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Eversion

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Instead of opening in one of Reynolds’ future worlds, the action starts on a sailing vessel, the Demeter, in a stormy sea off the coast of Norway in either the late 18th or early 19th centuries. At every stage of this mystery, Reynolds describes the technologies of the various vessels in great detail as well as the increasingly sophisticated instrumentation and mathematics for pinpointing and identifying the big, dumb object that proves so elusive to the explorers. Contrary to intuition, it is possible to do this without cutting or tearing or creasing the sphere’s surface. CLARKE AWARD; REVELATION SPACE, ABSOLUTION GAP, DIAMOND DOGS and CENTURY RAIN were shortlisted for the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD and CHASM CITY won the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD.

I read it as a part of monthly reading for October 2022 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. Several characters of interest play parts across the various scenes, and the positions they play in the grand scheme are familiar enough that it’s easy to follow them through the narrative. So when I started reading this book I was a little confused as to why we were in the 1800's aboard a ship off the coast of Norway. If there are any core concepts more central to the genre of science fiction than mind-bending ideas, awe-inspiring vistas, and grand adventure, I don’t know what they are. I was enraptured by the ingenuity of its construction, the (apparent) frailty of the main character, the premise and its conclusion, but I deeply missed the vastity of the universe.Reynolds demonstrates his writing skill to great effect in yet another twisty timeline shifting story.

As the story progresses, we get to meet Silas in the other timelines and learn more about him as more of his personality and motives are revealed. And while it’s not always clear where the story is going, it is vitally important that you trust the author to know what they’re doing. The main question you have to ask yourself is how much you think you'd enjoy reading about the same cast of characters sequentially going through similar scenarios at different times and locations for most of the book. Ingeniously, Reynolds also evokes “eversion” in the novel’s structure, a nested set of fictions that led me far from my initial understanding of what was happening to the protagonists. One of my issues with Revelation Space were the poorly sketched characters, barring a few like Scorpio.

In Eversion, Reynolds engages with some of the central concerns of science fiction today, and of postmodern fiction generally: the relationship of language to the reality it purports to describe, the reliability of storytelling (especially auto-fiction), the mechanics of forgetting, and identity negotiation.

Think pulpy adventures with a hard SF twist, mysteries that infold in strange but tangible ways, characters who need to face the hard truths about themselves they are desperate to forget. So the crew of Demeter realize they are not the first to reach the Edifice after all, and anger centers on Topolsky, who has concealed the previous expedition from everyone else.I had to flick back to the information page as I was sure I had seen it was a Reynolds story but the beginning didn't seem anything like past reads. The attempt to work out the mathematics of this massive shape, and hence the ability to navigate its intricacies, is the obsession of the young mathematician, Raymond Dupin. You only get to know a part of him when the book begins, but it’s enough to know that he’s a caring and dedicated doctor, well-liked among the crew. Another thing that differentiate it from the others is that it's missing the grand scope, the vast universe and distances, the immensity of time scale which I loved to read about in his other books. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

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