Paul J. McAuley

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Paul J. McAuley
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24 Quotations from Paul J. McAuley

cold sleep v. 1997 P. J. McAuley A Few Last Things in Interzone (#124) Oct. 55/2 (review of Greg Bear’s Slant) But the Omphalus is unfinished and empty; the Aristos, extropians who want to coldsleep into a future where immortality is available, are only sketchily portrayed and quickly dismissed.
corpsicle n. 1998 P. J. McAuley The Gardens of Saturn in Interzone (#137) Nov. 11 I don’t fancy leaving here as a corpsicle in steerage.
cyberpunk n. 1 2000 P. J. McAuley Get Real in Interzone (#152) Feb. 52/1 (review of William Gibson’s All Tomorrows) If cyberpunk has an enduring characteristic, it is not so much the fusing of information technology and Chandleresque noir, but the rejection of the monolithic futures of traditional science fiction in favour of fragmentation, plurality and a gleeful inversion of the accepted power-structures.
cyberpunkish adj. 1995 P. J. McAuley Under Pressure in Interzone (#91) Jan. 56/2 (review of Eric Brown’s Engineman) Although it is set in the same nada -continuum future history as his early short stories, it does not share their headlong nervy rush and the crammed exotica of their cyberpunkish scenarios.
cyborg v. 1995 P. J. McAuley Under Pressure in Interzone (#91) Jan. 57/2 (review of Fred Pohl & Thomas T. Thomas’ Mars Plus) It is set forty years after Roger Torraway was unwillingly cyborged to enable him to explore Mars without needing external life support systems.
egoboo n. 1999 P. J. McAuley Alien TV in Interzone (#142) Apr. 27/1 It’s great for egoboo, but nice to meet your readers, too.
escape pod n. 2002 P. McAuley Making History 87 ‘It fell into Saturn.’ ‘The scow did, yes. But before it took its dive, it travelled most of the way around the planet within the ring system, long enough to drop off its passengers and cargo in escape pods.’
first contact n. 1994 P. J. McAuley This Alien Earth in Interzone (#86) Aug. 54/2 (review of Gwyneth Jones’ North Wind) We must remember that White Queen was a First Contact novel in which the alien Aleutians came to Earth to trade, and were mistaken for invaders.
future history n. 1995 P. J. McAuley Under Pressure in Interzone (#91) Jan. 56/2 (review of Eric Brown’s Engineman) Although it is set in the same nada -continuum future history as his early short stories, it does not share their headlong nervy rush and the crammed exotica of their cyberpunkish scenarios.
gengineering n. 1998 P. J. McAuley Gardens of Saturn in Interzone (#137) Nov. 9/2 The original colonists had undergone extensive gengineering to adapt them to microgravity.
infodump n. 1995 P. J. McAuley Sequelitis in Interzone (#100) Oct. 59/2 (review of Ken MacLeod’s The Star Fraction) Most of the first two hundred pages are taken up with long discussions between Moh and Janis about what is going on and what it all means, interspersed with cluttered flashbacks and long infodumps.
kipple n. 1988 P. J. McAuley Transcendence in Amazing Stories Nov. 60 His files…had been filled to overflowing: appeals from UFO cultists…, jargon-riddled letters from space freaks, political appeals…. He couldn’t be bothered to wade through all the kipple to find the updates.
nanotech adj. 1995 P. J. McAuley Under Pressure in Interzone (#91) Jan. 56/3 After a utopian period in which cities were enlivened and reshaped by myriads of coordinated microscopic machines, nanotech plagues and information wars have decimated the world’s population.
posthuman adj. 1994 P. J. McAuley Dead Can Dance in Interzone (#89) Nov. 56/3 (review of Ian McDonald’s Necroville) The strongest and most satisfying sense of strangeness comes from those scenes set in the cold quietus of space, in which the revolt of the freedead and glimpses of an eternal, posthuman future are limned with concise precision.
pre-spaceflight adj. 1989 P. J. McAuley Jacob’s Rock in Amazing Stories Mar. 101 A long time ago, in the same history course where she had learnt about ramscoops, Elena had come across an ancient print encapsulating an otherwise forgotten pre-spaceflight cosmology.
shaggy god story n. 1995 P. J. McAuley True & the Real in Interzone (#96) June 56/1 They are Shaggy God stories, revealing that everything is run either by a wizard, or by a showman who runs the wizard from behind behind [sic] a curtain.
sharecrop n. 1995 P. J. McAuley Under Pressure in Interzone (#91) Jan. 57/2 (review of Frederik Pohl & Thomas T. Thomas’ Mars Plus) As sharecrop collaborations go, this yields more nutrition than most.
space elevator n. 1999 P. J. McAuley Alien TV in Interzone (#142) Apr. 27/2 He sat in the bar until his flight was called, chatting with a couple structural engineers whose company also had a share in the construction of the space elevator.
space field n. 2 1986 P. J. McAuley Airs of Earth in Amazing Stories Jan. 35 The doctor’s eager seeking expression reminded him of the wretches who sometimes haunted spacefields, drawn by the glamor [sic] of space travel but lacking the necessary talent or wealth.
splatterpunk n. 1 1994 P. J. McAuley A Comedy of Terrors in Interzone (#79) Jan. 62/3 What it most definitely is not is of the splatterpunk school of blood'n'guts'n’sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll which in the late 80s clawed its way to the centre of attention in the horror genre.
steampunk n. 2 1995 P. J. McAuley Sequelitis in Interzone (#100) Oct. 59/1 (review of Paul Di Filippo’s The Steampunk Trilogy) Unlike James Blaylock, whose steampunk sagas are characterized by a romantic vision of Victorian London as it should have been, a playground for eccentrics, fantastic devices and sinister occult conspiracies, Di Filippo’s acidly funny tales are funhouse mirrors which warp and satirize precisely recreated conventions and prejudices of the era with deadpan wit.
transhuman n. 1997 P. J. McAuley All Tomorrow’s Parties in Interzone (#119) May 12/2 It is the century when it became possible to become transhuman, when humanity made the first steps beyond the surface of a single planet.
Venusian n. 1 1995 P. J. McAuley Mythic Templates in Interzone (#98) Aug. 19/2 (interview) The belief that the Venusians are coming to save us from ourselves is simply an expression of people’s deep-rooted worries.
worldlet n. 1994 P. J. McAuley A Comedy of Terrors in Interzone (#79) Jan. 63/3 (review of Charles Sheffield’s Godspeed) Jay discovers that the device may contain the location of the long-lost Godspeed base, hidden somewhere in the swarm of worldlets where the spacers mine asteroids for precious light metals.