Customer Reviews

Fairyland

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The scenes taking place in a far future Eurodisney basically made the book for me, McAuley's vision of a rundown and ramshackle former childrens paradise being changed into a place of forboding evil is probably one of the strongest SF images of the last five years or so . . . and the best part is that the book is about much more than that. McAuley is one of those rare writers that refuses to do the same trick over and over again (much like the highly recommended Ian Banks), and this book is no exception. In a not too distant future, McAuley imagines a gritty world with tons of throwaway details and some extrapolation of technology, one of those being "dolls" basically soulless little people. When a maker of designer drugs gets involved with a young girl who wishes to give the dolls sentience, he succeeds but the results aren't quite what anyone expected. McAuley's writing is densely descriptive and has an urgency that fits the story well, the plot moves forward steadily and with increasing interest as events start to pile on each others. He has this habit of starting a section by introducing people who are completely new to the story and then going with them for a bit, while this serves to give us other views of the situation, it also has the effect of sometimes slowing the plot down for a bit while you try to process everything. Still, his world is beautifully rendered with plenty to keep even casual readers interested and lots of other ideas and extras that serve to enhance his reputation as one of the more fascinating SF new writers to come along the pipeline in a while.

There's nothing quite like 'Fairyland'. It's unneven in terms of its construction and character development, but more than makes up for it by the intensity of vision displayed by MacAuley. He has shown in his short fiction (see King of the Hill) that he is a master of the art of exploring the darkest recessess of our mythology (this is Brothers Grimm territory not Hans Christian Anderson!), and blending it into our worst imaginings about the future. Fairyland is a triumphant culmination of this theme- a high-tech future where the past is an ever-present nightmare. This is best illustrated by the inhuman fairies' capture of the artificial 'magic kingdom' of Eurodisney, turning it into something to be feared and avoided as the source of evil. Like Gibson on magic mushrooms. Brilliant!

I have read a few of the books by this gent and to my way of thinking, this is the best. Published in 1995, it seems that everybody else is catching up with it now. Alastair Reynolds has written of indoctrinal viruses, but did they first appear in fiction between these covers?

At the start we meet Alex Sharkey, ex-con, nuaghty boy, but no ogre, no monster. Young Mr Sharkey is mixed up with something hitech that he cooks up on the sly, something that is about to become illegal. Then he meets the Little Miss and everything changes. Alex becomes a target who survives by moving. And Alex is not the old Alex anymore. The old Alex has already died and woken back to a new life under heavy manners.

Cut to years later in gay Paree. Alex is treks through an altered Europe, looking for the Little Miss, fomenting Revolution, fighting for his own life and those of his confederates. The book throw off fountains of virtual reality, biological technology, references to exotic Chemistry and Physics, the nuts and bolts of Cyberpunk. There is a difference. I don't remember Gibson making much of Biology.

Ever heard of George Turner? I'll excuse you if you haven't. He was the finest SF writer Australia ever produced. He said that in the future there would be more horrors produced by Biology than anything else and here McAuley proves him right. The artificial people, the Fairies, he creates and inserts into the world are Capek's robots, a race of servants who revolt and take over, change themselves and us, move the bottom rail to the top as the slave becomes the master. Think of the huge breakthroughs we might be on the verge of and ask how could they be misued.

Alex Sharkey pursues Fairyland, Utopia, his Little Miss, and it is all like being stretched on the rack. How many people reach out for dreams they cannot reach, wander off after a vision, a false hope? This book is about Sharkey's journey and the fantasy of Fairyland, whether it be London by night or Utopia. It is about the different fairylands that live inside peoples' heads. And of course, my old favourites, Good and Evil.

As SF, this is marvellous. It is pure wonder and horror, just bloody excellent, just as good the third time as the first.

