Re-read of the eBook following the disappointment of spending £50 on a pre-order of two volumes of “The Revelation Space Collection”, which it turns out were NOT the collected novels but all the short stories instead… (of which their own review is pending). So, just for the record there are two completely products called “The Relevation Space Collection”, one an ebook collection of 7 novels, the other the collected short stories. Hence my confusion!
My first read was quite some time ago and while I vividly remember certain scenes (Chasm City, the Nostalgia for Infinity and the Hades/Cerberus artifact) I couldn’t remember how it all fitted together, and I’m not actually sure that I really did back then.
I must have gained some insight or maturity over the years as on this reading I realised that there were huge areas that I had missed and the story hangs together in a really clever way. On the surface, the tale of a driven archaeologist and an assassin sent to kill him (for unspecified but serious reasons) this is a much deeper story, going back almost a million years for the archeological record and back to the dawn of life in the universe for the (literal) back story. A hugely impressive book, well worthy of the SF Gateway masterworks edition I saw in Waterstones the other day.
Having read almost everything else Alastair has written I can also see echoes of other works here - the huge found artefact that appears in ‘Pushing Ice’, the intelligence puzzles from ‘Diamond Dogs, the competing invasive AIs from ‘The Prefect / Machine Vendatta’ (arguably also the world simulation from “Century Rain”); along with the richly realised universe from the rest of the Revelation Space sequence.
Mindblowing ideas, exciting story telling and detailed universe building combine to make this a genuine classic (although I think my favourite book is still ‘House of Suns’). Recommended.