Beyond the Burn Line

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After the death of his master, a famous scholar, Pilgrim Saltmire vows to complete their research into sightings of so-called visitors and their sky craft. To discover if they are a mass delusion created by the stresses of an industrial revolution, or if they are real—a remnant population of bears which survived the plague, or another, unknown intelligent species. I don't remember much about those UFO books now. Apart from a few which attempted to give impartial overviews of the phenomenon, most were, like Adamski's book, eccentric personal revelations of It begins with scholar's assistant Pilgrim Saltmire after the death of his patron. Pilgrim wants to complete his master's work, an investigation of mysterious lights in the sky that might be visitors but might also be mass hysteria. He wants but funds for the work, which are hard to obtain. Returning to his mome he meets rejection, shame and exile. But exile leads to discovery of a mysterious map and a connection beween his people, bears and ogres which have devastating implications.

And of course, there are the mysterious and seemingly increasing sightings of the "visitors", the rise of a new cult preaching that they will soon arrive and bring even more prosperity to all and eliminate the wealth and statusRisking 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. Clearly, our species has paid the ultimate price for our hubris. The scars of our existence can still be found in places like Ogre’s Grave, but nature recovers—eventually. 200,000 years after our catastrophes, this planet seems to be a fine place. The travels of the main characters provide the opportunity for McAuley to describe a full and vivid natural world, much like our own. Indeed, the extent to which the plot is entwined with a form of travel writing is reminiscent of planetary romance. McAuley’s work more generally often provides a clear sense of place through his description of setting, whether alien worlds, artificial environments or, as here , something very much like our own landscapes. It is the slower pace of travel in this novel, as in 2020’s War of the Maps , that provides a strong sense of the novel being a planetary adventure.

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. At the end of the first section, the mystery of the Visitors is solved. The second section is set forty years later. The Visitors play the viewpoint role in this section as we discover the answers to the mysteries that Visitors existence are disclosed. This section involves a Visitor who specializes in Visitor-People relations. Those relations have soured. In addition, the question of the plague that overthrew the Bears becomes important. The first novel by poet J.O. Morgan, Pupa is set in an alternate world predicated on a single what if? -- what if human reproduction resembled that of insects, with larval forms hatching from eggs, and changing, via pupae, into the adult form? Sal is a larval who tells himself he is content with his lot. He's an unambitious office drone with a necessarily unrequited friendship with another larval, Megan, and has no intention of willing the potentially fatal transformation to adulthood. As he tells Megan, 'You can't know if you'll like how you'll turn out.' But by a single uncharacteristic act, he precipates Megan's decision to change, and puts his own assumptions to the test.

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I'm the author of more than twenty books, including novels, short story collections and a film monograph. My latest novel is War of the Maps. After the death of his master, a famous scholar, Pilgrim Saltmire vows to complete their research into sightings of so-called visitors and their sky craft. To discover if they are a mass delusion created by the stresses of an industrial revolution, or if they are real - a remnant population of bears which survived the plague, or another, unknown intelligent species. 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. first stars that formed in protogalaxies a few hundred light years across were composed entirely of primordial hydrogen and helium. 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.