Races in Revelation Space
Encyclopedia
This is a list of fictional alien and modified human races in the fictional Revelation Space universe
created by Alastair Reynolds
.
by the Europan Demarchy. They possess varying levels of intelligence, ranging from animalistic to baseline human capabilities, but are invariably of great physical strength and well adapted to life in the Europan ocean. Their most unusual adaptation is their ability to utilize hydrogen sulfide
instead of oxygen in a modified human body (Europa's oceans may contain a high sulfur content). The Denizens were originally created for slave labour, but the project was abandoned after infighting amongst Demarchy researchers. A few Denizens, however, survived and retreated into the volcanic vents of Europa. Later on, however, Cholok, a Europan defector, tricked Agent Marius Vargovic of Gilgamesh Isis (an anti-Demarchy faction that controlled Ganymede
and Callisto
), into giving the Denizens a virus containing genes that would let them survive in the oceans outside the vents (to better control them, the Denizens were previously unable to survive in the cold oceans of Europa without assistance), at the cost of his own life. The Denizens later mounted a rebellion destroying the first Europan Demarchy.
.
conditions to avoid detection. During that time, some of them encountered the Nestbuilders and the Jumper Clowns, and received technology from them, including FTL
communication
(but not travel).
The Grubs have the ability to absorb characteristics of aliens they encounter, by "eating" them and then utilizing the biology of the alien they find to mutate themselves. They use this to communicate with other species without the use of translation technology.
A grub ship is known as a "void warren", and is controlled by a central giant grub. The grub controls the actions of the ship, and the army of "helper" grubs (smaller versions of the giant grub). Both the helper grubs and the ship appear to be extensions of the one main grub, e.g. when a worker grub is hurt, the cry of pain comes from the main grub. Nothing in a void warren is wasted, and any grubs that are killed or injured are immediately dissolved and re-made into healthy new grubs or re-built into the ship itself. The grubs make use of a highly sophisticated force-field technology to help defend their ships.
In a flashback in Chasm City
, Sky Haussman has an encounter with a grub. Another grub crash-landed on Yellowstone millions of years ago, and was still alive during the events of the novel Chasm City (though it was dead by the time of Redemption Ark
). Examining the wreckage of this second grub's ship helped humans to recreate its inertia-suppression technology. It was this grub that brought the Melding Plague to Yellowstone. The grubs appear to be immune to the plague, probably because of the plague-preventative agent that is produced by them. This liquid was concentrated and distilled into a form known as "Dream Fuel" that was agreeable with the human metabolism
, and was one way of protecting plague-susceptible implants and nanotechnology
.
on the planet of Sky's Edge. Most information about them is imparted in the novel Chasm City
, where much of the action takes place on Sky's Edge. Hamadryads are named for the hamadryad
s of Greek mythology
, for reasons which become obvious with an understanding of the animal's life cycle
.
As the climate
of Sky's Edge suffers no winter season, there was no ecological niche
into which creatures analogous to mammal
s could evolve. Similarly, the vertebral column
never evolved there, so all fauna are invertebrate
poikilotherm
s, with the largest being broadly analogous to reptile
s on Earth. Whilst the largest invertebrates on Earth are aquatic, such as squid
, large invertebrates on Sky's Edge also populate the land, possibly as the result of a catastrophic event having caused the oceans to shrink. The hamadryad is the largest land-based lifeform native to the planet.
The lack of a spine is handled, by evolution
by animals maintaining structural rigidity
"through the pressure of circulatory fluid
s alone, pumped by hundreds of heart
s spread throughout the creature's volume".
The life cycle of the hamadryad is rather complex: juvenile and near-adult hamadryads are snake
-like limb
less creatures, of minimal intelligence, with a very simple central nervous system
. The juvenile owned by Cahuella is described as being 12 metres in length and roughly as thick as an adult human's torso
for most of that length, weighing more than a tonne
. Being limbless, the creatures move like snakes on Earth. Their cold-bloodedness means that they generally move slowly, feeding infrequently, and are remarkably long-lived, with a longevity
of hundreds of years. Being the largest native land-based lifeforms, the hamadryad has no real predators.
Juvenile and near-adult hamadryads have no apparent external eyes but, despite this, are capable of camouflaging
themselves to match their surroundings. Contrary to this belief these pre-adult hamadryads do in fact have eyes. Eyes with remarkable visual acuity
, set inside the upper roof of the jaw
and spaced apart for binocular vision
. Whilst hunting and preparing to ambush, prey are additionally triangulated
with a host of other senses, such as infrared
vision and smell
.
At the end of the near-adult phase, adult hamadryads bond with a hamadryad tree, their bodies becoming part of the bark
. The first explorers on Sky's Edge didn't investigate the hamadryad trees very well before the planetary war began, so the nature of the creatures' life cycle was not immediately apparent. The trees are relatively rare, but distributed across a large part of the Santiago peninsula, rising to a height of 40–50 metres above the forest floor. They are broadly cylindrical
in shape, thickening towards the base, with an almost metallic-looking helical
structure wrapped around the length of the trunk
and a wide canopy at the top, tens of metres in diameter.
