India 2047

Cyberabad Days return to the India of 2047 as featured in Ian McDonald's acclaimed novel River of Gods. A new, muscular superpower of two billion people in an age of new nations, 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. Cyberabad Days is a cycle of seven stories, three Hugo nominees and one Hugo winner among them, as well as an original thirty-one-thousand-word novella. Welcome back to the fierce, dazzling, thrilling world of River of Gods. Featuring: Sanjeev and Robotwallah (selected for both The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection and Year's Best SF 13): A boy-soldier roboteer from the War of Separation learns that war may be hell, but peace is harder. 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: In the time of water-wars, the daughter of a powerful water-raja learns that revenge revenge is a slow and subtle art. An Eligible Boy: Love and marriage is never easy when there four men for every women. But it should be easy with an Artificial Intelligence matchmaker. Shouldn't it? The Little Goddess (Hugo nominee for best novella of 2006): In Kathmandu, a child-goddess discovers what lies on the other side of godhood and what divinty really means. The Djinn's Wife (Hugo for best novelette and BSFA short-fiction winner of 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. Praise for Cyberabad Days: "The sheer number of ideas and plotlines can sometimes make McDonald's novels seems dense, but the stories here are sharp, focused and witty." -BBCFocus "McDonald's India engulfs you with an overwhelming, perfumed, stinky embrace. A hugely impressive collection. Seven nifty, witty stories." -SFX "McDonald excels at conveying, in a gorgeous melange of sensory impressions, an India transformed by AIs, nanotech, robots and cybernetics: the subcontinent is chaotic and lurid, shot through with devotion to eternal Hindu gods and divided by internecine conflict. McDonald gives a refreshing take on the future from a non-western viewpoint." -The Guardian

A superpower of two billion people, a dozen new nations from Kerela to the Himalayas, 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. This is India in 2047, one hundred years after its birth. In the new nation of Bharat, in the face of the failure of the monsoon, nine lives are swept together - a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout - to decide the future of Mother India. 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. A war is fought, a love is betrayed, a mystery from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on. Praise for River of Gods: "A superb, complex, Indian future." - Cory Doctorow "[A] bold, brave look at India on the eve of its centennial, 41 years from now...McDonald takes his readers from India's darkest depths to its most opulent heights, from rioting mobs and the devastated poor to high-level politicians and lavish parties. He handles his complex plot with flair and confidence and deftly shows how technological advances and social changes have subtly changed lives. RIVER OF GODS is a major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best sf novelists of our time." -Washington Post "[P]erhaps his most accomplished novel to date… reminiscent of William Gibson in full-throttle cultural-immersion mode, packed with technical jargon, religious and sociological observation and allusions to art both high and low… RIVER OF GODS amply rewards careful consideration and more than delivers its share of straight-ahead entertainment. Already a multiple-award nominee following its British publication, McDonald's latest ranks as one of the best science fiction novels published in the United States this year." -San Francisco Chronicle "A staggering achievement, brilliantly imagined and endlessly surprising ... A brave, brilliant and wonderful novel." -Christopher Priest, The Guardian