Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds
Posted in Alastair Reynolds, Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 4 December 2021
Gollancz, 2010, 491 p.
Spearpoint is a tiered city whose tip reaches beyond the atmosphere. Post-human angels (though they call themselves human and the other inhabitants pre-human) occupy the Celestial Levels and ride thermals with their wings. These are where the most advanced technology still works. Angels are feared, even hated, by those in the levels below. Down the tiers – through Neon Heights, Steamtown and Horsetown – the transition between different zones is debilitating or worse (requiring anti-zonal drugs to ameliorate the symptoms) and technology becomes progressively unusable. From time to time the zone boundaries quiver or shift due to disturbances in The Mire, aka the Eye of God, the chaotic origin point for the zones. A religious text called the Testament seems to allude to this.
The viewpoint character is Quillon, a former angel altered so as to be able to survive in the lower levels as a kind of spy, but whose wing buds keep growing and must periodically be surgically removed by his friend Fray. Quillon habitually wears tinted glasses to avoid his eyes betraying his angel nature, but has long since abandoned any allegiance to his origins when he found he was being used. The action kicks off when the body of a fallen angel is delivered to him in the mortuary where he works as a pathologist. Just as he is about to cut into it the body speaks to warn him. The angels know where he is and are coming for him. With the help of a man called Fray and his courier Meroka, who hates angels, he embarks on a journey away from Spearpoint. On that trip a sudden catastrophic shift in the zone boundaries affects most of the lower levels of Spearpoint.
Quillon and Meroka have to hide from a caravan of scavenger-rapists called Skullboys (whose clothing and symbology seems to be inspired by heavy metal) but notice a cage containing a mother and her child. Also inhabiting the plain below Spearpoint are metal and flesh creatures named carnivorgs, whose feeding habits are particularly noisome. (The clue is in the name, carnivore organisms, but their gruesome preference is for drilling into and eating brains – often leaving a victim alive but severely incapacitated.)
Later Quillon and Meroka are able to free the mother, Kalis, and child, Nimcha, but both bear the distinctive mark of a tectomancer. Kalis’s is fake to try to protect her child from the widespread fear of tectomancers, held responsible for zonal shifts, a minor one of which had given them Quillon and Meroka the opportunity to free them. Nimcha claims to have caused the shift. Her mother believes Nimcha can close the Eye and Nimcha says, “‘The tower wants me to make it better.’” So it seems they must go back.
This is prevented by them being taken up by the Swarm, a sort of flying circus (in the Richthofen sense) of dirigibles presided over by a man called Ricasso. He has had a project to use captured carnivorgs to produce an anti-zonal drug much more effective than the current one. He is learned and in his conversations with Quillon says, “The Testament tells us that we were once allowed through the gates of paradise.” Beyond the gates lay numberless gardens, each with its own sun and moon. Spearpoint may be a ladder to the stars.
Internal politics within the Swarm and an attempted coup delay things for a while but eventually they embark for Spearpoint with a cargo of the drug, taking a shortcut through a region called the Bane forever known as an area from which no-one returned but now, since the huge zonal shift, likely to be passable. While traversing it they pass over a series of downed aircraft of decreasing technological complexity and a truncated tower which appears to be an exact counterpart of Spearpoint, but obviously defunct before running the gauntlet of Skullboy military positions below the intact tower.
The characters refer to the planet as Earth but there are internal indications (the air is thinning, the forests dying, the planet getting colder, and there are three extinct volcanoes in almost a straight line plus another enormous natural mountain) that it is in fact Mars, backed up by one of the Mad Machines at Spearpoint’s centre mentioning Earth as a separate place.
While it is a powerful plot motor the zone shift is a neat idea which allow Reynolds to write SF without having to think up future technologies.
This is a complex yet highly readable piece of SF with all of the betrayal, loyalty, treachery and power plays that you might expect from its quasi-military/political elements but Reynolds does not neglect character. Meroka is a mouthy delight, Quillon troubled but decent at heart, Ricasso a refreshing input of philosophising. However, Kalis and Nimcha are never any more than plot enablers. It is all very enjoyable stuff though.
Pedant’s corner:- “He scratched a finger under his right eye” (he has a finger under his right eye?) sprung (sprang,) wintery (wintry, which was used later,) amoebas (fine in English but amoebae, or, even better, amœbæ, is more classical,) “the other lying on their side” (‘its side’,) “he was taken not back to the others” (odd syntax. What’s wrong with ‘he was not taken back to the others’?) crenulations (crenellations, I assume,) close-minded (closed-minded?) “from some of other captains” (some of the other captains,) “where the blade had missed it mark” (its mark,) “none of the other skeleton staffers were in any way annoyed by it” (none of the other …was … annoyed,) hiccough (hiccup; hiccough is a misattribution.) “‘He hopes do,’” (‘He hopes so’,) “that was now hoving into clear view” (hove is past tense, ‘that was now heaving into clear view’.) “The best that Curtana could hope for were a few lucky strikes” (the best is singular, hence, ‘was a few lucky strikes’,) “none of the machine guns were operable” (none was operable.) “There were a handful of enclaves” (There was a handful,) staunched (stanched.)
