Fairyland by Paul McAuley
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
The speculative elements of science fiction tend to age badly, and each passing minute of the real world causes futures that once
attracted us with their visionary wonder to now offer only the amusement of yesterday's tomorrows. Near-future SF that attempts
plausible extrapolations is particularly vulnerable to senescence, and it is rare to encounter such a book that is more than ten
years old and still possesses the power to dazzle, because so often the writer has emphasized the speculation more than other,
more durable, qualities.
Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley
reviewed by Paul Kincaid
In a USA that is not our own, they have invented a device known as the Turing Gate, which allows people to pass between
parallel worlds. But the powers that be in this USA were horrified to discover that other Americas were not as powerful
as they were. There were Americas under fascist rule or communist rule or dissolved into anarchies, there is even one
strangely familiar USA filled with peaceniks who have brought down President Nixon. Into these different Americas
an analogue of the CIA begins to infiltrate agents,
popularly known as Cowboy Angels, to start undermining these unwelcome states and work towards an America more like their
own.
Mind's Eye by Paul McAuley
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
The story begins with an episode from the childhood of Alfie Flowers, one that left him with a mild form of
epilepsy. Years later, as a professional photographer, he sees a design by a graffiti artist that brings back his childhood
trauma. Alfie enlists the help of a friend to search for Morph, the graffiti artist. Meanwhile, Harriet Crowley,
a securities expert with ties to British Intelligence agencies is also hunting for Morph and the
glyph, not because of epilepsy but because the glyph can be used in a form of mind-control.
White Devils by Paul McAuley
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
On the surface, this is a near-future thriller energized by the specter of a world both devastated by and
dependent upon bio-tech. The story concerns Nicholas Hyde and his attempt to discover the secret behind a mysterious species of
white-skinned, ape-like creatures who have viciously attacked humans in a remote part of the African jungle. The author uses
unexpected intrusions of violence mixed with characters whose actions are often surprising to craft a story full of twists and turns.
Reality Dust by Stephen Baxter and Making History by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Raise your hand if you remember the Ace Doubles. All right, that separates the old-timers from the younger readers. The
Ace Doubles were a series of paperbacks that featured two complete novels, printed back-to-back in the same volume. It was
extra value for the reader and allowed the publication of some books that might not have sold so well on their own. The form
died out as science fiction writers moved away from dependence on the magazines as their main outlet and SF novels became
longer and longer in the 60s.
Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Rodger Turner
Alex Sharkey is a pudgy, socially inept designer of soon-to-be-illegal psychoactive viruses. He's
getting his butt kicked around by a bent cop, the gangster to whom he's in debt, the gangster's minions,
his landlord, in fact just about everybody. He's not happy. One day he meets Milena, who looks about eight,
acts about ninety and who wants him to design an enzyme. With her contacts and his work, they can convert
a new toy of the age, gene-engineered slave dolls, into living beings, fairys. So, he figures, why not?
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Whole Wide World by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by William Thompson
Set in London after the Infowars, its former financial district in ruins, society monitored by security cameras constantly
surveying the streets, a landscape whose architecture is decaying while technology and information has outpaced
the very civilization it supports. In the aftermath of rioting, computer-generated fires and microwave
bombs that wiped every hard drive within their targeting radius, within a moment crippling the information
infrastructure of corporate London, every police department has a computer crimes division, watching behind
search engines whose sole purpose is to seek out and monitor information traffic.
Into this realm comes a detective novel, our protagonist is a man at the end of his career, measured more by his
failures than successes, called in on his day off to pick up evidence at a particularly brutal crime
scene that involves the use of video cameras and the theft of computer hard drives.
It soon becomes a personal obsession for him, as well as a last, and some would say desperate, effort to vindicate a life
that has slipped from its track.
The Secret of Life by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Nick Gevers
A very indirect sequel to Fairyland, this novel expands on
some of the concerns and speculations of that dense conflation of cyberpunk and myth; but its plotting and style are
far more open than those of its predecessor. This is fundamentally a quest tale, preoccupied
with the acquisition and public use of scientific knowledge, and the quest soon leads the heroine and her nemesis
on a voyage to Mars.
Shrine of Stars by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Rich Horton
Many of the mysteries introduced in the first two volumes, Child of the
River and Ancients of Days, are slowly dispelled in this
concluding volume. Here, the author actually delivers on the implied promise
of the first two books: the nature of Confluence, the nature of Yama and the
answers to the mysteries of the first two books are all revealed in logical
and satisfying ways. In the end, the three books are clearly, unambiguously, far future science fiction.
Eternal Light by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Jean-Louis Trudel
In this sequel to Four Hundred Billion Stars is all that real science fiction fans could
wish for: complex societies, characters shaped by the technologies of our wildest dreams, wild rides through
space and time, glimpses of surreal landscapes and transcendent beings...
Pasquale's Angel by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Jean-Louis Trudel
This story will delight lovers of the unexpected juxtapositions of steampunk, the clanking engines
of modernity set in ancient streets, the wandering heroes of our own history rubbing shoulders with
characters of the author's own devising. In an alternate world 16th-century Florence, the inventions of Leonardo da
Vinci have wrought an industrial revolution centuries before its time.
Ancients of Days by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Neil Walsh
Many questions, posed in Child of the River, are finally answered in
this 2nd volume of the trilogy. Yama's adventures on the artificial world of
Confluence continue and his quest remains constant: to find out who he
really is and to discover his own people, if indeed they still exist. The
route to this goal, however, is as convoluted as the River is straight.
The Invisible Country by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
This is the author's second short story collection.
The stories, mostly hard SF that draw on McAuley's background in biology,
are a good introduction to a writer who is both a first-rate story teller
and remarkable stylist.
Child of the River by Paul J. McAuley
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
The mere mention of a new science fiction or fantasy series is enough to send Lisa shrieking from the
bookstore. Sometimes, the stand-alone novel seems on the verge of extinction. But a new series when
the name on the cover is Paul McAuley is cause for celebration.
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