way that proves again that he knows his craft.
And then the real story begins - because the ship is full with both good and bad people (including the monster from the start of the story) and everyone needs to make a decision - are their old deeds more important than humanity; can monstrosity be forgotten and forgiven for the sake of survival; what is more important - personal history and memories or the memories of the race.
In a way it is a story of redemption but it is also a story about the hard choices that everyone need to make; about memory and belonging; about desperation and hope. It is the kind of story that made me fall in love with the genre all those years ago.
Show More
secondary story lines. And Reynolds's craft shines in this one. Slow Bullets are used as recording devices for the soldiers in a war - they hide in their bodies, they cannot be removed without killing them (or it is very hard anyway) and they contain information about who they are (like high-tech version of dog tags except carrying a lot more information). Their name comes from the way they are put there - they are injected and then the AI bullet finds its place to the middle of the body, carefully skirting any areas where it can cause damage. But they are not that harmless either - they can be ordered to kill (or really do anything else depending on what the person programming them wants to do). And hat duality is what Reynolds uses to build his story.
Scur is a soldier at the end of a war that had devastated the worlds (of course all is happening in space and on a lot of planets - this is Reynolds after all). And just when she believes she is done with the war she is captured by one of the worst from the other side - a man that is considered a monster from both side; a man that is heading to the war tribunals no matter who wins. The irony of the fact that the war is over and the Scur should not have been in the war to start with is just part of it; the fact that she is going to die is the bigger problem. Although her being the narrator, we already know that she somehow survives - although for a minute here I did wonder if she will end up being trapped in a bullet or something.
She does survive - just to wake on a half-dead ship, bound to military prison and the war tribunals. Where she does not belong. And while protesting her innocence, she realizes that it does not matter - technology backfired a bit and she and everyone on the ship are the last chance of humanity to survive an alien threat. Of course the story takes its time revealing the pieces of it and how things happened - there is enough material in that story to cover a trilogy (and a sequel to it) and Reynolds condenses it in a way that proves again that he knows his craft.
And then the real story begins - because the ship is full with both good and bad people (including the monster from the start of the story) and everyone needs to make a decision - are their old deeds more important than humanity; can monstrosity be forgotten and forgiven for the sake of survival; what is more important - personal history and memories or the memories of the race.
In a way it is a story of redemption but it is also a story about the hard choices that everyone need to make; about memory and belonging; about desperation and hope. It is the kind of story that made me fall in love with the genre all those years ago.
Show Less
LibraryThing member orkydd
Scur is an unwilling soldier, perhaps conscripted against her will in the struggle between 'insert name here' and 'insert another name here' forces. She is captured, tortured and left for dead by her enemy just as a ceasefire is announced.
Things could hardly be worse....
She awakes on a crippled
Things could hardly be worse....
She awakes on a crippled
Show More
ship, returning soldiers of both sides to their homes, but now drifting and deteriorating. Former combatants must work together to survive, to preseve knowledge, and to carry a warning. Competently written, but lacking Reynold's usual panache. Show Less
LibraryThing member StormRaven
Scurelya Timsuk Shunde was a soldier conscripted into the great war between Central and Periperhal over which Book was the right one. In the waning days of the war she was captured by a Central war criminal named Orvin and tortured. Her life is saved when a passing Peacekeeper transport scares
The novella takes its name from the implants the soldiers in the conflict carry inside of them, the "slow bullets" that serve as identifying devices encoded with the record of every soldier's background, service history, and other personal information. These devices are implanted under the skin and work their way into the recipient's rib cage, requiring life-threatening surgery to remove, and can apparently explode and kill their bearer under certain conditions. Orvin's method of torture involves painfully implanting a second slow bullet into Scur's leg and waiting for it to grind its way through her body until it reaches her chest and explodes, a particularly cruel means of execution. As he watches her die, he taunts her by destroying her copy of the Book, a religious text that apparently was the root cause of the war, although this seems to have little effect on Scur. It is only when Ovid panics that Scur is able to try to save her life with some impromptu self-surgery.
The primary shift takes place at the moment Scur begins to cut into her own leg to remove the offending slow bullet, when Scur's memories, and the story, leap to her waking up in a hibo capsule with a healed leg and no idea how she got there. As she explores her new environment, she meets up with and more or less saves a crew member named Prad - and then forces him to help her at gunpoint. It turns out that she is on a ship populated mostly with war criminals from both sides in the recent conflict who are being shipped across interstellar space for unclear reasons. As the story progresses, it turns out that the journey in the "skipship" has gone terribly awry: Prad cannot locate the normal navigational signals to identify where they are, and the ship's systems reset, so he cannot figure out how long their journey took. Not only that, the ship is malfunctioning, and while the ship's systems can keep its inhabitants alive for the foreseeable future, they are cannibalizing the vessel's long-term memory, progressively destroying the vast stores of information contained therein.
