Reality Dust by Stephen Baxter/Making History by Paul McAuley
01/10/2002 . Source: Jane Palmer 

Pub: Gollancz. 89/76 page paperback. Price: £ 4.99(UK). ISBN: 0-575-09306-3.

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Reality Dust by Stephen Baxter:

The young Hama Druz, whose interests lay in historical philosophy, has been charged with not restoring historical veracity to Earth after the Qax occupation but hunting down the pharaohs and jasofts who had been their collaborators instead.

With the aid of Nomi Ferrer, a military minder, he travels to Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Here one of the long-lived pharaohs has made a discovery of quantum magnitude and a Xeelee ship is in hot pursuit to prevent the unleashing of Callisto's reality-bending bacteria.

The writing has the stamp of a master SF writer, complete with a situation set up to examine the quantum mechanics involved. However, in a novella, the explanations are too lengthy. Though thoroughly done, so much detail slows down the plot.

The characters are finely drawn and consistent. One can only hope none of them eventually ended up like the Xeelee ship when the reality-bending bugs had finished with them.

Making History by Paul McAuley:

This short novel encompasses the history of the colony Paris on Dione, a moon of Saturn, in its 'Quiet War' against Earth's taxation. The narrator, Professor-Doctor Graves, arrives there to find out what happened to the ringleader of the revolt, Marisa Bassi.

He is immediately besotted by Demi Lacombe, another researcher. She has also attracted the lustful attention of Dev Veeder, the sadistic military commander from Earth.
It would be unfair to reveal any more of the plot because the author weaves its threads with such expertise, it is a pleasure to see them unravel into that increasingly rare thing: a story with a satisfying conclusion yet promise of unfinished business.

Without pseudo-scientific spiel or pleas to suspend disbelief, the exquisite city that had thrived in the far reaches of the Solar System where the sun is little more than a large star is totally credible.

To accommodate its low gravity the moon's residents, living in a world created by gene masters, can be twice the height of someone from Earth.

Everything in Paris is artificially manipulated and, perhaps because of this, of supreme beauty. An interesting point, given the way modern gene technology often aspires to a much more questionable potential. The irony that such a splendid achievement as Paris is systematically destroyed for the refusal to pay the taxes that had allowed its construction is inevitably all too human.

When Paul McAuley creates a world, as in his Fairyland, it is imaginative, unsettling and compulsive reading.
In many respects, both novellas are about occupation: one alien, one human.

Only the SF genre could supply the opportunity to explore the human psyche in such extenuating circumstances. In this case, Paul McAuley has the edge, remaining constant to the true nastiness human nature will always be capable of regardless of wherever our species may end up in the Cosmos.

The accuracy of his observation is in many ways self-defeating because if he is right, it's difficult to believe we will be going anywhere.

Jane Palmer