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The Holy Machine

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Holy Machine
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Chris Beckett
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:304
Dimensions(mm): Height 197,Width 128
Category/GenreScience fiction
ISBN/Barcode 9781782394037
ClassificationsDewey:823.92
Audience
General
Edition Main

Publishing Details

Publisher Atlantic Books
Imprint Corvus
Publication Date 5 December 2013
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

George Simling has grown up in the city-state of Illyria, an enclave of logic and reason founded as a refuge from the Reaction, a wave of religious fundamentalism that swept away the nations of the twenty-first century. Yet to George, Illyria's militant rationalism is as stifling as the faith-based superstition that dominates the world outside its walls. For George has fallen in love with Lucy. A prostitute. A robot. She might be a machine, but the semblance of life is perfect. To the city authorities, robot sentience is a malfunction, curable by erasing and resetting silicon minds. But George knows that Lucy is something more. His only alternative is to flee Illyria, taking Lucy deep into the religious Outlands where she must pass as human because robots are seen as mockeries of God, burned at the stake, dismembered, crucified. Their odyssey leads them through betrayal, war and madness, ending only at the monastery of the Holy Machine...

Author Biography

Chris Beckett is a former university lecturer and social worker living in Cambridge. He is the winner of the Edge Hill Short Fiction Award, 2009, for The Turing Test, the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2013, for Dark Eden and was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Novel of the Year Award for Mother of Eden in 2015 and for Daughter of Eden in 2016.

Reviews

Beckett examines the interface between human and machine, rationalism and the religious impulse, with sparse prose and acute social commentary of a latter-day Orwell * Guardian * Let's waste no time: this book is incredible * Interzone * One of the most accomplished novel debuts to attract my attention in some time... A triumph * Asimov's * Should be on the radar of anyone who professes concern for science fiction as a literary form * Alastair Reynolds *