Scur uses some strongarm tactics to create an uneasy truce between the three factions on the ship, and then they learn the disheartening truth: The ship is in the right place, but the reason they could not recognize the planet they are orbiting is that they were lost for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The question becomes not merely one of survival, but what does survival actually mean. Is it enough for humans to survive if all of their art, science, history, and culture is lost? Soon the survivors accidentally stumble upon a project Scur hopes will unite them - carving the rapidly disappearing knowledge contained in the ship's memory banks into the walls of the ship, and although this will only allow them to preserve a tiny fraction of what is contained in them, it is at least some way to fight against the darkness.
But the troubles of the past follow Scur and her compatriots even centuries into the future. One of the first things erased from the ship's data banks were all copies of the Book - an action that Scur believes was not accidental, and suspects that Prad instigated. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the book is still stored in yet another databank: The memories of many of the former passengers on the ship, and when an anonymous individual inscribes the opening passages to their portion of the Book on the walls of the ship, old hatreds flare up and the ship's complement begins to fracture along religious lines. Some knowledge, it seems, is too dangerous to bring forward from the past. In response, Scur takes a bold action and has the data on her slow bullet - the only record of her parents, childhood, and the rest of her past - overwritten with material from the dying memories of the ship, becoming in effect a living shell for a piece of her civilization's history.
[More forthcoming]
Show More
Orvin and his followers away, leaving her to die. Instead of dying, Scurelya, now calling herself Scur, survives, intent on living so as to be able to make good on her threat to exact revenge against Orvin. And then everything changes, and almost everything that mattered before is swept away, leaving only the will to survive behind. Slow Bullets is a fairly short work, but it manages to pack an enormous amount of activity into its pages, in large part because even when you strip humans down to an almost raw survival situation, they are still messy and irrational creatures.The novella takes its name from the implants the soldiers in the conflict carry inside of them, the "slow bullets" that serve as identifying devices encoded with the record of every soldier's background, service history, and other personal information. These devices are implanted under the skin and work their way into the recipient's rib cage, requiring life-threatening surgery to remove, and can apparently explode and kill their bearer under certain conditions. Orvin's method of torture involves painfully implanting a second slow bullet into Scur's leg and waiting for it to grind its way through her body until it reaches her chest and explodes, a particularly cruel means of execution. As he watches her die, he taunts her by destroying her copy of the Book, a religious text that apparently was the root cause of the war, although this seems to have little effect on Scur. It is only when Ovid panics that Scur is able to try to save her life with some impromptu self-surgery.
The primary shift takes place at the moment Scur begins to cut into her own leg to remove the offending slow bullet, when Scur's memories, and the story, leap to her waking up in a hibo capsule with a healed leg and no idea how she got there. As she explores her new environment, she meets up with and more or less saves a crew member named Prad - and then forces him to help her at gunpoint. It turns out that she is on a ship populated mostly with war criminals from both sides in the recent conflict who are being shipped across interstellar space for unclear reasons. As the story progresses, it turns out that the journey in the "skipship" has gone terribly awry: Prad cannot locate the normal navigational signals to identify where they are, and the ship's systems reset, so he cannot figure out how long their journey took. Not only that, the ship is malfunctioning, and while the ship's systems can keep its inhabitants alive for the foreseeable future, they are cannibalizing the vessel's long-term memory, progressively destroying the vast stores of information contained therein.
Scur uses some strongarm tactics to create an uneasy truce between the three factions on the ship, and then they learn the disheartening truth: The ship is in the right place, but the reason they could not recognize the planet they are orbiting is that they were lost for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The question becomes not merely one of survival, but what does survival actually mean. Is it enough for humans to survive if all of their art, science, history, and culture is lost? Soon the survivors accidentally stumble upon a project Scur hopes will unite them - carving the rapidly disappearing knowledge contained in the ship's memory banks into the walls of the ship, and although this will only allow them to preserve a tiny fraction of what is contained in them, it is at least some way to fight against the darkness.
But the troubles of the past follow Scur and her compatriots even centuries into the future. One of the first things erased from the ship's data banks were all copies of the Book - an action that Scur believes was not accidental, and suspects that Prad instigated. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the book is still stored in yet another databank: The memories of many of the former passengers on the ship, and when an anonymous individual inscribes the opening passages to their portion of the Book on the walls of the ship, old hatreds flare up and the ship's complement begins to fracture along religious lines. Some knowledge, it seems, is too dangerous to bring forward from the past. In response, Scur takes a bold action and has the data on her slow bullet - the only record of her parents, childhood, and the rest of her past - overwritten with material from the dying memories of the ship, becoming in effect a living shell for a piece of her civilization's history.
[More forthcoming]
Show Less
LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
While I have liked everything I have read from this author, some of his works in trilogy format have been a tad slow moving in places. Ironically,this short work is anything but slow. Squeezed in are a revenge for a military atrocity, a drive-by encounter with nasty aliens and a somewhat satiric
Show More
on-ship quarrel regarding religious texts and the perils of demanding their veracity. Would that more texts came out at this length...trilogies be damned! Show Less
LibraryThing member iansales
I decided to hang on for the signed, numbered WSFA Press edition of this novella, rather than buy the original Tachyon Publications edition. And it’s a smart little hardback they’ve produced – except… they’ve got the ISBN wrong, and re-used one from one of their previous novellas. Argh.
