Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds - Wikidata

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**Alastair Preston Reynolds** (born 13 March 1966) is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland. In 1991, he moved to Noordwijk in the Netherlands where he met his wife Josette (who is from France). There, he worked for the European Space Research and Technology Centre, part of the European Space Agency, until 2004 when he left to pursue writing full-time. He returned to Wales in 2008 and lives near Cardiff.

Between 2006 and 2009 he maintained a blog called Teahouse on the Tracks. From 2010, he has blogged at Approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon (a link to the blog can also be found at his website, AlastairReynolds.com/blog.

## Works

Reynolds wrote his first four published science fiction short stories while still a graduate student, in 1989–1991; they appeared in 1990–1992, his first sale being to Interzone. In 1991 Reynolds graduated and moved from Scotland to the Netherlands to work at ESA. He then started spending much of his writing time on a first novel, which eventually turned into *Revelation Space*, while the few short stories he submitted from 1991–1995 were rejected. This ended in 1995 when his story "Byrd Land Six" was published, which he says marked the beginning of a more serious phase of writing. As of 2011 he has published over forty shorter works and nine novels. His works are hard science fiction veiled behind space opera and noir toned stories, and reflect his professional expertise with physics and astronomy, included by extrapolating future technologies in terms that are consistent, for the most part, with current science. Reynolds has said he prefers to keep the science in his books to what he personally believes will be possible, and he does not believe faster-than-light travel will ever be possible, but that he adopts science he believes will be impossible when it is necessary for the story. Most of Reynolds's novels contain multiple storylines that originally appear to be completely unrelated, but merge later in the story.

### Revelation Space

Five of his novels and several of his short stories take place within one consistent future universe, usually now called the Revelation Space universe after the first novel published in it, although it was originally developed in short stories for several years before the first novel. Although most characters appear in more than one novel, the works set within this future timeline rarely have the same protagonists twice. Often the protagonists from one work belong to a group that is regarded with suspicion or enmity by the protagonists of another work. While a great deal of science fiction reflects either very optimistic or dystopian visions of the human future, Reynolds's future worlds are notable in that human societies have not departed to either positive or negative extremes, but instead are similar to those of today in terms of moral ambiguity and a mixture of cruelty and decency, corruption and opportunity, despite their technology being dramatically advanced.

The Revelation Space series includes five novels, two novellas, and eight short stories set over a span of several centuries, spanning approximately 2200 to 40 000, although the novels are all set in a 300 year period spanning from 2427 to 2727. In this universe, extraterrestrial sentience exists but is elusive, and interstellar travel is primarily undertaken by a class of vessel called a lighthugger which only approaches the speed of light (faster than light travel is possible, but it is so dangerous that no race uses it). Fermi's paradox is explained as resulting from the activities of an inorganic alien race referred to by its victims as the Inhibitors, which exterminates sentient races if they proceed above a certain level of technology. The trilogy consisting of *Revelation Space*, *Redemption Ark* and *Absolution Gap* (the Inhibitor trilogy) deal with humanity coming to the attention of the Inhibitors and the resultant war between them.

*The Prefect* from 2007 marked a return to the Revelation Space universe. Like *Chasm City*, it is a stand-alone novel within the Revelation Space universe. It is set prior to any of the other Revelation Space novels, though still 200 years after the original human settlement of the Epsilon Eridani system.

### Other works

*Century Rain* takes place in a future universe independent of the Revelation Space universe and has different rules, such as faster-than-light travel being possible through a system of portals similar to wormholes. *Century Rain* also departs substantially from Reynolds's previous works, both in having a protagonist who is much closer to the perspective of our real world (in fact he is from a version of our past), serving as a proxy for the reader in confronting the unfamiliarity of the advanced science fiction aspects and in having a much more linear storytelling process. Reynolds's previous protagonists started out fully absorbed in the exoticisms of the future setting and his previous Revelation Space works have several interlinked story threads, not necessarily contemporaneous. According to Alastair himself, no sequel will ever be made on Century Rain.

*Pushing Ice* is also a standalone story, with characters from much less distant in the future than in any of his other novels, set into a framework storyline that extends much further into the future of humanity than any of his previous novels. It contains an alternative interpretation of the Fermi paradox: intelligent sentient life in this universe is extremely scarce.

*House of Suns* is a standalone novel set in the same universe as his novella "Thousandth Night" from the One Million A.D. anthology. It was released in the UK on 17 April 2008 and in the US on 2 June 2009. Reynolds described it as "Six million years in the future, starfaring clones, tensions between human and robot metacivilisations, King Crimson jokes."

*Terminal World*, published in March 2010 was described by Reynolds as "a kind of steampunk-tinged planetary romance, set in the distant future". As with Century Rain, Reynolds has said that he does not plan any further work in the universe of Terminal World.

In June 2009 Reynolds signed a new deal, worth £1 million, with his British publishers for ten books to be published over the next ten years.

His current project is Poseidon's Children (previously known by Reynolds working title, the 11k series), a hard science fiction trilogy dealing with the expansion of the human species into the solar system and beyond, and the emergence of Africa as a spacefaring, technological super-state several centuries down the line over the next 11,000 years. The first book is titled *Blue Remembered Earth*.

His Doctor Who novel *Harvest of Time* was published in June 2013.

