Alastair Reynolds

The man himself!

Alastair Reynolds: Author, Scientist, and one of the best science fiction authors writing today. Perhaps it is a bit premature to call him our generations' Clarke, Heinlein, or Asimov, but I have no doubt that 20 or 30 years down the line, that those are going to be the comparisons being made. Reynolds was born in Wales and earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from St. Andrews, Scotland. From there he worked for the European Space Agency (Europe's NASA) for 12 years before he decided to pursue writing full time. When you read Reynolds it's certainly easy to think the science and technology of these distant futures is far-fetched or even impossible, but given his background and the amount of research he does for all of his books all of it is based on fact and is more than plausible.

 What type of science fiction does he write you ask? Well, that's a rather difficult question to answer, for several reasons. First and foremost, I believe he is writing in a genre all his own, sure his style is firmly rooted in hard sci-fi, but it's more than that. He has amazing characterization and storytelling, two things that many hard sci-fi authors tend to lack. His books feature grand scope comparable to some of the best space opera out there. Cyberpunk? Absolutely! Steampunk? Damn straight! Both at once? You better believe it! If it sounds hard to believe and near impossible to pull off, you would be right..... except Reynolds does flawlessly. Perhaps now you're realizing the difficulty in using an almost arbitrary system to classify such an eclectic author.

Collection of Reynolds books only missing Terminal World

I discovered Reynolds back in 2007 shortly after I started working at Borders--may it rest in peace. His first book is called Revelation Space and is also the first book in the "Revelation Space Series" which spans thousands of years and includes a main trilogy, following Revelation Space, as well as several full length novels and many short stories. To say that I enjoyed them is an understatement, I read all three novels in the Revelation Space Trilogy, plus one of the full length novels set in the Universe. As I said before (and probably in several other blogs) Reynolds has the amazing ability to pull you into these far flung futures and make it so you cannot stop until suddenly its over. You not only fall in love with the characters, but your heart aches to live in these worlds to experience the next stage of humanity. The Revelation Space Universe is so rich and complex that it is barely a leap of the imagination to believe these places actually exist and even less of a leap to see the plausibility of their future existence. Reynolds is masterful in throwing hundreds of strands in different directions and then, amazingly, being able to tie them all up in a neat package that blows you away in the end. Interestingly, he also knows just which to leave dangling to leave you practically raving to know what happens next. This, I believe, is one of his best strengths as an author. Some authors believe that they need to tell you exactly what happens, how it happens, and what the future will hold for the characters, whereas Reynolds leaves his characters and his stories in a conclusion, yes, but also with a wide open door for what will happen next. This can be amazingly frustrating, naturally, but at the same time I find it almost more satisfying to not know play by play what the "final" end of the characters is. Don't get me wrong and think that he doesn't conclude his stories, because he does, but instead of "and Jack and Jill lived happily ever after to the end of their days" you find that after the story has ended, the rest of this characters life is ahead of them, with the possibility of adventure, tragedy, or even the mundane. The great part is that you don't know. Occasionally a thread from one story is picked up and toyed with in another, sometimes to an ultimate conclusion for that story, other times just to tease and to let the reader know things were happening in the interlude. Call it fan service, but I find it very satisfying to hear a tidbit about "character x" in a completely different story and time.

The Revelation Space Universe

Above are the covers of all seven books and short story collections that are within the Revelation Space Universe. Now, if you google "Revelation Space Reading Order" you'll find tons of different ways to read them, but honestly I would say the best way is to read them by publish date with the exception being Chasm City, which deals with some characters from the main trilogy, but does not make as much sense without having finished the trilogy. Think of it like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia". Sure Book 1 is The Magicians Nephew, but it doesn't make a damn bit of sense unless you've read the other 6! It's not quiet as bad as that, but I enjoyed it more after I had read the main trilogy. I personally recommend this reading order, but there is an actual chronological order that things can be read in, if you're into a stickler about that sorta thing:

1. Revelation Space (2000)
2. Redemption Ark (2002)
3. Absolution Gap (2003)
4. Chasm City (2001)
5. Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)
6. Galactic North (2006)
7. The Prefect (2007)

I do have to say that a lot of the short stories and novellas are harder to appreciate without having read the main trilogy, which is green above. 

Other than the Revelation Space novels, Reynolds also has four non-related novels that are amazing. These I also read by publish date, cause that's just how I roll. 

• Century Rain (2004)
• Pushing Ice (2005)
• House of Suns (2008)
• Terminal World (2010)

Century Rain has a really neat noir theme, but of course is set in the future.. and the past.. and I gotta say is one of the most unique stories I've ever read. Pushing Ice is some classic hard sci-fi with a great action/adventure twist, and a pinch of space opera that leaves you breathless upon finishing it. House of Suns is probably my favorite of the four and ends in such a way that I am still longing to know what else can/will happen. Again, it is another genre breaker that defies classification. Finally Terminal World, is that crazy mix of steampunk and cyberpunk, not to mention hard sci-fi, space opera, planetary romance, and excellent action and adventure. Hmm well it seems that all four are pretty much unique in terms of classification and I am doing a terrible job of actually making you wanna read them.

