I have only previously read two of Paul McAuley's science fiction novels, Fairyland and Austral, both impressive, interesting and different. On the other hand, the ending was so deliberately and pointlessly awful, it ruined the entire book for me. The background to this world and the creatures upon it are revealed, and the story’s science-fictional element is made clear.

Any more than 250x the mass of the sun collapsed into black holes; the rest either burned out or blew up in supernovae that scattered newly-forged metals into space. Paul manages to do that clever thing of telling stories from non-human perspectives and yet still embody human characteristics – a thirst for knowledge and understanding, love, friendship, envy, and even bureaucracy! Until now, when it has been revived as an ebook edition by the Gollancz Gateway, some 33 years after its first publication, in this wonderful, strange, terrible future of ours. Beyond the Burn Line is a beautifully crafted brew of First Contact, Uplift and the ecological novel. Morgan allows the differences between Sal's world and ours to unfold at an unhurried pace that eschews infodumps and exposition for glimpses of complexities and consequences that Sal, like other larvals, often doesn't quite understand.

It contains several reflections on the power of dominant narratives and the disturbance caused when they are overturned; and it asks the reader to participate in understanding the world. Humans (referred to as ogres) have been extinct far longer, which, until things are explained further, made the tag line of the book 'What will become of us? Later the story moves along some decades in the future and switches again in perspective, though Pilgrim's discoveries are still its main focus. Maybe if the author had had more room (more pages) he would have fleshed out parts of the story that to me he barely touched, but maybe that's his style - this is the first book I've read by him).

At one point, bears achieved sentience, but their civilization also collapsed when a plague drove them back to a feral state. Now a new continent-wide society of these former slaves is developing, digging in the ruins of Ogre—that is, human—society, and recreating the techne they find there. There are (slightly heavy-handed) messages about colonisation and the treatment of indigenous people - though perhaps there is not enough exploration of what being indigenous really means under the circumstances of the novel's storyline. advanced by Peter Davies and others, that all of life on Earth may be decended from microbial life that first evolved on Mars, and the rivalries, politics and commercial chicanery Mariella must navigate to arrive at the truth. In summary then, as with the best of Paul’s work, Beyond the Burn Line is inventive and smart, engaging and logical.This provides more insight into his world, adding to growing indications that these “persons,” as they are often described, are quite different from us. My sympathies for the main protaganist in the second story started to wane as I realised I was possibly being set up for another sequel to the story in the coming year? The work that Pilgrim wishes to complete is an investigation of “the visitors,” astral beings who are seen by many but with whom no one has ever engaged. It is only as this journey progresses that I realised that it was something more than this story of animals with human traits at first suggested. This part is a bit less engaging, being not from the raccoons' point of view, but still quite interesting.

Part One is the story of Pilgrim Saltmire, a sentient raccoon who lives 200,000 years after humanity's extinction. The field of view is tiny, about the size of a grain of dust held at arms length, but it's packed with galaxies shining with light 4. It's 2 short stories in a shared universe that have been padded out to novellas with irreverent sidetracks and excessive description. It reads like a nineteenth century novel about a young scientist following a lead and is a bit meandering. There are the usual near future dystopias, far out space opera's, climate fiction or morality tales set on other planets.The bears' former slaves, a peaceable, industrious and endlessly curious people, believe that they have inherited the bounty and beauty of their beloved Mother Earth. Their fall to barbarism has freed their slaves, racoons also modified by the whims of lost humanity. And yet, the novel’s concluding pages beautifully echo and reinforce the mystery at the centre of the first part. A encounter during a riot brought Amon Brightbourne together with Raissa Hopeland on a mad rooftop hunt for a family heirloom: a Tesla Coil. It was, and still is, a somewhat low-rent resort, but there was a park with a boating lake, a miniature railway and a small zoo, and a long promenade with a theatre, a pier and miles of sandy beaches from which, on clear days, the misty coast of France could be glimpsed at the horizon.