Revelation space cycle

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Known space map

The Revelation Space cycle comprises four novels , two novellas and currently eight short stories by the author Alastair Reynolds , which can be assigned to the genre of space operas as well as the genre of hard science fiction .

overview

The Revelation Space novels are set in a fictional future of humanity. Humans have spread over parts of space and are in contact with several extraterrestrial races. Advanced technologies are available to mankind, some of which are even more advanced to aliens. When designing the technologies, Reynolds, who studied physicist and astronomer and worked for the European Space Agency before his career as a writer, limited himself to technologies that appeared plausible to him and only added inventions that are impossible according to today's knowledge if they were indispensable for the progress of a story. Reynolds' stories within the Revelation Space universe do not have a clearly optimistic or dystopian tendency, there are no clear "heroes" or "villains". All factions of mankind form heterogeneous groups in terms of character traits. The actors are usually positive or negative over long periods of time, but not permanently. In terms of content, mankind sees itself exposed to threats from its own race, from extraterrestrials or from unfavorable scientific influences through all the novels, but always manages to defy the threats. The name "Revelation Space", in German roughly "Place of Revelation", comes from one of the novels in which one of the main characters is allowed to enter a "Place of Revelation" during an encounter with an alien race.

Books

Related novels of the Revelation Space cycle

Novels that are part of the Revelation Space cycle

  • Dreams of Infinity (Contains 2 short stories, 2005, Heyne, ISBN 3-453-5202-11 , original title: Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days )
  • Galactic North (2006, 8 short stories from the Revelation Space Universe, English)
  • Aurora (2008, Heyne, ISBN 3-453-5250-27 , original title: The Prefect )

Groupings

Demarchists

The demarchists are a group of people who live out a political system of democratic anarchy or demarchy . According to Reynolds' short story "A Spy in Europe" , the demarchy works through a neural implant that constantly forces the user to comment on various aspects of the life of the demarchists. These constant inquiries finally disappear in the neural background, similar to the ticking of a clock that is only perceived subliminally. It is not clear from the narrative whether the Yellowstone Demarchy, the most important demarchy at the time of the Revelation Space events , also employs such a technique (although The Prefect confirms this). Other known demarchies are Haven and the Demarchy of Europe . Apart from access to these tools of direct democracy in their most extreme form, there were no restrictions on the individual social systems in the habitats around Yellowstone, at least in the Belle Epoque . This absolute freedom found its climax in the establishment of the "voluntary tyranny" in which one is suppressed on a voluntary basis by a dictatorial system. There is no central power, there are only institutions to prevent the electoral process from being hindered.

There were several powerful families in the demarchy up until the melt epidemic. One of the most influential was the Sylveste House, they founded the SIS or Sylveste Institute for Veil Studies and organized the Resurgam Expedition. Important representatives of the Sylveste family are Dan Sylveste (leader of the Resurgam expedition), Calvin Sylveste, who became known through "The Eighty" and Lorean Sylveste.

The Demarchists (especially the Yellowstone Demarchy) have extensive experience in the fields of nanotechnology , life extension , and genetics . The height of demarchist society, the Belle Epoque , was brought to an end by the meltdown and plunged demarchist society, especially Chasm City , the capital of Yellowstone, into a dark age.

Chasm City was rebuilt with the help of the Synthesizers. The Demarchists, dissatisfied with their new role as the second most important power, declared war on the Synthetics. While the Synthesis initially dominated the war, their shared consciousness gradually turned out to be a disadvantage, as it made them predictable, which gave the Demarchists the upper hand. In the end, however, the Syntheticists managed to free themselves from this handicap by restructuring their swarm consciousness and defeated the Demarchists several times. Only the appearance of the oppressors prevented the absolute victory of the synthesizers .

The weapons used by the Demarchists are antimatter ammunition (or pinhead bombs , named for the tiny amount of antimatter they require, usually antilithium) and mass accelerators. The Yellowstone demarchy was believed to have been destroyed during the time of "Revelation."

In the epilogue to “Galactic North”, Alastair Reynolds comments that the Demarchists are not his own invention. He is referring to Joan D. Vinges book "The Outcasts of Heaven Belt" as an inspiration for the Demarchist society. The term demarchy is a political term that is derived in simplified form from “democratic anarchy”.

