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Little Machines by Paul McAuley
01/06/2005 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: PS Publishing. 328 page limited edition book. Deluxe slipcased hardback: Price £60.00 (UK), $90.00 (US). ISBN: 1-902-880-93-5. Hardback: Price: £50.00 (UK), $50.00 (US). ISBN: 1-902-880-94-3. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.pspublishing.co.uk and www.paulmcauley.com
Paul McAuley has been winning awards for his fiction since the publication of his first novel, 'Four Hundred Billion Stars', won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. It is unsurprising, then, that the first story in this collection of seventeen stories is a homage to Philip K. Dick, 'The Two Dicks'. Whereas the real author wrote novels which could be regarded as alternate histories, this one is set there. The Phil Dick of the story is a mainstream novelist, best known for a volume called 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'. His SF novel, 'A Man In A High Castle' has been pirated and sold to millions of fans. Annoyed that the illegal book is more popular than his other work, he writes to the President hoping to get some authorisation to try and tackle the problem. The title can be read two ways - either the two Dicks are the factual and the fictional authors or they are the author and the President - Richard Nixon. To appreciate the story fully, it is best to be familiar with the life and works of Philip K. Dick. It is the kind of story that could easily have more written about in commentary and analysis than the length of the original.
'Residuals', written in collaboration with Kim Newman, is also very much a character-based story. The narrator, Ray, along with Nyquist and Elliot Mitchell were once responsible for saving the world from an alien invasion. For years, Ray has been living off the residuals from book, movie sales and TV interviews. Mitchell was, due to his governmental job, unable to benefit. Now the FBI are concerned that he is carrying out some dangerous experiments and wants Ray to use his influence to find out what. It is a cleverly constructed story, hooking the curious reader with intriguing statements. As the story unfolds from its starting point, 20 years after the original incident, the back story is gradually revealed.
McAuley is by training a scientist. As a result, his Science Fiction has the ring of authenticity that comes with deep familiarity with an area of knowledge. The stories touch on a wide variety of SF themes. '17' is set on a factory world. Workers there don't expect to live past forty. 17 is a young girl who has ambitions to leave but no way to do so, until she meets Doc who acts as her mentor. The story is as much social comment as Science Fiction.
'All Tomorrows Parties' looks at the problems of boredom that immortality can eventually engender. The unnamed protagonist has created a fake Earth and peopled it with clones, descendants and constructs of people she once might have known. She is getting tired of all the parties until she encounters a man who doesn't fit the pattern she has created. Life starts to get interesting again.
'Interstitial' considers the futility of war. The several surviving factions on Mars have one purpose, to wipe each other out as eventually there will be no source of supplies to ensure survival. There is no hope from Earth as it is now totally covered with an ice sheet and uninhabitable. Each faction has soldiers and techs and eventually the story becomes a battle between the brutality of soldiers and the cunning of the techs.
'How We Lost The Moon, A True Story By Frank W. Allen' is also a disaster story. This time the catastrophe involves the moon. An accident generates a minute black hole that, oscillating through the body of the moon is slowly consuming it.
Each story shows the versatility of the author as they are very different from each other in content and style. Only two are related. 'Alien TV' and 'Before The Flood' have the same background. 'Alien TV' is a broadcast, apparently coming from a distant planet and shows the lives of the aliens in real-time. In the first, we are introduced to Alien TV as a cult phenomenon with conventions of devotees which greatly resemble SF conventions. The second involves a different kind of cult in which the devotees have attempted to make themselves over to physically resemble the aliens as they see them on TV.
'A Very British History' returns to the theme of alternate worlds. In this one, it is the British who have lead the space race rather than the Americans and is written in the form of a book review. 'Cross Roads Blues' is a different slant of alternate history and involves time travel. Turner attempts to change the course of history by travelling back in time to teach the musician Robert Johnson to play the guitar. In his world, it was Johnson whose influence lead to the desegregation bill in 1945 rather than Martin Luther King.
The title of this volume, Little Machines, is a reference to the stories themselves. A novel is complex, as is a machine such as a steam engine. A story has a simpler narrative. Simple machines such as levers and pulleys are less complex and have a single purpose. Just as complex machines may be made from many simple machines working together, so a novel can be regarded as a complex story made up from shorter, simpler ones woven together to make the whole. These little machines from Paul McAuley are all worth reading.
Pauline Morgan
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