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Alastair Reynolds

Permafrost Paperback – 19 March 2019

by ALASTAIR REYNOLDS (Author)

375 ratings

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Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future.

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.

2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.

Does she resist ... or become a collaborator?

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Product details

Publisher : St. Martins Press-3PL (19 March 2019)
Language : English
Paperback : 178 pages
ISBN-10 : 1250303567
ISBN-13 : 978-1250303561
Dimensions : 19.81 x 12.7 x 1.78 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 99,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,079 in Time Travel Fiction
- 1,510 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- 4,265 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
375 ratings

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A post-apocalyptic time-travel adventure from master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds.

Book Description

A post-apocalyptic time-travel adventure from master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds.

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5 star		47%
4 star		31%
3 star		15%
2 star		5%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Kimmy C

Confusing if readable tale

Reviewed in Australia on 6 July 2020

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I’m not sure if I should’ve had some pre-reading, or if there’s a web series I’ve missed out on, but the first few chapters of this book were like being launched into a room full of strangers and being expected to know who they were and what their back story was. Once I got the gist and relationships of everyone, it improved, but, and I think I speak for all of us, time travel is confusing.

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dshan111

Timelords Not

Reviewed in Australia on 13 May 2019

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Reynolds gives us a dramatic, enjoyable and thought-provoking tale of time travel and the resulting paradoxes. A group of post-apocalypse survivors try to change the past just enough to ensure humanity's survival. Taut, bleak and well written, this is Alastair Reynolds at his best.

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RobinEM

Take a trip back in time, inside someone else’s body.

Reviewed in Australia on 14 July 2019

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A good story with an interesting premise, not just another time travel. I liked the science of slipping into someone else’s body and the hero wasn’t young and ex military of some kind. A quick read and I was left wishing it had been a tad longer. Recommended.

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Hopeful Near future story

Reviewed in Australia on 7 September 2019

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Everyone should read this environmentally and AI prescient story. Realistic and galvanising bringing to life the dreadful possibilities of complete loss of flora and fauna as well as the possibility of revival via seed banks.

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Mshell

Good read

Reviewed in Australia on 30 December 2019

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Great read for the tea and lunch break. Good to read just before getting into work too. Great author, good read.

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V. Good Reynolds

Reviewed in Australia on 21 April 2019

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If you like this author, you'll like this novella. Reynolds brings his patented mix of driven characters, existential bleakness, and desperate hope to this time travel tale.

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Dave Bowyer

Stunning novella

Reviewed in Australia on 23 March 2019

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Although shorter than I expected, this is top-drawer time travel sci fi. Couldn't put it down. Totally worth your time.

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Dilair Mustafa

Good plot, interesting concept.

Reviewed in Australia on 10 August 2019

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Mental time travel concept is a new way to explore time travel. The characters are relateable.

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Tielhard

Spoilers will kill the McGuffin!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 April 2019

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I don’t know what has happened to Alastair Reynolds recently? I used to wait for his new books with eager anticipation and was rarely disappointed. Recently though he has been turning out workman like stuff that brings me little joy. Permafrost is a time travel Novella. It is set in a world which has suffered a terrible disaster, never clearly explain but it appears to involve the extinction of all plant life. A secret project is set up to send people back in time and rescue some super-duper seeds that will save human life. If you think about this for a bit you will come to realise that if the whole ecosystem has been lost then no one set of seeds is going to save the world. So the McGuffin was slain before the quest even started! The start of the story is quite good and the time travel idea seems to have had some inspiration from that in J.P. Hogan’s ‘Thrice Upon A Time’ but the end is hurried and jumbled and it is not at all clear how some of the events arise. I was left confused as to details and with the overall feeling that this had started out as a longer piece and at some point the author decided it wasn’t working out as he intended or that he was bored with it so he killed it off quick and flogged it as a Novella.

23 people found this helpful

els76uk

Needs a middle as well as beginning and end

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 March 2019

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This book could be so much better if I'd felt it was complete. As it was, I wondered if I'd missed a giant chunk from the middle, as we went from the beginning straight to the end. I guess the author didn't feel that bit was important. It was otherwise well written and engaging, but so much more could have been done with it, even as a series of books.

12 people found this helpful

Andrew Watt

It's rather like the notes for a full novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 April 2019

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Let's be honest, as a Reynolds fan this is both engaging and disappointing. It's very hard to call it a novel, it's a novella and allows for very little character development and colour to be added to what I thought was a well considered plot and concept. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it but it left me wanting so much more. If AR had been asked to pitch a TV series or movie then this is like the summary without anything more than plot and characters. Was he in a contractual rush to get this done? It's a fully formed plot but certainly not a fully formed book. I'd genuinely like to see this rewritten at three times its length and with some real world-building and character development.

