From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 25 09:19:07 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!think.com!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: WALLEY@vax.oxford.ac.uk Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: ETERNAL LIGHT by Paul J. McAuley Message-ID: <1991Nov22.204838.8102@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 22 Nov 91 20:48:38 GMT Sender: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Reply-To: WALLEY@vax.oxford.ac.uk Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Pacific * Bell Lines: 39 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com ETERNAL LIGHT by Paul J. McAuley A Review by Andrew J. Walley (copyright 1991) In his first two novels and some of his short stories McAuley has explored a single future history where the Earth and the colonised worlds are under the control of the ReUnited Nations and the Golden, the near-immortal people who hold the source of an anti-longevity drug, are the only other major power faction. In EL McAuley returns to this setting for easily his most ambitious novel to date. One faction of the Golden, led by Duke Talbeck Barstilkin V, has discovered a star system travelling close to the speed of light which is on a collision course with the solar system in 1200 years time. The RUN has suppressed this knowledge and Talbeck and the RUN Navy race each other to the system in search of ancient weapons left by the Alea, a race that Man has just succeeded in wiping out in the BD20 system where they had been encountered. The Alea have a genetic predisposition to eradicate all rivals and over a million years ago they were forced to leave the galactic core by the shadowy marauders. They were then found by Man at BD20, where Dorthy Yoshida, an empathic Talent, made mental contact with them before they were destroyed. EL is her story, as she travels to the hypervelocity star and on into even stranger places. It is hard SF of the highest order, on a par with the recent visions of Greg Bear, and McAuley's background as a biologist once again leads us to encounter strange and alien life. The action is well-plotted and the characters involving and the story is without the peculiarly pessimistic tone of McAuley, which should make it more palatable for the American market. This is not to say it is unrealistic though which is pleasing. Compared to "Xenocide" this is SF of a very high standard, streets ahead of his first novel, and I would not hesitate to recommend this for the highest awards in the field. %T Eternal Light %A Paul J. McAuley %I Victor Gollancz Limited, London %D 1991 %? pp384 %P 14pounds 99pence %G ISBN 0 575 04931 6 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Mar 11 13:36:15 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews,soc.history.what-if,alt.history.what-if Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review: PASQUALE'S ANGEL by Paul J. McAuley Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Evelyn C Leeper Lines: 50 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 23:22:11 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 50 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:907 rec.arts.books.reviews:1387 soc.history.what-if:6776 alt.history.what-if:22870 PASQUALE'S ANGEL by Paul J. McAuley A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper This is the second "alternate Leonardo" I read in quick succession (Jack Dann's MEMORY CATHEDRAL being the first, though this actually predates the Dann by about a year). In this, however, Leonardo is not one of the major characters on-stage. He does appear but mostly he is talked about as the "Great Engineer" in the tower. So far as I can determine, he got that way because Savonarola's revolution of 1498 succeeded and Leonardo turned from concentrating on art to concentrating on invention. The result is a Florence well into the Industrial Age in Leonardo's lifetime. Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed this book and that I recommend it. I want to say that up front, because my comments might lead you to think I had a negative opinion of PASQUALE'S ANGEL, and that's not true. One of my complaints has to do with the premise: I doubt the Industrial Revolution could have proceeded this fast this early. In twenty years, Florence seems to have gotten to the technological level we achieved around 1900--considerably more than twenty years after the Industrial Revolution started. Another problem is that PASQUALE'S ANGEL starts with a "locked-room" (or rather "locked-tower") mystery whose solution, alas, should be obvious to most of the readers who would be attracted to this book. Given that McAuley wanted a murder mystery, I wish he had designed one less derivative. He does a good job of describing his characters and making them come alive. (Of course, most of his characters WERE alive, at least in some form.) His use of the politics and conspiracies of the time is the most interesting aspect of the novel, and more emphasis on that, with less on detailing more technical advances than seem likely or are necessary, would have made me happier. But as they say, your mileage may vary, and even with my reservations, I still strongly recommend PASQUALE'S ANGEL. %T Pasquale's Angel %A Paul J. McAuley %C New York %D