Revelation Space (franchise): Difference between revisions

A fictive [[the Verse|universe]] written by [[Alastair Reynolds]] accounting for most (but not all) of his episodic stories, named after the [[Revelation Space|first novel]] in the central trilogyquatralogy (after other attempts at naming didn't stick). The series has a quality that changes throughout, but can be summarised as 'pessimistic sci-fi with humour that is [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|hard]] but unafraid to refer to genre mainstays' (or more topically stated, ''tropes'').

Books in the ''Revelation Space'' series include, as of 20202022:

** ''Redemption[[Revelation ArkSpace]]''

** ''AbsolutionRedemption GapArk''

* [[Aerith and Bob]] : Names range from common (Ilia, Boris, Nevil, Dan, Tom, John, Pascale, Nils, Martin) to less common ([[My Nayme Is|Ana]], Xavier, Antoinette, Carine, Renzo, Lyle), to downright rare (Schuyler, Galiana, Tanner) or odd (particularly among Conjoiners : Skade, Remontoire, Felka, Aura etc.). And then there are the [[Awesome McCoolname]] examples (Scorpio, Lasher, Blood, Beast), used mostly by the hyperpigs or self-aware AIs with a sense of humour.

* [[Badass Grandpa]] / [[Cool Old Guy]] : Nevil Clavain all the way. Dan Sylveste also has his moments. Scorpio matures into one during the main trilogy.

* [[Badass Longcoat]] : Ana Khouri wears one while on a Shadowplay assasinationassassination assignment in Chasm City. They're also popular on Sky's Edge, where she was born.

* [[Base on Wheels]] : The "cathedrals" and "caravans" of Hela's [[Fantastic Religious Weirdness|strange local chucheschurches]] from ''Absolution Gap''.

* [[BFG (weapon)]] : The Breitenbach cannon, a portable particle beam weapon similar to a light machine gun. But since the series [[Averted Trope|deliberately isn't built]] around gun fights and actiony scenes, it makes only brief appearances.

** {{spoiler|The Inhibitors, at least initially, mainly owing to their thinking on a timescale insanely longer than most sentient races. They routinely wipe out whole spacefaringspace-faring civilisations [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|for the greater good]] - the greater good in this case being 'to make the crisis easier to navigate when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda'. Which it will do in approximately ''three billion years''.}}

* [[Butt Monkey]] / [[Cosmic Plaything]] : ''A lot'' of the main characters have to undergo struggles with physical pain, mental stress or just [[Finagle's Law|plain old bad luck and bad timing]] (leading to various misunderstandings). Clavain, Khouri, Scorpio, Quaiche, Brannigan and Volyova all qualify. And the list goes on.

* [[Continuity Porn]] : A lot of the backstories of the major characters from the trilogy are explored in the standalone novels and it's often really interesting how many seemingly forgetableforgettable details from works set chronologically earlier [[Chekhov's Gun|become important plot elements later on]]. Also, expect many an [[Early-Bird Cameo]] in the standalones of the series (e. g. Khouri in ''Chasm City'', though she's an [[Anonymous Ringer]] there).

** A more straightforward example of this trope would be captain Brannigan from ''Revelation Space'' {{spoiler|before he became consumed by the Melding Plague. Also, Skade from ''Redemption Ark'', who has herself willingly tranformedtransformed into one after a near-fatal accident}}.

** Doctor Trintignant from ''Diamond Dogs'' is ''absolutely obsessed'' with cyborgifyingcyborging anyone he can get his hands on, including himself. Badly injured people are a great opportunity for him. Reynolds highlights this with this some snarky [[Black Comedy]] quips from the "good doctor" himself.

* [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]]: Averted in most of Reynolds' novels, but played with in ''Diamond Dogs''. Although in fairness, in that novella it's more along the lines of "Modifying the fundamental structure that underlies your cognitive processes may have deleterious effects on your personality"; a similar thought is explored in another book with Skade, who temporarily disables her vomit reflex while working in space to prevent the disparity between her visual and inner-ear sensory inputs from convincing her brain that she's been poisoned and triggering emesis, i.e., making her puke her guts up. She notes to herself that becasuebecause the brain is messy and holographic, even small changes like this have decidedly peculiar knock-on effects on perception and cognition.

