Most Popular Books by Ian McDonald

Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world''s greatest and strangest nations. Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling. Three characters, three time periods, three stories that bind together. Sao Paulo 2031: Edson is a self-made talent impresario one step up from the slums. A chance encounter draws him into the dangerous world of illegal quantum computing, but where can you run in a total surveillance society where every move, face, and centavo is constantly tracked? Rio 2006: Marcelina is an ambitious Rio TV producer looking for that big reality TV hit to make her name. When her hot idea sets her on the track of a disgraced World Cup soccer goalkeeper, she becomes enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy that threatens not just her life, but her very soul. The Amazon 1732: Father Luis is a Jesuit missionary sent into the maelstrom of 18th-century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest who has strayed beyond the articles of his faith and set up a vast empire in the hinterland. In the company of a French geographer and spy, what he finds in the backwaters of the Amazon tries both his faith and the nature of reality itself to the breaking point. Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, linked across time, space, and reality in a hugely ambitious story that will challenge the way you think about everything. Praise for Brasyl "McDonald''s outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America''s largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all... Chaotic, heartbreaking and joyous [a] must-read..." — Publishers Weekly "BRASYL is classic McDonald: a deep thinking, high-paced adventure story, exploring the quantum universe, combining sassy, believable characters with a captivating delight in language and storytelling. McDonald inhabits the Brazil – or rather, the Brazils – of this world and sweeps you along as no other writer in the field could manage." — The Guardian "A beautiful story, one that cries out to be read again and again. McDonald''s light is still shining brightly, and considering the consistent quality of his titles, we say long may it burn." — SciFi Now "Ian McDonald''s BRASYL, with its three storylines, is as close to perfect as any novel in recent memory. It works because of great characterization, but also because McDonald envisions Brazil as a dynamic, living place that is part postmodern trash pile, part trashy reality-TV-driven ethical abyss... and yet also somehow spiritual... McDonald''s novel is always in motion. This movement extends through time and alternate realities in ways both wonderful and wise, as the three storylines interlock for a satisfying and often stunning conclusion. McDonald has found new myths for old places; in doing so, he has cemented his reputation as an amazing storyteller." — Washington Post

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

Another day, another tram bomb. It seems everyone is after a piece of Turkey. But the shock waves from this random act of twenty-first-century terrorism will ripple far beyond Necatibey Cadessi. Welcome to the world of The Dervish House—the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. With a population pushing one hundred million, and Istanbul alone swollen to fifteen million, Turkey is the largest, most populous, and most diverse nation in the new Europe, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It''s a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and central Asia. The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, and three interconnected story strands all woven around the common core of the old dervish house of Aden Dede. A terror attack, a vision of djinn, a commodities scam, a hunt for half a miniature Koran that holds the key to new technology, and a quest for a creature from Arabic legend—that may not be so legendary after all. Praise for The Dervish House "To read McDonald is to fall in love with a place and to become drunk with it....If you''ve never read him, you''re in for a treat. If you''re a fan like me, you''ll be delighted anew. What a wonderful, wonderful book."— Boing Boing "The Dervish House is an audacious look at the shift in the power centers of the world and an intense vision of one possible future." — New York Times "Hugely adventurous and entertaining, sumptuously inventive and full of heart... it is likely to rank as Ian McDonald''s finest creative achievement." — Locus

Winner of the Philip K Dick Award "Filled with wondrous language, marvelous events." — Science Fiction Chronicle In Ireland, three generations of young women fight to control the powers coursing through their blood: the power to bring the mystical Otherworld into our world, and change it. Emily, Jessica and Enye must each face their dark side of human mythoconsciousness–and their own personal histories. But the forces of faerie are ever treacherous... Filled with vivid, passionate characters you will never forget, King of Morning, Queen of Day is a spellbinding fantasy of the real Ireland. "McDonald''s power as a storyteller lies in his stylistic versatility and intensity of language as well as in his capacity to create vivid and memorable characters. Highly recommended." — Library Journal "A brilliant book." —Charles de Lint

The scions of a falling house navigate a world of corporate warfare to maintain their family''s status on the Moon in this thrilling space opera. The Moon wants to kill you. Maybe it will kill you when the per diem for your allotted food, water, and air runs out, just before you hit paydirt. Maybe it will kill you when you are trapped between the reigning corporations—the Five Dragons—in a foolish gamble against a futuristic feudal society. On the Moon, you must fight for every inch you want to gain. And that is just what Adriana Corta did. As the leader of the Moon''s newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon''s Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family''s new status. Now, in the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation—Corta Helio—confronted by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana''s five children must defend their mother''s empire from her many enemies . . . and each other. Perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson and Ken Macleod alike. Praise for Luna: New Moon "McDonald''s never written a bad novel, but [ Luna: New Moon] is a great one." —Cory Doctorow "With an action narrative driving this political commentary, Luna is actually a fantastically fun read as well as an important one. "— Los Angeles Review of Books "McDonald creates a complex and fascinating civilization featuring believable technology, and the characters are fully developed, with individually gripping stories." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