Show More
You would not believe how many things that screws up. The title of the novella refers to devices implanted in people which store their memories, allowing their actions during a vast war between worlds to be recorded. They’re called “slow bullets” because they’re implanted in the leg and then slowly work their way up to lodge in the chest. But the actual plot of Slow Bullets concerns Scur, who is captured and tortured by a war criminal from the other side, left for dead, but then wakes up aboard a transport carrying war criminals and other prisoners. Except something has gone wrong and it looks like everyone aboard had been left in hibernation for thousands of years… This is typical Reynolds – a universe which he perhaps might not have visited before but nonetheless feels like one of his, and a plot predicated on horrible violence which still manages to slingshot off an optimistic and redemptive ending. It is, in fact, pretty much about as Reynolds as you can get and, as a result, your mileage may vary. I enjoyed it, some bits more than others. Show Less
LibraryThing member bemidt
Could have been shorter or longer. Strange length for a Alastair Reynolds novel. Good enough, but I think he might have been fulfilling a contract deadline or something.
LibraryThing member bemidt
Could have been shorter or longer. Strange length for a Alastair Reynolds novel. Good enough, but I think he might have been fulfilling a contract deadline or something.
LibraryThing member SheTreadsSoftly
Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds is a highly recommended novella that should please science fiction fans.
Scurelya Timsuk Shunde is a conscripted soldier who goes just by the name Scur. The war is supposed to be over and a ceasefire in effect but that doesn't prohibit war criminal Orvin from
Scur sort of saves and takes as a prisoner Prad, and discovers she is on the Caprice, a prison ship. This skipship was also being used as a Military transport and the destination was supposed to be the planet of Tottori, but things seemed to have gone terribly wrong. Now the passengers on the ship are waking up too soon and it appears fraction are developing, with violence an obvious result. Scur also sees that her nemesis, Orvin, is on the ship and she is determined to make him pay. At the same time they need to figure out where they are since none of the obvious facts make sense.
This story focuses tightly on the character of Scur and the story and all of the action is through her point of view. Reynolds is an accomplished writer so he pulls off this comparatively short novel but he leaves you wanting more. It easily could have been expanded to a larger novel with a more complex plot. At the end of the novel, though, the tight focus makes sense. Reynolds shows growth in Scur's character, raises some satisfying questions, and ultimately leaves us with hope.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Tachyon for review purposes.
Scurelya Timsuk Shunde is a conscripted soldier who goes just by the name Scur. The war is supposed to be over and a ceasefire in effect but that doesn't prohibit war criminal Orvin from
Show More
capturing Scur and torturing her. All soldiers have a slow bullet implanted, sort of dog tags only more closely resembling the implanted id chips used for dogs. The slow bullet carries all their personal information. Orvin, to torture Scur, shoots a different kind of slow bullet into her, one that is meant to slowly painfully kill her by moving through her body to her heart. When Orvin leaves, Scur begins to cut the slow bullet out of her leg. She wakes up in an unknown place at an indeterminate time.Scur sort of saves and takes as a prisoner Prad, and discovers she is on the Caprice, a prison ship. This skipship was also being used as a Military transport and the destination was supposed to be the planet of Tottori, but things seemed to have gone terribly wrong. Now the passengers on the ship are waking up too soon and it appears fraction are developing, with violence an obvious result. Scur also sees that her nemesis, Orvin, is on the ship and she is determined to make him pay. At the same time they need to figure out where they are since none of the obvious facts make sense.
This story focuses tightly on the character of Scur and the story and all of the action is through her point of view. Reynolds is an accomplished writer so he pulls off this comparatively short novel but he leaves you wanting more. It easily could have been expanded to a larger novel with a more complex plot. At the end of the novel, though, the tight focus makes sense. Reynolds shows growth in Scur's character, raises some satisfying questions, and ultimately leaves us with hope.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Tachyon for review purposes.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ladycato
I read this as part of the Hugo finalist packet.
Dang, but Reynolds can write. This sci-fi novella grips from the start as you follow Scur, a conscripted soldier in a war that is finally at end. She is caught by a sadistic thug and tortured briefly. When she awakens, she's on a ship in a hibernation
Dang, but Reynolds can write. This sci-fi novella grips from the start as you follow Scur, a conscripted soldier in a war that is finally at end. She is caught by a sadistic thug and tortured briefly. When she awakens, she's on a ship in a hibernation
Show More
chamber. Something has gone very, very wrong on board, and Scur and other characters slowly find out how dire their situation really is. The whole scenario is truly horrific. It's almost soothing to be in Scur's perspective. She may not have chosen to be a soldier but she's a darn good one. She is cool and calculated, even when she finds out the man who tortured her is also on board. The novella threatens to become a dark revenge tale, but the story is much deeper and complicated than that. Again--dang, Reynolds can write. This has it all: a fantastic premise, a solid protagonist, and incredible tension to carry everyone along. Show Less
LibraryThing member lavaturtle
This is an interesting story about a group of soldiers and civilians thrown together at the end of an interstellar war. The premise reminds me a little of the end of [Forever War]. The main character is interesting. I didn't care for the narration style -- it felt flat and emotionless, even when
Also, the discussion of the causes of wars seemed overly simplistic, a description of religious differences entirely lacking specifics or a reason anyone cares. "They're fighting because they disagree about the details of their religious texts, which is obviously silly" as an explanation for war appealed to me when I was in high school... but in the real world, the seemingly trivial religious differences are usually a proxy for other issues. As a backdrop for the story, this oversimplified narrative about war was unsatisfying worldbuilding.