* [[Culture Chop Suey]] : A given, with humanity being quite a cosmopolitan mix during the events of the trilogy, especially on old and densely inhabited colony worlds like Yellowstone. Nationalities play a far lesser role than back on [[Earth-That-Was|Earth]] and the main new political and social divisions are purely idelogicalideological factions (such as the Conjoiners, the Demarchists, the Ultranauts, etc.). Some characters' names give obvious hints about a great mixing of nationalities (e.g. Pauline Sukhoi, Xavier Liu, Gillian Sluka).

* [[Death World]]: The [[All Planets Are Earthlike]] trope gets a major kick in the shins in this series. The most Earth-like planet mentioned is Sky's Edge, which is full of hostile life that is biologically incompatible with Earth life. Eating it will kill you (and vice versa) or do nothing. Then there are the Pattern Jugglers - algae-like [[Starfish Aliens]] inhabiting planets with global oceans - that usually act benign, but once in a while someone who swims with them doesn't come back, [[Came Back Wrong|comes back wrong]], [[Empty Shell|or worse]]. Also, Yellowstone, the most important and most populated interstellar colony of humanity, has an atmosphere and surface very similar to Saturn's moon Titan, so only the giant domed settlements (like [[Capital City|Chasm City]] or [[Egopolis|Loreanville]]) and orbital habitats are actualyactually populated. Pretty much all planets in the series are either uninhabitable, barely habitable (without advanced tech) or habitable, but full of [[Everything Trying to Kill You]].

* [[Death From Above]]: Threatened by Volyova in ''Revelation Space'', who uses one of her ship's smallest weapons to devastating effect as a warning to the inhabitants of Resurgam. She also has access to teratonneteraton-yield nukes and "hell class" weapons that could conceivably shatter worlds (and indeed do, on one occasion).

* [[Deconstruction]]: A hard sci-fi decon of the [[Space Opera]] subgenre, [[Zig-Zagging Trope|with some]] liberal applying of [[Reconstruction]] here and there. For a start, there's ''no'' [[Casual Interstellar Travel]] ''at all'' and the author goes to great lenghtslengths to examine the ramifications of this simple fact on the setting and personal fates of the characters (Khouri's tale being a prime example).

** The ending of ''Revelation Space'' does this in the case of the fate of three of the main characters. Though it's at least explained thouroughlythoroughly.

* [[Emergency Transformation]]: In the short story ''The Great Wall of Mars'', {{spoiler|a life-or-death situation is what finally forces the protagonist to join the [[Hive Mind|Conjoiners]]}}. He later {{spoiler|pays it forward by giving a comatose Volyova a medichinemedicine infusion despite her phobia of them}} in ''Redemption Ark''.

* [[Eternal English]] : Averted. Though the stories are all in English via [[Translation Convention]], it is clearly stated that human languages 500 years in the future have continued to further evolve. Notable examples are the two main ''lingua franca''s : [[Latin Land|Norte]] and [[Canada, Eh?|Can]]-[[Far East|asianAsian]]. In a throwaway comment, Volyova refers to her native language as "[[Future Slang|Russish]]", not "Russian".

** Also, as seen in ''Chasm City'' the various religious cults that sprang up on Sky's Edge after the life, deeds and {{spoiler|[[Not Quite Dead|supposed]] }} death of the colony's controversial founder, Sky Hausmann, passed into legend. Some of the more avid cults even went so far as to engineer special biomechanicbiomechanical nanoviruses to forcefully indoctrinate unsuspecting people or opponents into new followers of their faith. This becomes a major [[Chekhov's Gun]] in the [[Backstory]] of Horris Quaiche from ''Absolution Gap'' {{spoiler|(who founds his own bizzaro religion, based on a mishmash of old Earth faiths and his own traumatic experiences enhanced by the virus)}}. ''Absolution Gap'' generally goes far deeper into this trope, often to the point of [[Deconstruction]] ''and'' subsequent [[Reconstruction]].

