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Galactic North

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About this listen

 Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down.

The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

Set in the Revelation Space universe, this is the first short story collection by the author who has been called "one of SF's best and most ambitious novelists". The eight stories included in Galactic North are "Great Wall of Mars", "Glacial", "A Spy in Europa", "Weather", "Dilation Sleep", "Grafenwalder's Bestiary", "Nightingale", and "Galactic North".

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2009 Tantor Media Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera

Critic reviews

"Reynolds is one of sci-fi's brightest stars. [He] writes Big Science Fiction. Enormous spaceships travel though space that feels galactic in scale, a feat of depiction that is still noteworthy in the genre." ( The Guardian, London)
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All from the Revelation Space universe that Reynolds has created, this for me puts the finishing touches on that series of books. It's worth listening to the afterword at the end too. All in all I'm happy with that as a final entry in the series.

kinda ties it all together

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Wonderful gift from Reynolds to bookend the original Revelation Space quad of RS, Chasm City, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap.

MILD SPOILERS:

Few of the stories feature characters from the original 4 books, but those that do carry with them a surprising amount of pathos and nostalgia, with the last appearance of an established character being hugely affecting for really what is Reynold's usual thin level of characterisation.

Two of the earlier stories in his career are included here and they're fine, but not to his usual standard, but the rest could really have fit into the main four books and not seemed out of place.

Definitely get this to end the whole thing though, it provided me with some closure.

Wonderful present at the end of the RS quadrilogy

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This is a good collection of some of the authors shorter works most of which I had not read before. They were all very interesting and captivating, but a couple of them were a little bit more like they should’ve been from a horror genre a little bit more intense than I usually like my sci-fi regardless they were still really good stories and very intense certainly kept you reading

Good collection of shorter works

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This is hard sci fi, some of the audio version moved too fast for me to really grasp what was going on. This is absolutely not a criticism of the author or narrator, just an observation that the depth of information I needed to absorb might have been better served with an actual book being read at my own pace.

An incredible journey through a future history.

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