Finally pushed through to the end of Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds after putting it down twice over the past decade. As a conclusion to the original Revelation Space trilogy, it’s an … ending. Worth going through because the first 95% is standard RS-level fun (at least on Akarat). A solid 4/5 for the first 47/50 chapters.

If you want the ending to be satisfying—or the Epilogue to make sense—have Inhibitor Phase on the ready to start right after (so I’m told). Also, the Galactic North collection of short stories apparently has a lot of the missing bits/context that build out the world before this. Perhaps the proper reading order is: Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Galactic North, Absolution Gap, Inhibitor Phase. With Chasm City appropriate anywhere after Revelation Space for the world-building of Yellowstone.

It used to be, back in the days of white-on-black email and newsgroups, that you were able to keep a copy of everything you did on the Internet. Well, mainly it was because you did two or three things and they all required specific client software that had the option of keeping copies of your contributions, but there it was, you could do it. I, for instance, have a majority of my email back to 1996 — that includes mail from Compuserve, AOL, Eudora, Claris Emailer, Outlook Express, and now Apple Mail. My newsgroup client keeps copies of all my sent messages as well, still. That’s another old, large archive.