Chasm City: Alastair Reynolds

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Several of my GR friends have read Chasm City and had mixed reactions ranging from "it sucks" to "it's just okay. Lumea Orașului abisului este însă foarte bine dezvoltată și destul de coerentă, conținând detalii tehnice, dar și altele ce dau veridicitate (etnografie, mitologie, religie etc. It deals with themes of identity, memory, and immortality, and many of its scenes are concerned primarily with describing the unusual societal and physical structure of the titular city, a major nexus of Reynolds's universe. Taking 1000 or 5000 years, one can easily imagine a colony or even a solar system where they teach kids that their holy woman (who knows? I picked up on it around 1/3 of the way through, and was initially disappointed, thinking that it might be a shocking twist ending that was too obvious and heavy handed.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Scenes of Tanner's murderous quest alternate with scenes of Sky's life, which Tanner sees whenever he nods off. This book is a very intricately plotted sf novel with strong element of a noir thriller, but the emphasis is definitely on the sci-fi. Sky Houseman and the generations of crew taking care of sleeping human colonists on their way to our first extra-solar system colonisation.

When Americans originally settled the Epsilon Eridani system by Von Neumann robot, the location of Chasm City -- a huge crater spewing unusual gases -- was spotted. There was a discussion on Twitter the other day I can no longer find in which somebody referred to Dune – both the recent Villeneuve adaptation and the franchise – as “mostly vibes,” and not as an insult.

One of those books that I massively enjoy having read, past tense, but ultimately didn’t enjoy while reading. The one time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city’s inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. In lesser hands this sort of skipping back and forth along the timeline can cause a lot of confusion for the readers, but kudos to Mr.Want some cheap, illegal, operation as a welcome gift to make sure that you don´t grey/green goo too much and make the place even slimier and grittier?

Normally that sort of thing doesn't sit well with me but it works much better in a dark context than in a humorous or other lighter context. He gets thrust into a “Most Dangerous Game” hunt (as the quarry), then he gets rescued, betrays his rescuer, goes on a fact-finding mission, hooks up with his rescuer again, etc. While Chasm City is not any shorter at around 700 pages, it makes much better use of those pages with a fast-paced plot, complicated and dark but intriguing characters, and flashbacks that form a gripping story of their own. And what makes Chasm City (the book) so excellent is that the sci-fi noir experience doesn't end at the rim of Chasm City (the city).Somewhat different from Revelation Space—and that’s probably a good thing— Chasm City delivers an interesting mix of mystery, thriller, and philosophy. and yet somehow no one is mentioning how often this trope pops up in Classic Sci-Fi™ for middle-aged, gruff men and frankly, it’s embarrassing.