{"id":3174,"date":"2015-11-14T20:44:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T04:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=3174"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:51:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:51:14","slug":"review-of-alastair-reynolds-slow-bullets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/11\/14\/review-of-alastair-reynolds-slow-bullets\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Alastair Reynolds’ SLOW BULLETS"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Alastair Reynolds\u2019 short novel SLOW BULLETS \u2013 the latest in a series of short novels from Tachyon Publications<\/a>, following among others Nancy Kress\u2019s Yesterday\u2019s Kin<\/b> and Daryl Gregory\u2019s We Are All Completely Fine<\/b>, both awards winners \u2013 is a spectacular far future space opera whose main defect is that it\u2019s too short, and a bit skimpy near the end. Reynolds is one of those authors whose works I’ve admired, those I\u2019ve read, but whom I\u2019ve been unable to keep up on over the years, partly because most of his novels are quite long, and mainly because of my own erratic attention over the past decade. I particularly admired House of Suns<\/b> (2008, Wikipedia<\/a>), a spectacular saga of competing multi-generational families that hold reuinions, via clones, every circuit of the galaxy or so; he makes the drama work within the constraints of non-FTL travel in a way I\u2019ve not seen any other hard SF author do.<\/p>\n

SLOW BULLETS is also set in some remote, intergalactic future, as a long-term war between the Central worlds and the Peripheral worlds is winding down, has reached a truce. News of the truce is slow to spread, and so the opening of the novel involves Scur, a warrior on one side, being captured by Orwin, a sadistic warrior on the other side who hasn\u2019t heard about the truce, who injects her with a second \u2018slow bullet\u2019, in additional to the one she already has; a memory device all warriors carry, to preserve their memories, but which application causes excruiciating pain.<\/p>\n

Scur awakes in a \u2018hibo\u2019 capsule aboard a prisoner starship with no recollection how she got there. Aboard are hundreds of other \u2018prisoners\u2019 from both sides of the conflict, along with a few crew members who seem to have no idea of what has happened \u2013 how the ship has apparently traveled for longer than intended, and how they do not know where they are.<\/p>\n

And so the story evokes, on a couple counts, a basic SF theme \u2013 the resetting of humanity without memory of a past, first on the starship, cut off from everything they\u2019ve known, forced to rebuild some kind of internal society on their own terms; and second, with the gradual realization about where they\u2019ve arrived, and what\u2019s happened to the rest of humanity across its worlds, with an example of an SF encounter with an inexplicable alien \u2018other\u2019. The titular notion of the \u2018slow bullets\u2019 becomes crucial, as a threat to the loss of cultural knowledge, via decay of their starship, is resolved through self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Reynolds writes clean clear prose, in a way that doesn\u2019t beg appreciation for his wide-scale cosmic depictions; he lets his cosmic expanses appear matter-of-factly, to speak for themselves. Yet his prose is occasionally quite striking, as when the villain Orvin confronts our hero Scur, about her need for revenge:<\/p>\n

\nBe honest with yourself, as one solder to another. We both know what hate feels like. It hasn\u2019t gone away just because we spent a little time in hibo. It\u2019s like a light filling you up from inside. It\u2019s leaking through your skin.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A fine short novel, and one which invites attention to his longer works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alastair Reynolds\u2019 short novel SLOW BULLETS \u2013 the latest in a series of short novels from Tachyon Publications, following among others Nancy Kress\u2019s Yesterday\u2019s Kin and Daryl Gregory\u2019s We Are All Completely Fine, both awards winners \u2013 is a spectacular … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-species-reset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3174"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}