Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds

Master class in short fiction.

While the stories themselves were pretty hit or miss for me, the skill on display was readily apparent. Alastair Reynolds crafts his stories with an artisan's touch, gently shaping and polishing his works to nearly radiant perfection.

The main reason this is 4-stars instead of 5 is because I noticed he tends to focus hyper-specifically on one main facet while letting others fall to the wayside. For example, incredible characterization (Minla's Flowers, Zima Blue, Thousandth Night), outstanding worldbuilding (Beyond the Aquila Rift, Diamond Dogs), intense and wonderful storytelling (Vainglory, Trauma Pod)

Major standouts include Minla's Flowers (holy shit, the slowly changing meaning of the titular flowers? Top tier for that alone), Zima Blue (entire reason I read this was because of the LD&R adaptation of this story, the short story is even better, mind-blowingly incredible), Diamond Dogs (David Bowie reference in the title? Story about Math geniuses upgrading their mental capacity to ascend a tower of puzzles?? You can't get any more up my alley than this. Planning a TTRPG campaign based on this story, very high marks), and Thousandth Night (maybe my favorite in the collection? Love how Reynolds plays with massive timescales and he does it best here I think).

Badass book, wildly imaginative and thought provoking. Alastair Reynolds is one of the modern SF greats.