Don't let this novel's fey title fool you. This is actually a chilling near-future dystopia tale about nanotechnology and genetic engineering running amuck, with some remarkable ideas by McCauley that give you the very uncomfortable impression that they could possibly come true some day. Psychological plagues are spreading throughout the human population through the use of microscopic "fembots" that can alter behavior and personalities, and these are traded like illicit substances and used for psycho-warfare and manipulation. Meanwhile, genetic engineering has resulted in semi-intelligent "dolls" used for human service and amusement. The two processes have come together to produce a new species of intelligent dolls called "fairies" who are being manipulated by artificial intelligence constructs to take over the world (creating their own "fairyland") and eliminate their human creators. This all culminates in a bizarrely psychoactive war in Eastern Europe. McCauley displays great feats of the imagination here, especially through the use of a wasted French theme park (which shall remain nameless) that has become a festering shantytown and breeding ground for inhuman revolutionaries. This novel is a bit confusing with all its subplots and ephemeral characters, but you can't deny that McCauley has come up with some of the most intriguing ideas in recent sci-fi. [~doomsdayer520~]

I felt compelled to write this after reading the reviews of this novel (the exception being the bloke from Newcastle).

What drew me into this novel is not just the Bladerunner meets Ribofunk imagery, but the almost travelogue quality of the narrative. From the tropical 21st century London, the slums in the shadows Eurodisney and the Parisian arcologies, and the still war torn Balkans, Fairyland reads like Robert Kaplan's travelogue _The Ends of the Earth_ thrown 50 years into the future. Also, this is science fiction that isn't fixated on an extrapolation of science (though McAuley does an excellent job with biotech and a disturbing view of biological AI), but also provides a realistic, if disturbing view of society and politics (the Serbian conflict fought with smart bullets and polymers, the Second American Civil War initiated by fundamentalists, and those are just the throwaway asides). For those interested in hard science fiction that is interested in more than just technology and testosterone, go buy this book. Also, if you enjoyed Greg Bear's _Queen of Angels_, you will definitely enjoy this novel.

McAuley is becoming one of my favorite authors. His "Red Dust" is probably
the best thing he's written. "Fairyland" is good, but not great. It contains
his strong style of prose and attention to detail, but the perspective shift
after part-one is ineptly handled. Part-one introduces a complex main character,
and an interesting environment. Part-two, introduces a host of disposable characters
and 100 pages that add nothing to the story. It took an act of will to stay with the
book. Fortunatly, we get the main character back (albeit about 10 story years later).
A simpler architecture would have been more effective, and told the story
more concisely.

Not much SciFi is actually full of ideas that seem new. This one is and also has some settings you will find new and interesting. At times I was reminded of "When Gravity Fails" but, that was not a bad thing. The characters are not great but the writing is good and this one is about ideas. It deserved the award it got when published and has mostly aged well (only 5 years but, for SciFi this is a long time).

Set in a dystopian near future, Fairyland is filled with exotic and sinister technological wonders. Designer drugs, mind-altering viruses, savage "warewolves", personalities uploaded into virtual worlds. And, of course, there are the dolls, artificial beings created for humanity's amusement but which, like miniature Frankenstein monsters, become increasingly and alarmingly independent. Fairyland suffers from being a novel in three parts, with separate casts of minor characters, and this makes it rather disjointed. But the firecracker display of ideas is exhilarating, Alex Sharkey is a refreshingly atypical hero and, despite dating from over a decade ago, this novel remains relevant and enjoyable.

Not as great as Red Dust - well, it has no AI Elvis as a deus ex machina - but a wonderfully wierd mixture of concerns. If it just followed through the first part of the story - the activation of the child genius - it would be another Gibson spin-off, albeit a good one. What makes it great is McAuley's idiosyncratic development of the story in such unexpected ways.

McAuley works up familiar dystopian SF tropes (balkanized first world countries, climatic disaster, virtual reality, etc., etc.) with great skill and seemingly endless invention but not enough feeling. I kept reading, wondering what was going to happen next, and wondering why I should care.