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Fairyland
 
 

Fairyland (Paperback)

by Paul McAuley (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (26 Sep 1996)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575600314
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575600317
  • Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 542,875 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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

Product Description
In 21st century Europe, ravaged by the changes of war and technology, gene hacker Alex Sharkey is a bare step ahead of the police and the Triads. When he helps a super-smart girl turn a genetically-engineered doll into a new species, he doesn't realize he's giving history a dangerous shove.

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars An Enjoyable Science Fantasy Loses It’s Way, 31 Dec 2003
By dogbarkssome (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)      
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 ending. The central idea seems to be an expansion of McAuley’s earlier short story ‘Karl and the Ogre’ (collected in The King of the Hill) with it’s setting of a seemingly fantastic landscape created out of technology. The story centres around the evolution of genetically engineered dolls into fairies – part one showing the creation of the first fairy, with part two dealing with an early colony set up in the remains of the old Disneyland Paris. Both of these are expertly paced as the sympathetic characters draw the reader deeper into the mystery of fairy ‘Queen’ Milena, and paint a disturbing picture of a world where nanotechnology is capable of changing people’s perception on a massive scale.

This is excellent stuff, but unfortunately it all falls apart with a confusing finale concerning Milena’s quest for immortality. This muddled and unclear ending ensures the novel ends on a low point, which is a shame for a novel that promised so much. Fairyland also suffers in comparison with Richard Calder’s Dead Girls – another novel that tackles the idea of engineered dolls gaining their freedom, only with a lot more style and emotion. Fairyland is patchy and rather staid in comparison, but this is still an interesting read for sf fans.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Alex in Nano-land: Cyber-opera and our cultural origins., 3 Aug 2001
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.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Very Dark, Very Confusing, Very Good, 7 Dec 2001
By A Customer
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars 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 4 months ago by BloodyOllie

4.0 out of 5 stars 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

4.0 out of 5 stars A sprawling synthesis of decadence, nanotech and wonder.
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,... Read more
Published on 14 Feb 1999

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