O'Guilin, Peadar
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of Irish author Peadar Ó Guilín (1968- ), who began to publish work of genre interest with "Charly's Ark" in Albedo One for Summer 1994; much of his short work was assembled as Forever in the Memory of God and Other Stories (coll 2014). O'Guilin's first series, the Young Adult Bone World Trilogy beginning with The Inferior (2007), is located in what may be a Pocket Universe, possibly Underground, or perhaps within a Generation Starship; in this venue, the "Human" tribe finds itself in constant conflict with non-human groups, and a strange woman falls (it seems) from the Roof. Various groups speak to each other with the aid of a magic box, which may be a Universal Translator. The plot thickens in The Deserter (2011), where, not unpredictably, some disease or malfunction seems to have afflicted the governors (or governing AIs) who control life below the Roof, and the City embedded above the hollow world has become dysfunctional.
O'Guilin's second series, the Young Adult Call sequence beginning with The Call (2016), focuses on an unspecifiedly Near Future Ireland quarantined from the rest of the world by a mysterious wall, setting up contesting energies of the sort often found in the work of Robert Charles Wilson. In The Invasion (2018), a "Call" to penetrate the barrier continues to intensify, and "Wilsonian" Transcendence beckons as Crosshatch intersections proliferate; but in O'Guilin's version the land into which teenagers are drawn is something very like Faerie [for Crosshatch and Faerie see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], where they suffer metamorphosis, which may be very distinct from becoming adult. [JC]
Peadar Ó Guilín
born Dublin, Ireland: 12 June 1968
works
series
Bone World Trilogy
- The Inferior (Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling, 2007) [Bone World Trilogy: hb/]
- The Deserter (Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling, 2011) [Bone World Trilogy: pb/Richard Collingridge]
- The Volunteer (Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling, 2014) [Bone World Trilogy: pb/Fiona Jayde]
The Call
- The Call (London: Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling, 2016) [The Call: hb/Blacksheep]
- The Invasion (London: Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling, 2018) [The Call: hb/Blacksheep]
collections
- Forever in the Memory of God and Other Stories (no place given: Peadar Ó Guilín, 2014) [coll: ebook: na/]
links
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Crosshatch; Faerie.
- Picture Gallery
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