A Very British History

A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Paul McAuley, 1985–2011.

Cover art by Jim Burns.

TIMES ALTERED, TIMES TO COME

While the use of genetically engineered dolls in combat games in near-future Holland poses profound ethical questions, their liberated cousins threaten to alter the nature of human existence; on an artificial world beyond the edge of the Milky Way, one of the last humans triggers a revolution amongst alien races abandoned there by her ancestors; in the ocean of Europa, a hunter confronts a monster with its own agenda; in ‘The Two Dicks’, bestselling author Philip K. Dick has a life-changing meeting with President Nixon; while in ‘Cross Road Blues’ the fate of American history hinges on the career of an itinerant blues musician; and in the Sturgeon Award-winning novella ‘The Choice’, two young men make very different decisions about how they will come to terms with a world transformed by climate change and alien interference.

Selected by the author himself from his output across over a quarter of a century, this landmark collection contains the very finest science fiction stories by one of Britain’s foremost masters of the genre. From sharply satirical alternate histories to explorations of the outer edges of biotechnology, from tales of extravagant far futures to visions of the transformative challenges of deep space, they showcase the reach and restless intelligence of a writer Publishers Weekly has praised as being ‘one of the field’s finest practitioners’.