Customer Reviews

Zima Blue

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alastair Reynolds is one of the best authors of science fiction writing today, and Zima Blue, which collects ten short stories set outside his Revelation Space universe, is no exception.

The stories in this collection follow many themes recognizable from Reynolds's other works, including the effects of transhumanism on society and genocidal sentient machines. They are, however, often refreshingly original, always bringing a new perspective, even if it's something Reynolds has written about before. Many of the stories have the same epic scope as Reynolds's novels, but some are surprisingly personal and small-scale--especially "Signal to Noise," which was, I feel, the collection's best.

True to form, Reynolds includes a lot of real science in these stories, so be prepared to do some learning about astrophysics and quantum mechanics. On the other hand, unlike many authors in the genre who tend to infodump in order to show you how intelligent they are, the in-depth science in these stories is always integral to the plot, not just a window dressing that can be skipped. Thus the writing remains tight and is never dull. And Reynolds never expounds on technical details at the cost of characterization; under the science and the science fiction, these are very human stories, ultimately driven by the people in them.

Whether you're a returning fan or new to Reynolds's writing, I highly recommend Zima Blue. These ten stories don't fail to disappoint.

This collection of stories written over a number of years is a very enjoyable way to pass a few hours. Readers of Reynold's novel works will recognize a number of themes in some of the stories, including interstellar 'genocidal' efforts against humanity, the impact of relativity when travelling at speeds near c, his great ability to write really ALIEN aliens (maybe not so much as in Pushing Ice or the Shrouders and Pattern Jugglers from the Inhibitors series), machine intelligences extrapolated into sentience with their own motives, and a lot of hard-science astrophysics and quantum mechanics.

If you enjoy his other published works, this is definitely worth picking up.

The short stories are a tribute to Reynolds' sweeping imagination. You can discern why he is considered one of the main proponents of New Space Opera. While not all the stories qualify on those grounds, several certainly do. He wrote the latter with enough scientific certitude to be plausible. We see a Grand Vision of an interstellar war between mankind and a terrible enemy, stretching over possibly centuries; both sides armed with devastating weapons, drawn from the most basic of physics.

The characters do tend to be less memorable than the plots. But this is a time honoured tradition in science fiction.

I consider Alastair to be one of the best Sci-Fi writers in the last 30 years. His universes are full of very different characters and very tangible events and things. This collection of short stories offers a good look at his style and diversity. Some are placed in his sci-fi "opera" universe "Revelation Space" and some are just in the near future. Being a scientist by training, he describes complex concepts easily and his stories are always very deep in background, history, characters, and plot. Prepare to have your mind challenged by what you think you know about Sci-Fi writing.
A universe I have come to enjoy immensely.

Finally, a collection of short stories which doesn't stray from solid sci-fi. There are no political-power-struggle yawners often found in older collection. Nor are there are any fantasy stories written by transgenre authors. This is a sci-fi author writing sci-fi stories. For that reason alone, it garners my support, yet Reynolds takes it one step farther and actually makes the stories readable, interesting and even entertaining! Of course, I AM a fan of his Revelation Space series and I also have some of his tomes lined up to read in the future. If you've liked Revelation Space, you'll enjoy his techie sci-fi and his humorous sci-fi, too.

Once again Alastair Reynolds has written an excellent collection of short science fiction stories. If you like classic hard science fiction, you'll love these stories.

My first real exposure to Reynolds work... and it blew me away... I've been looking in vain for this guys style for years! Solid and deft writing, a furious blend of neo-brit gothic space opera and hard science fiction. High concept, real brain rattling imagery all tucked in and around a darkly compelling future history. Picture a darker Larry Niven, a more tech Arthur Clarke... and I only use these comparisons because I am a huge fan of them all. Loads of fun, the title story (saved for last) will melt your brain.

--- This is a review of the 2009 Gollancz edition including the short stories "Minla's Flowers", "Cardiff Afterlife", "Everlasting", "Signal to Noise" and "Digital to Analogue". ---

As a devoted Alastair Reynolds fan I was a disappointed by this (mostly) short story collection. No real twists or surprises in most of the stories; especially the first one "The Real Story" disappointed me, closely followed by "Zima Blue" that gave the collection its name. Reynolds really seems to shine in longer stories like the Merlin trilogy in the middle of the book, though, and some other stories are OK, "Enola" being one of them. Some are not believable with regard to the main character's actions and motivation - "Understanding Space and Time" and "Beyond the Aquila Rift" being prime examples.

