A stunning idea—the Calculator's as real as if McMullen had built it in his backyard—with an utterly convincing setting, breathtaking developments, and a captivating narrative.” —Kirkus Reviews (pointer review) Booklist (starred review) Publishers Weekly San Diego Union-Tribune The Bulletin
The Barnes & Noble Review The Centurion's Empire , was a lively debut featuring one of the most adventurous and luxuriant time-traveling historical novel romps in recent memory. In his follow-up book, Souls in the Great Machine , McMullen returns to tell the innovative, complex, and fascinating tale of a land ruled by its own library.
Two thousand years into the future, the world is technologically backward, and people travel mostly on trains that rely on the "pedal-power" of passengers. This future Australia is comprised of many mayoral lands, the largest of which is Rochester, also home to the "Libris," a great library that dominates all aspects of the culture. People study cataloguing and mathematics in the hopes of becoming a "dragon" in the Libris. Most of the lands other than Rochester suffer from the "Call," a sporadic, sweeping telepathic command that draws all untethered humans and mammals to the southeast. Houses are built without southeast doors and with high walls in that direction, and people must wear call-timers that will fire anchors to hold them from wandering off zombie-like, never to be seen again.
Zarvora Cybeline, the Highliber of Libris, is a charismatic and deadly woman who has won many duels in three years of rule, all so that her innovative project can come to fruition. The Calculor is this new world's first computer, built out of abacus-using prisoners who operate independently in the deep hidden cubicles, and who are sometimes gagged and beaten if they perform improper calculations. Taxfrauds,embezzlers, and other enemies of the state are drafted into the great machine, where they are given new names such as MULTIPLIER 8, ADDER 17, and FUNCTION 9. The Calculor is also capable of decoding secret messages sent between noblemen's spies and winning at the game "Champions," but Zarvora's real purpose for the Calculor is initially kept a secret. Only she realizes that machines programmed centuries earlier are still working efficiently on the moon, and will soon finish a gigantic mirror originally intended to curtail global warming. She believes that the Greatwinter that nearly destroyed the world is about to be unleashed again when the mirror is completed, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth as a new ice age descends.
McMullen's strengths as a storyteller lie in his ability to take the reader smoothly from fantastical elements and offbeat social ideology to prophetic science fiction in an inviting manner. The landscape here is sometimes primal and always strange, but we get hints of familiarity in tiny details left scattered among the oddities. The Calculor is a brilliant and convincing contrivance that underscores this new culture perfectly, even while the unknown siren's "call" keeps an added mysterious ingredient in the narrative. McMullen's characters are engaging and credible, with a lyrical depth that makes even the nameless "function" characters a significant part of the greater whole of this weird and enticing world: We never doubt that the great machine has a soul of its own. Souls in the Great Machine is a fine addition to a body of work that is already filled with entertaining, daring, and wholly intriguing novels.
—Tom Piccirilli
Fast-paced and amusing, McMullen's latest novel (after The Centurion's Empire) is an action-packed adventure in the tradition of world-building SF. Set 20 centuries in the future, in a postnuclear winter society, the tale centers on the Calculor, a fantastic calculating machine powered by nameless human components who remain imprisoned within its workings. As the Highliber of Libris--aka head librarian--Zavora is the de facto ruler of the Calculor, and thus of all Confederation society, packing more political clout than the mayor himself. Through the Calculor's number crunching, Zavora has discovered that the world will be plunged into another "Greatwinter," or ice age, unless she can gain control of a satellite in Earth's orbit, which seems nearly impossible given her society's limited technology. Aiding Zavora in her mission are the Abbess Theresla, who has an innate ability to resist "the Call," a psychic phenomena that forces all humans to follow its deadly beckoning; Lemorel, a spirited young street fighter and librarian within the Libris; and Johnny Glasken, a rogue and former prisoner of the Calculor. McMullen's dramatic pacing and believable characters ensure that readers will enjoy Zavora's quest through a well-wrought, richly imagined multidimensional world. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
...[A] complex, well-crafted novel filled with action and adventure. It entertains, but it is also a sugarcoated pill that contains a rather dark and bitter center not easily digested.Locus
Far-future tale from the Australia author of The Centurion's Empire (1998). By 3931 a.d., a low-tech Australian civilization is dominated by the great library at Rochester, the only city that's free of the Call, a mysterious psychic compulsion that intermittently sweeps across the countryside, gathering all people and animals not securely tethered; those who are affected trek mindlessly to the south and are never seen again. One of the dwellers here, the dynamic and innovative chief librarian, Zarvora Cybeline, has fought many duels to defend her progressive ideas—but her greatest secret is the Calculor, a huge computer composed of an abacus array mechanically linked to human operators and controls. With the Calculor, she painlessly raises revenues by exposing embezzlers and tax cheats (they're inducted into the Calculor), decodes the secret messages the nobles use to conceal their plotting, and improves the efficiency of the beamflash signal-tower network by which information is exchanged. Zarvora effectively rules the confederacy, though nobody has yet grasped that fact. There is, however, an urgent problem: machines working on the Moon are building a huge mirror-band that, once placed to girdle the Earth, will reflect heat away from the planet. Programmed centuries ago, the system was designed to ameliorate global warming. But the planet is no longer too warm, and the reflector, now nearing completion, would precipitate another Greatwinter like the one that destroyed the previous civilization. Among Zarvora's other concerns: contact with people who can resist the Call; treachery; war; and further revelations about her people and her world. A stunning idea—theCalculor's as real as if McMullen had built it in his backyard—with an utterly convincing setting, breathtaking developments, and a captivating narrative.
