House of Suns / Alastair Reynolds

House of Suns

category: science fiction, author:

Alastair Reynolds

published by Gollancz, original copyright 2008, read in June 2010

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10

Big picture stuff! Or, as the cover says, "A genius for big-concept SF." What's so "big" about this book? Well...

The main characters have been around for six million years. They have circumnavigated the galaxy more than thirty times. Their spaceships are big enough to have a few dozen more normal spaceships stacked in the hold... The scope is more than big, it's gigantic! Yet we still have sympathy for the lives and worries of the heroes.

Sort of.

Sure, they're meant to be immortal, so potential death is a bit of a bummer. But they're clones. And 800 of the 1000 clones of one character are killed off by the time the plot gets serious. So why don't they clone another 800? No explanation.

The characters are okay... but the technology is the real star of this book. You name it, the technology makes it possible. Except for FTL travel: the characters think nothing of being frozen for the 6,000 years that it takes for the final "car" chase.
It's a lot of fun, over the top, super-science science fiction.

But is it "Space Opera"?

The back cover of the book indicates that this is "space opera". I'm not too sure... I may have to use my own definitions here:

I see space opera as being larger-than-life characters, super-duper science, galactic scale and evil aliens. Yes, House of Suns has super-duper science. The scale is definitely galactic -- and more. But...

The characters are not large enough. Sure, they are millions of years old, but that is due to technology which exists from the start of the story. I prefer my space opera heroes to invent the technology for themselves, or to find it in new civilisations -- which are discovered by the heroes. House of Suns is like the Star Wars movies -- the technology is always there, an accepted part of the background.

The characters themselves, have just a bit too much depth for my views of space opera. They are almost two-dimensional but not quite. Flat enough for SF but not flat enough for space opera.

The aliens are even worse...

What aliens?

House of Suns is a human universe. Every civilisation is human, though possibly extremely mutated. Without a tentacled and slimy alien, this is just SF. Sure, there's a secret and galaxy-wide organisation -- but it's human. Worse yet, the secret enemy has apparently good reasons for its evil deeds... In a proper space opera, the secret organisation is unspeakably evil -- and they know it.

So House of Suns is large scale science fiction. But it is not space opera.

..o0o..

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