It's three stars because it's clever and quite gripping (no spoilers - it's worth a read) but I read it in one sitting so there's little to savour.

6 people found this helpful

Kate

An excellent novella, full of big ideas as well as thrills and action

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 April 2019

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The year is 2080. The Earth is not as we know it. The Scouring has changed it beyond all recognition. This recent environmental disaster has removed every last hope for the future of life on Earth. Except for one. Scientists have discovered a means to travel back in time. Their aim is to go back to the 2020s, before the Scouring, to search for seeds which, it is hoped, will be able to save the planet. Gathered in the Arctic circle, this community of potential time travellers needs just one new member to help bring their experiment to success – 71-year-old teacher Valentina Lidova, the daughter of a genius in the paradox of time travel.

Alastair Reynolds is such a favourite author of mine and I was thrilled to learn of Permafrost, a novella which tackles two irresistible themes – time travel and an apocalyptic environmental disaster. Add to that a Russian feel and Arctic setting and I couldn’t wait to read it. As a novella of under 200 pages, it wasn’t a long read but it was packed full. As is almost always the case with a novella, though, it left me wanting more.

I’m not going to go into the plot of Permafrost any further because it is densely crammed into the pages, resulting in a compelling and multi-layered read. What it did give me are moments that made my stomach lurch. Those moments when you realise that something has happened that is so extraordinary that it takes the breath away. When characters have made a connection that resonates with so much emotion and you sit and wonder at what you’ve just read. Alastair Reynolds is a master of jaw-dropping moments and it’s not a surprise to find one or two here.

I really enjoyed having the older protagonist, Valentina. It isn’t often that you read a science fiction novel, or any novel, with a main character such as this. And she isn’t made to feel old and decrepit either, thankfully. The focus is on her experience, wisdom and empathy, not to mention her courage and resilience. It was good to spend time with her.

I’m not the biggest reader of novellas, although I do make exceptions for science fiction, because I’m such a reader of brickbooks! I like to spend time immersed in these worlds. Nevertheless, as with Alastair Reynolds’ ingenious short stories, Permafrost is an excellent read, full of big ideas as well as thrills and action. I can’t help wishing it were longer but what we have is thoroughly enjoyable, thought-provoking and full of surprises.

4 people found this helpful

William Donelson

An exquisite, small masterpiece. Brilliant and poignant. Wonderful.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 April 2019

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An exquisite, small masterpiece. Brilliant and poignant. Wonderful.
(links in my GoodReads reviews)

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

At first in this gem, the skipping around in time can be confusing. Stick with it. Your mind will expand as the book proceeds, absorbing the paradoxes, filling your mind with the superposition of Valentina and Tatiana, binding your heart to theirs. Wonderful and amazing. Perfect in every way.

It's so nice to be back into Reynolds' confident prose. What a truly fine writer. What a joy is this book!

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Notes and quotes:

10%
Director Cho explains the dire situation of the world.
"The national and international seed vaults were supposed to be our hedge against global catastrophe, but one by one they failed, or were destroyed, or pillaged. Those that survived did not contain the particular seeds we require. Now we are down to a few impoverished gene stocks. Nothing will take, nothing will grow—not in the new conditions. Hence, we’re digging into stored rations, which will soon be depleted.”

Actual breach of permafrost seed bank 2017 (link in my GoodReads review)

The "Brothers" -
The Brothers were artificial intelligences, each the most powerful and flexible such machine that could be provided by four of the main partners in the Permafrost enterprise. ..... ... the machines had been shrouded in these anonymising casings and given new designations. They were Dmitri, Ivan, Alexei and Pavel, after The Brothers Karamazov.

41% "Causal Lag" -
A truly delicious exposition of causality breakage by Reynolds here. Yum! It's Shrodinger as god, both nonsense and truth at the same time 😉 Brilliant!

I let out a breath. “Crap!”
“Generally the first reaction,” Antti said, with a faint approving smile, as if I’d crossed some unspoken threshold of acceptance. “Gets easier, though. Less strange. These are only small paradoxes, after all. You just buckle up and ride the turbulence. Be glad we never go near anything big.”
I’d regained enough composure to pay attention to what she was saying. “And if we did?”
“Oh, we can’t—luckily,” Margaret said. “The noise swamps us long before we ever get close to doing anything really stupid.”

"A causes B causes A" physics article

Wonderful! Thank you, Alastair.

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