Ultras

The part of the people who spend most of their life on light ships is called ultranauts (or ultras for short ) . Most ultras have strong body modifications and replace their organs with technical equivalents. Although most modified people are called ultras , this does not seem to be an inevitable name for modified people, since Ilia Volyova has no such (at least no visible) modifications and in another book a heavily modified person is not referred to as ultra.

Ultranauts are primarily characterized by their isolation from the rest of humanity and their lifestyle, which is very much related to the inner world of their light ship.

Their bodies are almost always prosthetically and cybernetically equipped to adapt to the conditions on a light ship, especially the change between weightlessness and gravity when the ship is under thrust or rotates around its own axis and to come into contact with the ship's computer. Typical upgrades include visual, respiratory , i. H. Breath-supporting and muscle-strengthening changes.

The Ultras usually shave their heads except for a row of dreadlocks in the middle of the skull. The number of dreadlocks shows how many cold sleep periods an Ultra has already spent.

Interstellar trading is an essential part of the life of the Ultras. The Ultras trade in artifacts from the time before the meltdown, raw materials, information and, in general, everything that can be profitable.

Their ship is their purpose in life, which is why the Ultras are very paranoid and on the one hand heavily arm their ships to scare off enemies and on the other hand avoid possible battles from the outset.

Synthesizer

Syntheticists are a group founded by Galiana on Mars through experiments designed to connect the structures of consciousness of the participants. This resulted in the so-called 'trans-lighting' and the formation of the mother's nest.

Syntheticists are a combination of man and machine, similar to a cyborg , with the difference that Syntheticists only use brain implants to speed up their thinking and change their neural architecture. After the first war against the synthesizers, they flee with Nevil Clavain , who was convinced by Galiana that the synthesizers pose no danger, and form the first mother's nest. There is a connection of the consciousness of all synthesizers. However, while technically they are way ahead of the other factions, their engineering is still very far from what the alien races once created near the Sol system . After the emergence of the Green Plague and the eradication of the other human factions, the members of a small group of synthesizers are the last humans in the galaxy.

Synthetics use implants to increase their brain activity and to create a collective consciousness. This collective consciousness can be generated locally by the implants or it can be reinforced by background machinery. In addition, all of the synthesizers' communication takes place through fields generated by their implants, which is why normal speech appears extremely inefficient and slow to them. In addition, the implants allow the synthetists to remodel their own neural architecture, modify their bodies and interact directly with computer systems. Synthesizers also often have the ability to superimpose their own sensory impressions of eyes, ears, etc. with versions revised by the implants. In this way a synthesizer can expand his body awareness and control a light ship directly and feel as if it were part of him. Furthermore, it is no problem for synthesizers to hack computer systems and paralyze weapons. One consequence of the advancing technology of their brains is the generation of waste heat , which they dissipate via body modifications (e.g. combs). Some synthesizers renounce their bodies and only keep their brain mass as a reminder of their phase as a human being made of flesh and blood.

The Syntheticists are known among the other factions as the builders of the so-called synthetic engines.

According to Reynolds, the synthesizers are not a new concept and were already mentioned in outline in Michael Swanwick's " Vacuum Flowers ".

Coalition for Neural Purity

The Neural Purity Coalition was formed around 2190 after it was revealed that Galiana had created the Synthesizers on Mars. The coalition began a war against the Synthetic, in which Nevil Clavain and John Brannigan were involved, who fought on the side of the coalition. Due to their community awareness and the ability to quickly accelerate their own brain processes to a multiple, the synthesizers were initially superior to the armed forces of the coalition. Nevil Clavain finally ordered the use of various weapons of mass destruction against the Synthesizers. The war against the synthesizers was won and they were driven back into a fortified laboratory complex. This was protected by an old terraforming project, the so-called Great Wall. Trapped and monitored by a satellite defense system, they found a way to escape by eventually exiting the solar system from a Martian moon that had been hollowed out by Synthetics and converted into a giant light ship. In the course of this, Nevil Clavain was captured by the Synthetics and infected with the nanomachines, whereby he became a Synthetic and was able to turn the conflict around in the interests of the Synthetic. He convinced the Demarchists to ally with the Syntheticists and to withdraw the coalition's license for various, highly developed weapon systems.

