I've read all of Alastair Reynolds's novels, and I think I've figured him out. Reynolds is an extremely competent science fiction writer, but his stories lack heart (mostly). No matter how deep his science, or how intricate and considered his future histories, he maintains such a distance from his characters (and therefore his readers) that his stories never carry the emotional heft necessary to distinguish the true classics (like Ender's Game) from beloved workhorses like his own books.

Which is a shame, because everything aside from his workmanlike sentiment is pure gold. Century Rain is no exception. Humanity has spread beyond the solar system, but just barely. Half of the human race has embraced nanotechnology and evolved into something more than (perhaps less than) human. But half of humanity has vehemently rejected nanotech, for the very simple reason that a dreaded and now legendary nanotech weapon destroyed Earth, encasing it in ice and infecting it with active, mutating nanotech agents who ineradicably pollute any human unlucky enough to encounter the contagion.

Verity is a scientist who specializes in "old" Earth prior to its destruction. Her life's work is to venture into the icy nanotech wilderness of Earth and digging for such priceless artifacts as old newspapers and automobiles. After an unfortunate accident befalls her crew, she is whisked away by the vaguely fascist government and told that she can escape her punishment if she takes on a secret mission. It seems that scientists have been regularly discovering alien portals scattered throughout the solar system, and probably beyond, by some unknown power. And one of those portals, recently discovered, leads to a replica of 20th-century Earth, tucked safely away in a far corner of the galaxy.

In classic Reynolds style, there's another plotline. Floyd is a 20th-century private investigator, an American living in Paris, who is hard down on his luck. He's been pursuing the case of a young woman who died in an apparent (and very suspicious) suicide--a young woman who has mysterious documents and a strange radio in her apartment. There are also creepy children wandering around, and an old flame who surprises Floyd by asking him to move with her to America.

It doesn't take an imagination as adept as Reynolds's to realize that, at some point, these two plotlines must meet. And they do, with a predictable number of setbacks interfering to justify the great length of this novel. It's all very exciting and well told--including the explanation for "Earth 2," the revelation of the enemy's clever plot, and a frantic climax where, finally, we move out of faux 20th-century investigating and into huge ships unleashing hell on indestructible alien artifacts. (Yeah!) But, as I said, that's not surprising: Reynolds is a superbly competent writer, and there are very few false notes throughout the story (the two most notable being Verity's really annoying condescension toward Floyd, and a bit of "you're our only hope" that occurs on p. 454).

Of course, it's true that the far future setting feels a bit thin, perhaps because Reynolds is used to multi-volume setups and can only include the bare details of a background if he's confined to one volume, however thick. But the big problem, as I said at the beginning, is that the story lacks passion. Sure, Reynolds tries hard with the budding relationship between Verity and Floyd, and a tough choice at the end that resembles the heart-wrenching finale of Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass (the last volume of His Dark Materials). But for some reason they just don't ring true. They're just going through the motions.

An equally serious problem--which bothered me a bit less, though it may nag other readers much more seriously--is the question of why the enemy (and I'm being deliberately vague here) cares at all about this second Earth. The entire book revolves around discovering and then trying to foil a sinister plot, but it is a plot that is spectacularly without a point. Verity is excited about the second Earth because it is a new opportunity for research, and a promise for a better future. How disappointing that, at the end, it turns out to be nothing more than a red herring.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu