Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect

I think the best science fiction novelist of the 21st century is Alastair Reynolds. I have enjoyed all six Reynolds books I have read. He is a fountain of invention, and with a background in astrophysics he knows how to make his future worlds scientifically plausible. His plots tend to be overly complex, with so many balls in the air that it takes an implausible ending to bring them all down together, but at least he is never boring.

The Prefect is a sort of detective story set in the Revelation Space universe. This world, a few hundred years in the future, features slower-than-light travel between a dozen or so worlds inhabited by humans, with hints of alien presences both benign and threatening. I love it. Reynolds has set five novels in this world, along with three story collections, and I recommend all of them. The Prefect, published in 2007, is the most recent of the novels. It is not necessary to have read any of the others to enjoy it, although I thought that knowing the other stories added resonance to this one. The setting is the Glitter Band, a commonwealth of 10,000 inhabited satellites surrounding the planet Yellowstone. The Glitter Band is 10,000 separate experiments in the different ways of being human, a madhouse of virtue, vice, and the pushing of limits -- complete freedom, voluntary tyranny, even a whole world of people in comas. Boredom seems to be the biggest threat, extreme modifications of bodies and minds the most common solution.

The story's main character and biggest problem is Tom Dreyfus, a detective of sorts with Panoply, the Glitter Band police force. As he investigates the destruction of a small habitat and its 960 inhabitants, he discovers a sinister force bent on controlling the Glitter Band for its own purposes. Dreyfus unravels the case, always at least two steps ahead of what seemed plausible to this reader. His brilliance is further emphasized by making everyone around him stupid, expect for Panoply's leader, the Supreme Prefect, whose own brilliance is shown by having her always agree with Dreyfus. But this only bothered me a little, and mainly I was swept along by another of Reynolds' amazing plots and a new array of inventions. Loved the clockmaker.

If you like science fiction but don't yet know Reynolds, find something of his and read it.