Galactic North is a collection of science fiction short stories by British author Alastair Reynolds, published by Gollancz in 2006. It comprises most of Reynold's short stories and novellas set in the Revelation Space universe.
Stories Title First appearance Date Position inGalactic North "Great Wall of Mars" Spectrum SF 1 2000–02 1 "Glacial" Spectrum SF 5 2001–03 2 "A Spy in Europa" Interzone 120 1997–06 3 "Weather" Galactic North 2006 4 "Dilation Sleep" Interzone 39 1990–09 5 "Grafenwalder's Bestiary" Galactic North 2006 6 "Nightingale" Galactic North 2006 7 "Galactic North" Interzone 145 1999–07 8
Reynolds states in the afterword to the collection that the stories are set in rough chronological order, with "Great Wall of Mars" occurring around AD 2200, whilst Galactic North extends to AD 40 000
Summary of short stories
"Great Wall of Mars" In this short story, we meet Nevil Clavain, one of the protagonists of the Revelation Space cycle; Galiana, the founder of the Conjoiner faction; and Sandra Voi, an important person in the Demarchist faction.
The story begins on Deimos, where Nevil Clavain, a high-ranking officer in the Coalition for Neural Purity is preparing to go down to the surface of Mars. His brother, Warren, is pushing for war with the Conjoiners. Eventually, Clavain and Voi depart and fly down towards the Great Wall of Mars, which turns out to be a massive construction that completely envelops part of the planet's surface (enough to cover a city) and the atmosphere above it. As they descend, they are attacked by robotic "worms"- war machines from the previous war with the Conjoiners. Clavain destroys the first worm, but more arrive and kill Voi. Clavain just succeeds in reaching the Conjoiner base. Galiana shows him around and he suggests that the Conjoiners and Coalition team up to attack Phobos, which is apparently infested by the worms. It is revealed that the Conjoiners are constantly deploying shuttles that try to escape the planet, but are always shot down by Coalition satellites. Clavain also meets Felka, a girl who was part of an experiment to further improve human intelligence by altering the brain in the womb. It failed miserably and Felka seems completely uninterested in anything except the mysterious game she is playing – she keeps waving her hands around in a pattern.
While negotiations between Clavain and Galiana are underway, Clavain’s brother Warren broadcasts faked footage of Clavain being killed by the worms when he landed. Clavain concludes that he has been betrayed by his brother, who knew of the worms but hoped to use his brother’s death as an excuse to launch an all-out attack on the base. Clavain is knocked out in the ensuing Coalition attack, but the Conjoiners are able to hold off the first three waves. By then, however, their defences are exhausted and they will not last another attack. During surgery, Clavain receives basic Conjoiner implants, enabling him to see the complicated readouts that surround every Conjoiner and their devices. With these, he can see that Felka is not simply playing a game: she is actually controlling the Great Wall's repair mechanisms. However, the attack has damaged it so badly even she cannot keep it intact for long and soon the wall will collapse, causing the atmospheric pressure inside to be released and tear the base apart. Clavain is confident that the Conjoiners will soon be wiped out.
Galiana reveals the Conjoiners' plans to escape: the shuttles they were sending up were no more than distractions – they were filled with brain-dead clones before they took off. The Conjoiners had really been digging a tunnel that they use to launch spaceships to Phobos, which they have hollowed out and turned into a massive shipyard. The Coalition was unaware the Conjoiners had control of the moon. As Galiana prepares to leave, Clavain first runs back and takes Felka with him, unable to leave without her. They take off and head for Phobos. Galiana warns Clavain that the deceleration upon landing will kill him unless he receives more extensive neural implants. He accepts, knowing he is about to defect from the Coalition.
"Glacial" "Glacial" is set a short time after the events of Great Wall of Mars. The Conjoiners have escaped upon their starship, named the Sandra Voi, to an ice planet called Diadem (which orbits the star Ross 248). It is home to an American colony, seeded decades ago by automated robots containing human DNA, but it appears deserted. Everyone is dead and seem to have shown signs of insanity before they died. Clavain is collecting the planet's native worms for studying. He and Galiana explore more of the colony, when they discover a corpse at the bottom of a crevasse. Upon closer inspection, they see the name on the man's spacesuit is "Setterholm". His helmet is detached from his suit, but Clavain realises that he would not have been able to leave the airlock without it being fully attached. He also notices the initials "IVF" carved into the ice nearby.
Later on, Clavain and Galiana find a man frozen in a makeshift reefersleep unit. The Conjoiners fit him with neural implants in order to revive him, and when he regains consciousness, he claims to be Iverson. He is unable to explain the initials that were carved by the dead man. He becomes good friends with Felka (who is now starting to become more human), but Clavain does not trust Iverson. He shows considerable interest in the worms, much like Setterholm was known to have done decades earlier. Eventually it occurs to Clavain that the letters "IVF" may have been the beginning of an attempt to spell "Iverson", with the man dying before he could finish carving the letter "E". However, he is unable to work out why the dead man would try to carve Iverson's name. In the meantime, he and Galiana are still unable to understand why everyone is dead, or why they all seemed to go insane. They eventually discover a sample of Earth bacteria that could have been altered to kill everyone. When they go to question Iverson, he and Felka are missing.