I have mixed feelings on the framing device of "I'm telling this story to the legions of people born on the spaceship who have no knowledge of our origins". On one hand, sure, that's a cool idea. On the other hand, we learn /nothing/ about the future society... so it fails to make the story more interesting. It mostly distracts from the main story by periodically jumping out to say "remember, there are future people!"
Show More
the protagonist was obviously feeling strong emotions.Also, the discussion of the causes of wars seemed overly simplistic, a description of religious differences entirely lacking specifics or a reason anyone cares. "They're fighting because they disagree about the details of their religious texts, which is obviously silly" as an explanation for war appealed to me when I was in high school... but in the real world, the seemingly trivial religious differences are usually a proxy for other issues. As a backdrop for the story, this oversimplified narrative about war was unsatisfying worldbuilding.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TBlake
SLOW BULLETS, a new novella by Alastair Reynolds, is a very good piece of "hard" science fiction, without quite being up to the standard of Reynolds's usually excellent style. The text reads more like a manuscript summary, a submission to the publisher providing the sketch for a future novel,
The story is based on ambivalence, as the title announces. A bullet is a high-speed projectile, so the title "slow bullets" is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, as in the classical example: festina lente, hasten slowly. The contradictory nature of the expression serves to highlight the adjective "slow", and we see that the "slowness" involved has two values: positive, the bullet is slow so as to do no harm to vital organs; and negative, the bullet is slow so as to cause as much pain as possible, to prolong the pain.
In classical terms, a "slow bullet" is a pharmakon, something that can be either a remedy or a poison, a cure or a curse. This ambivalence is coded into the heroine's name "Scur", which is phonetically an anagramme of both "curse" and "cures". We can see the possibility of these two pronunciations in the full form of that name, "Scurelya". The audiobook version had to decide on one pronunciation, and chose "Scur" to rhyme with "cur", but two pronunciations are possible. On the second hypothesis "Scur" would rhyme with "secure", or "cure".
The pharmakon as the indetermination between two opposing values, or ambivalent medecine/poison, goes back to Plato. In the PHAEDRUS, writing is presented as a pharmakon. Supposedly an aid to memory, writing as an exteriorised or artificial memory potentially will weaken or destroy our personal memories. This theme is at work in the whole concept of the bullet and its actual and potential functions, and what information it can usefully contain.
Another ambivalence in the PHAEDRUS, and in SLOW BULLETS is the answer to the question who is wise? The sophists who write down their discourses, relying on the artificial memory of writing, or Socrates who doesn't write, but relies on the living memory of the active soul? They have much in common, but one is a poison or curse (Lysias, the sophist) and the other is a remedy or cure (Socrates, the philosopher). We find this theme in the opposition and identification between the heroine Scur and the vilain Orvin. Is Scur just as bad as Orvin, as Orvin himself claims? Can Scur bring something good out of Orvin, despite himself?
Memory and its ambivalence is at the heart of this story: is memory a blessing or a curse? Which memories are the "best", personal remembrances or collective culture ? Personal memories give us anchor, focus, and centredness. But they also give us division, repetition of the past, an appette for revenge. Cultural memory gives us poetry, science and humanity, but also weapons and sectarian strife. Wiping out the personal information on your bullet means passing from memory as literal proof of one's identity, to memory as personal relation to the past and creative relation to our individuality. Putting cultural information on the bullet means passing from narcissistic nostalgic self-authentication to collective future-oriented construction.
Another theme of the novella is the danger of literalism. The Holy Scripture of this future civilisation, called simply "The Book", exists in two versions, very similar but with crucial differences. Seeing The Book through the eyes of the heroine Scur who was brought up in a religious family but is not a believer, we can see how it is divisive if taken literally, but consolatory and wisdom-bearing if one approaches it free from literal belief, more poetically.
The pharmakon theme (curse or cure, poison or remedy) can be seen very clearly in the ship's auto-surgeon, which could heal you or butcher you. Right at the beginning of the novella we have the collection of poems of Giresun, with the poem entitled "Morning Flowers". Scur tells us that this poem is about death and memory ("remembrance"), loss and life. This sets up from the outset the thematics of the story in cameo form.
Another ambivalent term is "caprice", an unreasoning or inexplicable change of mood or line of action, in violation of accepted rules of behaviour. The ship on which almost all the action takes place is called "The Caprice". A caprice can be frivolous whim, often egotistical, or it can be a deeper impulse. When Scur asks Orvin why he is torturing her despite the ceasefire, he laughs and asks "Why not?" This is a negative caprice, meant to be lethal. When Scur spares Orvin, and gives him a second chance, this was an unexpected move, a positive caprice. Prad exclaims: “I did not think Scur would do the obvious thing”. The outcome is uncertain and Scur has violated the wishes of the ruling "Trinity", but Prado concludes that despite this uncertainty and despite the illegality of the action, Scur's caprice was a positive gesture: "It was good that we not kill this man, and good that we gave him a chance to do some good himself”.