The first scientists to investigate these trees discovered unusual cell differentiation both radially and around the tree's perimeter — animal epithelial
cells towards the outside, with soft, lipid
membrane
s, and plant cells further inwards, with cellulose
-like cell wall
s and chloroplast
s.
They are non-sapient machinery, referring to themselves as post-intelligent. They function on unknown principles speculated in the novel to be femtotechnology
or "structured" spacetime
and are capable of self-replication. Their technology often manifests as black cubes of "pure force" and is immune to conventional human weaponry; the machinery is easily capable of dodging most weapons thrown at it (usually temporary holes will appear and allow the shot to pass through) or is simply unaffected by it. The machinery can only be defeated by alien weapons supplied by the Hades Matrix or the Nestbuilders. They were created by the survivors of the Dawn War and their task is to inhibit the spread of intelligent life beyond individual planets or solar systems: the purpose, stated in Redemption Ark
, being to shepherd the galaxy
through a crisis 3 billion years (or 13 Galactic Turns) in the future: the Andromeda-Milky Way collision
. By confining sapient life to only a few planets, they make the process of moving stars and systems (for collision avoidance during the crisis) far easier and more centralized, thus preserving life. Consequently, they show little interest in non-sapient life, or civilisations that have not progressed beyond their own star system. However, when they have no choice, they will commit acts of xenocide in order to prevent life from spreading further.
They are not sapient; however, in order to supervise and control the process of xenocide, they are capable of forming a sapient overseer from many less-than-sapient machines. They also have some very advanced technology, and know about fifteen ways to kill a star, including one that allows the core material of a star to gush out and be used as a sort of solar flamethrower on planets (shown in Redemption Ark
). This is the exception rather than the rule however, as being forced to destroy an entire system to cull a single species is viewed as a moral defeat. Normally it is much preferred to exercise (relative) restraint and preserve the long-term ability of the affected worlds to support life.
They do not actively monitor the galaxy in their wait for a new star faring culture to suppress, instead they plant a series of triggers near interesting phenomena or structures in the galaxy and wait for sapient life to activate those triggers. The Cerberus object around the neutron star
Hades was one such object, and it was inadvertently activated by Dan Sylveste at the end of the book Revelation Space
, thus triggering the events in the rest of the series.
They are called wolves by the Conjoiners, because they lurk in the blackness of interstellar space and attack in packs.
In the novels it becomes apparent that the Inhibitors are starting to fail in their mission as civilisations are getting further and further into space before being found and destroyed. In fact, in the last book Absolution Gap
, in the epilogue, it is shown that humanity, with technological assistance from other star faring, albeit hidden, cultures (for example, the Nestbuilders), were able to push back the Inhibitors and establish an Inhibitor-free zone around human space. However, this introduced the problem of Greenfly, a terraforming-replicator gone wrong that ravaged systems.
With the help of the Nestbuilders, humanity was able to overcome and push back the Inhibitors, and create a large area of Inhibitor-free space. It is not explained what they look like or what they are in Absolution Gap
, but the story "Galactic North", featured in Galactic North
describes them as insectoid beings that float using anti-gravity technology built into their bodies. They build structures out of diamond and possess weapons capable of cutting through spacetime.
One interesting aspect of the Nestbuilders is that they are no longer sentient. However, another species called the Slugs has learned how to control the Nestbuilders' behaviour and subservient technology. The Slugs are small blue bags of protoplasm, seemingly too small and simple to house what humans grasp as sentience. They live in groups of up to a dozen between the gaps in the Nestbuilders' carapaces.
During the Greenfly crisis, it is not known what the actions of the Nestbuilders were, although it is known that they expressed doubt as to the effectiveness of even their weapons against the Greenfly.
In Absolution Gap it is suggested that marine ecosystems continue to exist beneath the Pattern Jugglers. Whether or not they exhibit consciousness is up for debate, but in either case they are certainly advanced, capable of spontaneously gathering large rafts of complex organic systems and producing structures as advanced as superconductive strands. Human swimmers in Pattern Juggler seas appear to be infiltrated by the alien organisms(s), often resulting in out of body experiences and giving the swimmers short-lived periods of heightened consciousness and mental clarity. Some swimmers also report feelings that they encountered the memories or minds of other past swimmers during their immersion. Repeat swimmers, however, face the risk of the sea taking too much of a liking to them, in which case they never return to land. The novella
Turquoise Days goes into more detail about the Pattern Jugglers.
Pattern Jugglers record the neural structures of sentient beings who enter their oceans, and are capable of rewriting the brains of swimmers. Normally this involves giving them heightened abilities, such as expertise in mathematics. These abilities typically last only a short period of time, but sometimes they can last for the better part of a lifetime. It is possible to persuade the jugglers to perform desired modifications to the minds of human swimmers, normally by remembering special trigger symbols coded for a particular transformation. Although in order to successfully persuade the Pattern Jugglers a price may be required, such as the Alpha-copy of Calvin Sylveste, given to the Jugglers by his clone/son Dan Sylveste in the Revelation Space book.
