| Alastair Reynolds | Contributor: Amfo | Posted: 14/02/07 | 22:52 |
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page 1 of 6 Despite being an author of high-tech, hard-concept future-history science-fiction, Alastair Reynolds is quite casual about the fact we're speaking via direct-dial international IDD, probably utilising an IP core at some point between Australia and the Netherlands, a distance of about 16,500km. And there isn't even any lag. Reynolds, who has recently released his first anthology Galactic North with long-time publisher Gollancz, lives in Holland and writes in English. He's originally from Wales, and spent time with the European Space Agency before pursuing writing as a career. He tells us he's a slave to the mighty publishing schedule, and Gollancz expects one book a year from him, to be released each Northern Hemisphere spring. Because of slips (Reynolds didn't specify whether they were his slips or the publisher's), he began to fall further and further behind the spring schedule, and so has released a collection to leap-frog back onto the timetable. Galactic North contains only three completely new stories, but since they're all quite long, most of the book is new material. Look out for our review for more specific details about the book. I spoke to Reynolds at length about his work, his recent novel Pushing Ice, and some of the scientific and philosophical principles that most interest and motivate him. Before we get started, let's clear up some nomenclature. We've heard your future-history novels referred to as the Inhibitor novels and also as the Revelation Space sequence. Which is correct?
Well certainly I've never thought of it as the Inhibitor universe because there's quite a bit more to it than just that one idea. I've normally used Revelation Space as a general term, but one reader suggested that it should be called the Galactic North sequence, because that short story sort of encompasses the whole history.
The Galactic North anthology works really well as an introduction to the Revelation Space universe, was that your intention in the collection?
Honestly, my motivation for pulling the collection together was to get back on to the spring schedule. There was no way I could write a whole novel in the time I had available, so we gathered some stories that had appeared in really obscure places and I wrote the three new ones and there you have it. I've heard from a few people now that it is a good "way in" to the earlier novels.
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