June 1995 %I AvoNova %O hardback, US$22 %G ISBN 0-688-14154-4 %P 384pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | eleeper@lucent.com <==NOTE NEW ADDRESS "People are worried about online porn on the Internet. It's the endless `Who's better--Kirk or Picard?' threads that *should* scare them." -- Jim Mullen, _Entertainment Weekly_ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Mar 11 13:43:48 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews,soc.history.what-if,alt.history.what-if Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review: PASQUALE'S ANGEL by Paul J. McAuley Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Evelyn C Leeper Lines: 50 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 23:22:11 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 50 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:907 rec.arts.books.reviews:1387 soc.history.what-if:6776 alt.history.what-if:22870 PASQUALE'S ANGEL by Paul J. McAuley A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper This is the second "alternate Leonardo" I read in quick succession (Jack Dann's MEMORY CATHEDRAL being the first, though this actually predates the Dann by about a year). In this, however, Leonardo is not one of the major characters on-stage. He does appear but mostly he is talked about as the "Great Engineer" in the tower. So far as I can determine, he got that way because Savonarola's revolution of 1498 succeeded and Leonardo turned from concentrating on art to concentrating on invention. The result is a Florence well into the Industrial Age in Leonardo's lifetime. Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed this book and that I recommend it. I want to say that up front, because my comments might lead you to think I had a negative opinion of PASQUALE'S ANGEL, and that's not true. One of my complaints has to do with the premise: I doubt the Industrial Revolution could have proceeded this fast this early. In twenty years, Florence seems to have gotten to the technological level we achieved around 1900--considerably more than twenty years after the Industrial Revolution started. Another problem is that PASQUALE'S ANGEL starts with a "locked-room" (or rather "locked-tower") mystery whose solution, alas, should be obvious to most of the readers who would be attracted to this book. Given that McAuley wanted a murder mystery, I wish he had designed one less derivative. He does a good job of describing his characters and making them come alive. (Of course, most of his characters WERE alive, at least in some form.) His use of the politics and conspiracies of the time is the most interesting aspect of the novel, and more emphasis on that, with less on detailing more technical advances than seem likely or are necessary, would have made me happier. But as they say, your mileage may vary, and even with my reservations, I still strongly recommend PASQUALE'S ANGEL. %T Pasquale's Angel %A Paul J. McAuley %C New York %D June 1995 %I AvoNova %O hardback, US$22 %G ISBN 0-688-14154-4 %P 384pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | eleeper@lucent.com <==NOTE NEW ADDRESS "People are worried about online porn on the Internet. It's the endless `Who's better--Kirk or Picard?' threads that *should* scare them." -- Jim Mullen, _Entertainment Weekly_ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Mar 11 13:43:53 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews,soc.history.what-if,alt.history.what-if Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review: THE MEMORY CATHEDRAL by Jack Dann Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Evelyn C Leeper Lines: 54 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 23:22:11 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 54 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:906 rec.arts.books.reviews:1386 soc.history.what-if:6775 alt.history.what-if:22869 THE MEMORY CATHEDRAL by Jack Dann Bantam, ISBN 0-553-09637-0, 1995, 486pp, US$22.95 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper This seems to have been the "Year of da Vinci," with not one but two alternate history novels about the artist and inventor. One of these is Paul J. McAuley's PASQUALE'S ANGEL, the other is Jack Dann's MEMORY CATHEDRAL. I call them alternate histories, but Dann's at least is written more as a secret history--not what might have happened but didn't, but what might have happened that we didn't hear about. In this case, it's about what might have happened during Leonardo's trip east. Frankly, I am of the opinion that it would be unlikely that the events described here happened without any record, but that is a dispute over classification, not over the book itself. And the book itself is very good. Dann has done the research, and the life and politics of 15th Century Florence and the eastern Mediterranean come to life in his telling. He does take a few liberties (changing Machiavelli's age, and introducing Christopher Columbus into the scene), but these are minor changes which serve the literary purpose without being false to the SENSE of historical truth. (George MacDonald Fraser explains this idea at greater length in his book THE HOLLYWOOD HISTORY OF THE WORLD.) Even with all his research, though, at least one error has crept in. On page 342, Dann