History Literature / RevelationSpace

* ForgottenSuperweapon: The [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup "Cache Weapons"]] aboard ''Nostalgia for Infinity''. They're also known as [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "Hell-Class"]] weapons.

* EldritchStarship: The ''Nostalgia for Infinity''

** Yellowstone is a cosmopolitan mix of a planet, settled mostly by American, European and East Asian colonists. Sky's Edge was settled by Latin American, Middle Eastern and Central Asian nationalities.

* ElectronicEyes: Dan Sylveste. At first he has advanced eyes that are able to record all that he sees and playback later for review, along with taking snapshots and live-zooming. Later, though, his eyes are damaged and are repaired with local parts on Resurgam, leading to a terrible security-cam-like vision (i.e. black and white, slow framerate, etc).

''Revelation Space'' is the first novel in the [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness Hard Sci-Fi]] SpaceOpera series of [[Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries the same name]], by Creator/AlastairReynolds.

* SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay: Averted. Related to the ShownTheirWork entry.

** Alpha-level simulations are perfect copies of the original mind. Beta-levels are very convincing but non-sentient, though particularly high-end beta-levels (like Calvin’s) will loudly argue that they are.

[[MeanwhileInTheFuture Meanwhile in the past]], the ship ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' is enroute to the planet Yellowstone. Designed to carry thousands of colonists in suspension, its only passengers now are a handful of Ultras — {{transhuman}}s adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. They're desperate to find Sylveste: their captain has been infected with the "Melding Plague" and they believe only Sylveste can save him. But in a universe [[MundaneDogmatic without faster-than-light communication]], they don't know Sylveste left Yellowstone more than 15 years ago. On Yellowstone itself, an [[ProfessionalKiller assassin]] named Ana Khouri has been hired to infiltrate the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' once it arrives. Her mission? Follow it to Sylveste and kill him, at all costs.

[[MeanwhileInTheFuture Meanwhile, in the Past]], the ship ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' is enroute to the planet Yellowstone. Designed to carry thousands of colonists in suspension, its only passengers now are a handful of Ultras — {{transhuman}}s adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. They're desperate to find Sylveste: their captain has been infected with the "Melding Plague" and they believe only Sylveste can save him. But in a universe [[MundaneDogmatic without faster-than-light communication]], they don't know Sylveste left Yellowstone more than 15 years ago. On Yellowstone itself, an [[ProfessionalKiller assassin]] named Ana Khouri has been hired to infiltrate the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' once it arrives. Her mission? Follow it to Sylveste and kill him, at all costs.

MeanwhileInThePast, the ship ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' is enroute to the planet Yellowstone. Designed to carry thousands of colonists in suspension, its only passengers now are a handful of Ultras — {{transhuman}}s adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. They're desperate to find Sylveste: their captain has been infected with the "Melding Plague" and they believe only Sylveste can save him. But in a universe [[MundaneDogmatic without faster-than-light communication]], they don't know Sylveste left Yellowstone more than 15 years ago. On Yellowstone itself, an [[ProfessionalKiller assassin]] named Ana Khouri has been hired to infiltrate the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' once it arrives. Her mission? Follow it to Sylveste and kill him, at all costs.

* AHouseDivided: The ''Nostalgia For Infinity'' - the entire crew hates each others guts and are all capable (and willing) to murder each other.

* BrainUploading: The backstory mentions a group of people known as "The Eighty" who were the first to attempt BrainUploading. They all died (well, technically, their simulations were corrupted or went irreversibly insane).

*** [[spoiler:Actually, we find out later that Dan "sold" his father's alpha level simulation to the pattern jugglers in order to give Dan the right brain patterns in order to enter the shroud.]]

* CultureChopSuey: A given, with humanity being quite a cosmopolitan mix during the events of the trilogy, especially on old and densely inhabited colony worlds like Yellowstone. Nationalities play a far lesser role than back on [[EarthThatWas Earth]] and the main new political and social divisions are purely ideological factions (such as the Conjoiners, the Demarchists, the Ultranauts, etc.). Some characters' names give obvious hints about a great mixing of nationalities.

* EternalEnglish: [[AvertedTrope Averted]]. Though the stories are all in English via TranslationConvention, it is clearly stated that human languages 500 years in the future have continued to further evolve. Notable examples are the two main languages: [[LatinLand Norte]] (Spanish + English) and [[CanadaEh Can]]-[[FarEast asian]] (Quebecois French + Cantonese). In a throwaway comment, Volyova mentions that her native language is [[FutureSlang Russish]] ([[http://www.alastairreynolds.com/rs-universe/rs-glossary/ described by Reynolds as Russian + English]]).
** Partially averted in ''Chasm City'', which mentions that many people in the 61 Cygni system still use a range of modern-day languages (including English).

