Paul McAuley is one of the secret success stories of recent British SF. He taught Biology at St. Andrews University while having six novels published since 1988. His first collection ‘King of the Hill’ brought together tales that had previously appeared in such magazines as Amazing, Asimovs, F & SF and Interzone. With Kim Newman he co-edited the excellent anthology ‘In Dreams’. In 1996 he won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his book ‘Fairyland’. During a signing session at Waterstones in Peterborough, as part of their ‘Fantasic Worlds’ promotion, I asked him a few questions about his work.

     First I asked him if winning the Arthur C. Clarke award had contributed to his decision to give up the day job and become a full-time writer?

     No I had just finished in Stirling before receiving the Award. What it did do is help ‘Fairyland’ become a 'Waterstones Recommends’ in the summer. Hopefully that introduced my work to a new section of reader’s.

     Your second novel had different titles on either side of the Atlantic, why was that?

     My books were coming out in America first, I’d sold them to Del Ray and they were being re-printed for Britain. So ‘Of the Fall’ was the original title, but the editor over here didn’t like it. So I had a day to come up with an alternative title. ‘Secret Harmonies’ was what I came up with.

     Was your Martian novel, ‘Red Dust’ as fun to write as it reads?

     Oh yes, with it's short chapters I saw it as a cross between a comic book and a kung-fu movie. With the cowboys and the computer-Elvis, I knew there were going to be various scenes which would be treats to write. So I had all these rewards to work towards.

     Your book after that, ‘Pascquales Angel’ was set in Renaissance Italy. Was that a period you’d been interested in?

     I’d always been interested in Leonardo Da Vinci and that whole weird time. That period was more advanced in many ways than people suspect. For instance they had percussion cap pistols in the 14th century. Leonardo is famous for having designed so many strange things like his ornithopters and helicopter. Many of those concepts might have worked if they’d had modern materials. There’s an idea that they didn't have steam power because they had slaves. Almost all the characters in ‘Pascquales Angel’ are actual historical people.

     What are you working on now?

     I'm halfway through writing a trilogy, the first book should be out in September 1997. Its about a magic kid on a world with no humans. All the 'people' are actually animals who have been evolved into higher forms. It's set millions of years in the future and is on an artificial world with an actual Eye of God looking down upon them. This Black Hole is what humans have disappeared into when they achieved transcendence. There are also religious wars going on due to explorers returning from the Andromeda Galaxy creating a number of heresies. The end of the trilogy is tied into time travel, and that's all I can tell you.

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