Redemption Ark
Late in the twenty-sixth century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors - alien killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons -and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes - and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether...
Stats for nerds
2recommend
8mentions
8people
2010–2024years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Overall I read a mix of some sci-fi, business type books, and a little Clancy mixed in.
1. Fear - Bob Woodward (did not actually get too far before dropping it)
2. Radical Candor - Kim Malone Scott (interesting)
3. Black & Decker Complete Guide to Wiring (VERY helpful during my home renovation, did most of my electrical)
4. Pitch Perfect - Bill McGowan (helpful for communication)
5. Quantum Thief/Fractal Price/Causal Angel [Jean le Flambeur series] - Hannu Rajaniemi (I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy the best, the third was too difficult for me to understand! Very hard Sci-fi)
6. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (enjoyed the audio production from BBC radio)
7. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu (enjoyed several of the short stories very much)
8. Revelation Space/Chasm City/Redemption Ark/Absolution Gap - Alastair Reynolds (love the series but it is long!)
9. Executive Orders - Tom Clancy (not my favorite Clancy book but still fun)
10. Rainbow Six - Tom Clancy (also not my favorite Clancy book, a little more fun than Executive Orders though)
While waiting for the next Game of Thrones book I picked up a few new series that I really enjoyed! I hope to get a few new suggestions out of this list.
The Expanse - James Corey
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
Broken Earth - NK Jemisin
Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin (translated: Ken Liu)
- If you're interested in "realistic" (meaning: no FTL) space battles read Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark (and read Revelation Space and Chasm City before that).
It includes a chase between star systems that goes on for years and "close" (ie within a few light-seconds) combat that involves a lot of interpolation of enemy position, movement and actions.
Personally I still have serious doubts about the viability of any kind of prolonged manned presence in space. Its simply too expensive and the distances involved in interstellar travel are so vast that even perfect mass to energy transformation would make the process prohibitive in terms of cost and time.
But it's fun to muse about.
- That happened in Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (2002), though of course the idea may also have been used before or since.
- Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds for the main arc.
- But isn't it what science fiction is? You get science sure, but with a little bit of fiction also. You read Ringworld or Redemption Ark, or any popular science fiction and you will read many implausible things.
The ratio of science to fiction determine the type of science fiction you get. Hard sci-fi, a la Arthur C. Clarke tends more toward the science bit while Ursula K. Leguin is more fiction than science.
In the end, what we look for in Sci-Fi, I believe, is the "What if" thing. It lets you explore ideas and concepts that you normally wouldn't, using some amount of "suspension of disbelief".
- Your book review site looks nice. Thanks for sharing.
However, the order of books in Alastair's Revelation Space series doesn't match up with I found on Goodreads
https://www.scifibooklove.com/book_series/revelation_space/ vs https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space
I recently started the series and went with Redemption Ark as book 2 (according to Goodreads) Hope I'm not missing too much going with the Goodreads ordering :/