I think that SLOW BULLETS is a good place to start reading Alastair Reynolds. In the space of a novella of 192 pages, or an audiobook of just under 4 and a half hours, we have a new world sketched out with great clarity in such a relatively small space. We have the sense of wonder of space opera combined with philosophical ideas about memory and forgetting, and their relation to identity. There is also a breaking free of the gender stereotypes that sometimes go with space opera: the most important characters, except for the vilain, are women, and they are treated in a much more human way than for example in Peter Hamilton's space operas. What begins as military science fiction grows into more philosophical speculative fiction. So I would recommend this book to those who would like to get an idea of the range of Reynolds's speculative imagination, his approach to technology in SF, and his sympathetic treatment of human beings.
Show More
broken up into separate chunks or segments. Despite the fact that each segment is gripping and contains very interesting ideas, there are big gaps in the narrative sequence begging to be filled in, and many segments have gaping plot-holes or contradictions that could have been ironed out in a final novel, that was never written. Still, it was a very enjoyable read.The story is based on ambivalence, as the title announces. A bullet is a high-speed projectile, so the title "slow bullets" is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, as in the classical example: festina lente, hasten slowly. The contradictory nature of the expression serves to highlight the adjective "slow", and we see that the "slowness" involved has two values: positive, the bullet is slow so as to do no harm to vital organs; and negative, the bullet is slow so as to cause as much pain as possible, to prolong the pain.
In classical terms, a "slow bullet" is a pharmakon, something that can be either a remedy or a poison, a cure or a curse. This ambivalence is coded into the heroine's name "Scur", which is phonetically an anagramme of both "curse" and "cures". We can see the possibility of these two pronunciations in the full form of that name, "Scurelya". The audiobook version had to decide on one pronunciation, and chose "Scur" to rhyme with "cur", but two pronunciations are possible. On the second hypothesis "Scur" would rhyme with "secure", or "cure".
The pharmakon as the indetermination between two opposing values, or ambivalent medecine/poison, goes back to Plato. In the PHAEDRUS, writing is presented as a pharmakon. Supposedly an aid to memory, writing as an exteriorised or artificial memory potentially will weaken or destroy our personal memories. This theme is at work in the whole concept of the bullet and its actual and potential functions, and what information it can usefully contain.
Another ambivalence in the PHAEDRUS, and in SLOW BULLETS is the answer to the question who is wise? The sophists who write down their discourses, relying on the artificial memory of writing, or Socrates who doesn't write, but relies on the living memory of the active soul? They have much in common, but one is a poison or curse (Lysias, the sophist) and the other is a remedy or cure (Socrates, the philosopher). We find this theme in the opposition and identification between the heroine Scur and the vilain Orvin. Is Scur just as bad as Orvin, as Orvin himself claims? Can Scur bring something good out of Orvin, despite himself?
Memory and its ambivalence is at the heart of this story: is memory a blessing or a curse? Which memories are the "best", personal remembrances or collective culture ? Personal memories give us anchor, focus, and centredness. But they also give us division, repetition of the past, an appette for revenge. Cultural memory gives us poetry, science and humanity, but also weapons and sectarian strife. Wiping out the personal information on your bullet means passing from memory as literal proof of one's identity, to memory as personal relation to the past and creative relation to our individuality. Putting cultural information on the bullet means passing from narcissistic nostalgic self-authentication to collective future-oriented construction.
Another theme of the novella is the danger of literalism. The Holy Scripture of this future civilisation, called simply "The Book", exists in two versions, very similar but with crucial differences. Seeing The Book through the eyes of the heroine Scur who was brought up in a religious family but is not a believer, we can see how it is divisive if taken literally, but consolatory and wisdom-bearing if one approaches it free from literal belief, more poetically.
The pharmakon theme (curse or cure, poison or remedy) can be seen very clearly in the ship's auto-surgeon, which could heal you or butcher you. Right at the beginning of the novella we have the collection of poems of Giresun, with the poem entitled "Morning Flowers". Scur tells us that this poem is about death and memory ("remembrance"), loss and life. This sets up from the outset the thematics of the story in cameo form.
Another ambivalent term is "caprice", an unreasoning or inexplicable change of mood or line of action, in violation of accepted rules of behaviour. The ship on which almost all the action takes place is called "The Caprice". A caprice can be frivolous whim, often egotistical, or it can be a deeper impulse. When Scur asks Orvin why he is torturing her despite the ceasefire, he laughs and asks "Why not?" This is a negative caprice, meant to be lethal. When Scur spares Orvin, and gives him a second chance, this was an unexpected move, a positive caprice. Prad exclaims: “I did not think Scur would do the obvious thing”. The outcome is uncertain and Scur has violated the wishes of the ruling "Trinity", but Prado concludes that despite this uncertainty and despite the illegality of the action, Scur's caprice was a positive gesture: "It was good that we not kill this man, and good that we gave him a chance to do some good himself”.
