You’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.
It’s looking like all of Alastair’s early writings were short stories, and this is another one in the long list. You certainly get to see how Alastair worked on his craft as a writer, cutting his teeth on these sci-fi ideas neatly wrapped up within a few hundred Kindle Loc Points.
Spirey and the Queen was written at a time when Alastair was just beginning Revelation Space and there’s certainly aspects of self aware machine vs human going on within this. It’s a really good story, but, and it’s a big but, the beginning is all rather all over the place in terminology and nomenclature. It’s like you’re thrown into this completely blurred out reality and slowly, over time, like in an opticians appointment, Alastair gradually finds the right lenses and all gradually becomes clear.
In Zima Blue and Other Stories, Alastair comments at the end of this story, that he’d like to come back to Spirey at some point in the future and explore what happened afterwards: which i would really look forward to reading.
So while i do feel this could have been better served had Alastair given it a novella length and explained things a lot more as we went along, i won’t throw the baby out with the bath water, it’s still, certainly, a good short story.
Coming next in the Alastair Reynolds reading list wil be Stroboscopic.
Alastair’s Page