Sacrifice of Fools

By Ian McDonald

Protestants, Catholics, aliens . . . Just another division in Belfast

When the alien Shian come to Earth, they offer technology in exchange for a home. Belfast, Northern Ireland, is where eighty thousand of them settle. From that point on, the already-divided city takes on yet another partition. The Shian integrate themselves into the city’s culture, becoming one more set of faces in the crowd. Now, a series of ghastly murders has stunned the city and affected both the Shian and the humans.

Andy Gillespie, a Loyalist and former criminal, is immediately named the main suspect in the killings. To clear his name, he must find the true perpetrators, and in order to do so, he must get help from any source possible—be it Protestant, Catholic, or extraterrestrial.

Shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, Sacrifice of Fools depicts a city at once familiar and peculiar. Belfast resident Ian McDonald’s interpretation of his hometown is one in which the people live their lives to the best of their abilities; one in which they have to deal with the basics of life with extraterrestrials, from language barriers to surprising new fetishes. Here, Belfastians discover how little things truly change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jul 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480432161

Ian McDonald

IAN MCDONALD was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He has won the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His novels include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House, the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. In 2019, Ian was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by the European Science Fiction Society. He now lives in Belfast.

Reviews for Sacrifice of Fools

[schant-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tiptree shortlist 1997. A bit rant-y and confusing in places but pretty good.

[macha_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

published in 1996 but set in Northern Ireland in the 2000s decade, this novel marries a story about technologically-advanced aliens choosing to settle on Earth to a tale about Andy Gillespie, an ex-con from Belfast who is drawn into the aliens' orbit. human law and Shian law clash after violence ensues, Gillespie sets out as a kind of advocate to investigate, and the law charges after him trying to pin the crime on him. the result, fictionally speaking, is an entertaining mix of genres: detective sf. McDonald is an important writer of sf, and this is for him a very different and intriguing offering that considers what cross-cultural traits might be common to two distinct species of hunters disparate in chemistry and anatomy, sexuality and views on violence.

[robertday_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This would be a fairly standard first contact story, save for one thing; the author has set it in his adoptive homeland of Northern Ireland, presciently in the time of the Good Friday Agreement (which wasn't actually signed until two years after the novel was written). All the features are there; an uneasy peace, dissident terrorist groups persuing their own agendas, and a non-sectarian police force with its own uneasy past. McDonald even almost gets the name right ('Northern Ireland Police Service' vs. 'Police Service of Northern Ireland' - though that wasn't going to be difficult, let's be honest.)Using that backdrop adds to the human protagonists' motivations, conflicts and problems, and elevates what might have been an ordinary novel into something rather different.