I think that SLOW BULLETS is a good place to start reading Alastair Reynolds. In the space of a novella of 192 pages, or an audiobook of just under 4 and a half hours, we have a new world sketched out with great clarity in such a relatively small space. We have the sense of wonder of space opera combined with philosophical ideas about memory and forgetting, and their relation to identity. There is also a breaking free of the gender stereotypes that sometimes go with space opera: the most important characters, except for the vilain, are women, and they are treated in a much more human way than for example in Peter Hamilton's space operas. What begins as military science fiction grows into more philosophical speculative fiction. So I would recommend this book to those who would like to get an idea of the range of Reynolds's speculative imagination, his approach to technology in SF, and his sympathetic treatment of human beings.
Show Less
LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
I ought to like Alastair Reynolds, given his reputation for hard SF and space opera. He's highly regarded by numerous other, excellent writers. Well, I've liked some of his short fiction. But I find he often fails to write as well as his far-ranging ideas would require.
Here, a short novel. In the
Here, a short novel. In the
Show More
aftermath of an interstellar war, people are awaking from hibernation on a derelict spacecraft. Some are accused war criminals from each side, some, refugees. How did they get here? How long have they been on the ship? Who are criminals, and who are innocent? These are the elements of a fine story, but Reynolds doesn't give this reader, at least, much cause to care. Not a bad book, but there are much better ones. Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
Reynolds in Character-Driven Mode: "Slow Bullets" by Alastair Reynolds
Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for
(The book is due to be published on June, 2015; review written on 18/04/2015).
Fiction is fashioned from the stuff of people’s lives, and yet the characters in SF are seldom full-fledged people. Most of time they become stand-ins for a creed, an attitude, or a way of life. This is the crux of the matter when it comes to good SF. It lies at the forefront on why SF has so often been dismissed as sub-literary. Why is that so? Traditional fiction is mainly concerned with character. It reveals character by putting emphasis in its development, its critical moments of awareness, its recognition of self. It reveals character through its duality on life and processes. Mundane fiction’s purpose on the other hand is for us to marvel at the complexity of human nature. What about the characters in SF? Is it necessary for a SF story to have rounded characters? I’m not sure. Rounded, full-fledged characters might well detract from the story being told. In mainstream fiction a rounded character is its raison d'etre. In a SF story, the situation is far from our ordinary experience. Verisimilitude is not what’s at stake here but rather, as in the theatre, the suspension of disbelief. SF must provide reasons for the suspension of disbelief (unlike Fantasy), because the fantastic must be rationalized. At a very basic level, I don’t read SF to become better acquainted with real people; the Estrangement, and the Otherness are what draws me into SF (I’ve written at length about the capacity of SF to make us “believe” in strange worlds – vide my review of Jo Walton’s book). And this leads us to Reynolds fictionalized worlds.
This is the first time I’m reviewing one of his works.
The rest of this review in on my blog.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for
Show More
this review.(The book is due to be published on June, 2015; review written on 18/04/2015).
Fiction is fashioned from the stuff of people’s lives, and yet the characters in SF are seldom full-fledged people. Most of time they become stand-ins for a creed, an attitude, or a way of life. This is the crux of the matter when it comes to good SF. It lies at the forefront on why SF has so often been dismissed as sub-literary. Why is that so? Traditional fiction is mainly concerned with character. It reveals character by putting emphasis in its development, its critical moments of awareness, its recognition of self. It reveals character through its duality on life and processes. Mundane fiction’s purpose on the other hand is for us to marvel at the complexity of human nature. What about the characters in SF? Is it necessary for a SF story to have rounded characters? I’m not sure. Rounded, full-fledged characters might well detract from the story being told. In mainstream fiction a rounded character is its raison d'etre. In a SF story, the situation is far from our ordinary experience. Verisimilitude is not what’s at stake here but rather, as in the theatre, the suspension of disbelief. SF must provide reasons for the suspension of disbelief (unlike Fantasy), because the fantastic must be rationalized. At a very basic level, I don’t read SF to become better acquainted with real people; the Estrangement, and the Otherness are what draws me into SF (I’ve written at length about the capacity of SF to make us “believe” in strange worlds – vide my review of Jo Walton’s book). And this leads us to Reynolds fictionalized worlds.
This is the first time I’m reviewing one of his works.
The rest of this review in on my blog.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LisCarey
Scur has been a soldier in hard-fought, far-future war between the Central Stars and the Peripheral Stars. It has finally come to an end with the negotiation of a ceasefire, but not everyone is ready to stand down immediately. Scur, a soldier for the Peripheral Stars, meets up with Orvin, a soldier
The next thing she knows, she's waking up in a hibernation pod on a starship, her leg is completely healed, and something is very, very wrong.
Caprice, a former cruise liner, has been converted to a prison ship. Most of the passengers are, or are supposed to be, war criminals of various kinds. Some are civilians, also criminals, war profiteers and such.
Still others, like Scur, are ex-soldiers or civilians who were never accused of any crime, added to the passenger contingent for no apparent reason.
They are, or were, headed for Tottori, where they would have been further processed for their prison destination.
Instead, the ship has clearly undergone some major failure. The hibernation pods are opening on no particular schedule, ship's crew and passengers alike emerging as individuals or small groups. Much of the ship's systems are not working.