All in all, the stories featured in this book don't do Reynolds' other works justice. If you are a Reynolds fan, definitely read the book, and if you're not, don't expect this to be the best introduction to the genius of Reynolds' other works.

A collection of tightly interwoven short stories that tell the story of mankind's desperate attempt to escape annihilation at the hands of a relentless enemy.

*** WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERTS ***


I agree with most of the reviews already posted here. Zima Blue is a stunning collection of short stories -- suspenseful, atmospheric, imaginative, intellectually stimulating, and beautifully written. In a way, Reynolds is writing in the mystery genre, but there's no detective. The "mystery" is the inner emotional life of human and near-human characters who are dealing with extreme (perhaps operatic) science-fictional predicaments, environments, and events. For example: the predicament of living temporarily inside the borrowed body of an alternate version of yourself in a slightly different alternate reality with the purpose of spending one precious week with the alternate version of your spouse who is almost identical to your own spouse who recently died in your native reality. Or, the predicament of watching a beloved genius robot artist (responsible for the most brilliant masterpieces of his time) as he succumbs to nostalgia by deliberately and permanently shutting down his higher-brain functions one by one and dismantling himself until he has reached his original and final incarnation: a small and primitive mechanical swimming pool cleaner. What some readers (like the reviewer named Josh More) may find dissatisfying is that Reynolds never presents a "solution" to the emotional "mystery" in each story. Which is why readers like Josh find themselves thinking, "this is the last book of his that I intend to read. He's too depressing." I totally agree with Josh in finding the stories not-exactly-uplifting. But, instead of using the words "too depressing," I would probably use the words "emotionally ambiguous in a way that lets the mystery in each story linger in my memory while giving my mind an aesthetic puzzle to ponder in my free time, like when I'm waiting for an elevator or stuck in traffic in my car."

A few other thoughts (random):

- Before reading Zima Blue, I read three other books by Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space, Chasm City, and Redemption Ark, all of which are novels (and all of which are riveting and superb). I was curious to see how Reynolds would handle the short story genre as opposed to the more-expansive genre of the novel. I wondered if his space operatic cosmic imagination would be compatible with the less-expansive scope/scale of a short story. The answer, I found, was yes - Reynolds shows that it's definitely possible to narrate a compelling space opera in 20 or so pages. However, it should be noted that quite a few of the stories in Zima Blue are interconnected (set in the same universe and populated more or less by the same characters), so really this is a collection of several short stories and several novellas.
- This book comes with a BONUS in the form of notes accompanying each story in which the author talks about the story's origins and other interesting behind-the-scenes details.
- A few of the stories are set in Cardiff, which made me think of Torchwood. I miss Torchwood.
- I really wish that more readers would mention (notice?) the fact that Alastair Reynold's writing is AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS. My wife is a poet and ever since we met she's been getting me into poetry and doing things like reading literature aloud for fun, and under her influence I've been starting to notice things like prose style and figures of speech (her terminology) in the books I read (most of which is sci-fi). Also I've been trying to get Sarah interested in science fiction, which has been challenging to say the least because all her life she's thought of science fiction as rubbish. But whenever I find good sci-fi (ie very beautiful sci-fi writing) I read it aloud to her, and she's actually gradually been converting to my point of view. So I was reading Zima Blue the other day and I found this one passage that I *had* to read aloud to my wife. It's a passage from the story Beyond the Aquila Rift:

Instead of the holographic blue, the dome was now full of stars. It was like no view I'd ever seen from another station or ship. There were furious blue-white stars embedded in what looked like sheets of velvet. There were hard gold gems and soft red tinges, like finger smears in pastel. There were streams and currents of fainter stars, like myriad neon fish caught in a snapshot of frozen motion. There were vast billowing backdrops of red and green cloud, veined and flawed by filaments of cool black. There were bluffs and promontories of ochre dust, so rich in three-dimensional structure that they resembled an exuberant impasto of oil colours... There were pulsars, flashing on and off like navigation beacons, their differing rhythms seeming to set a stately tempo for the entire scene, like a deathly slow waltz. There seemed too much detail for one view, an overwhelming abundance of richness, and yet no matter which direction I looked, there was yet more to see, as if the dome sensed my attention and concentrated its efforts on the spot where my gaze was directed. (This is on page 49.)

Guess what? My wife was genuinely impressed. Now she's reading Zima Blue and she tells me she's truly enjoying it.