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ISBN 0-575-06072-7 (UK hbk)
short stories, novella, science fiction, steampunk, slipstream, postmodern, biotechnology, genetic engineering, future
8th published book. 2nd short fiction collection.
"The Invisible Country" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in the anthology When the Music's Over edited by Lewis Shiner, 1991)
"This story was written at the end of the eighties. Its extrapolation of post-global-warming London as a Kafkaesque conjunction between the capital of Oceania and the brawling squalor of Calcutta is little more than a sarcastic heightening of the brutalization of society which occurred under the mob-handed free market rule of Thatcherism (Margaret Thatcher certainly deserves to go down in history, but only for the astonishing wickedness of her ringing announcement, made in the sincere tones of a psychotic Joan of Arc, that 'There is no such thing as society')." --Paul J.McAuley.
"Gene Wars" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first appeared as 'Evan's Progress' in New Internationalist , New Internationalist Publications Ltd., 1991... full version later published in Interzone and Aboriginal SF under its original title...
re-issued in the anthology The Year's Best SF 9 and several other anthologies)
"Prison Dreams" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , 1992)
"First in a short series about the Morlock-like dolls, culminating in a full-blown novel, Fairyland " --Paul J.McAuley.
"Recording Angel" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in the anthology New Legends edited by Greg Bear with Martin Greenberg, 1995... takes place in the same far future as the novel Child of the River , 1997)
"Dr Luther's Assistant" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in Interzone , 1993... takes place in the same near future as the novel Fairyland )
"The Temptation of Dr Stein" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein edited by Stephen Jones, Robinson Publishing, 1994... this story takes place ten years before the events in the novel Pasquale's Angel , written after the novel)
"Children of the Revolution" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in the anthology New Worlds 3 edited by David Garnett, Gollancz, 1993... takes place in the same near future as the novel Fairyland )
"The True History of Dr Pretorius" by Paul J.McAuley
(short story, first published in Interzone , 1995)
"Slaves" by Paul J.McAuley
(novella, first published on the internet in Omni Online , November 1995... takes place in the same near future as the novel Fairyland )
"'Slaves' also stands as a bridge between Fairyland and an earlier novel. I leave it as an exercise to that character, as legendary to writers as unicorns to questing knights, the constant reader, to deduce which novel I mean." --Paul J.McAuley.
"In a fifteenth-century Venice subtly different from our own, a physician chasing the image of his lost daughter encounters a forerunner of Baron Victor Frankenstein; in near-future Holland and France the use of genetically engineered dolls in combat games and the sex industry poses hard ethical questions, while their liberated cousins threaten human existence; on an artificial world at the edge of the Galaxy, one of the last humans causes revolution amongst the alien races abandoned there by her ancestors.
"Paul J.McAuley has been described by Locus as 'a major hard SF talent of the order of Bear, Benford, Niven or Sterling', and the New York Times said that he 'combines a disciplined scientific imagination with a view of history as a kind of evolutionary joke played on the survivors'. His second short-story collection displays the dazzling range of his talents as he explores the effects of biotechnology and its creations on our society and on ourselves. Four of these stories, including the novella 'Slaves', previously only available on the internet, share the same near future as his...novel, Fairyland , which displayed 'humanity and sense of historical development that transcended genre boundaries' (New Scientist ), and which won the prestigious Clarke Award for best SF novel of the year." [jacket blurb, UK hbk, 1996].
"The more I read McAuley's work, the more I like it. This collection provides a good coverage of his central themes and the issues he's concerned with. Readers unfamiliar with this author are advised to read this book to get a taste." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , December 1997).
Recommended.
To reach Paul J.McAuley himself:
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