Redemption Ark
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Redemption Ark is a 2002 hard science fiction space opera novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It is the third book in the Revelation Space series. The novel was named "Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year" by Chronicle magazine.
The plot of Redemption Ark involves the pursuit of the "hell class" weapons found on the ship Nostalgia for Infinity in Revelation Space. In Reynolds's universe, humanity has split into several factions. These include the Conjoiners, humans who have incorporated technology that allows them not only to share thoughts, but to enhance many aspects of their existence (such as vision enhancements, pain blocking, fastidious memory collection and recall etc). The other featured faction is the Demarchists, baseline humans who originally practiced a form of decentralised mass-participatory democracy, but who are tending towards authoritarianism as a nanotechnology plague gradually destroys their infrastructure.
These factions, allies before the plague are, in the timeframe of the novel, engaged in a permanent state of war. The events of Revelation Space have tipped the balance that had existed and now the Conjoiners are looking to take control of Nostalgia for Infinity. Skade is a conjoiner woman who appears to be in touch with secret circles of control within the theoretically egalitarian Conjoiners society. When, under the direction of an ultra-secret inner Conjoiner council, she recovers a long-lost Conjoiner exploration craft, the events that propel the novel are set into motion.
