The Invisable Country

Paul J. McAuley

A collection of short Sci-Fi stories, many are interconnected, (some more losley than others) and with enough creative reasoning they could all be considered interconnected.

The Majority of the stories include little blue genetically engineered servants called dolls that are based mostly on baboon DNA. I kept having mental pictures of the Pentium Aliens from the Intel adds. All of the stories include some form of Genetic Engineering.

One story is based around a corporate war over genetic patents, it has mention of something called a Micro-Saur (small pet dinoursaurs), these are mentioned in one of the sotries about the dolls. Two of the stories are about a doctor, one set in 15th Century Venice, the other set in the 1990's in mexico, basically he has an ultra slow aging process from selling his soul to a devil.

The doctor is more of a mad scientist and is into genetics, he goes into deep freeze prior to dying, so it could be reasoned that he had something to do with the creation of the dolls, hence interconnecting all stories.

There is nothing wrong with the writing abilities of the author, and the really cool bit is that there is a little bit written about the story after the story. Another plus is the foreword is written by Kim Newman, turns out they are friends and often hang out together at Sci-Fi conventions.

The Cover art is somewhat lame and it has that annoying metallic writing that makes scans look crappy.