Tootfinder

Read "Pushing Ice" by Alastair Reynolds which is a sci-fi novel about the crew of an ice-mining ship which usually pushes comets around to harvest their snow.
In fact there's almost no actual pushing of ice in the novel though because the crew are immediately distracted by the strange behaviour of one of Saturn's moons, Janus, which turns out to have been an alien artefact all along.
Being closest, they chase it out of the solar system and onto the relativistic time-dilated future of the galaxy.
Alastair Reynolds writes long. Seems to go on forever. Been reading it for months. And yet when you reach the end you still want to know what happened to 'em all next.
Interesting hook of how by timing your relativistic journey's speed properly you can take civilisations from all around the history of the galaxy and put them all in one structure at the end. Gives a nice way to have aliens interacting with each other even which each evolved in a pretty much otherwise empty galaxy.
The politics and factionalism of both the humans aboard Janus and inside and between the other alien species is explored well. Betrayals and manipulations and hiding of truths going on and being justified by everyone.
Felt like the prologue was all a bit spoilery really. Might have been a more surprising story without letting us know in chapter zero what kind of thing to expect, making the path of the captain predestined.
Good stuff though. Nice long space opera.
#reading #sciFi #AlastarReynolds #pushingIce