The Prefect

The Prefect is a science fiction novel by the Welsh writer Alastair Reynolds, published in 2007. It is set in the Revelation Space universe and appeared after four novels in that setting; it has since been retitled Aurora Rising.

The story takes place in the twenty-fifth century, in the Glitter Band, the thousands of orbital habitats that surround the planet Yellowstone in the Epsilon Eridani system, at what is the height of human civilisation in the setting. Tom Dreyfus is the prefect of the title, an officer of Panoply, the special investigations force responsible for protecting the Band. His case begins with the destruction of a habitat named Ruskin-Sartorious, which analysis attributes to the flame of a Conjoiner drive, and the only ship known to have been near the habitat in the weeks beforehand is a lighthugger called the Accompaniment of Shadows. All of this happens before the arrival of the Melding Plague, the catastrophe that has already ruined the Glitter Band by the time of the other Revelation Space books.

Ten thousand habitats orbit Yellowstone, each with its own laws and each linked to the others by a common right to vote, and a computer network polls their populations continuously to settle the Band's shared business. Reynolds wrote the novel so that it stands apart from the rest of the sequence, and it works as a police investigation in a setting where the force doing the investigating has jurisdiction over an entire ring of artificial worlds. A sequel, Elysium Fire, followed in 2018.