Scur teams up with Prad, a crew technician, and they make alarming discoveries. NavNet, without which any jump is dangerous (assuming the ship can still jump), is beyond risky, They're in orbit around a planet in an ice age.
They discover they've been in suspension for perhaps as long as five thousand years, and the civilization they came from is gone.
Orvin is one of the war criminals among them, and he's in hiding.
The survivors need to build a working governing structure, see what they can fix of the ship's systems, find out whether they can skipjump to somewhere more promising.
But before they do any of that, the former enemies have to figure out how not to kill each other.
There's a lot going on here, and Reynolds handles it very well.
Highly recommended.
I received this story as part of the 2016 Hugo Finalists packet.
Show More
for the Central Stars--and a sadistic war criminal. He captures Scur, and shoots a "slow bullet" into her leg, set to move slowly and painfully to her heart, and kill her. They're interrupted by the arrival of peacekeeping forces, and Orvin flees. With no other options, Scur picks up an available knife, and begins to cut the bullet out of her leg before it can progress too far.The next thing she knows, she's waking up in a hibernation pod on a starship, her leg is completely healed, and something is very, very wrong.
Caprice, a former cruise liner, has been converted to a prison ship. Most of the passengers are, or are supposed to be, war criminals of various kinds. Some are civilians, also criminals, war profiteers and such.
Still others, like Scur, are ex-soldiers or civilians who were never accused of any crime, added to the passenger contingent for no apparent reason.
They are, or were, headed for Tottori, where they would have been further processed for their prison destination.
Instead, the ship has clearly undergone some major failure. The hibernation pods are opening on no particular schedule, ship's crew and passengers alike emerging as individuals or small groups. Much of the ship's systems are not working.
Scur teams up with Prad, a crew technician, and they make alarming discoveries. NavNet, without which any jump is dangerous (assuming the ship can still jump), is beyond risky, They're in orbit around a planet in an ice age.
They discover they've been in suspension for perhaps as long as five thousand years, and the civilization they came from is gone.
Orvin is one of the war criminals among them, and he's in hiding.
The survivors need to build a working governing structure, see what they can fix of the ship's systems, find out whether they can skipjump to somewhere more promising.
But before they do any of that, the former enemies have to figure out how not to kill each other.
There's a lot going on here, and Reynolds handles it very well.
Highly recommended.
I received this story as part of the 2016 Hugo Finalists packet.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Glennis.LeBlanc
At the end of the war but before Scur can get back to her side she is attacked and tortured by an enemy soldier. She is rescued as she is passing out from blood loss and wakes up out of hibernation on a ship mostly packed with soldiers on their way to war crimes trials. The problem with this is the
No knowledge of any of his previous work was needed to understand what was going on and it certainly has me wanting to read more of his stuff.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
Show More
ship is failing and they are not where they should be. Hard decisions need to be made by the people that woke from cold sleep on their continued survival. No knowledge of any of his previous work was needed to understand what was going on and it certainly has me wanting to read more of his stuff.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
Show Less
LibraryThing member ragwaine
I loved this and felt like it could have been a full length novel and still be just as, if not more, enjoyable. It's my first taste of Reynolds' writing and I immediately started looking into his other books after finishing it. For me it was the perfect balance of science and space opera, since I'm
Show More
not a really big hard sci-fi fan. Cool idea and often went in directions I didn't expect at all. It wasn't exactly sci-fi/horror (my favorite kind of sci-fi), but there were definitely some horrific moments and an overall dread that worked for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member santhony
After having read science fiction for upwards of 45 years, I discovered the writing of Alastair Reynolds just recently. I’m still trying to figure out why it took me so long. I thoroughly enjoyed the Revelation Space series and have since read The Prefect (Aurora Rising) and Elysium Fire. Anxious
It should be noted that all of the above books were hefty works of 500+ pages. I was therefore surprised when I received Slow Bullets to discover what is essentially a mere pamphlet. It comes in at 190 official pages, but these are big margin, large font pages. The text of this book could easily fit onto 100 standard pages. It is little more than a short story, easily read in 3-4 hours, tops.
Now, it is a good, science fiction, short story. A collection of five or six such stories would garner a rating of eight or nine out of ten. However, this paperback book sold for $14.50, which is just absurd. Admittedly, I share some of the blame here, as the book description accurately indicated that it was only 190 pages. However, having read many of Reynold’s books, all of which were hefty tomes, selling for about the same amount, to charge $14.50 for a 3-4 short story read is beyond the pale.
If you can buy this for $3-4, it will be money well spent. If you pay $14 for it, you’re a sucker, like me.
Show More
for more of his work, I ordered 3-4 more of his books.It should be noted that all of the above books were hefty works of 500+ pages. I was therefore surprised when I received Slow Bullets to discover what is essentially a mere pamphlet. It comes in at 190 official pages, but these are big margin, large font pages. The text of this book could easily fit onto 100 standard pages. It is little more than a short story, easily read in 3-4 hours, tops.