Most Pigs, however, are mute, lacking the ability to form words in either thought or speech. Some Pigs are more intelligent and can interact on a human level, but even they are not as intelligent as humans; Scorpio comments that he has little understanding of complex human interrelationships and when played music, only hears a series of sounds. All but the lowliest have enough intelligence to make them useful as servants, however. Such treatment, and their low standing in human society, leads many into crime. At the time of Chasm City, Pigs are only mentioned as either servants, or a criminal underclass. No Pig has reached a high position of authority among Humans except among the survivors of the planet Resurgam's destruction, where a large number of the rescue party were Pigs.
In Reynolds' The Prefect, the issue of racism between baseline humans and pigs is touched upon in greater and more personal depth than in any of Reynolds' previous novels in the Revelation Space Universe. Deputy Field Prefect Sparver Bancal is an augmented pig who, contrary to the apparent silence and low intelligence level possessed by pigs in previous novels is able to communicate and interact with humans and easily understands complex emotions and issues, such as his own discrimination and the impact of his having been promoted to the rank of Deputy (no pig ever having been ranked so highly before) and his subsequent promotion to Field Prefect near the end of the book. He is also intelligent enough to work as a skilled software expert. At numerous junctures Bancal is called upon to either ignore or retaliate to actions of direct racism, but it is clear that the humans' attitude towards pigs is gradually changing in favour of forgiveness, compassion and acceptance.
Other members of the Revelation Space universe are unaware of the real nature of the Shrouders. In order to determine if Inhibitors were still active and that it was safe to leave the Shroud, one group of the Banished embedded a series of false messages into the Shroud that suggested that the Shrouders were a species that had gathered treasures and hidden them inside the Shroud. Lured by these messages, anyone who penetrated further into the Shroud would have semi-sentient programs and directives embedded by the Banished that would cause the intruders to trigger the Inhibitor device near the Banished home planet. If the Inhibitors responded to the triggering device then the Banished would know that the Inhibitors were still functioning. The program manifests itself in the novels as the "Sun Stealer" entity. It is capable of hacking virtually any human computer system and controlling starships. Eventually Ilia Volyova is able to defeat it with the Melding Plague, but not before it was able to activate the Inhibitors.
A second, dissenting group within the Banished planted a separate set of programs and directives to prevent the first group's plan from succeeding, believing that triggering the Inhibitors could lead to the discovery of the Banished hidden in the Shroud. It is implied that this agent manifests itself as the Mademoiselle, an entity with similar abilities which was able to penetrate even the Conjoiners' computer security systems.
In Absolution Gap, the emissary of the shadows is trapped in the scrimshaw
suit which is held by Quaiche. At first, Rashmika thinks it is right to negotiate with the shadows, but Scorpio suggests that the scuttlers were wiped out for trying to make contact with the Shadows, and the humans do not. They are apparently more advanced than the Inhibitors, able to jump across brane worlds, synthesise matter and (perhaps) travel back across time. They claim that some of their weapons went out of control and became a significant threat in their universe.
There is some suggestion that the terraforming agent which the Shadows are fleeing from is the Greenfly; the agent they are fleeing has characteristics that correspond more or less perfectly with the Greenfly forces encountered at the end of Absolution Gap and "Galactic North". If this is true, the Shadows could be descended from the human survivors at the end of "Galactic North". Another possible explanation is that either the Greenfly or instructions for building them somehow came to our universe from the far brane.
Revelation Space universe
The Revelation Space universe is a fictional universe which was created by Alastair Reynolds and used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories...
created by Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Preston Reynolds is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland...
.
Denizens
Denizens are a heavily engineered sentient species created on EuropaEuropa (moon)
Europa Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and...
by the Europan Demarchy. They possess varying levels of intelligence, ranging from animalistic to baseline human capabilities, but are invariably of great physical strength and well adapted to life in the Europan ocean. Their most unusual adaptation is their ability to utilize hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless, very poisonous, flammable gas with the characteristic foul odor of expired eggs perceptible at concentrations as low as 0.00047 parts per million...
instead of oxygen in a modified human body (Europa's oceans may contain a high sulfur content). The Denizens were originally created for slave labour, but the project was abandoned after infighting amongst Demarchy researchers. A few Denizens, however, survived and retreated into the volcanic vents of Europa. Later on, however, Cholok, a Europan defector, tricked Agent Marius Vargovic of Gilgamesh Isis (an anti-Demarchy faction that controlled Ganymede
Ganymede (moon)
Ganymede is a satellite of Jupiter and the largest moon in the Solar System. It is the seventh moon and third Galilean satellite outward from Jupiter. Completing an orbit in roughly seven days, Ganymede participates in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively...
and Callisto
Callisto (moon)
Callisto named after the Greek mythological figure of Callisto) is a moon of the planet Jupiter. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. It is the third-largest moon in the Solar System and the second largest in the Jovian system, after Ganymede. Callisto has about 99% the diameter of the...