## Awards and nominations

Reynolds's fiction has received three awards and several other nominations. His second novel *Chasm City* won the 2001 British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel. His short story "Weather" won the Japanese National Science Fiction Convention's Seiun Award for Best Translated Short Fiction. His novels *Absolution Gap* and *The Prefect* have also been nominated for previous BSFA awards. Reynolds has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award three times, for his novels *Revelation Space*, *Pushing Ice* and *House of Suns*. In 2010, he won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for his short story "The Fixation". His novella *Troika* made the shortlist for the 2011 Hugo Awards.

## Online articles, interviews et al

* *Some Sort Of Internal Consistency...* - Alastair Reynolds interviewed by Duncan Lawie (Zone-SF.com, ca summer 2002, Duncan Lawie)
* *Deep Space, Deeper Revelations* - An Interview with Alastair Reynolds by Nick Gevers (InfinityPlus.co.uk, 2001, updated verision of July 2000 interview for *Interzone*, Nick Gevers)
* An Interview with Alastair Reynolds by John Berlyne, SFRevu.com, 18 May 2001
* Audio interview with Alastair Reynolds (included in the article *The Spectrum of Space Opera*, 3 October 2002, by Rick Klefell of Agony Column)
* An Interview with Alastair Reynolds by Anthony Brockway, orig. publ. December 2003, republished 25 June 2009 on the Babylon Wales blog, by Anthony Brockway
* Aberrant Dreams magazine - An Interview with Alastair Reynolds, Autumn 2005 issue of *Aberrant Dreams* magazine, interview by Ernest G. Saylor and Joseph W. Dickerson
* SFFWorld - Interview with Alastair Reynolds, 31 March 2008
* 'No one pointed a gun at my head and said, become a science fiction writer' (*The Guardian*, 23 June 2009, by Richard Lea)
* Alastair Reynolds: 'I've been called the high priest of gothic miserablism' (*The Guardian*, 13 July 2009, by Stuart Jeffries)
* Alastair Reynolds: The Moral Universe (*Locus Magazine*, 18 February 2011 - full interview in the February 2011 issue of Locus)
* Episode 73: Live with Gary K. Wolfe and Alastair Reynolds (*The Coode Street Podcast*, 29 October 2011, by Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan)
* *Fascinated neutrality*: An Interview with Alastair Reynolds (*Los Angeles Review of Books*, 7 April 2013, by Jerome Winter)
* A 2014 Interview with Alastair Reynolds, Parts 1, 2 and 3 (*Agony Column Podcast*, 4 August 2014, by Rick Klefell of Agony Column)
* Episode 32 - Interview with Alastair Reynolds, *The Creative Writer's Toolbelt*, 21 March 2015
* LocusMag.com - Paul Di Filippo reviews Alastair Reynolds, Locus Magazine, 16 June 2016
* Episode 284: Alastair Reynolds, Revenger and the Far, Far Future (*The Coode Street Podcast*, 10 September 2016, by Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan)
* An Interview with Best-Selling Science Fiction Author Alastair Reynolds (Futurism.media, September 2017, by Neal Ulen)
* Alastair Reynolds on Returning to Revelation Space in Elysium Fire (12 February 2018, by Ross Johnson)
* Episode 390: Ten Minutes with Alastair Reynolds (*The Coode Street Podcast*, 18 April 2020, by Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan)

## Video interviews et al

### Public appearances by A. Reynolds

TEDxCardiff - Alastair Reynolds - Asking the Biggest QuestionTedx Cardiff talk (2011) - The Fermi Paradox and science fictionPicocon 27. Alastair Reynolds Talk.Picocon 27 (2010) - the first few minutes of the talkScience fiction and fantasy discussion. Alastair Reynolds, Peter Ellis and James Christie.Alastair Reynolds, Peter Ellis and James Christie discussing science fiction and fantasy at a panel of AutismCon, 2015Singularity Panel with Vernor Vinge, Charlie Stross, Alastair Reynolds, Karl Schroeder (full)
### Interviews with A. Reynolds

Interview with Alastair ReynoldsInterview at Finncon, 2009Alastair Reynolds Interview - Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast -68Interview in episode 68 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast (of Wired.com), August 2012Google Play presents- Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter F. HamiltonLive discussion with Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter F. Hamilton, 27 September 2012-Imaginales 2013- Entretien avec Alastair ReynoldsLonger interview (45 min.) at the Les Imaginales festival of speculative fiction in France, May 2013Interview d'Alastair Reynolds aux ImaginalesShorter interview (ca 12 min.) at the Les Imaginales festival of speculative fiction in France, May 2013Author Spotlight- Alastair Reynolds - Sword & LaserAuthor spotlight and interview at Sword & Laser, March 2014Geekopolis 2015 - interview de Alastair Reynolds pour ActusfInterview with Alastair Reynolds at Geekopolis 2015Alastair Reynolds Interview (part one)Long and detailed interview with Alastair Reynolds (August 2021) - Part 1Alastair Reynolds Interview (part two)Long and detailed interview with Alastair Reynolds (August 2021) - Part 2
## See also

* Official websites - Reynolds' web presence, concerning the Revelation Space series and his other works.
* Artworks by the author - Reynolds' own minor illustrations, some of them for the Revelation Space setting.