I have been known to overthink, however I wonder if Alastair Reynolds has presented us with some Philip K Dick easter eggs in his fun-filled Halcyon Years. I am not spoiling anything that the blurb does not give away in saying we start with a well-worn SF trope of a generation ship travelling between the stars. Rather than the oft-presented technocratic utopia or military / faux naval hierarchy, we have a scaled down, corrupt US city – Chicago without the bad weather, perhaps? – dominated Montague and Capulet style, with the delightful addition of a noir Yuri Gagarin, no longer a cosmonaut (except insofar as everyone on a generation ship is a cosmonaut), but now a PI, retained by a glamorous dame who knows more of what-is-going-on than she immediately-is-letting-on.

I did not go through a full scale tracking exercise, but swishing that wine around in my admittedly desensitised palate, I detected hints, stronger or otherwise, of A Maze of Death; We Can Build You (and maybe The Simulacra); and perhaps The Unteleported Man. There was perhaps a trace of Ubik, without being obvious. There was more than one Zap Gun. There was an unconventional not-straightforward robot, bestowed with the moniker Sputnik. And if I had come across a character named Lemmy Litz in a PKD story, I would not have been remotely disconcerted. But perhaps I am overthinking.

I really enjoyed Halcyon Years, and the gradual reveals of the penultimate truth of the situation faced by the inhabitants of the Halcyon. Well written SF with brains and heart, with the reward of found family when disparate characters in a bizarre world grow close, something I am a sucker for.