Halcyon Years - Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds has been known to dip his toes into other genres besides the space opera science fiction he is known for. When I say dip into, that means literally just flirting with the conventions of crime fiction and historical adventure, but always within the science-fiction world. Sometimes more obviously than others - Eversion had me confused for a while - although to my mind those have all been successful ventures. Although Halcyon Years flirts with noir then - more parodies than flirts with really - it's clear nonetheless right from the outset, when we find out that we are dealing with private investigator called Yuri Gagarin, that this is another genre-with-genre exercise - and again a fairly entertaining one, very much on the pulp side of his SF writing.

Future noir is nothing new either, but it needs to work hard not to fall into parody. Reynolds doesn't seem like he is too concerned with that, creating Gagarin Investigative Enterprises, a small time operation with one employee: former cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Reynolds immediately slips into the standard Chandleresque template of his detective being asked to look into the behaviour of the wayward young daughter of a wealthy family who has got into a bit of trouble: if you can call getting herself killed ‘into trouble’. Well, of course you can. Even though he's strictly a small time private dick and business is going through something of a rough patch, he is asked to investigate by a classy well-dressed dame in black wearing a broad brimmed hat and veil over her face who comes calling to his dingy office. Ruby Blue claims to be from the Department of Works and doesn't believe the official report that the death was an accident.

There is good reason to be suspicious of a cover up, as Juliana DelRosso, only 17 at the time, is not the only death of a young person from a wealthy family. The death of Randall five weeks later, the son of the Urry family, the other important family on Halcyon, makes it sound suspiciously like a feud. Yuri's concerns grow when he visits the clinic where Juliana spent her last days, only to witness another death, that of the owner of the clinic Dr Noah Apolisi soon after interviewing him. It's as well he is working for someone with influence, because his being there at the scene of the crime, poking his nose where it has no business being, looks mighty suspicious to the police.

All that is so much classic noir and handled pretty much perfectly by Reynolds, but the fact that we are not in LA in the 1940s is clear enough. Juliane's cause of death apparently arose from complications of oxygen deprivation while being outside Halcyon, which the reader can fairly quickly gather is a large - very large - space craft on a generational trip to a distant star. As for Yuri Gagarin, we find out is a Jack, a ‘jack-in-the-box’, the former cosmonaut held in cold storage for 200 years, revived 15 years ago while 335 years into the interstellar voyage. He has a friend called Milvus the Mouse, who has all kinds of conspiracy theories about hidden secrets of the ship, and it looks like he may be right about some of them.

Needless to say, given the fact that this is taking place on a space ship several centuries into a journey to a far star, the idea of a conspiracy has the capacity to go much further than in a conventional crime noir genre fiction, so in a way you get the best of both worlds in Halcyon Years. And then you have no less than Yuri Gagarin as the private eye, somewhat naïve but gradually piecing together the pieces of the puzzle and bringing the reader along with him. He is an ideal leading character, with a personality that is his own, not the typical hard-boiled PI. With the help of a few well chosen sidekicks to add a sly humour and unpredictability to the proceedings, it's guaranteed to be an enjoyable ride with plenty of revelations. 

Reynolds excels at this kind of genre writing. Personally I find some of his short pulp SF works derivative and unconvincing, but in longer form he can string you along brilliantly when he has a strong cast of characters and a situation where anything can happen. There is a lot that we don't know about Halcyon, a lot that Yuri doesn't know about Halcyon, and that means he can drop in little surprises and some big shocks along the way. Despite being both pulp noir and pulp SF - there's not really a convincing hard SF rationale provided here - Reynolds gets a good balance between the two genres, mainly thanks to those strong characters - human and non human. Halcyon Years definitely lacks the darker threat that gives his Revelation Space and other grand space opera works more of an edge, but this is still an entertaining read.

Reading notes: Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds is published by Gollancz on the 30th October 2025. My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance ebook proof. The book cover is excellent, really establishing the noir/SF tone of the setting.