), into giving the Denizens a virus containing genes that would let them survive in the oceans outside the vents (to better control them, the Denizens were previously unable to survive in the cold oceans of Europa without assistance), at the cost of his own life. The Denizens later mounted a rebellion destroying the first Europan Demarchy.
Gillies
Gillies are a faction of humans that have been bioengineered to live underwater. Due to the different pressure properties of liquids and gases, this enables them to crew short-range, high-g intra system ships. Most gillies are just normal people or labourers that work in submarine conditions, with barely more than gills on their chests distinguishing them from baseline humanity. Some gillies are mentioned as being so adapted to a submarine environment they cannot breathe or function in air anymore and have to be transported in huge robotic tanks. Their origins were revealed in the story "A Spy in Europa", featured in Galactic NorthGalactic North
Galactic North is a collection of short stories by the science fiction author Alastair Reynolds...
.
Grubs
The Grubs are a spacefaring civilization. They are named "grubs" by humans due to their general appearance. When they first developed starships, they were nearly exterminated by the Inhibitors. Some survived by hiding in the interstellar void, adapting themselves to near absolute zeroAbsolute zero
Absolute zero is the theoretical temperature at which entropy reaches its minimum value. The laws of thermodynamics state that absolute zero cannot be reached using only thermodynamic means....
conditions to avoid detection. During that time, some of them encountered the Nestbuilders and the Jumper Clowns, and received technology from them, including FTL
FTL
- Science and technology :* Faster-than-light, a speculative concept in physics and science fiction** Faster Than Light , a British video games company...
communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
(but not travel).
The Grubs have the ability to absorb characteristics of aliens they encounter, by "eating" them and then utilizing the biology of the alien they find to mutate themselves. They use this to communicate with other species without the use of translation technology.
A grub ship is known as a "void warren", and is controlled by a central giant grub. The grub controls the actions of the ship, and the army of "helper" grubs (smaller versions of the giant grub). Both the helper grubs and the ship appear to be extensions of the one main grub, e.g. when a worker grub is hurt, the cry of pain comes from the main grub. Nothing in a void warren is wasted, and any grubs that are killed or injured are immediately dissolved and re-made into healthy new grubs or re-built into the ship itself. The grubs make use of a highly sophisticated force-field technology to help defend their ships.
In a flashback in Chasm City
Chasm City
Chasm City is a 2001 science fiction novel by author Alastair Reynolds, set in the Revelation Space universe. It deals with themes of identity, memory, and immortality, and many of its scenes are concerned primarily with describing the unusual societal and physical structure of the titular city, a...
, Sky Haussman has an encounter with a grub. Another grub crash-landed on Yellowstone millions of years ago, and was still alive during the events of the novel Chasm City (though it was dead by the time of Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark is a 2002 hard science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It is the second book in the Revelation Space series , and it continues the story of Nevil Clavain begun in the short stories "Great Wall of Mars" and "Glacial"...
). Examining the wreckage of this second grub's ship helped humans to recreate its inertia-suppression technology. It was this grub that brought the Melding Plague to Yellowstone. The grubs appear to be immune to the plague, probably because of the plague-preventative agent that is produced by them. This liquid was concentrated and distilled into a form known as "Dream Fuel" that was agreeable with the human metabolism
Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
, and was one way of protecting plague-susceptible implants and nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
.
Hamadryad
The Hamadryad is native to the Santiago peninsulaPeninsula
A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....
on the planet of Sky's Edge. Most information about them is imparted in the novel Chasm City
Chasm City
Chasm City is a 2001 science fiction novel by author Alastair Reynolds, set in the Revelation Space universe. It deals with themes of identity, memory, and immortality, and many of its scenes are concerned primarily with describing the unusual societal and physical structure of the titular city, a...
, where much of the action takes place on Sky's Edge. Hamadryads are named for the hamadryad
Hamadryad
Hamadryads are Greek mythological beings that live in trees. They are a particular type of dryad, which in turn are a particular type of nymph. Hamadryads are born bonded to a particular tree. Some believe that hamadryads are the actual tree, while normal dryads are simply the entities, or...
s of Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, for reasons which become obvious with an understanding of the animal's life cycle
Biological life cycle
A life cycle is a period involving all different generations of a species succeeding each other through means of reproduction, whether through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction...
.
