Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds is a Welsh author of a number of sci-fi novels, which have the tendency to be about as far up Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness as it's possible to get while still remaining recognizably Space Opera. Of particular note is the total lack of Faster-Than-Light Travel in most of his books, despite their interstellar settings, and the extreme cultural divergences shown.

Most of his books take place in the Revelation Space universe, where by the 26th century humans have achieved slower-than-light interstellar travel, and find themselves needing to discover why all the other intelligent species they find evidence of seem to have gone mysteriously extinct.

The Revelation Space series:

 * Revelation Space
 * Redemption Ark
 * Absolution Gap
 * Chasm City: A prequel to Revelation Space
 * The Prefect: A prequel to Chasm City, before the Melding Plague.
 * Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days: a pair of unrelated novellas
 * Galactic North: A series of short stories in the Revelation Space universe.

Non-RS novels and short-story collections by Reynolds:

 * Poseidon's Children trilogy
 * Blue Remembered Earth
 * Pushing Ice
 * Century Rain
 * the Lines universe
 * House of Suns: A Space Opera set in the year 6.2x10^6 AD.
 * Thousandth Night
 * Terminal World
 * Zima Blue and Other Stories: A collection of short stories.
 * Deep Navigation: A collection of short stories.

""We call it a quantum snapshot, but that doesn't mean we have clue one about what was involved in producing it. That's just a name we give it to hide our ignorance.""
 * Alternate History: A pseudo-version of this is is used in the novel Century Rain, with Earth-Two, an exact copy of planet Earth in a different part of the Galaxy, on which the only difference is a 1940s-50s level of society and technology and the non-existance of World War Two. It is later revealed to be
 * A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Blue Remembered Earth. The weird bit is that the mind reader is.
 * Brown Note: Comes in song format in the short story Digital to Analogue.
 * Dieselpunk: In a Film Noir variation, the quantum "snapshot" Earth in Century Rain.
 * Dreadful Musician: Averted in Century Rain: in an early scene the protagonist is walking into a superior's office while he plays a violin, with her Internal Monologue noting how grating and painful the music is. It is then revealed that she, along with a large portion of the rest of the human race, were infected with a designer-disease called 'amusica', which prevented people from enjoying music, to ruin their side's morale. After all, someone who can't appreciate music can't get patriotic fervor from their anthems, now can they?
 * Eldritch Abomination: Doubtless whatever it is that exists outside the in Pushing Ice.
 * Emergency Transformation : In Pushing Ice,.
 * Grey Goo: Caused the abandonment of Earth in Century Rain; one type of nanobots in the air to affect weather patterns went rogue, so they made nanobots to combat those, which went rogue, and so on and so forth. The Grey Goo is then weaponized decades later by the descendants of the survivors and used as a weapon of mass destruction.
 * Mechanical Evolution: Played with in Zima Blue.
 * Neo Africa : One of the primary settings of his latest novel, Blue Remembered Earth.
 * Our Wormholes Are Different: In the short story Beyond the Aquila Rift, ships travel between worlds using an abandoned FTL network. The ships need to carry millions of tiny screens which project "runes" onto the ship's exterior, which the alien portal network interprets as where the ship wants to go.
 * Punny Name : The Rockhopper mining spacecraft from Pushing Ice. Its mascot is the eponymous cute species of penguin and... you know... the ship's routine flights involve "hopping" from one asteroid or comet to the next.
 * Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: Lampshaded in Century Rain:


 * Shout-Out :
 * In Century Rain, the transhuman Slasher faction identify themselves by a strange gesture in the air - a diagonal slashing motion followed by a poked dot.
 * There are at least two shout-outs to The Book of the New Sun in House of Suns: the Vigilance's methods of immortality, and (Book of the New Sun spoiler).
 * The entirety of House of Suns is constructed out of Alan Parson's Project references. Two antagonists that are featured prominently in the novel are Cadence and Cascade.
 * Time Dilation: Ubiquitous; especially relevant to Pushing Ice.
 * The Stars Are Going Out: The Absence in House of Suns causes Andromeda to disappear.
 * The Unpronounceable: Slasher names in Century Rain.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever?: Zima in Zima Blue
 * You Can't Go Home Again :