The Invisible Country [Paperback]

Paul J. Mcauley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1998

In these nine exraordinary tales, acclaimed author PAUL J. MCAULEY--winner of the Philip K. Dick, British Fantasy Society, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Aruthur C. Clarke Awards--explores the wonders and dangers of biotechnology and its creations in stories whose settings careen from a distant alternate past to a breathtaking far-flung future. In a sixteenth-century Venice, transformed by a premature Industrial Revolution, a physian mourning his daughter's passing meets a mountebank with the power to raise the dead. In a tomorrow of raw and terrible beauty, revolutionaries struggle to free genetically engineered creatrues fated to die in combat games and violent sexual encounters. And ten million years in the future, on an artificial world orbiting an immense black hole, a civilization of awesome strangeness and complexity created--and abandoned--by the Godlike Preservers is about to meet the human ancestors of its makers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Former biologist Paul J. McAuley, multi-award winning author of Fairyland and the Confluence trilogy (beginning with Child of the River), here presents nine of his short works, mostly set in future societies rendered bizarre by rampant biotechnology. McAuley is a brilliant storyteller, and several standout pieces in this collection are astonishingly wonderful. In the short, powerful "Gene Wars," young Evan gets a kit called Splicing Your Own Semisentients, which sets him off on a life of genetic engineering, corporate piracy, and third-world exploitation, ending in the unimaginably distant future. The title story, "The Invisible Country," is an SF-noir tale that embodies the essence of cyberpunk without resorting to dark, dangerous cliché--in his afterword, McAuley explains that he wrote it for a collection in which the central conflict is resolved without violence. Several stories contain shared themes of alienation and subjugation, examined through the plight of the victims of biotech--genetically engineered slaves--and one takes place in McAuley's Confluence universe, a far future in which the stars themselves have been altered. Fans of mature, thoughtful hard SF with a quirky, cinematic edge should delve into McAuley's work. The Invisible Country is a fine place to start. --Therese Littleton

About the Author

Paul J. McAuley is a professional bio-physicist and the author of Pasquale's Angel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, Red Dust and Eternal Light. A native Englishman, he currently lives in Fife, Scotland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Eos (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380792990
• ISBN-13: 978-0380792993
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,331,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul McAuley's first novel won the Philip K. Dick Award, and he has gone on to win almost all of the major awards in the field. For many years a research biologist, he now writes full-time. McAuley's novel The Quiet War made several "best of the year" lists, including SF Site's Reader's Choice Top 10 SF and Fantasy Books of 2009. He lives in London. Visit him online at unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com .

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A coherent world changed by nanotech, March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invisible Country (Paperback)

This book of short stories was my first experience with McAuley -- which meant that I experienced severe cognitive dissonance. McAuley is one of those writers (like C.J. Cherryh, in her decades-old "Faded Sun" series) who creates a world so different from the one we presently live in that it's sometimes hard to understand what's going on. But after a few stories, one becomes accustomed to the terminology and the ideas, and the plots and philosophies start to become clear. Indeed, the work shortly becomes compelling.

I'm not sure that this was the best introduction to McAuley, but I'm glad I read it. I must confess, however, that I particularly enjoyed the stories that were not in the "dolls and fairies" milieu, such as the story about Dr. Pretorius (which I found eerily fascinating, and very reminiscent in tone, if not in content, to Tim Powers's work). I am now very much looking forward to reading "Children of the Confluence" and McAuley's other novels.