Its fictional history follows the human species through various conflicts from the relatively near future (roughly 2200) to approximately 40,000 AD (all the novels to date are set between 2427 and 2858, although certain stories extend beyond this period).
[1] It is, nonetheless, somewhat "harder" than most examples of space opera, relying to a considerable extent on science Reynolds believes to be possible; in particular, faster-than-light travel is largely absent.
Instead, despite their dramatically advanced technology, they are similar to those of today in terms of their moral ambiguity and mixture of cruelty and decency, corruption and opportunity.
"[5] The chronology of the Revelation Space universe extends to roughly one billion years into the past, when the "Dawn War" — a galaxy-spanning conflict over the availability of various natural resources — resulted in almost all sentient life in the galaxy being wiped out.
One race of survivors, later termed the Inhibitors, having converted itself to machine form, predicted that the impending Andromeda–Milky Way collision, roughly 3 billion years in our future, may severely damage the capacity of either galaxy to support life.
In human history, during the 21st and 22nd centuries numerous wars occurred, and a flotilla of generation ships were deployed to colonise a planet orbiting the star 61 Cygni (this becomes a major segment of the plot of Chasm City).
Meanwhile, activities around a far-flung human colony on the planet Resurgam, orbiting the star Delta Pavonis, inadvertently attracted the attention of the Inhibitors.
Even so, it was realised that the humans would not last indefinitely, and Clavain's people, now led by Scorpio, decided to seek out the mysterious "Shadows": a race believed to be near a moon called Hela, site of a theocracy.
With the later assistance of the Conjoiner known as Glass, and of Clavain's estranged brother Warren, Scorpio and Aura (now going by the name Lady Arek) instead succeeded in contacting the Nestbuilders, an alien race who provided them with weapons capable of defeating the Inhibitors.
[6] All short stories and novellas in this universe to date are collected in Galactic North and Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, with the exception of "Monkey Suit", "The Last Log of the Lachrimosa", "Night Passage", "Open and Shut", and "Plague Music".