Tor, 2014, 264 p.

This is a strange concoction, part SF (with more than a touch of Altered History,) part history of the author’s family – including the mystical implications of being born in a caul – part disquisition on the art of fiction.

The first section seems to be from the viewpoint of a child living in a post US Civil War era where the North is ruled by a queen and there are Martians apparently threatening Earth. (Or is that bit an extract from the SF novel being discussed?) The second revolves around a Second World War secret endeavour. The third is less clear cut, with the narrator (or Park himself) looking into an incident in his family’s past that may, or may not, have involved aliens.

The later sections refer to and turn back on the earlier ones, with characters appearing again in different guises, or are the same but in a different situation, all mixed in with the author’s family’s convoluted history. This metafictional aspect of the book does make it slightly less than a straightforward read. And hence difficult to sum up succinctly.

At one point we read, “It’s all metafiction, all the time.” Being told this doesn’t make it any easier on the reader, who, in any case, has already worked out this is metafiction.

A recurring theme is the Battle of the Crater at the Siege of Petersburg, about which I had some previous knowledge but Park subverts that when at one point, in an Altered History twist, instead of a mine exploding, the crater is said to have been created by the explosion of a locomotive on lines dug under the entrenchments to provide swift access to the city when the projected attack is to take place. (Or is this some sort of joke about the Underground Railroad?)

Park does present some aperçus. “One of the interesting things about autistic people is the insight they provide into ourselves. We all have strategies to distract ourselves from what we cannot bear.”

In his capacity as a tutor of writing, our narrator – we are again perhaps intended to assume this is Park himself – says, “I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told.” Park is poking fun at himself here, I suppose, for All Those Vanished Engines is very far from a simple story, simply told.

Pedant’s corner:-  “The tiny incised pattern on the plates …. were not identical” (The tiny patterns….,) “I went upstairs and smote for a while, trying to get Captain Lukas to finally make a stand” (‘smote’ here does not seem to be the past tense of smite,) “the kaiser’s government” (the Kaiser’s,) “a font of the kind of wisdom” (the phrase is ‘a fount of wisdom’,) “Burnsides’s Corps” (the general was called Burnside; so ‘Burnside’s Corps’.) “I shined the light” (shone, please.)

Harper Collins, 1993, 254p.

On a planet colonised by humans some time ago the Aboriginals are routinely given drugs and cosmetic surgery to make them more or less indistinguishable from their masters. They have become so human many of them have been converted to Christianity. From a British perspective it is tempting to see this aspect of the novel as an allegory of Empire and the morality of colonisation, of manipulating the natives – even unconsciously – is always in the subtext.

Simon Marayam is an envoy from Earth, which has suffered an environmental and population decline. He becomes involved with Katharine Styreme, a beautiful, piano playing Aboriginal, just as a rebellion against human rule is starting. The situation becomes more intricate when it becomes apparent that the planet’s other sentient inhabitants, the Coelestis of the title, were not totally wiped out by the human settlers. Before humans arrived the Coelestis had exercised a form of mind control over the Aboriginals, who considered them Gods. The drugs the aboriginals are given negate this effect.

Styreme and Mayaram are imprisoned by the rebels and as her drugs wear off she becomes increasingly detached from what Mayaram perceives as reality and more under the influence of the Coelestis.

Park employs various points of view to narrate his story and one of the strengths of the book is the divergence of the views of humans and Aboriginals over the same event(s). Styreme’s perceptions are depicted as more and more dream-like. This is one of the best explorations of what it might mean to be alien I can remember reading.

The planet itself is less convincing. Since it is tide-locked, life can only exist within a few hundred miles of the terminator. Yet the landscape and weather are described as if they were somewhere on 20th century Earth. A journey into the darkside does give us a glimpse over the horizon of a hellish Black Hole at the centre of the galaxy, though.

On a technical level as time went by I found Park’s stylistic tic of repeating a phrase within a sentence of it already being used – sometimes as the very next phrase – increasingly wearing.

Despite the resolution being what you might expect of a traditional SF story, Coelestis does not have the overall feel of Science Fiction. It is, however, a novel which transcends quibbles, illuminating about the self-deceptions people have about their relationships, how others see them, and how they believe only what they want to.