As the climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
of Sky's Edge suffers no winter season, there was no ecological niche
Ecological niche
In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in its ecosystem to each other; e.g. a dolphin could potentially be in another ecological niche from one that travels in a different pod if the members of these pods utilize significantly different food...
into which creatures analogous to mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s could evolve. Similarly, the vertebral column
Vertebrate
Vertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
never evolved there, so all fauna are invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
poikilotherm
Poikilotherm
A poikilotherm is an organism whose internal temperature varies considerably. It is the opposite of a homeotherm, an organism which maintains thermal homeostasis. Usually the variation is a consequence of variation in the ambient environmental temperature...
s, with the largest being broadly analogous to reptile
Reptile
Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...
s on Earth. Whilst the largest invertebrates on Earth are aquatic, such as squid
Squid
Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles...
, large invertebrates on Sky's Edge also populate the land, possibly as the result of a catastrophic event having caused the oceans to shrink. The hamadryad is the largest land-based lifeform native to the planet.
The lack of a spine is handled, by evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
by animals maintaining structural rigidity
Rigidity
Rigid or rigidity may refer to:*Stiffness, the property of a solid body to resist deformation, which is sometimes referred to as rigidity*Structural rigidity, a mathematical theory of the stiffness of ensembles of rigid objects connected by hinges...
"through the pressure of circulatory fluid
Circulatory system
The circulatory system is an organ system that passes nutrients , gases, hormones, blood cells, etc...
s alone, pumped by hundreds of heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
s spread throughout the creature's volume".
The life cycle of the hamadryad is rather complex: juvenile and near-adult hamadryads are snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
-like limb
Limb (anatomy)
A limb is a jointed, or prehensile , appendage of the human or other animal body....
less creatures, of minimal intelligence, with a very simple central nervous system
Central nervous system
The central nervous system is the part of the nervous system that integrates the information that it receives from, and coordinates the activity of, all parts of the bodies of bilaterian animals—that is, all multicellular animals except sponges and radially symmetric animals such as jellyfish...
. The juvenile owned by Cahuella is described as being 12 metres in length and roughly as thick as an adult human's torso
Torso
Trunk or torso is an anatomical term for the central part of the many animal bodies from which extend the neck and limbs. The trunk includes the thorax and abdomen.-Major organs:...
for most of that length, weighing more than a tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
. Being limbless, the creatures move like snakes on Earth. Their cold-bloodedness means that they generally move slowly, feeding infrequently, and are remarkably long-lived, with a longevity
Longevity
The word "longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography or known as "long life", especially when it concerns someone or something lasting longer than expected ....
of hundreds of years. Being the largest native land-based lifeforms, the hamadryad has no real predators.
Juvenile and near-adult hamadryads have no apparent external eyes but, despite this, are capable of camouflaging
Camouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
themselves to match their surroundings. Contrary to this belief these pre-adult hamadryads do in fact have eyes. Eyes with remarkable visual acuity
Visual acuity
Visual acuity is acuteness or clearness of vision, which is dependent on the sharpness of the retinal focus within the eye and the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain....
, set inside the upper roof of the jaw
Jaw
The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term jaws is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serving to open and close it and is part of the body plan of...
and spaced apart for binocular vision
Binocular vision
Binocular vision is vision in which both eyes are used together. The word binocular comes from two Latin roots, bini for double, and oculus for eye. Having two eyes confers at least four advantages over having one. First, it gives a creature a spare eye in case one is damaged. Second, it gives a...
. Whilst hunting and preparing to ambush, prey are additionally triangulated
Triangulation
In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly...
with a host of other senses, such as infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
vision and smell
Olfaction
Olfaction is the sense of smell. This sense is mediated by specialized sensory cells of the nasal cavity of vertebrates, and, by analogy, sensory cells of the antennae of invertebrates...
.
At the end of the near-adult phase, adult hamadryads bond with a hamadryad tree, their bodies becoming part of the bark
Bark
Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...
. The first explorers on Sky's Edge didn't investigate the hamadryad trees very well before the planetary war began, so the nature of the creatures' life cycle was not immediately apparent. The trees are relatively rare, but distributed across a large part of the Santiago peninsula, rising to a height of 40–50 metres above the forest floor. They are broadly cylindrical
Cylinder (geometry)
A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...
in shape, thickening towards the base, with an almost metallic-looking helical
Helix
A helix is a type of smooth space curve, i.e. a curve in three-dimensional space. It has the property that the tangent line at any point makes a constant angle with a fixed line called the axis. Examples of helixes are coil springs and the handrails of spiral staircases. A "filled-in" helix – for...
structure wrapped around the length of the trunk
Trunk (botany)
In botany, trunk refers to the main wooden axis of a tree that supports the branches and is supported by and directly attached to the roots. The trunk is covered by the bark, which is an important diagnostic feature in tree identification, and which often differs markedly from the bottom of the...
and a wide canopy at the top, tens of metres in diameter.
