Chasm City

In a city overrun by a virus that attacks both man and machine, an agent pursues a lowlife postmortal-and uncovers a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget...

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers.

About the Author

Alastair Reynolds was born in Wales. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy. Since 1991, he has worked for The European Space Agency. He is a long-time contributor to Interzone, the premier professional science fiction magazine in Great Britain. One of his stories, A Spy in Europa, appeared in the 1998 edition of Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction.