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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9265498" data-attributes="member: 6671663">I got a sudden urge to read about encounters with mysterious megastructures, and have a pile of promising recommendation to re/read.Walking to Aldebaran is a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Audible has it read by the author as part of the Plus program, free to subscribers. He does a great job. The narrator is trapped endlessly wandering an alien maze that runs between star systems, in which engines don’t work, so it must be crossed on foot. Even with spatial compression, that’s a lotta walking. The narrator alternates describing his present-time journeys, encountering strangenesses of the maze and others inhabiting, and flashbacks to discovering an entrance 700 AU from the sun and the expedition to it. It’s a freakin’ wonderful story, soaking in both horror and sf. Some familiarity with Beowulf helps with allusions in the final part.Eversion is a novel by Alastair Reynolds. It’s hard to explain why it’s so cool without spoilers, and if you already like Reynolds, skip the rest of this, go read it, it’s a stand-alone in its own universe, it’s up to his usual standards. For the rest of you: the narrator is the ship surgeon’s on an expedition to a hidden inlet in Norway in the early 1800s. And the ship’s surgeon on an expedition to a hidden inlet in Patagonia in the late 1800s. And the ship’s surgeon on an expedition to Antarctica in the early 1900s. And more. The others don’t seem to notice the repetitions and alterations, but the doctor does. Things pile up. Then there’s the rest of this book, in which things are explained very satisfyingly and the stories move forward.These books share several things. The mysteries being confronted are really neat, very mysterious and very interesting as understood. The narrators are engaging guys, and remain so even when he portions of mystery around them are peeled back. They both establish their milieus really efficiently, with well-chosen details that feel like places in which plausible humans do plausible things. They bring what sf fandom calls (with a smile) “sensawunda” in bulk lots. I’m very happy to have read both.</blockquote>

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