Galactic North
2006 short story collection by Alastair Reynolds
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
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Galactic North” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.