Century Rain

It's very hard to find a new sci-fi, since so many books really can be judged by their covers, from the cheesy space-skank front flap to the back's promise of excitement and thrills like you've never seen before(!). So how do I do it? Well, sometimes I just go with the award winners. Enter Alastair Reynolds.

Century Rain combines the best elements of old-school noir with well-done hard, classic-style sci-fi, alternate history, and a good adventure under the careful eye of a master storyteller and skilled wordsmith. Set in a future universe in which the Earth has been purged of all organic life (and capability of sustaining such) by a plague of nanomachines, and the transference of information to digital mediums has misfired in the most tragic of fashions, three hundred years later an archaeologist named Verity Auger leads teams to the surface to search for any cultural artifacts - books, newspapers, recordings, anything that contains information regarding what was. When one of those trips goes seriously wrong under her command, her boss has the excuse he needs to pack her off on a trip through a newly discovered, highly unstable alien transit system in order to recover the belongings of a murdered intelligence agent. Why send an archaeologist when is sounds like a job for a spy? Because on the other end of that portal is Paris circa 1959, in a world where World War II never happened and thus neither did the need for advancing technology. This description doesn't do the plot justice, and indeed it is hard to describe without spoiling it. Suffice it to say that, on the Earth 2 end, is an American immigrant living in France for the past twenty years as a private detective, who is hired by the murdered agent's unsuspecting landlord to uncover the circumstances of her death. And then things start getting weird.

There are so many things Reynolds does right. The science element of the story is well-thought, and not over-explained, but still, if you're the sort who feels robbed by a film that has a too high ratio of science to action, you may be in for a disappointment. The European detective noir side of the story is spot-on and as enjoyable as any I've read. Above all, Reynolds doesn't pander. The ending is so satisfying, because it doesn't contradict the reasonable path of the story for the sake of making the audience feel good (this is not to say it's tragic). And he writes for fans of the genre without being a snob about it. In a favourite moment, Verity enters a government building and notices a robot stamped with a crossed-out "A", meaning that it is not Asimov-compliant, and becomes very uneasy. Now, I know what this means, so it's as funny as it is creepy. Reynolds clearly states that A means not Asimov-compliant - thus giving enough information to not be a prig about it - but doesn't explain what that means, thus respecting both the readership who knows what he's talking about, and the rest, who can look it up. This moment is indicative of his easy skill and quality of storytelling, and respect for the audience that he maintains throughout the whole book. Really, the hero of this story is consistency.

(Alright, there are a few minor anachronisms, such as when Reynolds, a Brit, forgets that he's writing dialogue for Americans and has one of them refer several times to a flashlight as a torch. But that's the extent of his indiscretions.)


My favourite thing, though, is seeing a heroine whose name is significant without being corny or in your face. Verity Auger - literally, "truth digger". What a brilliant name for an archaeologist, particularly one in her unique situation and universe.

This book gets an A+, and I'm looking forward to picking up more of his work.