describes a camel as getting up by raising first its front part, then its back. Having ridden a camel, I can assure you that camels raise their back part first. (The first thing they tell you is to lean BACK when the camel gets up, or you'll fall off.) But considering the level of detail that Dann has created, this is a truly minor point. Dann does a good job of describing the jockeying for power in the eastern Mediterranean as well as giving the reader a window into Leonardo mind through the use of "the memory cathedral" he has built. This book was not marketed as science fiction, so you will probably have to seek it out in the mainstream fiction section of your bookstore. Do so, by all means--it's well worth the search. %T The Memory Cathedral %A Jack Dann %C New York %D December 1995 %I Bantam %O hardback, US$22.95 %G ISBN 0-553-09637-0 %P 486pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | eleeper@lucent.com <==NOTE NEW ADDRESS "People are worried about online porn on the Internet. It's the endless `Who's better--Kirk or Picard?' threads that *should* scare them." -- Jim Mullen, _Entertainment Weekly_ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 24 21:58:18 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!usenet From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Eternal Light" by Paul J McAuley Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 13 Sep 1996 16:02:37 -0400 Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 46 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Keywords: author=p-m agapow X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 "Eternal Light" by Paul J. McAuley A Postview, copyright 1996 p-m agapow The galaxy was a battleground for thousands of alien families, feuding for millennia, engaging each other planetary-scale weapons. Years ago humanity was inadvertently drawn into the battle and now struggles to understand the genocidal aliens. Dorthy Yoshida knows the aliens better than anyone. But deep in the past a rogue star was launched at high velocity towards Earth. Dorthy falls into the hands of a crazed immortal millionaire who intends to meet the interstellar missile and confront the enemy there. McAuley's novels ("Red Dust", "Pasquale's Angel", "Fairyland" et al.) are always ambitious, entertaining and worth reading but there's often a feeling a disappointment when you read them that what aimed to a great story was "merely" a good one. In line with this faintly damning praise, "Eternal Light" is a flamboyant, wide-screen epic that continually threatens to be magnificent but never quite attains that. To play the comparison game, McAuley's world is like something out of Alfred Bester (esp. "Tiger Tiger / The Stars My Destination"): dukedoms on Titan, megalomaniac business men, doomed heros, corporate dominated Earth, colourful and baroque. The background is pure Larry Niven: wormholes, schemes spanning eons, cosmological engineering on a scale that makes the Ringworld look like local road works. The surprise is that McAuley is comfortable in both styles and deftly threads his plot through them. Unfortunately, having placed his story on such a grandiose level, McAuley is not quite able to resolve it satisfactorily and the climax is a bit of a letdown. This is perhaps unavoidable for it's problematic how you can raise the stakes and keep the tension without getting ridiculous (e.g. "The fate of this - and several other universes - are at stake!) or losing touch with the personal aspects of the story. Anyway, up until that point "Eternal Light" is an energetic and entertaining read and as such comes recommended. [***/interesting] and snuff Morris dancing on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Paul J McAuley %B Eternal Light %I Avon/Nova %C New York %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-380-76623-X %P 424pp %O paperback, Aus$13.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Oct 16 12:24:46 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!uninett.no!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!128.223.220.30!logbridge.uoregon.edu!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: aus.sf,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Postview: "Secret Harmonies" by Paul J McAuley Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Oct 1998 10:10:44 -0400 Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 55 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se aus.sf:1417 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2133 "Secret Harmonies" by Paul J McAuley A Postview, copyright 1998 P-M Agapow Elysium is a lush and welcoming world, colonised by a steady stream of settlers via STL starships from Earth. But there are tensions: the original colonists hold the reins of power, throttling back the expansionist designs of the newer arrivals. The behaviour of the primitive natives hints at unseen powers. Secret alliances jostle the population. Then without warning, the flow of colonists stops and civilisation starts to break down ... I'll recommend anything by Paul J McAuley - not everything he writes is great, but it is always entertaining and very readable. "Secret Harmonies" left me fairly ambivalent however. This is not because it's a bad book, but because it does not quite achieve what it sets out