Chasm City
Encyclopedia
Chasm City is a 2001 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Preston Reynolds is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland...

, set in the Revelation Space universe
Revelation Space universe
The Revelation Space universe is a fictional universe which was created by Alastair Reynolds and used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories...

. It deals with themes of identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...

, memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

, and immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

, and many of its scenes are concerned primarily with describing the unusual societal and physical structure of the titular city, a major nexus of Reynolds's universe. It won the 2002 British Science Fiction Association award
BSFA award
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association to honor works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members...

.

Synopsis

Chasm City is framed and largely written in the voice of Tanner Mirabel, a security expert who has come to Chasm City to avenge the death of his former client's wife at the hands of a "postmortal" noble named Argent Reivich.

Tanner arrives to find that Yellowstone
Epsilon Eridani in fiction
The fifth brightest star in the constellation Eridanus. As a Sun-like star relatively close to the Solar System, Epsilon Eridani regularly appears in science fiction....

, the most advanced civilization in human history, has descended into squalor; an alien nanotech virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...

 known as the Melding Plague has wreaked havoc throughout the system. Chasm City, a dense forest of mile-high shapeshifting
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...

 skyscrapers, has melted into a slum. The Glitter Band, a sparkling diorama of ten thousand orbital habitats, has been reduced to a "Rust Belt" of a few hundred survivors, mostly primitive and pre-nanotech antiques.

In this chaos of plague and desolation, Tanner seeks his prey
Predation
In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption...

, only to discover that Reivich is more clever than he originally thought. In the midst of his hunt, he begins experiencing virus-induced flashback
Flashback (psychological phenomenon)
A flashback, or involuntary recurrent memory, is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual has a sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. These experiences can be happy, sad, exciting, or any other emotion one can consider...

s from the life of Sky Haussman, the founder of his home world, Sky's Edge, who is both revered and reviled for the crimes he committed for his people.

From the depths of the gas plume at the heart of Chasm City, to the aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...

ic canopy spanning what remains of the skyscrapers, Mirabel begins to unravel the mystery of the Melding Plague.

Awards and nominations

Chasm City won the 2002 British Science Fiction Association award
BSFA award
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association to honor works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members...

.

External links

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