Chris Beckett’s novel, The Holy Machine, was published in the UK in July 2010, by Corvus. His short story collection, The Turing Test, won the Edge Hill Short Fiction Award for 2009, from a shortlist that included collections by Booker Prize winner Anne Enright and Whitbread Prize winner Ali Smith. This site has details of all his published fiction, and the full text of several stories It will also provide the latest news about Chris’ writing, and allow you to get in touch with Chris or his agent.
Featured book:
The Holy Machine (Corvus 2010 edition)
The new UK/World edition of Chris Beckett’s first novel will be published by Corvus in July 2010.
George Simling lives in Illyria, a city state founded by scientists and other refugees from the religious fundementalism that has swept the rest of the world. But Illyria is getting just as intolerant and narrow-minded as the countries that its inhabitants fled from.
George’s guilty secret is his obsession with Lucy, a syntec, a robot built for sex. When Lucy shows signs of self-awareness, George has two choices: to allow her to be ‘wiped clean’ (to have her emerging mind erased) or to escape with her to the outside world, the ‘Outlands’. But there she will have to pass herself off as human, or face certain destruction, because to Outlanders robots are demons, abominations, mockeries of God’s creation.
George sets out on a journey that leads him, through betrayal and madness, to the monastery of the Holy Machine, in a story that reflects on science and religion and the relationship between body and soul.
( US editions, published by Wildside in 2004 and by Cosmos in 2009, are still also available. Details here.)
Find out more!