- Hardcover: 360 pages
- Publisher: Avon Books (T) (Oct 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0380973448
- ISBN-13: 978-0380973446
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.7 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,085,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Fairyland
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Having already made the final shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award with his SF novels Eternal Light and Pasquale's Angel, Paul McAuley finally won this coveted prize with Fairyland. The title's hint of fey fantasy is blackly ironic: this is a streetwise cyberpunk future, replete with gene-hacking, instant designer drugs, and mind-warping viruses that function as "love bugs" or "loyalty plagues". One spinoff of genetic tailoring is a slave race of blue-fleshed "dolls", modified baboons made bright enough to do society's dirty jobs--until they're liberated by the unholy alliance of an idealistic child prodigy and a biologically savvy nerd, boosting them to thinking, evolving, breeding "fairies". And indeed the night becomes full of unwholesome magic and fanged terrors again, as this new race steps into the old mythological niche of the dark elves, attacking venomously from the trees and setting up their private fairyland in the decayed remains of a certain Magic Kingdom outside Paris... Though occasionally obscure and not quite plausible in all its plot details, Fairyland is a creepily effective nightmare of a world becoming increasingly chaotic under the stress of runaway biotechnologies, excessively deadly toys in the hands of people with no more common sense than children. Vivid and viscerally compelling. --David Langford
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
When gene hacker Alex Sharkey helps a super-smart girl turn a genetically-engineered doll into a new species he accidentally gives history a dangerous shove
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book blew my mind. Without giving too much away.. it started like a detective novel, snaked its way through cyber-punk and blossomed into a treatise on the very nature of what it really means to be alive with our need for hopes, fears, symbols and myths.
In the not too distant future the boundaries blur between technology , mythology and magic. This is science fiction at its heady best and although somewhat slow to get into, I guarantee that by page 60 you'll never want to put it down. This book lives with you. Fabulous. If you enjoy it (and i know you will) also try Ice People by maggie gee and Child Garden by Geoff Ryman.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An amazingly vivid and colourful read about the future, the dark imagery used for places you can imagine or even know really come to life in a decaying near future set up. The 3 Stories in one are very cleverly interlinked exploring the Birth, Rise and Fall of the free thinking slave robot's called Fairies or Fays. You shoot from London to Paris to Albania in a chase for knowledge and survival against the government and the corperations. I loved it, i will be reading more of his books.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
McAuley has added to the small set of books which add a new paradigm to SF. His atmospheric nanotech-dominated world, infused with the culture of global immersive web-space, drug-dealing and low-life, is suffused with a sense of wonder. You almost feel nostalgic for what is a horrifying preview of the supercession of decadent humankind by the gen-engineered "fairies". Definitely up there with Peter Hamilton, Greg Bear.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Dystopic Biology 101
Clever dystopian sf heavy on the biology, well written characters, quite taunt plotting. Not probably a good idea if you already feeling suicidal; but for anyone else who's... Read more
Published 6 months ago by DWS
Disappointing
I love my sf. I found Mcauley while browsing waterstones on a dull wet day having neared the end of my previous read. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2009 by Mr. M. R. Lewis
Worst of a good bunch
I bought this as part of the otherwise fantastic Gollancz 'Future Classics' series, but unfortunately this one fell way short of the mark. Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2009 by BloodyOllie
My 100-word book review
Set in a dystopian near future, Fairyland is filled with exotic and sinister technological wonders. Designer drugs, mind-altering viruses, savage "warewolves", personalities... Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2007 by A. J. Cull
An Enjoyable Science Fantasy Loses It’s Way
For two-thirds of its length Fairyland is an enjoyable character-driven science fantasy, but unfortunately it falls at the final hurdle with an overly obscure and anticlimactic... Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2003 by Jane Aland
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