River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures—one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.
]]>It all began 30 years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality from Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chataqua and Educational Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel) to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. It's inhabitants ranged from Dr. Alimantando, the town's founder and resident genius, to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother who just wants her own child grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo who has a mystical way with machines to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with and married the same woman.
Dozois's summation of the year in science fiction alone is worth the cost of admission to these annual collections. Along with his usual takes on publishing, literature, film, and more, Dozois delivers a retrospective on the state of science fiction in the year 2000. Contrary to those who claim science fiction is either dead or (at least) losing its heart and soul since the deaths of authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert J. Heinlein, Dozois emphatically argues that the health of SF has never been stronger. Discussing increased numbers of novels being published (he includes numbers to prove his point), discoveries of young new writers, ongoing evolution of the literature, and innovative viewpoints to mine, Dozois bubbles over with enthusiasm for the genre in which he made his name, as well as the coming century and its mysterious developments waiting to surprise and delight us. --Bonnie Bouman
Comprising:
The Juniper Tree by John Kessel;
Antibodies by Charles Stross;
The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin;
Saviour by Nancy Kress;
Reef by Paul J. McAuley;
Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick;
Crux by Albert E. Cowdrey;
The Cure for Everything by Severna Park;
The Suspect Genome by Peter F. Hamilton;
The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy-O by Michael Swanwick;
Radiant Green Star by Lucius Shepard;
Great Wall of Mars by Alastair Reynolds;
Milo and Sylvie by Eliot Fintushel;
Snowball in Hell by Brian Stableford;
On the Orion Line by Stephen Baxter;
Oracle by Greg Egan;
Obsidian Harvest by Rick Cook and Ernest Hogan;
Patient Zero by Tananarive Due;
A Colder War by Charles Stross;
The Real World by Steven Utley;
The Thing About Benny by M. Shayne Bell;
The Great Goodbye by Robert Charles Wilson;
Tendeleo's Story by Ian McDonald.
Cyberabad Days is a triumphant return to the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity, and a population where males outnumber females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas.
Cyberabad Days is a collection of seven stories, one Hugo nominee and one Hugo winner among them, as well as a thirty-one-thousand word original novella. As with everything Ian McDonald does, it is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
Featuring:
Sanjeev and Robotwallah:
Selected for both The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection and Year's Best SF 13
What happens to the boy-soldier roboteers when the war of Separation is over?
Kyle Meets the River
A young American in Varanasi learns the true meaning of nation building in the early days of a new country.
The Dust Assassin
Feuding Rajasthan water-rajas find that revenge is a slow, subtle process.
An Eligible Boy
An Indian take on Cyrano de Bergerac. Love and marriage should be easy with an Artificial Intelligence matchmaker.
The Little Goddess Hugo nominee Best Novella 2006
In near future Nepal, a child-goddess discovers what lies on the other side of godhood.
The Djinn s Wife Hugo Best Novelette and BSFA short fiction winner 2007
A minor Delhi celebrity falls in love with an artificial intelligence but is it a marriage of heaven and hell?
Vishnu at the Cat Circus
A genetically improved Brahmin child finds himself left behind as he grows through the final generation of humanity.
Cover Illustration © Stephan Martiniere
]]>KLING KLANG KLATCH.
It's enough to knock out anyone's stuffing. And in Toyland, that's no joke.
KLING KLANG KLATCH is set in a superficially glittering world that, if not exactly human, reflects humanity's desires, corruption, and racism at a fundamental level. Ian McDonald's (Desolation Road) blackly bizarre wit and David Lyttleton's (Punch) razor-sharp eye for detail have created a unique fantasy with a delicious streak of dark humor.
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