** [[The Hero]] : Ana Khouri. In ''Redemption Ark'' and ''Absolution Gap'' onward, she and Clavain tend to alternate in being [[The Hero]] and the [[Deuteragonist]]/SupportingProtagonist[[Supporting Protagonist]].

** A lesser example in the first ''Revelation Space'' novel, which features [[Powered Armor]] suits that are never mentioned in later books, though there are several stituationssituations in which they would make a huge difference. Then again, they would likely {{spoiler|have been destroyed/corrupted when the Melding Plague / [[The Captain]] took over the ship}}.

* [[Genius Loci]]: {{spoiler|The ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' from the main trilogy, after the Captain's intelligence is spread throughout its systems by the Melding Plague. Also, many enviromentsenvironments overtaken by the Melding Plague in general. A more unrelated example of this trope is Blood Spire in ''Diamond Dogs''.}}

* [[Intelligent Gerbil]] : Some of the less out-there alien species. A subversion, since they're few and far between and by the time starfaring humans discover them, they're usualyusually already extinct.

** The Amarantin were an advanced humanoid avian species from the planet later known as Resurgam, a formerly Earth-like world orbiting Delta Pavonis. The reasons behind their disapperancedisappearance and the planet turning to a barely habitable rocky wasteland drive the central mystery in ''Revelation Space''.

* [[Little Hero, Big War]]: To the point that in ''Absolution Gap'', humanity largely isn't saved by their own efforts at all, but by {{spoiler|the abovementionedabove-mentioned Invisible Aliens deciding that the Inhibitors have finally become weak enough for them to reveal themselves and fight them. This is revealed in passing in the epilogue - not so much part of the story as just an incidental fact of how history played out.}}

** '''Planet [[Shout-Out]]''': Tangerine Dream (see [[Shout-Out]]s sectionon belowthe [[Revelation Space (franchise)/Trivia|Trivia Page]]).

* [[Ocean Punk]] : Any planet inhabited by the Pattern Jugglers, particularly the ones with established human colonies, e.g. Turquoise (deliberate colonization), Ararat (colonization by necessesitynecessity). The Jugglers favour wide open oceanic enviromentsenvironments, so this is pretty much a given.

* [[Reality Ensues]]: Pretty much the reason why [[Applied Phlebotinum]] is not always an instant solution to everything. The series is generally very down to earth in what humans can achieve even with highly advanced or reverse-engineered alien tech. For instance, Khouri's entire previous life gets wrecked because of a bureaucratic mistake that puts her and her husband on two different lighthuggers. Since [[Casual Interstellar Travel]] is non-existantexistent in the series and crossing from one system to the other can take decades (even in reefersleep), her chances of meeting him again during her lifetime have dropped to nearly zero.

* [[Rocks Fall, EverybodyEveryone Dies]]: In ''Absolution Gap'' {{spoiler|, the Greenfly appears, the universe ends and the reader feels like their soul has been removed with pliers.}}

* [[Space PiratePirates]] : The Banshees pretty much fit the bill and are a thoroughly unromantic version of the trope. The Ultra(naut)s often have elements of this, but are not necessarily antagonistic.

* [[Space Western]] : Bizarrely, even though the setting looks generally un-westernlyWesternly, there are some elements of this trope thrown in - particularly in places like the Rust Belt and the Mulch on Yellowstone (lawlesnesslawlessness, smugglers, organized crime), or on Resurgam and Hela in general (pioneer settlements, backwater planets, unexplored wastelands, fairly low-tech infrastructure and econonomyeconomy, [[New Old West|trucker-like travelers and workers]]). In the case of Resurgam and Hela, it's a crossover between [[Space Western]] and [[Mysterious Antarctica]] : [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Polar Explorer Western]] <small>[[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]] !</small>

** ''Chasm City'' is probably the best example of this, since it's mostly set on the habitable, but commercially backwater planet of Sky's Edge, torn by politicking and territorial wars between the colonists. Though it's kinda a mixed bag there : [[Space Western]], but crossed with a [[Banana Republic]] slash [[Darkest Africa]] kind of enviromentenvironment.... <small>[[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]] !</small>

* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]] / [[Left Hanging]] : Several storylinesstory-lines in the trilogy weren't resolved at all, particularly the whole case about The Mademoiselle.