Alastair Reynolds’ Terminal World almost finished

UK science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds has almost finalised his next book, Terminal World, which is due for publication on October 29.

Apologising on his blog this week for not posting many entries, Reynolds said he’d been busy with “edits and queries on TW, including about 12,000 words of last minute additions and substitutions.”

The book was first announced in April 2008, according to Wikipedia, and is not set in Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe, in which his books Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap and The Prefect sit. Reynolds first described it as “SF, it’s weird, and it doesn’t have spaceships”.

Reynolds also appears to have been busy with other material; the author said he had also recenly finalised two novelettes (one at 17,000 words) set on Earth, and has a few more in the pipe. The author also revealed a substantial TV habit, listing a number of series he was currently watching, from House MD to the West Wing and Doctor Who.

The Amazon blurb for Terminal World states:

“Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains …

Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint’s Celestial Levels – and with the dying body comes bad news.

If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint’s base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon’s own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality – and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability …”