Beyond the Aquila Rift

This best-of collection, edited by Jonathan Strahan and William Schafer, gathers 15-plus years of Alastair Reynolds's short fiction — including key Revelation Space universe stories, the Hugo-nominated Troika, and the title story in which an astronaut waking from faster-than-light travel discovers something has gone catastrophically wrong. Publishers Weekly called Reynolds one of the most gifted hard SF writers working today, and this collection earns that. The range is extraordinary: cosmic horror, hard science fiction, body horror, and character study sit side by side. The honest caveats are firm: this collection is not appropriate for faith-family or younger audiences. Multiple stories contain dark, psychologically disturbing content and mature themes including adult relationships and body horror. The Netflix Love, Death and Robots adaptation of the title story added explicit sexual content not present in the written original. The Kindle edition has also been reported to have significant formatting errors. For adult science fiction readers who can handle the darkness, this is serious, canonical work.