Hesperus
I just finished reading House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. In the book, two shatterlings named Campion and Purslane (the galaxy-wandering, six-million year old clones of a woman named Abigail Gentian) fall in love with each other, befriend a golden robot (Hesperus, of the Machine People) and arrive decades late for the gathering of shatterlings that happens approximately once every 32,000 years.
I absolutely loved the book, and the fact that parts of it span tens of thousands of years. Reynolds writes sci-fi on an enormous time scale. As Charlie Jane Anders writes:
“House Of Suns is one of those novels that assumes a shape after you’re done reading it. All of the elements that seemed purely random fall into place, and you realize quite what an intricate design you’ve been looking at all this time….This novel has everything: artificial intelligences that become sentient, post-humans, questions of faster-than-light travel and causality, cloning, virtual worlds, a murder mystery and a group of nigh-immortal people dealing with the burden of history in a more personal way than most of us ever do.”
Anyways, that’s not a picture of Hesperus, but of my Halo 3 armor. I was inspired by the book to make him golden and to give him the House of Suns insignia.
Anyways, here are some tracks that I’ve also been coincidentally listening to these days. I really feel like they flow with the book. The Empire of the Sun track makes me think of the love between Campion and Purslane, and the name of the original band and remixers just works with the book as well.
We Are The People (Golden Filter Remix) - Empire of the Sun
Why this Girl and the Robot? Because at one point in the book, the female shatterling (Purslane) spends a great deal of time with Hesperus (don’t worry, nothing weird happens).
Girl and the Robot (Joakim Remix) Royksopp
Girl and the Robot (Ocelot Remix) Royksopp
You should buy House of Suns on Amazon, then check out Alastair Reynold’s blog.
You can also buy Royksopp tracks on Itunes.
Awesome tracks. Thank you for sharing.
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Well, the tracks are great. I think the House of Suns is as good as Chasm City. This is only my personal opinion. I like the ending. It’s very satisfying.