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Beyond the Burn Line

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advanced by Peter Davies and others, that all of life on Earth may be decended from microbial life that first evolved on Mars, and the rivalries, politics and commercial chicanery Mariella must navigate to arrive at the truth. John Barrow for the SF magazine Interzone (several of his books, notably his collaboration with Frank Tippler, the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, I think the thing that gets me is that it seemed to be very intentional and I just don't understand what purpose it served.

So far, so good, but there remain some problems. Practically every character in the second half seems to have an ulterior motive, and the main character's actions are repeatedly derailed to an extent that becomes a touch tedious. It is also confusing in places as many characters are introduced briefly, and it becomes difficult to remember who is who amongst the various adversaries and apparent helpers in the repeatedly shifting perspective of the apparent truth. Add in a distinctly frustrating ending, and the reader can emerge a little unsettled. They call themselves people, and certainly deserve the name. They are, with some significant exceptions, curious, peaceable, likeable and inventive. But they are not human. Pilgrim Saltmire is one of these (a mole, or badger, or what-you-will), a young academic determined to finish the monograph of his dear departed master, Able. Beyond the Burn Line shows us what a skilled writer can do. Imaginative, intelligent world building, with a far-future setting that allows our characters, whilst different, to exhibit endearingly human traits. It is going to be one of my books of the year, I think. In the course of this story, we learn that humans have been extinct for “only” two-hundred thousand years and that the intelligent Bears were overthrown by the People eight hundred years before when a plague reduced Bear intelligence and made them feral.Beyond the Burn Line is a book of two halves. The first takes us into a far future Earth, where the dominant species, simply referred to as 'people' but clearly not human, live a relatively low tech, but rich life. We discover that they used to be slaves of intelligent bears, who were the main intelligent species on Earth for thousands of years before their relatively recent demise. Humans (referred to as ogres) have been extinct far longer, which, until things are explained further, made the tag line of the book 'What will become of us?' confusing. few dozen miles west of Bognor, but as far as we were concerned it might as well have been on Mars. Amongst others, it featured the Who, the Doors, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimmy Hendrix (one of his last shows; he died of a barbiturate overdose a few weeks later) and Joni Mitchell, who was given an especially hard time by a bellicose crowd

Risking his reputation and his life, Pilgrim's search for the truth takes him from his comfortable home in the shadow of a great library to his tribe's former home on the chilly coast of the far south, and the gathering of a dangerous cult in the high desert. Whether or not the visitors are real, one thing is certain. Pilgrim's world and everything he thought he knew about his people's history will be utterly changed. Science fiction is not a homogenous genre, even though there is a lot of SF that seems similar. There are the usual near future dystopias, far out space opera's, climate fiction or morality tales set on other planets. And then there are the novels that are about truly exploring new viewpoints and new ideas - conceptual science fiction, one might say. Even though to me this is the core of the genre, and novels like this were prevalent in the 'golden age of SF', now these are few and far between. But I still like stumbling on them. I also kept expecting that one of the drives of the story would be everyone finding out where these intelligent species came from, but no.

The modern classic of space opera that began with Children of Time continues in this extraordinary novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. The first reissue is an ebook edition of my second novel, Secret Harmonies, first published in the US, in 1989, as Of the Fall. A title whose slight pun wouldn't, my then-editor Malcolm Edwards said, be appreciated by British readers; and thus the title change.

With the invention of faster-than-light travel there is nowhere that humanity cannot go. New worlds are discovered, but with them come new dangers.Later the story moves along some decades in the future and switches again in perspective, though Pilgrim's discoveries are still its main focus. The second part is by its nature much faster-paced than the first and at times this makes it seems a bit rushed especially towards the ending which solves the main mysteries at least to a large extent, though as in any good story, leaves enough hooks for a possible sequel. The first half feels like a rather meandering prelude that can probably be summed up in one sentence. Things really get cooking in the second, so my advice is to persevere.

A novel of two parts of equal length. Lots of big, intriguing ideas and wonderfully imaginative world-building. I guess my problem is that the author tends to withhold so much from the reader, until a rush of exposition at the end, that it can be a frustrating read. Peaceful and emphasising harmony with nature and cooperation between its tribes, but with strict divisions between the roles of men and women, it spans the American continent and is beginning to explore the rest of the world. But now, sightings of mysterious visitors are being reported. Are they bears which escaped the plague, a remnant population of human beings, or an unknown intelligent species? Where are they from, and what do they want? Where do writers get their ideas? Anywhere and everywhere they can. In the case of Beyond the Burn Line, it began with something so slight it barely qualified as the ghost of a notion. A throwaway remark by a minor character in one of my earlier novels, The Quiet War, who wonders, as nations struggle to fix the damage to ecosystems caused by previous generations, if Earth might not be better off without humans. ‘In The scale of a planet becomes all the more apparent when Pilgrim is exiled to the far south, a place of snowy winters. He is tasked with cataloguing a library abandoned by his tribe some decades before and, through the cold dark winter this task provides intellectual satisfaction amidst physical and social deprivation. In the process he discovers a map which may provide more insight into the visitors, and to a possible connection with the madness of the Bears. However, Pilgrim loses this along with the rest of his research, as events once again over take him. Since 2001, he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.

I have to give this a very mixed review. On the one hand, it's got a lot of the sort of thing I like, especially non-human intelligences. On the other hand, it keeps building to a dramatic peak or reveal, and then ... skips to years/decades later. McAuley’s fabulous far future, impacted by the consequences of global warming, colonisation and historical injustices, explores and reflects our own challenges while telling a fast paced story of discovery and adventure.

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