The first scientists to investigate these trees discovered unusual cell differentiation both radially and around the tree's perimeter — animal epithelial
Epithelium
Epithelium is one of the four basic types of animal tissue, along with connective tissue, muscle tissue and nervous tissue. Epithelial tissues line the cavities and surfaces of structures throughout the body, and also form many glands. Functions of epithelial cells include secretion, selective...
cells towards the outside, with soft, lipid
Lipid
Lipids constitute a broad group of naturally occurring molecules that include fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins , monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, phospholipids, and others...
membrane
Cell membrane
The cell membrane or plasma membrane is a biological membrane that separates the interior of all cells from the outside environment. The cell membrane is selectively permeable to ions and organic molecules and controls the movement of substances in and out of cells. It basically protects the cell...
s, and plant cells further inwards, with cellulose
Cellulose
Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand β linked D-glucose units....
-like cell wall
Cell wall
The cell wall is the tough, usually flexible but sometimes fairly rigid layer that surrounds some types of cells. It is located outside the cell membrane and provides these cells with structural support and protection, and also acts as a filtering mechanism. A major function of the cell wall is to...
s and chloroplast
Chloroplast
Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and other eukaryotic organisms that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy to conserve free energy in the form of ATP and reduce NADP to NADPH through a complex set of processes called photosynthesis.Chloroplasts are green...
s.
Inhibitors / Wolves
The Inhibitors are the intelligence left over from a massive war — the Dawn War — that occurred between the first few civilizations that arose in the Milky Way galaxy. Initially an organic race, they later made use of extensive cybernetics to enhance themselves, and eventually discarded their organic forms entirely to become wholly machine. The hints of a quadrupedal, warm-blooded vertebrate (also known as mammalian) past can be faintly discerned in their architectures.They are non-sapient machinery, referring to themselves as post-intelligent. They function on unknown principles speculated in the novel to be femtotechnology
Femtotechnology
Femtotechnology is a hypothetical term used in reference to structuring of matter on a femtometer, which is 10-15 m. This is a smaller scale in comparison to nanotechnology and picotechnology which are 10-9 m and 10-12 m respectively...
or "structured" spacetime
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
and are capable of self-replication. Their technology often manifests as black cubes of "pure force" and is immune to conventional human weaponry; the machinery is easily capable of dodging most weapons thrown at it (usually temporary holes will appear and allow the shot to pass through) or is simply unaffected by it. The machinery can only be defeated by alien weapons supplied by the Hades Matrix or the Nestbuilders. They were created by the survivors of the Dawn War and their task is to inhibit the spread of intelligent life beyond individual planets or solar systems: the purpose, stated in Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark is a 2002 hard science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It is the second book in the Revelation Space series , and it continues the story of Nevil Clavain begun in the short stories "Great Wall of Mars" and "Glacial"...
, being to shepherd the galaxy
Galaxy
A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...
through a crisis 3 billion years (or 13 Galactic Turns) in the future: the Andromeda-Milky Way collision
Andromeda-Milky Way collision
The collision seen from a hypothetical extragalactic planet. The galaxies will be at this relative angleThe Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a predicted galaxy collision that could possibly take place in approximately 3 to 5 billion years' time between the two largest galaxies in the Local...
. By confining sapient life to only a few planets, they make the process of moving stars and systems (for collision avoidance during the crisis) far easier and more centralized, thus preserving life. Consequently, they show little interest in non-sapient life, or civilisations that have not progressed beyond their own star system. However, when they have no choice, they will commit acts of xenocide in order to prevent life from spreading further.
They are not sapient; however, in order to supervise and control the process of xenocide, they are capable of forming a sapient overseer from many less-than-sapient machines. They also have some very advanced technology, and know about fifteen ways to kill a star, including one that allows the core material of a star to gush out and be used as a sort of solar flamethrower on planets (shown in Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark
Redemption Ark is a 2002 hard science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It is the second book in the Revelation Space series , and it continues the story of Nevil Clavain begun in the short stories "Great Wall of Mars" and "Glacial"...
). This is the exception rather than the rule however, as being forced to destroy an entire system to cull a single species is viewed as a moral defeat. Normally it is much preferred to exercise (relative) restraint and preserve the long-term ability of the affected worlds to support life.
They do not actively monitor the galaxy in their wait for a new star faring culture to suppress, instead they plant a series of triggers near interesting phenomena or structures in the galaxy and wait for sapient life to activate those triggers. The Cerberus object around the neutron star
Neutron star
A neutron star is a type of stellar remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without electrical charge and with a slightly larger...
Hades was one such object, and it was inadvertently activated by Dan Sylveste at the end of the book Revelation Space
Revelation Space
Revelation Space is a 2000 science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It was the first novel set in the Revelation Space universe, although the then-unnamed universe had already been established by several published short stories....
, thus triggering the events in the rest of the series.
They are called wolves by the Conjoiners, because they lurk in the blackness of interstellar space and attack in packs.
In the novels it becomes apparent that the Inhibitors are starting to fail in their mission as civilisations are getting further and further into space before being found and destroyed. In fact, in the last book Absolution Gap
Absolution Gap
Absolution Gap is a 2003 science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It takes place in the Revelation Space universe and is a direct sequel to Redemption Ark.-Plot summary:...
