L. W. Currey, Inc.

McMullen, Sean. SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE. New York: Tor, [1999]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. (first combined, and first hardcover) edition. "VOICES IN THE LIGHT (1994) and the Ditmar Award-winning MIRRORSUN RISING (1995), both assembled and rewritten as SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE (1999), begin the Greatwinter sequence, an exceedingly complex ruined Earth narrative set 1700 years after a devastating nuclear World War Three, in a densely imagined Australia broken into many individual states linked by heliograph and wind-driven trains. The first Greatwinter had been generated by the Holocaust centuries earlier; but a new freezing-down is threatened. The main story involves the gradual perfection of a kind of Computer (here called the Calculor) whose components are slaved human calculators, along with an equally gradual movement towards the comprehension of the "Call" –- the title story of McMullen's collection is worked into sequence -– which periodically entraps humans and large animals into a fatal trek southwards to the ravening sea. Later volumes of the sequence shift their grounds: THE MIOCENE ARROW (2000) carries the narrative to a balkanized America, where Aliens immune to the Call threaten to end the human race; EYES OF THE CALCULOR (2001) is set again in Australia." - Peter Nicholls and John Clute, SFE (online). Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-755. Upper fore-edge corners lightly bumped, a nearly fine copy in fine dust jacket. (#153871).

Price: $50.00