The novel “The Prefect” by Alastair Reynolds was published for the first time in 2007. It was later republished as “Aurora Rising”. It’s Part of the Revelation Space series.

Tom Dreyfus is perhaps the best field Prefect of Panoply, the police force that protects the Glitter Band, formed by ten thousand habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. A routine assignment highlights a flaw in the voting system that regulates the democracy in the Glitter Band so an update is quickly prepared and Thalia Ng, one of the Dreyfus’s assistants, is assigned the task to propagate it to all the habitats. To be safe, she goes in person to install the update on some habitats but at some point, something goes wrong.

The destruction of a habitat is an exceptional event and Tom Dreyfus has to conduct the investigation. The solution seems easy, as everything suggests that the perpetrator is the Captain of an Ultra starship who, after a commercial transaction gone bad, used his starship to destroy the habitat. The Ultras independently handles the issue but the Captain, when he is about to die, swears he’s innocent. Something doesn’t add up and Dreyfus investigates more deeply but someone tries to stop him in any way.

Alastair Reynolds is best known for his space operas, particularly those set in the Revelation Space universe. “The Prefect” is a different novel, all set in the Yellowstone system, and is basically a thriller with political and social elements. Although the Sylveste family, the protagonist of “Revelation Space” is often mentioned, this novel is completely independent so it can be read without any problems by people unfamiliar with this fictional universe.

“The Prefect” is set before the other novels in the Revelation Space series, in the golden age of Yellowstone. The Glitter Band, the ensemble of ten thousand habitats orbiting the planet, is at the peak of its glory and is a democracy in which technology allows citizens to vote very quickly on any proposal or request by the authorities.

In the Glitter Band, there isn’t a single political / social system but each habitat can freely choose in a democratic way the one preferred by the majority of its citizens. In this way, all the inhabitants of the Glitter Band can choose to live in the habitat with the political / system they like, of course, if they’re admitted.

Technological developments led to the emergence of new ways of life, even extreme. However, despite the abundance of choices, even in the 25th century there are “sheep”, people who need someone to make decisions for them. For this reason, among the habitats, there are some voluntary tyrannies, where citizens have only very few fundamental rights and for anything else are subject to the power of local rulers.

The voluntary tyrannies tend to degenerate when becoming as oppressive as the tyrannies of the past. In one of these cases, Panoply’s intervention shocked Prefect Gaffney, who started wondering how much democracy in the Glitter Band really works. Gaffney is Panoply’s head of security and those events caused in him the fear that the Glitter Band’s inhabitants can’t handle their own security and Panoply’s powers are too limited to enforce it.

Master Yoda once said that “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” and Alastair Reynolds learned that lesson well. Gaffney is genuinely concerned for the safety of the Glitter Band’s citizens and end up thinking that some limitation of their freedom may be a good compromise.

In Gaffney’s case, it’s not a vision to finally convince him that restricting the freedom of the Glitter Band’s citizens is the solution but it’s the mysterious Aurora who convinces him that something must be done to prevent a disaster that in the future would destroy that civilization. Gaffney doesn’t want power but is persuaded that there is a threat that justifies the restriction of the citizens’ freedom in the name of their safety.

In this situation, Alastair Reynolds develops Aurora’s machinations with Gaffney’s collaboration. The investigations of Prefect Tom Dreyfus and the work of his assistant Thalia Ng end up being all connected to the attempt to stage a coup.

In the course of the novel, Tom Dreyfus and his assistants slowly discover Aurora’s plans and her true identity along with Gaffney’s involvement. That’s not enough and the story’s developments are connected to other events of Tom Dreyfus’s past, to be precise to the Clockmaker’s case. It’s a crime committed years earlier which had serious consequences that continue still. The events connected to Aurora lead to the discover of hidden truths about the Clockmaker as well.

The result is a complex story in which Alastair Reynolds uses the detective story and science fiction genres to explore political and social problems. The Glitter Band’s citizens are trying to build a utopia that remains imperfect because humans are imperfect. Despite their advanced technology, their problems are essentially the same as today.

The other novels in the Revelation Space series were sometimes verbose and the pace slowed down to allow to add various information. In “The Prefect” Alastair Reynolds manages to keep the pace quite fast and the tension as well in a story full of twists. This novel has in common with others the presence of many characters and inevitably only the most important are developed.

“The Prefect” is a novel I found very good, with several intriguing mysteries but also a lot of food for thought in a story full of the typical Alastair Reynolds’s hard science fiction elements. Highly recommended! It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.