Pushing Ice

Product Information

I can imagine that this has too much drama for an outright hard SF fan and perhaps too much hard SF for a space opera fan, but I couldn't put it down. First let me state where I'm coming from... There is an interaction between the world and the protagonists - a kind of two-way street that puts constraints as to what each can do - if the world is not built to a sufficient degree of detail, it will come out in the characters and what they do. Reynolds manages to bring forth another novel of the same quality as the Revelation Space series that serves to place him at the forefront (perhaps along with Peter Hamilton) as one of the pre-eminent contemporary sci-fi writer today. The pacing of the plot appears slow at first and gains speed as the storyline progresses, but in reality, Reynolds is shadowing the relativistic time dilation that the characters are undergoing. Another of Reynolds' talents is to unfold his tales along a Richter scale of increasing complexity and scope. The overall theme of story surrounds female friendship and its complicated interplay between the personal and professional, along with a higher duty to society. As is typical of Reynolds, the science is inviting and doesn't overwhelm the storytelling. His rendition of aliens is also refreshing in its diversity. YES! No hesitation. It may be a bit full-on if you are not into sci-fi, but if you are wanting something to blow your mind a bit and just a bloody good story with superb writing – look no further! I have added ALL his other work to my TBR!

The added acceleration of their captivity leads to more time dilation. Its not clear how much except that it is A LOT. This becomes apparent when they do get some information from more than 18000 years into their own perceived future (and this proves to already be ancient). The novel opens with a curious prologue set 18,000 years in the future, describing an ambitious plan to celebrate the legendary Right out of the gate I was engaged. The depiction of life aboard a comet mining ship was really first rate with very little in the way of "space magic" thrown in. The characters were interesting and the events of the first portion of the book were so gripping I found myself pulled into the slip stream (wink). Politically, they had very little in common, but by the same token they had very little worth squabbling over. (c)Unseen Evil: The Uncontained is regarded as the biggest threat in the Structure, but the main characters never had seen what they and their ships are look like. in inscrutable alien politics, and at the end, a story of confronting truly Deep Time, the very far future. This, to CENTURY RAIN, PUSHING ICE, HOUSE OF SUNS and TERMINAL WORLD are all unrelated standalone novels. I have vague intentions to return to the universes of PI and HOS, but nothing firm, and I don’t intend to return to the worlds of CR or TW, much as I’m fond of those books. There are three books in the REVENGER sequence.

Pushing Ice is classic Reynolds at his paint-it-on-a-huge-canvas best and yet it falls well short of his best books. That huge canvas, the ideas, concepts, vision and science, are as brilliant as ever, but his characters, never one of Reynold’s strongest points, are here quite dire. The main characters are all pretty much either unreasonably nice or equally unreasonably horrible. In particular the behaviour of one of the main characters is so appalling that I simply found their actions and motivations utterly implausible though possibly not as much as the way everyone else just quietly goes along with that behaviour. I know we humans can be a bunch of sheep at times but there are limits. is a "light speed limit" author, and fascinated with Deep Time. And all this describes Pushing Ice quite excellently. As opposed to a not real-life alien?” .... “I don’t think it’ll happen. I think we’ll find automated systems, that’s all.” I have come to like Alastair Reynolds more with each book I finish, and Reynolds' in-depth stories and characters are complimented very nicely by John Lee!must say that I was gripped throughout. There's a lot going on: a lot of neat SFnal ideas, some "small"

Just look at it, Liz. Does that strike you as the product of the kind of intelligence you really want to do business with?” (c) Weird times to forget reason. This is where I tapped out. The captain has to make a huge decision, and ignores all reason and the lives of her people to chase this thing, Ahab style, even though she's made it very clear that she is doing this by democracy. And the weirdest part is, the thing they're following? They know where it's going! So why chase it when a better equipped team can meet up with it later?It's a story that is ultimately about the relationships between the crew members, which bodes well, but unfortunately the characters are never entirely convincing and the plot skims the edges of melodrama in places. Reynolds absolutely amazes me as a writer. He's an astrophysicist who worked for the European Space Agency so he writes hard sci-fi, with exceptions made for the story, but his writing is also absolutely excellent. He keeps the story evolving throughout the book in a way that means it could easily have been split into three less suspenseful stories, which is much more typical these days. There's not only an ongoing mystery of what Janus is and who the aliens are, there are also multiple situations along the way, each with their own resolution. The suspense just never let up in this one. I ended up not being able to read it before bed because I would go to bed too tense. I ended the book feeling like events that happened in the first third of the book were distant memories. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: The novel is essentially about establishing a society in hostile surroundings with no advance preparation and minimal supplies.

So what were the nagging issues, well, I can’t describe them all without spoiling the plot. But I will say the emotional intelligence of the two main characters was disappointing and frustrating for me. These are leaders hardened by danger and rigor of space mining, but they occasional show the relationship skills and self-control of a first grader. I get that the high stakes and life/death decisions create stress that can impair decision making, but these are long-term grudges and resentment that goes well beyond the heat of the moment. This drives one of them to make a decision with an alien race that had me pounding my head against the wall in exasperation. In addition, there are some minor plot holes, actually probably not holes, just very unlikely circumstances that are very convenient for the plot. Ultimately, the wonder outweighs the frustration and I never thought about abandoning this story. And finally, while the primary questions are answered, there are several tangential questions that are never answered. I’m assuming this is intentional, leaving the door open for sequels. Reynolds even tries to come up with plausible solutions for the 2057 level of technology. So, his heroes don’t look at tablets but possess a quasi-organic medium of storage and communication called flexi – he even does the decent thing and spares us the mumbo jumbo of how it “works”. Same thing applies to all his mid 21st century imagined technologies. Even his far out future tech sounds balanced and well thought. In fact, we go from near-future asteroid miners to a science mission that then turns into a story of colonization, feuding, massive SFnal discoveries, leading to a ton of awesome alien interactions that remind me of how Europeans bamboozled the Native Americans. I'm not telling you the direction of the bamboozle. :) Every reason in the world...We’re here and we’re alive. It’s a beautiful evening, on the last perfect day of summer… Now let’s go down there and make the most of it, while it lasts.” (c)

corporation seems to have been hiding his fact, she begs for a turnaround, and turns against Bella when she refuses. This