If you don't want to jump into the 7 novel universe, I highly recommend picking up one of the four stand-alone's, all of them have the power to blow you away and in all likely hood will interest you enough to picking up his other stuff!

Questions of Colonization

I've been toying around with the idea of colonization for a while now and I think its high time for me to focus my thoughts and actually write something down. Granted I'm a mere second semester freshmen in a non-science major but someone needs to be thinking of it. The most likely reason, I think, that I'm so curious about space is from all my sci-fi reading. Yeah, yeah I know that many, if not all, of the ideas, designs, theories, and so forth are fantasy but that doesn't mean there's a real way to achieve some of this. Recently I've gotten into an author name Alastair Reynolds who writes something called hard science fiction which stresses scientific accuracy. Though Reynolds world is much more advanced and, like most sci-fi, set in the distant future he has some interesting views of how space is colonized. One of the planets in his books is a recently colonized planet which may shed some ideas on how we may be able to make that jump. One of his ideas is terraforming, which, by definition, is the modification of another celestial body to make it similar to earth. Its still hypothetical, of course, but in my opinion its definitely feasible.

Mainly this post is meant to organize some of my thoughts and help me critically look at the whole concept of colonization. I'm no expert but I know I'm not the only person out there that has questions about this sort of thing so by asking I have a basis to start my search. Obviously wikipedia is one of my favorite things to use but I'd like to expand from there and if I have narrower more specific questions that will help me look at more "credible" sites like NASA and such. Mars is going to be my focus but I realize that the more probable place to start out is our very own moon, seeing as I don't know shit about vacuums or gravity or any of the main problems with the moon I'm just gonna avoid it for now.

How much time and fuel would it take to transport a manned ship to Mars?

Do we have the technology to even make a manned trip to Mars?

Is a closed ecosystem a possibility on Mars?

How many people, if any, would it take to maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars?

How much water would be needed to create a closed ecosystem on Mars?

What kind of engineering problems are associated with creating domes?

How violent are the storms on Mars?

What kind of materials would be needed to create a dome capable of withstanding dust storms on Mars?

What is the soil made up of on Mars?

How much less sunlight does Mars receive than Earth?

What is the temperature on Mars?
Around the equator during the summer Mars can reach 20 degrees Celsius (70 degrees F)

Does Mars have an atmosphere?
"Mars has a very thin atmosphere composed mostly of the tiny amount of remaining carbon dioxide (95.3%) plus nitrogen (2.7%), argon (1.6%) and traces of oxygen (0.15%) and water (0.03%). The average pressure on the surface of Mars is only about 7 millibars (less than 1% of Earth's)..." (NinePlanets.org) 1013 millibars is 1 atmosphere so 7 millibars is roughly 0.006908463 atm. The altitude that one would experience such a low pressure is 159,013 ft. or 30 miles up, if you go that far up you'll enter the Mesosphere (ace).

What does low pressure do to the human body?

Is it possible to depressurize slowly and safely?

Is it possible to increase the pressure of a planet?
Essentially what needs to be done here is injecting large amounts of gases into the atmosphere. This will serve a duel role of both increasing the surface temperature on Mars as well as the pressure. This is one of the many goals of terraforming.

What is the gravity on Mars?
Mars has approximately .38 the gravity of Earth (NASA) Essentially I weighing 130 pounds would be 49.4 pounds there. This is a whole lot less than I thought, and reading the article sited above gave some interesting questions I didn't have before. I'm gonna keep a close eye on the Mars Mice since they'll be able to answer questions I won't even be able to look into myself.

Would a human be able to function normally on Mars?

What is the escape velocity for Oxygen on Mars?

Does Mars even have the gravity to even hold onto Oxygen?

Some of these are very simple to find with google but I just want to put them down on paper, well in writing rather, to organize my thoughts. I'll edit this post as I find answers to some of these, others which are more speculative I'll just write up another post and link to it here. One thing I've learned from my academic career is the more questions you answer the more emerge, I'll most likely add to this list as I learn things but the point is not to find a solid answer but to critically look into such a feat. It will be years before we will even visit Mars but who's to say we can't start working on colonization now? Stephen Hawking recently stated "The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years, If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." He says that its possible to have a base on the moon in the next couple decades and a get to Mars by the middle of century (AIP). It's really great that we're just now trying to fix the climate but the climate isn't the only problem facing the future of humanity. Even if we completely clear up our massive carbon footprint there still remains the fact that we only have so much room, our population is growing exponentially. Nothing short of totalitarian rules on reproduction can we avoid outgrowing Earth in the next couple centuries, and still, eventually we'll grow out of it anyway. Of course, that is, if we don't all end up killing each other off. Nature may even do us that little favor by unleashing even more intense disasters and viruses . There's all sorts of horrible things that can happen that will kill off a couple billion people, but isn't that all the more reason we should spread out and increase our chances that much more? Lets face it, sooner or later some renegade asteroid will come along and not just prune our population but completely annihilate our species. Hop to it people, this is our future at stake.