to do. A point one might make about McAuley's previous novels is that they tend to be of the Big Flashy Idea variety: daVinci kickstarts the Industrial Revolution ("Pasquales Angel"), cosmic engineering ("Eternal Light"), rogue androids as fey folk ("Fairyland"). There is nothing wrong with this, but it feels with "Secret Harmonies" as if he is trying to get away from this mode and into a more low-key and sophisticated setting and plot. Thus we have political machinations and tangled personal relationships driving the plot. Elysium isn't just a plot setting, it's believable as a place that people live and work. But darn it, I want to know more about the aliens. When humans enter the aboriginal villages on Elysium, the natives freeze up, staying locked up until interlopers depart or their nervous systems burn out. Elysium is certainly a strange place, perhaps not as exotic or full as other fictional counterparts like Dune, Medea or the Ringworld but it is a place that functions on its own rules. This SFnal part of the book and the political side struggle with each other, not quite having enough room to develop fully and not quite integrating with each other. While the book shouldn't be longer, there is a sense that there is more to tell. Parts of the story felt abbreviated or rushed. A book shouldn't be condemned for expectations, but neither should one be praised for ambition. "Secret Harmonies" isn't bad, but doesn't completely gel. Nonetheless I still look forward to McAuley's next work. [**/ok] and the movie you see when you can't get into the movie you want to see on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Paul J McAuley %T Secret Harmonies (aka Of The Fall) %I Vista %C London %D 1997 %P 333pp %G ISBN 0-575-60371-0 %O paperback, Aus$13.95 Paul-Michael Agapow (p.agapow@ic.ac.uk), Dept. Biology, Imperial College "We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Feb 19 15:11:26 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Paul S. Jenkins" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Paul J. McAuley's _Ancients of Days_ Organization: Customer of Energis Squared Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Date: 17 Feb 2001 14:33:59 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 62 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: 982438440 senator-bedfellow.mit.edu 8798 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2826 Ancients of Days, Paul J McAuley Review Copyright (c) 2001 Paul S. Jenkins [May contain spoilers for this book and for "Child of the River," the previous novel in this trilogy. --AW] Confluence is not a planet. Though it hangs in space like a planet, it oscillates rather than rotates, so that the sun rises in its sky, then reverses and sets whence it rose. The Great River running down its length falls off the edge of the world and is recycled by gargantuan hydraulics. In _Child of the River_, the novel that precedes this one and begins the Confluence trilogy, little of the artificial world is explained, though by reading McAuley's short story "Recording Angel" one can get an idea of the strangeness of the world. By the end of _Child of the River_, our foundling hero Yama has left his stepfather and arrived in the city of Ys, in search of his destiny, and more urgently his bloodline, which he thinks could be that of the Builders, the race that first populated Confluence. The opening of _Ancients of Days_ finds Yama, his self-appointed squire Pandaras, and the intimidating female mercenary Tamora, about to participate in a battle against the Department of Indigenous Affairs, an organisation that seeks to control the city. Yama's adventures read like fantasy: the tricks he performs with his power to influence machines are seen as magical, not based on science or logic. Throughout _Child of the River_ Yama remained a passionless protagonist, without any hint of a sense of humour, and for the first half of _Ancients of Days_ the detached narrative continues; we rarely get inside Yama's head. McAuley's prose is rich, with many unusual words depicting a densely imagined world. There's a lot of description; at 320, the page-count of this Millennium edition is marginally lower than _Child of the River_, but here the print is much smaller. I'd guess that _Ancients of Days_ is half as long again. Towards the middle of the book Yama meets up with an old adversary from whom he has previously escaped, and when he returns to his home town things start hotting up. Relationships change, and the story takes on a greater depth of characterisation. As the novel reaches its final stages, we revisit the events depicted in "Recording Angel" -- but from a slightly different viewpoint. By the end of the book, everything is changed, yet Yama is in the same predicament as at the end of _Child of the River_: he still doesn't know who he really is; he's still in search of his destiny. Only this time, so many options have been eliminated that the final part, the last book of Confluence, is something to look forward to. %A McAuley, Paul %T Ancients of Days %S Confluence %I Millennium (Gollancz) %C London %D 1999 (copyright 1998) %G ISBN 1 85798 892 2 %P 320 pp. %O paperback GBP 6.99 Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at: Portsmouth UK | http://www.rev-up-review.co.uk