, in the epilogue, it is shown that humanity, with technological assistance from other star faring, albeit hidden, cultures (for example, the Nestbuilders), were able to push back the Inhibitors and establish an Inhibitor-free zone around human space. However, this introduced the problem of Greenfly, a terraforming-replicator gone wrong that ravaged systems.
Jumper Clowns
An ancient race from whom the Grubs acquired instant communication technology. Very little is known about them, but the grubs claim that they refuse to research faster-than-light travel, to the extent that any mention of it causes refined jumper clowns to die of revulsion.Nestbuilders / Slugs
The Nestbuilders, or conch-makers as they were first known, are a race of alien beings who have lived in hiding from the Inhibitors. They were responsible for the death of the scuttlers, who made the mistake of trying to contact the shadows.With the help of the Nestbuilders, humanity was able to overcome and push back the Inhibitors, and create a large area of Inhibitor-free space. It is not explained what they look like or what they are in Absolution Gap
Absolution Gap
Absolution Gap is a 2003 science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It takes place in the Revelation Space universe and is a direct sequel to Redemption Ark.-Plot summary:...
, but the story "Galactic North", featured in Galactic North
Galactic North
Galactic North is a collection of short stories by the science fiction author Alastair Reynolds...
describes them as insectoid beings that float using anti-gravity technology built into their bodies. They build structures out of diamond and possess weapons capable of cutting through spacetime.
One interesting aspect of the Nestbuilders is that they are no longer sentient. However, another species called the Slugs has learned how to control the Nestbuilders' behaviour and subservient technology. The Slugs are small blue bags of protoplasm, seemingly too small and simple to house what humans grasp as sentience. They live in groups of up to a dozen between the gaps in the Nestbuilders' carapaces.
During the Greenfly crisis, it is not known what the actions of the Nestbuilders were, although it is known that they expressed doubt as to the effectiveness of even their weapons against the Greenfly.
Pattern Jugglers
The Pattern Jugglers are collectives of marine organisms that inhabit widely scattered water-covered planets. They act as a form of biotechnological data storage system, recording the minds and memories of anyone who communes with them. Nobody, including the jugglers themselves, knows their origin, although the inhibitors seem to avoid attacking Pattern Juggler worlds.In Absolution Gap it is suggested that marine ecosystems continue to exist beneath the Pattern Jugglers. Whether or not they exhibit consciousness is up for debate, but in either case they are certainly advanced, capable of spontaneously gathering large rafts of complex organic systems and producing structures as advanced as superconductive strands. Human swimmers in Pattern Juggler seas appear to be infiltrated by the alien organisms(s), often resulting in out of body experiences and giving the swimmers short-lived periods of heightened consciousness and mental clarity. Some swimmers also report feelings that they encountered the memories or minds of other past swimmers during their immersion. Repeat swimmers, however, face the risk of the sea taking too much of a liking to them, in which case they never return to land. The novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Turquoise Days goes into more detail about the Pattern Jugglers.
Pattern Jugglers record the neural structures of sentient beings who enter their oceans, and are capable of rewriting the brains of swimmers. Normally this involves giving them heightened abilities, such as expertise in mathematics. These abilities typically last only a short period of time, but sometimes they can last for the better part of a lifetime. It is possible to persuade the jugglers to perform desired modifications to the minds of human swimmers, normally by remembering special trigger symbols coded for a particular transformation. Although in order to successfully persuade the Pattern Jugglers a price may be required, such as the Alpha-copy of Calvin Sylveste, given to the Jugglers by his clone/son Dan Sylveste in the Revelation Space book.
Pigs
Pigs (or hyperpigs) within the Revelation Space universe have been genetically modified at various stages throughout Human history. Although modifications were originally related to the growth of human-compatible organs, many races of Pig have heavily altered physiological and neurological states compared to their base ancestors- most notably the ability to think in human terms, and to speak human languages. The origin of such modifications is lost to history, and a puzzle in the universe, since there appears to be no gain to be had to humans for what must have been quite comprehensive and complicated work.Most Pigs, however, are mute, lacking the ability to form words in either thought or speech. Some Pigs are more intelligent and can interact on a human level, but even they are not as intelligent as humans; Scorpio comments that he has little understanding of complex human interrelationships and when played music, only hears a series of sounds. All but the lowliest have enough intelligence to make them useful as servants, however. Such treatment, and their low standing in human society, leads many into crime. At the time of Chasm City, Pigs are only mentioned as either servants, or a criminal underclass. No Pig has reached a high position of authority among Humans except among the survivors of the planet Resurgam's destruction, where a large number of the rescue party were Pigs.