** InSeriesNickname: The Yellowstonians (and apparently people from other terrestrial planets as well) often refer to themselves as "Stoners".

* GrandTheftMe: What [[spoiler:the Captain]] did to [[spoiler:Sajaki]] prior to the events of ''Revelation Space''.
** Though it technically is more of a BodySnatcher example, as the "host" mind is overwritten and effectively "killed".
** Also played straight and subverted by [[spoiler:Calvin Sylveste]], who had originally engineered [[spoiler:Dan Sylveste as a clone of himself to make it easier to possibly imprint a copy of himself into Dan's brain.]] While he does do this near the end of the book (and had already done it once previously), it's more of a two minds/one body relationship.

** With [[FakeRussian fairly bad Russian grammar]] at that (she doesn't seem to differentiate between singular and plural forms of her favourite cussword). [[LampshadeHanging She does mention]], however, that [[AuthorsSavingThrow her knowledge of "Russish" isn't what it used to be]].

* InsistentTerminology: "Servitors" [[CallARabbitASmeerp for robots]] (non-sentient worker ones, but still).
** What are these "cryogenics" you speak of? They're called "reefersleep", dammit ! And flying cars are "[[EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench volantors]]", get it?

* MoreThanMindControl: When it's not simply driving its hosts mad, [[EldritchAbomination Sun Stealer]]'s influence on people is implied to be this. For example, [[spoiler:Dan Sylveste's]] urge to go to Resurgam, despite [[spoiler:there being no good reason to go there, let alone dig for a colony and begin archaeological research]].

* StarKilling: In the final part of novel, the [[BigBad Inhibitors]] "sing" [[spoiler:Delta Pavonis]] apart[[note]]using a 'graver', a gravitational-wave laser tuned to the frequency of the star[[/note]] in order to destroy the local human colony: having already wiped out one species native to the system millennia ago, they're determined to do the job for good this time. It's also offhandedly mentioned that they know fifteen different ways to destroy a dwarf star.
** Not only do they kill the star, but they do so by first building a gigantic machine to take apart the system's gas giant, then use the material they recovered from ''that'' to produce the star-killing weapon - which is so large and so massive that a character notes it shouldn't even be possible for it to ''exist'' without collapsing in on itself. When they fire their weapon at the star, it doesn't just kill the star - [[spoiler:it turns it into a astronomically [[AwesomeButImpractical huge Flamethrower.]] ]]

* AlienGeometries: The Shrouds. Spacetime near the "edges" is under a constant state of flux, meaning that any ship that attempts to approach is [[LudicrousGibs torn apart by the wildly shifting tidal forces]].
** Also, the [[spoiler:Inhibitor "Jewel" at the center of the mysterious planet]] orbiting Hades. When [[spoiler:Sylveste first sees it, it appears to be rotating in the center of a chamber. However, as he proceeds straight towards it, it appears to him that the walls of the chamber are rotating, while the Jewel is fixed, implying that the Jewel is dragging spacetime around it.]]

* AntiMatter: Used as a weapon of mass destruction, and as a highly efficient fuel. Ack-am launchers fire tiny pellets of normal matter containing a magnetic confinement field for the antimatter. [[spoiler: Sylveste has a pinhead of anti-matter in his eye, used to coerce the Triumvirate into helping him]]

** The sealed [[spoiler: advanced Amarantin city]] is initially presented as this; it's a gargantuan shell surrounded by solid rock.

** And, of course, at the end when it's revealed that [[spoiler: the neutron star Hades is actually a ''giant alien supercomputer'']].

* CultureChopSuey : A given, with humanity being quite a cosmopolitan mix during the events of the trilogy, especially on old and densely inhabited colony worlds like Yellowstone. Nationalities play a far lesser role than back on [[EarthThatWas Earth]] and the main new political and social divisions are purely ideological factions (such as the Conjoiners, the Demarchists, the Ultranauts, etc.). Some characters' names give obvious hints about a great mixing of nationalities.

* {{Cyborg}} : A lot of the future factions of humanity have {{Transhuman}}ist trappings, at least as far as having with various brain implants. The Conjoiners are a whole society of these, the Ultras and Demarchists less so.

* EternalEnglish : [[AvertedTrope Averted]]. Though the stories are all in English via TranslationConvention, it is clearly stated that human languages 500 years in the future have continued to further evolve. Notable examples are the two main languages: [[LatinLand Norte]] (Spanish + English) and [[CanadaEh Can]]-[[FarEast asian]] (Quebecois French + Cantonese). In a throwaway comment, Volyova mentions that her native language is [[FutureSlang Russish]] ([[http://www.alastairreynolds.com/rs-universe/rs-glossary/ described by Reynolds as Russian + English]]).