Pigs or hyper pigs

The hyper pigs (or “pigs” for short ) were created through human experiments. At first they were only designed as a spare parts store for humans, i.e. designed for organ transplants, until rudimentary intelligence emerged in them through the transfer of human DNA into pig DNA.

Alien races

Nest builders

The nest builders were the first known race of extraterrestrial beings who managed to hide from the oppressors. They were responsible for the deaths of the speedsters who made the mistake of trying to contact the Shadows. With the help of the nest-builders, mankind was able to repel the oppressors and create a large oppressor-free space. No explanation is given of what they look like, but in Galactic North they are described as insectoid. They float in their bodies due to anti-gravity technology. They have no emotions, but are possessed by a different species known as "snails" . They use diamonds to build space-time weapons.

Sample slide

Pattern sliders are semi-intelligent, organic creatures that can be found in the seas of various planets of the Revelation Universe. The pattern slide complex resembles a giant brain and stores the emotions, consciousness and knowledge of those who come in contact with it. It can happen that pattern sliders “remodel” someone who comes into contact with them, that is, change their neural structure. Pattern sliders consist of microorganisms that act in associations and can also "break down" someone who has often been in contact with them, i.e. take them up into their matrix, or infect them so that part of the pattern sliders live on on the person concerned. Pattern Sliders are a kind of collective memory of the galaxy and contain the knowledge of many races who visited the Pattern Sliders before humans appeared.

The characters in the novel speculate whether the pattern pusher were a tool of another people that were scattered around, but their origin is never fully explained.

Dan Sylveste and his expedition to the veil weavers use the pattern sliders to change their thinking so much that they are not recognized as hostile by the veil to be visited.

Veil weaver

Veil weavers are incomprehensible and inaccessible beings for the people of the Revelation Universe who hide behind a veil of impenetrable spacetime barriers. Almost all attempts to establish contact have so far failed, as the veils are surrounded by an extremely distorted spacetime that destroys everything they touch. Gravitational fields and vortices prevent any approach to the surface of the veil. There are few people in the Revelation universe who have ever had contact with the Veil Weavers , according to Sylveste, who tried to prove that the Veil Weavers are nothing more than the Resurgam avenoids, i.e. amarantines who tried to protect themselves from the oppressors or wolves to hide.

Oppressors or wolves

Suppressors are not living beings in the actual, biological sense, but merely a tool that consists of nanotechnological, black cubes that do not reflect radiation. They were created after the first great galactic war to prevent the development of intelligence. The people who created the oppressors saw the intelligence as the source of all evil and the reason for the first war, and therefore decided to prevent this from happening again. The oppressors appear whenever an intelligent race sets out to travel the galaxy. They then destroy them and thus nip the beginning of a new war in the bud ( Resurgam event ).

The suppressors appear as black, crystalline, fractally arranged structures of cubes that can convert any material into further suppressor material. They are also able to infect organisms and thus read out the brains. Oppressors can form clumsy and simple structures as well as complex ones, such as spaceships and weapons.

Similar to state-building insects, the action of a larger mass of oppressors appears to be quasi-intelligent - a contradiction in terms of the objective of preventing intelligence. This is resolved by the fact that the suppressor structures only activate as much intelligence as they currently need to complete their current mission. The individual oppressor associations also have an overseer intelligence that is activated to complete the current mission and then switched off again.

technology

In contrast to that of many other Hard SF authors , Alastair Reynolds' fiction is fundamentally based on the recognition of classical Einsteinian relativity, according to which mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. As a result, the relativistic flight with correspondingly long travel times is a decisive element of his stories. In some places he also deals with the paradoxes and causality breaks predicted by physicists that could occur if one gets too close to the speed of light.

On the other hand, it describes technologies that appear highly speculative from today's perspective, such as B. highly complex nanotechnology or the generation of energy from the vacuum disintegration of space (synthetic engines, see below).

Synthetic engines

Synthetic engines are highly developed engines that make it possible to undertake interstellar travel because they do not require propulsion mass and instead draw their energy from the quantum vacuum in order to deliver constant thrust up to the speed of light. Only their enormous power allows a constant acceleration of 1 g and thus artificial gravity.

