Product Description

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into interstellar space . . . Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award-shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award-winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breathtaking vision of 'The most exciting space opera writer working today' (Locus) in these two tales of high adventure set in the same universe as his novels. The title story, 'Diamond Dogs', tells of a group of mercenaries trying to unravel the mystery of a particularly inhospitable alien tower on a distant world; 'Turquoise Days' is about Naqi, who has devoted her life to studying the alien Pattern Jugglers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50618 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
Reynolds's ambitious, stunningly detailed Revelation Space trilogy (Revelation Space, paperback, etc.) seethes with post-human Demarchists, Ultras and Conjoiners, and alien Shrouders, Pattern Jugglers and Inhibitors. Here, two novellas share the grand setting but not characters or plot. In "Diamond Dogs," explorer Roland Childe draws in a team to explore an alien artifact on planet Golgotha, among them obsessive cybernetics expert, Dr. Trintignant, scholar Richard Swift and Richard's ex-wife Celeste (he had his memories of her erased), who's had her math abilities enhanced by the alien Pattern Jugglers. The artifact, a huge building called the Blood Spire, is a puzzle-palace with a succession of rooms, each opening only when a particular problem has been solved. Wrong answers are, however, punished by dismemberment or death. Those members of the team who survive are forced to allow Dr. Trintignant to transform them into cyborgs as they progress deeper and deeper into the building, toward-what? In "Turquoise Days," the seas of planet Turquoise contain Pattern Jugglers, aggregations of microscopic life-forms that contain copies of the memories of every intelligent creature that ever swam in the ocean. The Jugglers can also impress, temporarily or permanently, the mindset of one being upon another. Researcher Naqi Okpik, whose sister Mina vanished in the ocean and whose mind is still preserved there, must defend the Jugglers against the crew of a vast light-hugger starship who want to use the Jugglers to create an army of religious-warrior fanatics-and a renegade crewman who'd rather kill the Jugglers and all the minds they contain rather than allow the fanatics to succeed. "Dogs" is certainly the stronger, though both tales are noteworthy; readers familiar with Reynolds will find intriguing sidebars, while those unacquainted should try the novels first. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. Since 1991 he has lived in the Netherlands, near Leiden, where he works as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. The first three books in his loosely linked series, Revelation Space, nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke and the British Science Fiction awards, Chasm City, winner of the British Science Fiction Award, and Redemprion Ark, are all Gollancz bestsellers.

Customer Reviews

Worth it for Diamond Dogs alone
Diamond dogs was the first Alistair Reynolds story I read some years ago, (when it was published by PS Publishing as a single novella before even Revelation Space was released) and it was a perfect introduction.

In Diamond Dogs the characters are forced to use outlawed technology to alter and augment themselves in order to progress, almost computer-game-style, up a series of increasingly (mentally and physically) challenging levels of the alien Blood Spire, an artifact discovered and kept secret by one of the protagonists, who gathers together a group of singularly-skilled individuals to conquer it. They suffer indescribable punishment along the way, and always there are unanswered questions: what is at the peak? and why are they compelled to continue?

Throughout are references to "back home" where the melding plague is taking over Chasm City (and we have to read later books to find out) and this grounds the story well in the wider universe which Reynolds has created.

The abstract puzzles are so well described that they made me feel that I was developing a mastery of multi-dimensional mathematics as it progressed, and so it draws you in to the possibility of mind and body modification and enhancement that we see in some of the factions who inhabit those later novels and the motives that lead people to evolve themselves into ultra-human states.

If you don't read Diamond Dogs, you won't have a true feel for the universe in which Revelation Space, Chasm City and others are set - and you will have also have missed out on a superb and engaging story, that I, for one, keep returning to, to re-read again and again, whenever I'm waiting for Reynolds to publish something new.

Turquoise Days is just a bonus.

Short but sweet
This book collects two novellas that were previously published separately as limited editions, both set in the same universe as Reynold’s ‘Revelation Space’ series of novels.

Opening story Diamond Dogs deals with an expedition to uncover the secret at the heart of Blood Spire, a mysterious alien artefact that has killed all who have previously attempted the challenge. In effect this appears to be a very straight-forward puzzle story, as the expedition enters a room, solves a puzzle, and proceeds to the next room where another puzzle awaits, not dissimilar to an old style computer or roleplaying game, or as Reynolds all but namechecks in the text, the puzzle solving aspect of such films as The Cube and the Indiana Jones movies. Despite a vivid cast of characters (including a cyberneticist obsessed with replacing body parts, and an ex-couple where memory suppression has dimmed one’s recollection of the other) it’s a case of so far, so basic. Reynolds masterstroke however is to change the emphasis – the actual puzzles are not the focus (they rapidly move into realms of such advanced mathematical complexity that Reynolds only skims over the details), even what lies at the heart of the artefact is not the focus, instead it is the competitive spirit of the characters, and the lengths to which they will go to – even eventually shedding their own humanity behind them – in their quest to beat the puzzle. It’s the players, not the game, that’s are the stars here, and Diamond Dogs is a fantastic exploration of obsession as a result.

The second novella, Turquoise Days, deals with a scientist studying a world inhabited by Pattern Jugglers – alien biomass forms that float on the planet’s oceans and absorb the thoughts of those who swim in them – and the calamitous results of the arrival of a group of offworlders. Perhaps not quite as gripping as Diamond Dogs, this s nevertheless an interesting examination of an alien culture, and the hidden motives of the off-worlders provide an action-packed finale.

All in all, both these novellas are good solid batches of science fiction, and recommended for either established Reynolds readers or newcomers (these stories are only tangentially linked to Reynolds full-length novels, and are perfectly self-contained as a result). Reynolds can occasionally suffer from pacing problems with his bloated doorstopper-sized novels, but what these novellas lose in ‘epic’ feel they more than make up for in good pacy storytelling. Good stuff.

Diamond Dogs-hit, more like it.
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Too short to be any good, too long to write off as a wasted moment. I didn't spot anywhere on the cover that the book was TWO stories. Then again, it doesn't say that they were going to be dull and over-contrived either.
Massive disappointment - avoid like the (melding) plague.