 Hello, hello, hello, I'm Philip Magnus and today's video is going to be rather a short one, not for any technical difficulties or anything of that sort, but because I'm talking about a novella, permafrost by Alistair Reynolds, a science fiction novella that won... did win anything? No, I'm thinking of Slow Bullets, which won the Locust Award in 2016, actually did permafrost win anything. Let's check out whether it was worthy of any... oh, it got a nomination. It has not won anything. Too bad, so sad. I suppose there's no purpose to review it other than to award it the title of a very fun novella, which it is. Let's jump into it, shall we? I delight in the way in which time travel paradox is rendered across the 173 pages of Alistair Reynolds' permafrost. This novella is the kind of read that engulfs you, covers you in a sheet of eyes that won't let go until you're well and clear. But I assure you, even with this... novella's cover is closed and the copy safely tucked away in the library, you'll find yourself thinking about permafrost for a long while. Reynolds tells the story of a last-ditch attempt to save a humanity about a starved death, following a calamity that killed off both the plant and animal life of the entire planet. The very last food reserves are running out. The year is 2080 and societal collapse is forecasted in, oh I don't know, nine months? 12 if we're lucky? The last-ditch attempt I mentioned, you guessed it from the opening. Time traveling. To a point in the past well before the calamity. But the time travel is not done in some slapstick way without rhyme reason. No no, Alastair Reynolds is proposing a very elegant mode of time travel, one that I will not be getting into, mostly because I would much rather you found out about it for yourselves and really 173 pages. You can read that even those of you who don't make a habit of it, and that's one person to whom I am talking right now. You can do it buddy. Yes you can. Yes you can. The ending is wistful and melancholy but hopeful too. I admire that the point-of-view character Reynolds chose for this one is a 72 year old Russian woman whose voice comes through way down by experience in a lifetime of depravity, much of it accompanied by the knowledge that she is among the very last human beings to ever walk the earth. A school teacher to the very last generation of children, humanity has at this point sterilized itself. Valentina Lidovert turns out to be uniquely suitable to interact with the past, becoming the first in the permafrost project to transport her mind within another body. It's not just her suitability that makes her such a perfect candidate. No, what makes her of interest to the permafrost project is a unique relationship with the mathematician and scientist on whose theories time travel is even possible, namely Valentina Lidovert's mother. Things get considerably more complex when the consciousness whose body Valentina has taken for a spin talks back, which shouldn't be happening and this is far from the last surprise that time traveling teacher will come across as she attempts to change history and leave a way for her own world to continue on, despite the costs that must be paid for that. The science fictional teams here really took me by surprise, some of them. There is a particularly interesting, I'm not going to say what it is, but a development that I did not see coming although in retrospect I should have. I think this is going to turn out to be one of those patterns in the writing of Alice de Reynolds. I often find myself surprised at the things that he has set up, the way that a scene later on can certainly add a secondary context to many of the earlier scenes that you've gone over, perhaps noted that something is ever so slightly odd, but then later on the rec contextualization at work really is, it's really fun to experience. Anyway, the way that time travel is conceptualized, not as a branching out set of possibilities, but as the cracks running through the full extent of some colossal iceberg. That's one of the elements that makes permafrost more memorable than some many other time travel stories I've come across, this further complexity to boot, but I will let you discover it on your own. As far as my first ever title by Alice de Reynolds to pick up, this was an absolute treat. I recommend it to everyone who enjoys time travel tree anagans, especially if you're looking for something you could easily read in one or two settings. It's also post-pocalyptic in the sense that humanity's fate really was decided a long time ago and yeah, I think you will enjoy it. I'm willing to bet on it, in fact, next up when it comes to Alice de Reynolds I will be reviewing slow bullets, so if you'd enjoy hearing my thoughts on that one, press the like button, share the video with your friends, don't forget to subscribe or, you know, go read the book and go to bed, which I should be doing. Anyway, I'll see you again next time. Bye!