The Invisible Country | |||||||||
Paul J. McAuley | |||||||||
Avon EOS Books, 310 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Greg L. Johnson
That's all changed in the nineties. Scotland has experienced a
mainstream literary renaissance. American writers like Pat Cadigan and
Tricia Sullivan have moved to London. And a good portion of the best SF of
the last ten years has been written by British writers, including Iain M.
Banks, Ian MacDonald, Gwynneth Jones, Stephen Baxter, and Paul J. McAuley.
The Invisible Country is McAuley'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 stylist. The title story, a does-the-end-justify-the-means look at a
near future world suffering from over-population and environmental
catastrophe, is a perfect example. The story of Cameron and his decision on
how to deal with the world he is forced to live in is engrossing, and
presented in prose that recalls Lucius Shepard at his finest. Just as
impressive is "Recording Angel", a far future story of what happens when
the inhabitants of a world built near the edge of a black hole are visited
by a woman from the distant past whose philosophy cannot help but change
their way of life. Here McAuley's use of language that subtly evokes both
an incredible long stretch of time and gives us a connection to our own
world brings to mind Gene Wolfe and The Book of the New Sun.
Four of the stories included in the collection, "Prison Dreams",
"Dr. Luther's Assistant", "Children of the Revolution", and "Slaves" are
set in the same future history as McAuley's novel Fairyland. The best of
these are "Prison Dreams" and "Slaves". "Prison Dreams" introduces us to
Lianna, a young woman with a chip in her head, doing time as a medical
worker for the crime she committed. Her duties bring her into contact with
dolls, animals whose minds and bodies have been altered to enable them to
do the dirty work for the citizens who inhabit the arcologies of Amsterdam.
"Slaves" is the coming of age story of Katz, a young woman who lives with a
band of "fringers", unemployed or out of luck people who live in the wild
lands of Europe, where renegade dolls and the humans who help them are
creating a strange new world. "Slaves" manages to be both a disturbing and,
in contrast to its title, uplifting view of a world changing in ways that
its human creators no longer fully comprehend.
Of the remaining stories, two are set in the same alternate history
as Pasquale's Angel, McAuley's evocation of early renaissance Italy. Both
stories revolve around the character of Dr. Pretorious, a Frankenstein-like
figure whose life attracts the attention of Dr. Stein in ancient Venice,
and Larry Cochrane, an investigative reporter from our own time. The other
story in The Invisible Country, "Gene Wars", is a snapshot-by-snapshot
recounting of a world and its people transformed by biotechnology.
The one thing all these stories share is a sympathy for what
McAuley calls "the victims of technology". The viewpoint characters are
people whose lives have been changed, and who are struggling to hang on and
find a place for themselves in a world being constantly altered by
technology. While McAuley's artistry is most evident in "The Invisible
Country", he is generally careful to not let the prose get in the way of
telling a good story. The result is a splendid collection of stories that
also serves as a fine introduction to one of the best new writers to emerge
in the nineties.
Strange But True Department: Cleaning the kitchen one evening, reviewer Greg L. Johnson found himself listening, for the first time in about a year, to Taking Liberties, a collection of singles and b-sides by Elvis Costello, including the song "Dr Luther's Assistant". The next day's mail brought The Invisible Country. Upon opening the package, the first story he saw was, you guessed it, "Dr Luther's Assistant", the title of which McAuley admits was borrowed from the Costello song. Strange, but true! |
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