* FantasticSlurs : Yellowstonian Demarchists call Conjoiners "spiders" and rogue Demarchists, Skyjacks and Ultras "zombies". The "spider" nickname was also used by the Coalition for Neural Purity seen in the chronologically earliest installments of the series. Conjoiners refer to baseline humans as "the retarded".
** InSeriesNickname : The Yellowstonians (and apparently people from other terrestrial planets as well) often refer to themselves as "Stoners".

* GratuitousRussian : Volyova, but only when she gets particularly frustrated or angry (so it's mostly limited to swear words or snarky comments).

* OmnidisciplinaryScientist : Dan Sylveste and his father, Calvin. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by their very long lifespan, immense wealth and use of assistive technology (mind-expanding cybernetics, AI personas that help them do science, etc.) designed to help them live up to this trope.
* PoweredArmor : The [[AMechByAnyOtherName "suits"]] are a very versatile example of this trope. Powerful enough to probably wipe out an entire modern-day army. Slightly subverted in that the suit will "take over" if it deems the situation too dangerous to trust to relatively-slow human reflexes (at which point the person inside becomes little more than glorified cargo).

* ProjectedMan : Many of the "entoptic" simulations and personal avatars are presented as this.

* SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay : Averted. Related to the ShownTheirWork entry.

** Not only do they kill the star, but they do so by first building a gigantic machine to take apart the system's gas giant, then use the material they recovered from ''that'' to produce the star-killing weapon - which is so large and so massive that a character notes it shouldn't even be possible for it to ''exist'' without collapsing in on itself. When they fire their weapon at the star, it doesn't just kill the star - [[spoiler: it turns it into a astronomically [[AwesomeButImpractical huge Flamethrower.]] ]]

* GreyGoo: [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] the Melding Plague. It absolutely devastates [[spoiler:Chasm City]], horrible killing thousands of people and mutating the affected landscape. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in that it only attacks ''nanotech'', meaning that normal matter (and baseline humans without any nanotech in their body) are completely unaffected. However, in specific circumstances, it can be beneficial [[spoiler: as shown at the end of the novel, when a plague-infested Captain is implied to have ''become the ship'' and saves Khouri and Volyova's asses]].

* GodzillaThreshold: Mademoiselle considers destroy an entire populated planet with the ''Nostalgia For Infinity'''s [[WeaponOfMassDestruction Hell-Class weapons]] to be preferable to allowing [[spoiler:Daniel Sylveste to travel to [[BigDumbObject Cerberus]] and unwittingly re-awaken the Inhibitors, for [[PrecursorKillers a very good reason]].]]

* CyborgHelmsman: The crews of interstellar spacecraft have formed their own culture, and most of them are cyborgs. A more extreme example is John Brannigan, a starship captain who became infected with a [[TheVirus nanotechnological virus]], [[BodyHorror causing his mind and body]] to merge with his ship in a very disturbing way. Even before the virus, he is described as being more robot than man, with the only visible trace of his humanity being his dreadlocks and the skin around his highly [[GasMaskMooks modified]] [[ElectronicEyes face]].

* {{Cyborg}} : A lot of the future factions of humanity have {{Transhuman}}ist trappings, at least as far as having with various brain implants. The Conjoiners are a whole society of these, the Ultras and Demarchists less so.

* DramaticUnmask: When Dan finds [[spoiler:Sajaki's empty powersuit, revealing that the "Sajaki" he thought had been accompanying him and talking to him was actually the Sun Stealer]].

* MoreThanMindControl: When it's not simply driving it's hosts mad, the [[EldritchAbomination Sun Stealer]]'s influence on people is implied to be this. For example, [[spoiler:Dan Sylveste's]] urge to go to Resurgam, despite [[spoiler:there being no good reason to go there, let alone found a colony and begin archaeological digs]].

* MileLongShip: Lighthuggers are roughly 4 km tall.

* GreyGoo: [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] the Melding Plague. It absolutely devastates [[spoiler:Chasm City]], horrible killing thousands of people and mutating the affected landscape. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in that it only attacks ''nanotech'', meaning that normal matter (and baseline humans without any nanotech in their body) are completely unaffected.

* AnyoneCanDie

* CorrectionBait: The Inhibitor Jewel has what appear to be OnlySmartPeopleMayPass tests at the entrance. They are there to identify intelligent lifeforms for destruction.