Ethonal

The world is dying. There’s no two ways about it. With our fossil fuel consumption exponentially increasing, the earth is slowly paying for it. Even though global warming is now commonly accepted, our politicians still show how little they actually care. Instead of actually doing any research they find the quickest, easiest, and the stupidest solution. What I’m talking about is biofuel, more specifically ethanol. It’s supposed to be our way out of the death hold oil has on the U.S. even though research shows it is far from that. Even yet all the presidential candidates have thrown their support to biofuels only for votes. Ethanol is not the resource our planet needs.

First, a let’s take a look at what biofuel is: biofuel is a form of fuel produced from organic matter such as corn, sugar, switchgrass and other plant life (Grunwald 40-42). One such fuel is E85, which is made from 85 percent of corn-based ethanol and gasoline. Biofuels, such as E85, can be used to fuel cars, thus reducing oil use and lowering carbon emissions, right? Well, not really. Michael Grunwald recently wrote an article in Time called “The Clean Energy Scam” which points out the negative aspects to biofuels: “The basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple … using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon” (42). Not only is this a huge threat to the environment, it’s a huge threat to the thousands of species that live in these various environments, that’s not all either. Using corn for fuel instead of food has bumped the global price into record highs. Grunwald puts it bluntly, “The grain it takes to fill up an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person

for a year” (42). Those are just some of the problems our “savior” from oil has. There are many others, most of which are just ignored by our politicians.

Politics is quite the interesting subject, indeed quite the popularity contest. It amazes me that, given the research done on ethanol, all three of the major political candidates support biofuels with such vigor. Democrat Barack Obama states in his book The Audacity of Hope, “The bottom line is that fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85 percent ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry” (170). I wonder what Obama would say if he knew that “the future of the auto industry” would leave hundreds of thousands starving. It seems that no one told Mr. Obama about the environmental impacts nor the humanitarian implications of ethanol because he not only supports ethanol, he makes us pay for it; “We provided tax credits to gas stations for installing E85 fuel pumps” (Obama 326). Barack isn’t the only politician to disregard research on biofuels; both Hillary Clinton and John McCain praise the “virtues” of ethanol. Perhaps the biggest supporter of ethanol, though, is Congress. Grunwald states “Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream of future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill” (44). Quite frankly, such utter disregard for the planet and humanity by the people that run our country is heinous.

To think I have to point out alternative fuels for the alternative fuel our nation is embracing, is sad. There are many truly renewable resources to consider, indeed many of which are quite obvious. There’s been a lot of talk recently about creating nuclear fusion to fix our energy woes; it’s a great idea and all, but it’s a waste of money at this point. Fusion has already been discovered. What’s 1,000,000 times bigger than earth and creates enough fusion to light the world for, well, forever? The sun! I’m glad I’m not the only one to see this wonderful star as a resource. In Al Gores book, An Inconvenient Truth, he asserts just how powerful the sun is, “On a bright sunny day the sun shines approximately 1,000 watts per square yard” (166). Now think, the sun shines roughly 300 days a year here in New Mexico; New Mexico is also the 5^th largest state, that’s a lot of power. Another clear solution to the world energy crisis is wind energy. In The Rough Guide to Climate Change the author, Robert Henson, shows just how powerful wind energy can be, “It’s been estimated that the U.S. could generate up to 11 trillion kilowatt hours of wind power per year, about three times the total from all U.S. power plants” (316). To address Obama’s automotive future I think it would be wiser to invest our tax dollars in hydrogen fuel cells. There are no carbon emissions and the only waste material is vaporized water (Henson 324). Those tax credits being wasted on ethanol pumps could be going to new technologies that make the production and storage of hydrogen cells easier and more productive.

In conclusion, ethanol is far from Earth’s green alternative and it’s, in reality, far from green. In the end, our government only cares about two things: Who has the money, and how to get easy votes. We should not give up hope. There are plenty of truly renewable resources out there that are readily available. Combine solar and wind energy with hydrogen fuel cells and it then becomes possible to overthrow the oil tyrants. Though we may feel powerless, every one of us can make a difference. Invest in some

solar panels, which will increase the overall value of your home, or just give your local energy provider a call about ways to go green.

Works Cited

Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth. New York: Viking: 2006.

Grunwald, Michael. “The Clean Energy Sam.” Time Apr. 2008: 40-45.

Henson, Robert. The Rough Guide to Climate Change. New York: Rough Guides: 2008.

Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope. New York: Three Rivers Press: 2006.

So I wrote this research paper for my English 101 class. Its not too bad but its certainly not very good either. I did it over like 3 days tops and quite frankly its suppose to be argumentative but.... I don't really care too much about the topic so its kinda half assed. I should get it back on Tuesday so we'll see what I get on it. It is kinda interesting how our politicians jump on the easiest and quickest 'solution' without doing any research. Oh well.. maybe they'll figure it out at some point.