Synthetic engines are black boxes and any attempt to open them to recreate them will result in the engine detonating, powerful enough to completely destroy itself and the lightship that powers the engine. However, they were not developed by the synthetics themselves, but passed on to them in the form of building plans through the Exordium, a kind of connection to a parallel future. The engine power is obtained from a wormhole , one end of which is in the engine and the other end of which exists in the first few seconds after the Big Bang , in a quark - gluon plasma, from which the energy for acceleration is obtained.

The monopoly on the construction of such drives have the synthesizers , who are the only ones able to manufacture them. Around 2500 they stop building the engines due to the high dew neutrino emissions. They fear that this will attract the oppressors and develop new types of engines that reduce emissions to a minimum and are equipped with an inertial suppression system, among other things - but these ships are only built for their own use in order to put together their Exodus fleet.

Lightships

The interstellar spaceships in the books are referred to as light ships.

Their outer shape resembles a very long cone 3–4 km long, the optimal shape for travel only a few tenths of a percent below the speed of light. At the end of the fuselage there are two synthetic engines , which provide the enormous power for acceleration up to almost the speed of light.

In order to accelerate to cruising speed, the ships need months to years with 1 Ge thrust. The years or decades of journeys from one star system to another are mostly spent by the ultra crew in a cold sleep . To protect themselves from the relativistic effects of high speed, light ships almost always have diamond-reinforced ice armor, which should also protect against attacks by other light ships.

For the most part, light ships belong to Ultras, which spend their entire life or most of them on board the ship.

The capacity of a light ship is several hundred thousand people ( demonstrated in Die Arche during the evacuation of the planet Resurgam ). Gravity is created on these ships either by thrust or by rotation around the ship's longitudinal axis .

Hell class guns

Hell-class guns are self-contained weapons developed by the Synthetics. The blueprints, like the plans for the synthetic engines, come from the Exordium. A total of 40 hell-class guns were created, which are now in the possession of Longing for Infinity . The blueprints for the weapons were destroyed by the Synthetics after the prototypes were built for fear of their strength and abuse. The weapons are independent and have a certain intelligence. They are housed in housings that are around 60–70 meters long and have their own drive. Once the weapon has been activated, it moves away from the ship on its own and focuses on its target. It is said that the smaller of the guns can do terrible things to a star. Some of the weapons are based on chemical and nuclear principles, while others do not use either form of energy. Some of the weapons self-destruct when triggered, so the weapon that was fired at Haldora, others not. A good part of the weapons are based on gamma-ray lasers, the acceleration of relativistic projectiles, but also on exotic principles such as standing gravitational waves (fired at Resurgam). The fire sequence can only be stopped by destroying the weapon itself.

Cryo-arithmetic aggregates

A cryo-arithmetic aggregate is a quantum computer that violates the second principle of thermodynamics . The quantum computer generates cold or destroys heat when it calculates. The colder it gets, the faster it calculates. So it is very difficult to keep cryo-arithmetic aggregates under control, and some accidents have already happened, for example after Skade's crash in Revelation . Cryo-arithmetic aggregates are used for camouflage, as they adapt the temperature of the hull of a ship to the temperature of the background radiation and thus make it invisible in the area of ​​heat detection.

Hypometric weapons

Hypometric weapons are among the most advanced weapons in the Revelation universe. They are repeatedly described as "against nature" and "just plain wrong". Hypometric weapons are based on blueprints taken from the Hades matrix. It is said that they are mostly only developed by peoples who have been in space for one to two million years.

Hypometric weapons appear to have a tree-like structure and cut part of space-time out of their target in the shape of a bullet. The tolerance range for construction is on the scale of an atom, as otherwise they would represent a danger to the light ship on which they are located at the high rotational speeds they reach when firing. Hypometric weapons seem to be slightly acausal as it can never be said exactly where they cut out part of space-time. Although their radius of destruction is the size of a miniature bubble, e.g. For example, to remove tissue from a person, up to a few kilometers, firing is always dangerous, because you can never say exactly whether the weapon hits the enemy or yourself. Hypometric weapons also distort space-time in their environment .

Although the weapons were very effective against the wolves for a while, they seem to have become immune to them.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview on BBC News. Retrieved September 17, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Telepolis article, March 25, 2006. Retrieved September 17, 2015 .