Magellan Author:Colin Anderson The back cover hints at the ingenious subject, "Magellan is the last city-state on earth -- a society where perfection is being rapidly approached. It is the Eve of Eternity -- the day when the great computer complex Chronophage will assume dominion over the earth and grant every man wish. Euripides Che Fourthojuly 1070121, who has been avoiding... more » the tranquilizing drugs all are required to take, will be in for a very bad time indeed..."
Post-holocaust Earth contains a single city, Magellan (replete with futuristic buildings, universities, causeways, lifts, and the other standard future city accouterments). Society is highly advanced -- government is an extreme form of democracy (for the select few) -- people are paid to cast votes. Each citizen is assigned a Servant who supplies their every need. Hunger, death, disease, etc have been defeated.
Outside Magellan is the Old City -- ruins from the last war, a reminder of mankind's violent past. Magellan is the sign of everything that is good -- however, mankind yearns for a further evolutionary stage -- Eternity: a "perfect state" subsumed into a gigantic computer called the Chronophrage which sends its veritable power cord tentacles into Earth's very core.
Our "hero" Euri is an emotionally conflicted individual (he appears at points in the novel to look forward to Eternity but then lashes out in unusual ways). He visits the Old City and engages in illicit activities with the Gamblers. As a historian, his job is to reduce history into a form that can be subsumed by the Chronophage.
When Eternity arrives Colin Anderson immerses the reader in a bizarre allegorical landscape (sentient castles, a creepy Pied Piper-esque Sir Daddy, endless marshes, etc). Euri is seperated from his wife in Eternity and seeks to reunite with her.« less