A novella. Introduction by Stephen Baxter.
Richard Swift is a failure; a brilliant thinker and theorist on alien intelligence who has been excluded from the most significant project of his era due to a bitter family dispute. Bored and restless, he is shocked by the return of his oldest friend – the supposedly dead Roland Childe.
Once, Swift and Childe entertained each other with intricate games and challenges. Now Childe proposes that they – and a small number of other experts – tackle the greatest challenge of all: gaining entry into a sinister alien structure on a nameless world light years from Swift's home.
But Swift and Childe are not the first to attempt this task. Others have come before them and failed. Their bones litter the ground, testifying to the appalling punishments that the structure has inflicted on those who would dare to better it.
No one sane would take Childe up on his offer.
But there is nothing Swift likes better than a challenge.
The series
The Revelation Space universe is a fictional universe which was created by Alastair Reynolds and used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories. Its fictional history follows the human species through various conflicts from the relatively near future (roughly 2200) to approximately AD 40000 (all the novels to date are set between 2427 and 2727, although certain stories extend beyond this period). It takes its name from Revelation Space, which was the first published novel set in the universe.
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The main trilogy (also known as the Inhibitor trilogy) consists of 1) Revelation Space, 2) Redemption Ark and 3) Absolution Gap, and deals with humanity coming to the attention of the inhibitors and the resultant war between them.
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