It was good to hear tonight about another British hard SF space-opera author I had overlooked, during the years when I didn’t pay much attention to the new SF and fantasy books. Revelation Space is said to have a Xeelee-like time-span and similarly ‘big ideas’. One of its central ideas is (apparently) a sort of SF’d Lovecraftian ‘cosmic’ entity.
I have too much to read (and write) now, but Alastair Reynolds looks very promising. His well-regarded Revelation Space series has a manageable six novels and two collections. So, for my own far-future reference, I’ve spent five minutes sorting out the story-world chronological reading-order and matching them with the required books…
2205 | “Great Wall of Mars” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2217 | “Glacial” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2338 | “Night Passage” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2330–2340 | “A Spy in Europa” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2358 | “Weather” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2427 | Aurora Rising | NOVEL |
2427 | “Open and Shut” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2429 | Elysium Fire | NOVEL |
2500–2550 | Diamond Dogs | Novella (in Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days) |
2511 “Monkey Suit” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2513–2540 | “Dilation Sleep” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2517–2524 | Chasm City | NOVEL
2530 | “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2539-2541 | Turquoise Days | Novella (in Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days) |
2550 | “Grafenwalder’s Bestiary” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2524–2567 | Revelation Space | NOVEL
2600 | “Nightingale” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
2605–2651 | Redemption Ark | NOVEL
2615–3125 | Absolution Gap | NOVEL
2303 – far-future | “Galactic North” | Story (in collection Galactic North) |
The novels are all are available as unabridged audiobooks, and apparently so are the two collections.
Are audiobook providers missing a marketing opportunity, by not offering an ‘chrono-list’ version of such sagas? In this case, buy the ‘big bundle’ and it would not only have all the audiofiles neatly bookmarked at the start of each story and chapter, but would also offer a playlist for these which runs in story-world chronological order.
Possibly that’s something already happening. But, not being someone who hangs around on Good Reads or subscribes to Audible, I’m just clueless about it. Yet I pay attention to the innovative publishing news and I haven’t heard of anything like that. Nor seen such a product for sale.