What if Genghis Khan got his wish, and brought the entire planet under the control of the Mongols? Where would he have gone next? A thousand years after Khan’s death, Yellow Dog is the codename of a female spy working for a vast Mongol-dominated galactic empire. When she learns of anomalous events happening on the edge of civilised space—phantom ships appearing in the faster-than-light transit system which binds the empire together—Yellow Dog puts herself forward for the most hazardous assignment of her career. In deep cover, she must penetrate the autonomous zone where the anomalies are most frequent, and determine whether the empire is really under attack, and if so by who or what. Yellow Dog’s problems, however, are only just beginning. For the autonomous zone is under the heel of Qilian, a thuggish local tyrant with no love for central government and a reputation for extreme brutality. Qilian already knows more about the anomalies than Yellow Dog does. If she is going to learn more, she will have to earn his confidence—even if that means working for him, rather than against him. So begins a deadly game of subterfuge and double-cross—while the anomalies increase…

Dr Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist who has for years been fascinated with the long-dead alien race the Amarantin, is about to discover something that could change the course of mankind. But before he can act on anything his wife is killed and he is captured when a coup sweeps across the planet Resurgam. Meanwhile, an astonishing ship bearing a crew of militaristic cyborgs and a kidnapped Gunnery Officer is bearing down on Resurgam, crossing light years of space to enlist Sylveste’s help to save their metamorphosing Captain. Only Sylveste, or, more accurately, the software programme containing his father’s knowledge that he carries in his mind, can save the Captain. None of them can anticipate the cataclysm that will result when they meet, a cataclysm that will sweep through space and could determine the ultimate fate of humanity. Nominated for BSFA Award in 2000. Nominated for Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2001.

A brand new stand-alone deep space adventure from Alastair Reynolds, featuring the author’s long-running character Merlin, who has previously appeared in “Merlin’s Gun” (1999), “Hideaway” (2000) and “Minla’s Flowers” (2007).When Merlin encounters the derelict hulk of an old swallowship drifting in the middle of nowhere, he can't resist investigating. He soon finds himself involved in a situation that proves far more complex than he ever anticipated. The Iron Tactician is the first in a new series of NewCon Press novellas. The series will be issued in sets of four, with each set featuring cover art by the same artist - one piece of artwork divided between the four covers.                                

Reynolds' pursuit of truth is not limited to wide-angle star smashing - not that stars don't get pulverised when one character is gifted (or cursed) with an awful weapon by the legendary Merlin. Reynolds' protagonists find themselves in situations of betrayal, whether by a loved one's accidental death, as in 'Signal to Noise', or by a trusted wartime authority, in 'Spirey and the Queen'. His fertile imagination can resurrect Elton John on Mars in 'Understanding Space and Time' or make prophets of the human condition out of pool-cleaning robots in the title story. But overall, the stories in ZIMA BLUE represent a more optimistic take on humanity's future, a view that says there may be wars, there may be catastrophes and cosmic errors, but something human will still survive.

Amazon.com ReviewAlastair Reynolds's first novel is "hard" SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old--when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defenses: "a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy." Now an intuition he doesn't understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity's tiny crew have hidden agendas--Khouri the reluctant contract assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity--and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal, and ingenious lies.The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defenses to challenge the Infinity's planet-wrecking superweapons.At the heart of this artifact, the final revelations detonate--most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. --David Langford, Amazon.co.ukFrom Publishers WeeklyThis distant-past/far-future, hard sci-fi tour de force probes a galaxy-wide enigma: why does spacefaring humanity encounter so few remnants of intelligent life? Excavating the 900,000-year-old Amarantin civilization on its home world, Resurgam, archaeologist Dan Sylveste discovers evidence of a splinter cult that abandoned Resurgam for the stars but returned, only to be swallowed up by a mysterious cataclysm that destroyed all the Amarantins. Aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity, a vast light-hugger ship in interstellar space, the ominous Triumvirate of cyborg starfarers seeks Sylveste to heal its captain, afflicted by the deadly Melding Plague, which turns once-humans into their own semisentient spaceships. In Chasm City on the slum-ridden world of Yellowstone, assassin Ana Khouri joins the Nostalgia's crew intent on killing Sylveste. Clearly intoxicated by cutting-edge scientific research in bioengineering, space physics, cybernetics Reynolds spins a ravishingly inventive tale of intrigue. Hard SF addicts will applaud the author's talent for creating convincing alien beings and the often uneasy merging of human and machine intelligence, depicted here as nearly too frighteningly real for comfort. Others, however, may find these human-cybernetic hybrid characters chilling, dispassionate (except for their built-in drives toward revenge and murder) and foreboding. Reynolds's vision of a future dominated by artificial intelligence trembles with the ultimate cold of the dark between the stars. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Three hundred years in the future, Verity Auger is a specialist in the archaeological exploration of Earth, rendered uninhabitable after the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. After a field-trip to goes badly wrong, Verity is forced to redeem herself by participating in a dangerous mission, for which her expertise is invaluable. Using a backdoor into an unstable alien transit system, Auger’s faction has discovered something astonishing at the far end of a wormhole: mid twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Is it a window into the past, a simulation, or something else entirely? Century Rain is not just a time-travel story, nor a tale of alternate history. Part hard SF thriller, part interstellar adventure, part noir romance, Century Rain is something altogether stranger.