Now, it is a good, science fiction, short story. A collection of five or six such stories would garner a rating of eight or nine out of ten. However, this paperback book sold for $14.50, which is just absurd. Admittedly, I share some of the blame here, as the book description accurately indicated that it was only 190 pages. However, having read many of Reynold’s books, all of which were hefty tomes, selling for about the same amount, to charge $14.50 for a 3-4 short story read is beyond the pale.
If you can buy this for $3-4, it will be money well spent. If you pay $14 for it, you’re a sucker, like me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Cataloger623
Slow Bullets is the story of what happens after the war is over. The victors and the defeated gather together to make peace and prosecute the war criminals. The prison ship the war criminals are on experiences an accident and travels forward in time. The prisoners discover the future is not what
Show More
they wanted it to be — Stranded on ship that can barely move between the stars. They find themselves in the future. Where a massive tragedy has struct their entire galaxy. We see this world through the eyes of one of the female prisoner. We experience her heroic moments, the hard choices she has to make, and her failures. This is a well-written fictional autobiography I could not put this book down. It was one well-crafted novel. There are no wasted words in an extraordinary story. Show Less
LibraryThing member CraigGoodwin
Really 4.5.
Unusual story, brilliant pacing and characterisations. Read in two sessions and feel all the better for it!
Unusual story, brilliant pacing and characterisations. Read in two sessions and feel all the better for it!
LibraryThing member Aristocats
In the aftermath of a galactic war, soldier Scur finds herself waking up on a derelict spaceship with no memory of how she got there. On the ship are other soldiers from both sides of the conflict, all having data capsules named "slow bullets" implanted in their bodies containing fragmented
Show More
memories, along with some civilians without these "slow bullets". Forced to cooperate, Scur must unravel the mystery of the ship, their fragmented pasts, and a looming threat that could jeopardize everything. It's a tense, claustrophobic thriller set against the backdrop of a shattered universe, exploring themes of war, identity, and the power of memory. Show Less
LibraryThing member cuentosalgernon
Reynolds is an excellent writer, both of novels and short fiction. And although this might not be his best novella (I think “Zima Blue”, for instance, is even better) it is a good one, a classic space opera (although I wouldn’t call it hard SF), with plenty of emotion, ideas and sense of
I think that Reynolds fans will enjoy this book, but I would especially recommend it to anyone looking for an introduction to Reynold’s work.
Show More
wonder. It also touches some more serious concepts like religion and memories, but not in a great depth. The plot is complex for a novella, with a few twists that will probably make you read it in one seating, and the main characters (Scud and Prad) are well developed. I particularly liked the “slow bullets” idea and the sort of tribute to Bradbury’s “book people”.I think that Reynolds fans will enjoy this book, but I would especially recommend it to anyone looking for an introduction to Reynold’s work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Zare
This was a strange novelle. My first book from this author was Revelation Space, very dense and strong kicking book about the humankind spread between the stars and encountering a grave danger.
Story was fast, although by no means condensed - it is quite a door-stopper :) - but it had impact and
I dont want to ruin experience of other readers so I wont go much into the story itself (there is quite a twist in the last third) but when compared to Revelation Space, this one is rather a slow burner. Our protagonist, Scur, war veteran wakes up on board of unknown ship instead on her home-world. To make things worse, this ship is not your standard transport but ship carrying war veterans from both sides and also people that are marked as high risk war criminals.
Story has a lots of twists, and ending gives hope that from ashes humanity can rise up again. Parallel between humans and slow-bullets (devices from the book title) are wonderfully rendered.
That being said, interesting story notwithstanding, book meanders, it seems that story was maybe meant for something bigger but it was published in the given form. Entire book reads like an introductory tale, with a rather hasty ending. Or it could just be me, having read few similar books in succession....
All in all interesting SF story, with very interesting comments on humanity and what makes society a society. But it lacks a ..... punch I guess, I cannot get rid of the feeling this book was supposed to be start of something bigger.
Recommended to fans of adventure SF.
Story was fast, although by no means condensed - it is quite a door-stopper :) - but it had impact and
Show More
very interesting view of both biological, technological and societal aspects of humanity.I dont want to ruin experience of other readers so I wont go much into the story itself (there is quite a twist in the last third) but when compared to Revelation Space, this one is rather a slow burner. Our protagonist, Scur, war veteran wakes up on board of unknown ship instead on her home-world. To make things worse, this ship is not your standard transport but ship carrying war veterans from both sides and also people that are marked as high risk war criminals.
Story has a lots of twists, and ending gives hope that from ashes humanity can rise up again. Parallel between humans and slow-bullets (devices from the book title) are wonderfully rendered.
That being said, interesting story notwithstanding, book meanders, it seems that story was maybe meant for something bigger but it was published in the given form. Entire book reads like an introductory tale, with a rather hasty ending. Or it could just be me, having read few similar books in succession....
All in all interesting SF story, with very interesting comments on humanity and what makes society a society. But it lacks a ..... punch I guess, I cannot get rid of the feeling this book was supposed to be start of something bigger.
Recommended to fans of adventure SF.
Show Less
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novella — 2016)
Locus Award (Finalist — Novella — 2016)
RUSA CODES Reading List (Shortlist — Science Fiction — 2016)
Original publication date
2015
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Reynolds |