This is a list of fictional factions in Revelation Space. The human factions are found in the Revelation Space universe, the setting for a series of stories and novels by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds.

Interstellar factions

Spacefaring humanity is divided among these four main factions. While each of these factions has its roots in the Solar System, they have spread with humans to multiple other star systems. Demarchists controlled most major colony worlds, including Yellowstone, until the introduction of the Melding Plague. Conjoiners inhabited hollowed out asteroids on system peripheries, called Nests, before the move to the central Mother Nest in the Yellowstone system during the Conjoiner-Demarchist war. Ultras prefer living aboard the massive lighthugger ships, and are generally uncomfortable on terrestrial worlds. Skyjacks are comet and asteroid miners.

Conjoiners

ULTra (Urban Light Transit) is a personal rapid transit system developed by the British engineering company ULTra Global PRT (formerly Advanced Transport Systems).

The first public system opened at London's Heathrow Airport in May 2011. It consists of 21 vehicles operating on a 3.9-kilometre (2.4 mi) route connecting Terminal 5 to its business passenger car park, just north of the airport. ULTra is in contention to develop an urban system in Amritsar, India projected to carry up to 100,000 passengers per day using 200 vehicles.

To reduce fabrication costs, ULTra uses largely off-the-shelf technologies, such as rubber tyres running on an open guideway. This approach has resulted in a system that ULTra believes to be economical; the company reports that the total cost (vehicles, infrastructure and control systems) is between £3 million and £5 million per kilometre of guideway.

Inception

The system was originally designed by Martin Lowson and his design team, Lowson having put £10 million into the project. He formed Advanced Transport Systems (ATS) in Cardiff to develop the system, and their site was later the location of its test track. ULTra has twice been awarded funding from the UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). Much of the original research on ULTra was done by the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Bristol during the 1990s. Recently the company renamed itself "ULTra PRT Limited" to better reflect its primary business, and moved its corporate headquarters to Bristol.

Ultra is the ninth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 14 April 1997 by Mute Records. The album was the band's first since the departure of Alan Wilder, who had left the band in 1995 having become disillusioned with life in Depeche Mode. Wilder's departure and lead singer Dave Gahan's drug problems, which culminated in a near-fatal overdose, had caused many people to speculate that the band was finished. This is their first album as a trio since 1982's A Broken Frame.

Ultra debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and at number five on the Billboard 200. By April 2006, the album had sold 584,000 copies in the United States. The project was initially conceived as an EP.

In 1999, Ned Raggett ranked the album at number 50 on his list of "The Top 136 Or So Albums Of The Nineties".

Promotion

To promote the release of the album the band played two short concerts in London and Los Angeles, titled Ultra Parties. The London concert took place on 10 April 1997 at Adrenalin Village and the Los Angeles concert was held on 16 May 1997 at the Shrine Exposition Hall. The Shrine show was produced by Philip Blaine whose 1500 Records was currently compiling the soon to be released Depeche Mode tribute album For the Masses. The shows featured Christian Eigner on drums and Dave Clayton on keyboards. The Los Angeles show was filmed by MTV but the performance was never broadcast in its entirety.

"Cocaine" is a song written and recorded in 1976 by JJ Cale, who was until then a little known country blues singer with a particular relaxed style. Both Cale and the song became famous when a cover version was recorded by Eric Clapton. The song was featured in the 2004 film Starsky & Hutch, and in the 2005 films Lord of War and Bad News Bears.

Charts

Eric Clapton version

Glyn Johns, who had previously worked with The Who, Faces, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, produced the Clapton recording, which was released on the 1977 album Slowhand and as a single in 1980. The live version of "Cocaine", from the Just One Night album recorded in Tokyo, charted on the Billboard Hot 100 as the B-side of "Tulsa Time", which was a No. 30 hit in 1980. "Cocaine" was one of several of Cale's songs recorded by Clapton, including "After Midnight" and "Travelin' Light". AllMusic critic Richard Gilliam calls the latter "among [Clapton's] most enduringly popular hits" and notes that "even for an artist like Clapton with a huge body of high-quality work, 'Cocaine' ranks among his best."

Purple Naked Ladies is the debut studio album by hip hop soul band The Internet, a duo consisting of Syd tha Kyd and Matt Martians of Odd Future. The digital version of the album was released on December 20, 2011, with a physical copy, with bonus tracks released on January 31, 2012. The album is the first physically released album on Odd Future's own record label Odd Future Records.

Personnel

The Internet is formed of Odd Future members Syd the Kyd, the group's sound engineer, audio mixer, and live DJ, and Matt Martians, one half of The Jet Age of Tomorrow. The album features collaborations with fellow Odd Future members Left Brain, Mike G, and Pyramid Vritra as well as other guest artists Tay Walker, Kilo Kish, and Coco O.

Singles

The album's first single, "Love Song -1" was released on September 14, 2011. The second single, "They Say", which features Tay Walker, was released on October 4, 2011, though before its single release, it was included on the Odd Future compilation album 12 Odd Future Songs. The third single, "Cocaine", which features Left Brain, had its music video premiere on Odd Future's YouTube page on October 31, 2011. It was released as a single to the iTunes Store on November 8, 2011, as a 3 track EP including "Love Song -1" and "They Say" as tracks 2 and 3 respectively. The fourth single, "Fastlane", was released on January 19, 2012.

Cocaine (Configurable Omnipotent Custom Applications Integrated Network Engine) is an open source PaaS system for creating custom cloud hosting apps that are similar to Google App Engine or Heroku.

Any library or service can be implemented as a service in Cocaine using a special API. Several indispensable services have already been implemented this way, including a service for detecting a user's region or language, a service for accessing MongoDB storage, and a URL fetcher.

History

In times when cloud technologies were not yet popular, Andrey Sibiryov, the project founder, discovered Heroku. At that time Heroku was an app engine supporting only Ruby but the idea was somewhat revolutionary. It was possible to create a Ruby app, push it to the cloud and do not pay attention to any infrastructure problems. Load balance problems were covered as well.

The idea was great but it was hard to find any description how it worked, which became a reason to start yet another open source cloud app engine project. The same logic was followed by many developers, which lead to many cloud project start up.