From Publishers WeeklyThe seventh novel set in Reynolds's Revelation Space milieu (most recently encountered in his 2007 collection Galactic North) is a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study. One of the 10,000 colony habitats of the utopian Glitter Band has been destroyed, and title character Tom Dreyfus, a cop who patrols the Glitter Band beat, is assigned to learn whodunit and why. Meanwhile, his protégé, Thalia Ng, shepherds a supposedly minor series of software upgrades on several other habitats, while Dreyfus's superiors oust their leader, ostensibly for her own good. Reynolds unfolds revelations layer by onionskin layer, supplying enough detail to imply a novel's worth of unwritten backstory without ever obscuring the stakes and personalities. The high-quality characterization more than compensates for the slightly too shadowy villains. This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carré and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromReynolds returns to Revelation Space to follow the trials and tribulations of Tom Dreyfus, prefect of Panoply, tasked with maintaining democracy throughout the Glitter Band. Between an apparently minor security flaw in the voting software and an apparent attack that left an entire habitat destroyed and the only survivors flawed beta-level copies of three of its inhabitants, Dreyfus is caught in a web of good intentions gone bad. Tension is high as the threads leading to a conspiracy to control the Glitter Band and a plan to destroy people’s rights ostensibly to protect them come together faster than the planners intended. There are secrets in the highest ranks of Panoply; even Dreyfus has kept some from himself. The endgame is creative, though as usual with Reynolds, neither plot nor solution is simple. The questions he raises about freedom and the fascinating solutions his characters come up with are relevant to our own time, and the thriller aspects keep us engaged with the magnificently imagined world in which those questions are resolved. --Regina Schroeder

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake—until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner’s pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city’s inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers. Won BSFA Award for Best Novel in 2001.

Have we got a treat for you! We are thrilled to share Open and Shut, an exclusive short story by Alastair Reynolds, today. Step into the futuristic world of Prefect Dreyfus for a fast paced new SF crime story. This is your new SF obsession. One citizen died a fortnight ago. Two a week ago. Four died yesterday . . . and unless the cause can be found – and stopped – within the next four months, everyone will be dead. For the Prefects, the hunt for a silent, hidden killer is on . .

From Publishers Weekly The seventh novel set in Reynolds’s Revelation Space milieu (most recently encountered in his 2007 collection Galactic North) is a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study. One of the 10,000 colony habitats of the utopian Glitter Band has been destroyed, and title character Tom Dreyfus, a cop who patrols the Glitter Band beat, is assigned to learn whodunit and why. Meanwhile, his protégé, Thalia Ng, shepherds a supposedly minor series of software upgrades on several other habitats, while Dreyfus’s superiors oust their leader, ostensibly for her own good. Reynolds unfolds revelations layer by onionskin layer, supplying enough detail to imply a novel’s worth of unwritten backstory without ever obscuring the stakes and personalities. The high-quality characterization more than compensates for the slightly too shadowy villains. This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carré and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who. From Booklist Reynolds returns to Revelation Space to follow the trials and tribulations of Tom Dreyfus, prefect of Panoply, tasked with maintaining democracy throughout the Glitter Band. Between an apparently minor security flaw in the voting software and an apparent attack that left an entire habitat destroyed and the only survivors flawed beta-level copies of three of its inhabitants, Dreyfus is caught in a web of good intentions gone bad. Tension is high as the threads leading to a conspiracy to control the Glitter Band and a plan to destroy people’s rights ostensibly to protect them come together faster than the planners intended. There are secrets in the highest ranks of Panoply; even Dreyfus has kept some from himself. The endgame is creative, though as usual with Reynolds, neither plot nor solution is simple. The questions he raises about freedom and the fascinating solutions his characters come up with are relevant to our own time, and the thriller aspects keep us engaged with the magnificently imagined world in which those questions are resolved. — Regina Schroeder