BOOKS
EVERSION
Inside-out science fiction
►RELEASED 26 MAY 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook
►Author Alastair Reynolds
►Publisher Gollancz
➟There are good reasons why Alastair Reynolds has a reputation for crafting big science fiction. His debut novel Revelation Space (2000) redefined widescreen baroque at the turn of the millennium by upping the baroque and imbuing space opera with a flesh-tingling sense of creepiness. In subsequent years, ranging across different fictional universes, Reynolds has continued to offer up fiction replete with epic plots and exotic settings.
What’s less often noticed is that Reynolds doesn’t just do widescreen. Throughout his career, he has also written shorter fiction, work where he focuses in on specific ideas and scenarios. We mention this because Eversion may well strike fans of Reynolds the space opera guy as a novel of uncharacteristic brevity. Moreover, it’s a book whose storytelling essentially spirals inwards rather than ranges across deep space. This is because, similarly to a Christopher Nolan movie, it keeps returning to the same central story, retelling it from a slightly different angle and nudging the plot along each time.