A deceptively classic adventure novel by Alastair Reynolds.
We first think thatEversion is a mise en abîme: the British Alastair Reynolds imagines a novelist who writes a story of which he himself seems the character, and which would be the one we are reading. Silas Coade, a 44-year-old assistant surgeon, has indeed embarked on writing an adventure novel, the progress of which he reads to the crew of the Demeter. The Demeter is the name of the decrepit ship on which this doctor from Plymouth was recruited to provide medical care. He is a character who seems inspired by the romantic imagery of the 19th century, a follower of opiates, which he takes to daze “until falling into dreamless oblivion”, but who has a sure hand when it comes to trepanning Colonel Ramos.
The mission of the schooner chartered by the rich Topolsky file “always further north along the shores of Norway” to find access to a mysterious enclave. According to a previous expedition, a crack in the cliff leads to a body of water with a stone building that intrigues Topolsky, he named this artifact the “Edifice”. Quickly, strange things seem to be happening on board, aren’t they coming out of Silas’ opium-clouded mind? Coming out of sleep, he thus discovers on his scrawled manuscript the word “Eversion”, in his own handwriting. He doesn’t remember. «“Eversion”, I say, hoping that, like a spell, the meaning of the word will be revealed by its utterance. But my conscious mind saw nothing of it.” Soon the Demeter find the hole in the cliff, and death for all. Not the end. Are we in a bad dream of Silas? The doctor emerges in any case on a Demeter new version, with the same protagonists, but this time the ship goes up the Pacific coast of South America.
From maritime expedition narrative to hard science
The romantic mechanics ofEversion works on repetition: same characters, same mission, with a change of era, vehicle and place each time (a schooner in the 19th century, a more advanced ship, an airship that wants to sink under the surface of the earth, then a spaceship looking for the crack in an Ice Planetoid). From the story of a maritime expedition, we end up with hard science, and all the virtuosity of the book is due to this journey between time and space which rests on the shoulders of Silas. “The expedition exists – the fiction is how it appears to you”, told him Ada Cossile, the only female passenger, countess or journalist depending on the version.
Every rewind, the expedition made further progress towards the Aedifice, the place of an extraterrestrial entity. In the logbook of a previous expedition, Silas finds a message written under the blow of a “hysterical terror” : “I CAME OUT. /THING COMES BACK. / SHE COME BACK TO DRAG ME IN. /Bring me back to others. /LEAVE WHILE YOU CAN”… But this horrifying aspect of the novel, if it spices up the story, is ultimately not the most important resolution. Subtly, Alastair Reynolds has navigated fantasies and pretenses, as if manipulated by Silas, the demiurge writer from the start. Extremely well designed, killing the willing mathematician to save others in the maze, Eversion takes the mission to completion, with a surprising and two-trigger ending.