In Reynolds' The Prefect, the issue of racism between baseline humans and pigs is touched upon in greater and more personal depth than in any of Reynolds' previous novels in the Revelation Space Universe. Deputy Field Prefect Sparver Bancal is an augmented pig who, contrary to the apparent silence and low intelligence level possessed by pigs in previous novels is able to communicate and interact with humans and easily understands complex emotions and issues, such as his own discrimination and the impact of his having been promoted to the rank of Deputy (no pig ever having been ranked so highly before) and his subsequent promotion to Field Prefect near the end of the book. He is also intelligent enough to work as a skilled software expert. At numerous junctures Bancal is called upon to either ignore or retaliate to actions of direct racism, but it is clear that the humans' attitude towards pigs is gradually changing in favour of forgiveness, compassion and acceptance.
Shrouders
Shrouders are, as their name suggests, the inhabitants of "shrouds", artificially created zones of space so tightly warped that the inhabitants are, effectively, sealed off from the rest of the universe. The shrouds are effectively impenetrable from the outside (although they can be deactivated from inside). The Shrouders began as a race of bird-like creatures known as the Amarantin on the planet Resurgam. One group of Amarantin, the Banished, achieved space flight and inadvertently triggered one of the Inhibitors' devices for detecting intelligent, space-faring life. Unable to escape the Inhibitors, the Banished created the Shrouds and retreated into them to hide until the Inhibitors (already declining in ability) were no longer active.Other members of the Revelation Space universe are unaware of the real nature of the Shrouders. In order to determine if Inhibitors were still active and that it was safe to leave the Shroud, one group of the Banished embedded a series of false messages into the Shroud that suggested that the Shrouders were a species that had gathered treasures and hidden them inside the Shroud. Lured by these messages, anyone who penetrated further into the Shroud would have semi-sentient programs and directives embedded by the Banished that would cause the intruders to trigger the Inhibitor device near the Banished home planet. If the Inhibitors responded to the triggering device then the Banished would know that the Inhibitors were still functioning. The program manifests itself in the novels as the "Sun Stealer" entity. It is capable of hacking virtually any human computer system and controlling starships. Eventually Ilia Volyova is able to defeat it with the Melding Plague, but not before it was able to activate the Inhibitors.
A second, dissenting group within the Banished planted a separate set of programs and directives to prevent the first group's plan from succeeding, believing that triggering the Inhibitors could lead to the discovery of the Banished hidden in the Shroud. It is implied that this agent manifests itself as the Mademoiselle, an entity with similar abilities which was able to penetrate even the Conjoiners' computer security systems.
Scuttlers
The scuttlers were the race that first inhabited Hela. They had the ability to remove their limbs and swap them with other members of their species, a trait which gave them incredible adaptability. After being pushed back by the Inhibitors, the scuttlers tried to contact the shadows for assistance by using a gravity device, concealed beneath the projection of a gas giant (Haldora), to send a message between braneworlds. This was a mistake, and the scuttlers were culled by the Nestbuilders.Shadows
The Shadows are a race of sentient beings who exist on a parallel braneworld. In their original universe, they were pursued by a relentless terraforming agent which ripped apart their worlds and remade them into millions of asteroid-sized habitats. In order to escape from the agent which had overrun their brane, the Shadows abandoned their original physical forms and jumped into a different brane.In Absolution Gap, the emissary of the shadows is trapped in the scrimshaw
Scrimshaw
Scrimshaw is the name given to handiwork created by whalers made from the byproducts of harvesting marine mammals. It is most commonly made out of the bones and teeth of sperm whales, the baleen of other whales, and the tusks of walruses...
suit which is held by Quaiche. At first, Rashmika thinks it is right to negotiate with the shadows, but Scorpio suggests that the scuttlers were wiped out for trying to make contact with the Shadows, and the humans do not. They are apparently more advanced than the Inhibitors, able to jump across brane worlds, synthesise matter and (perhaps) travel back across time. They claim that some of their weapons went out of control and became a significant threat in their universe.
There is some suggestion that the terraforming agent which the Shadows are fleeing from is the Greenfly; the agent they are fleeing has characteristics that correspond more or less perfectly with the Greenfly forces encountered at the end of Absolution Gap and "Galactic North". If this is true, the Shadows could be descended from the human survivors at the end of "Galactic North". Another possible explanation is that either the Greenfly or instructions for building them somehow came to our universe from the far brane.
See also
- Revelation Space universeRevelation Space universeThe Revelation Space universe is a fictional universe which was created by Alastair Reynolds and used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories...
- Characters in Revelation SpaceCharacters in Revelation SpaceThese are major characters from the various novels and stories that make up Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe.- Ana Khouri :...
- Factions in Revelation SpaceFactions in Revelation SpaceThis is a list of fictional factions in Revelation Space. The human factions are found in the Revelation Space universe, the setting for a series of stories and novels by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds.-Interstellar factions:...
- Locations in Revelation Space
- Technology in Revelation SpaceTechnology in Revelation SpaceThis article lists elements of technology in the fictional Revelation Space universe created by Alastair Reynolds.- Abstractions and entoptics :Abstraction is the process by which humans with neural implants gain access to wireless data networks, the data rate of which is far beyond anything...