Clavain and Galiana chase Iverson to an ice cave, where they find him and Felka. Galiana takes Felka away, and Clavain and Iverson talk. Clavain has realised by now that "Iverson" is actually Setterholm, who killed the real Iverson and swapped the records of their identities. Setterholm had discovered that the worms and the tunnels they dug through the ice (which were coated in chemicals which determined which way the worms went down them, much like a human brain) had become a massive natural information processor, which he believed either was or was becoming a sentient mind. However, the American fusion reactor needed ice, the mining of which would have killed the worms. In order to protect this intelligence, Setterholm killed everyone in the base. Setterholm denies his identity, but Clavain proves it by smashing an ice pick into the worm colony, causing Setterholm to try and stop him. Clavain offers him the chance to leave, but Setterholm tries to kill him. Clavain then kills Setterholm by causing his neural implants to malfunction. He buries the corpse and returns to the others.
Clavain and his family appear again as characters in Redemption Ark and to a certain extent Absolution Gap, set several centuries later.
"A Spy in Europa" This story can be read here at Infinity Plus. This short story is set on the moon Europa, controlled by the Demarchists. It portrays some of the events leading to the fall of Europa. It is linked with Grafenwalder's Bestiary.
As a result of a second Maunder Minimum, economic power in the Solar System has shifted to the moons around Jupiter. The Europan Demarchy controls Europa and Io; Gilgamesh Isis controls Ganymede and Callisto. Both powers are vying for dominance. Marius Vargovic is a Gilgamesh agent who has been deployed to Europa to meet a woman known as Cholok, who has something that could threaten the cities of Europa. He lands in the city of Cadmus-Asterius, or C-A, a floating city whose top is built into the ice, but which descends eight kilometres into the ocean below. They meet in the city and Cholok reveals that she has a piece of "Hyperdiamond", a carbon compound that is extremely strong – individual molecules can be hundreds of metres in diameter. Floating spheres of vacuum encased in hyperdiamond keep the city from sinking. If Gilgamesh can find a way to tamper with it, they could cause the Europan cities to collapse.
Marius is then operated on to give him the ability to breathe underwater. He asks Cholok about "Denizens", experimental cross-breeds between humans and fish to create the perfect underwater worker. She denies their existence. Marius kills her and leaves the city. As he swims northward to his extraction point, he is informed that it has been compromised. He swims southward, but the Demarchy is trailing him. He meets a group of Denizens who kill the Demarchist agents and inform him that Cholok created them, but the Demarchy turned them away and imprisoned them in their cave. The cave was warm enough to survive in, but if they went outside, their blood would freeze. Normally, they could make "glycoproteins" that would lower their freezing temperature, but the Demarchy has deactivated them. Cholok has, however, inserted a virus into Marius's blood that will reactivate the genes to make the proteins. To get it, they need to drink his blood. As such, they kill him.
"Weather" "Weather" follows the activities of an Ultra, Inigo, whose ship Petronel is attacked by pirates. The ship is almost wiped out, but a piece of debris destroys the pirate ship. Inigo discovers a Conjoiner girl hiding on the ship. Inigo's captain allows him to go and find her. She initially refuses to come with them, but Inigo knocks her out with a tranquilliser dart. Inigo's captain insists that she be kept restrained in a radio-shielded cell, as he is convinced that she can control the ship. Inigo talks to the girl who tells him that she cannot tell him her name – as a basic human, he would not be able to process it. She describes it as like the atmosphere of a gas giant, so he gives her the name of Weather.
Inigo continues to speak to Weather as often as he can, but his captain refuses to let her out of her cell. He tells Inigo that he hates Conjoiners (whom he refers to as "Spiders") because in the war against them, they took his wife and turned her into a Conjoiner without her consent. When the two met later on, she no longer seemed to hold any interest in him. Weather tells Inigo that the Conjoiners considered the act a kindness, but failed to realise the effect it would have on loved ones of the people they transformed. Meanwhile, the ship detects an incoming stealth vessel. Inigo, being the shipmaster, is in charge of the engines, but finds that he cannot make them accelerate without danger of nova (this happens if the engines are pushed too hard, if non-Conjoiners attempt to open a Conjoiner Drive to reverse-engineer it, or if the two engines on a ship are allowed to get more than 1 mile away from each other). He gets permission to let Weather look at the engine, but she insists she cannot do anything to help.
Weather speaks to Inigo's captain and repeats a message his wife left for him in the Conjoiner group memory. He lets her further inspect the engines. She opens one up and takes Inigo inside. They discover a brain that the Conjoiners inserted into the engine: it has to calculate the engine's workings to control the energy the drive produces, but has taken damage and cannot process enough information. Weather merges with him, making Inigo promise to bring other Conjoiners to help when they reach their destination. Inigo admits his love for Weather and leaves the engine.
"Dilation Sleep"