It all began thirty 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 Chautauqua and Educational ''Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel), to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. Its 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. REVIEWS "Ian McDonald''s Desolation Road is one of my most personally influential novels. It''s an epic tale of the terraforming of Mars, whose sweep captures the birth and death of mythologies, economics, art, revolution, politics... Desolation Road pays homage to David Byrne''s Catherine Wheel, to Ray Bradbury''s entire canon and to Jack Vance, blending all these disparate creators in a way that surprises, delights, then surprises and delights again." – Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing) "McDonald''s first novel, it absolutely bowled me over when it came out, and while I have read everything he''s published since, and admire all of it and like most of it, this remains my favourite... some of the most beautiful prose imaginable... If you ever want to demonstrate how different science fiction can be, what an incredible range and sweep of things are published with a little spaceship on the spine, Desolation Road is a shining datapoint, because it isn''t like anything else and yet it is coming from a knowledge of what the genre can do and can be and making something new out of it." – Jo Walton (Tor.com) "This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do. Desolation Road is a rara avis... Extraordinary and more than that!" – Philip José Farmer

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 thrilling early work from the author of the critically-acclaimed New Moon trilogy "For ten years, I''ve been singing the praises of OUT ON BLUE SIX, Ian McDonald''s 1989 science fiction novel that defies description and beggars the imagination... this book is one of those once-in-a-generation, brain-melting flashes of brilliance that makes you fall in love with a writer''s work forever." — Cory Doctorow Hundreds of years from now, the world is perfect. The Compassionate Society guarantees happiness, peace and total personal fulfillment to its citizens, and those less than satisfied are guilty of Paincrime. Among them, count cartoonist Courtney Hall, who runs afoul of the Ministry of Pain when one of her cartoons hits a little too close to home. Pursued by the relentless Love Police, she drops down a rabbit hole into a counter-world of rebels, artists and enhanced raccoons. Out on Blue Six is a fast, funny, bizarre story of an almost-Utopia–and almost-Utopias make the best dystopias.

There is not one you. There are many yous. There is not one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one among billions of parallel earths. When Everett Singh''s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer: the Infundibulum, the map of all the parallel earths, the most valuable object in the multiverse. There are dark forces in the Plenitude of Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They''ve got power, authority, the might of ten planets—some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth—at their fingertips. He''s got wits, intelligence, and a knack for Indian cooking. Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate that his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner''s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter, Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness. Can they rescue Everett''s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot! Praise for Planesrunner "PLANESRUNNER is chock-full of awesome. Ian McDonald''s steampunk London blazes on a vast scale with eye-popping towers, gritty streets, and larger-than-life characters who aren''t afraid to fight for each other. The kind of airship-dueling, guns-blazing fantasy that makes me wish I could pop through to the next reality over, join the Airish, and take to the skies." —Paolo Bacigalupi "Science fiction rules in this stellar series opener about a boy who travels to parallel universes. What joy to find science fiction based on real scientific concepts... Shining imagination, pulsing suspense and sparkling writing make this one stand out." — Kirkus (Starred Review) "McDonald writes with scientific and literary sophistication, as well as a wicked sense of humor. Add nonstop action, eccentric characters, and expert universe building, and this first volume of the Everness series is a winner." — Publishers Weekly

In The Menace from Farside, Ian McDonald returns to his elegantly wound solar system of the twenty-second century, full of political intrigue and complicated families. Remember: Lady Luna knows a thousand ways to kill you, but family is what you know. Family is what works. Cariad Corcoran has a new sister who is everything she is not: tall, beautiful, confident. They''re unlikely allies and even unlikelier sisters, but they''re determined to find the moon''s first footprint, even if the lunar frontier is doing its best to kill them before they get there. Praise for Ian McDonald''s Luna series "McDonald''s never written a bad novel, but Luna: New Moon is a great one."—Cory Doctorow "With an action narrative driving this political commentary, Luna is actually a fantastically fun read as well as an important one. "— Los Angeles Review of Books At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"At once disturbing and beautiful . . . superbly realized." — The Times (London) Grandfather was a tree, Father grew trux, in fifteen colours. Mother could sing the double-helix song, sing it right into the hearts of living things and change them... The Land is a living, breathing, sentient world, where careful skills and talent can manipulate its very substance into a myriad different shapes and forms. This is the world in which Mathembe Fileli grows up, until the conflicts tearing her country apart shatter her village, her home and her family and scatter them to the four winds. Can Mathembe reunite her family in a world full of angels, talking trees, squalor and glory? "Ian McDonald takes on all the atrocity and strife of the 20th Century, radically displaces it, and dares to envision a means of change. It''s a brilliant achievement." — Locus "McDonald is a superior writer." — Booklist

"[A] multigenerational novella of two time-crossed lovers . . . Fans of science fiction who enjoy a dash of history and legend will savor this tender story." — Publishers Weekly A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it. In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found. Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate timelines overlap. "With echoes of H. G. Wells''s The Time Machine . . . Time Was weaves an exquisite spell of love, war and quantum physics that is timeless in its appeal." —Nina Allan, award-winning author of The Silver Wind "McDonald''s gift for storytelling is on full display as he captures the emotional nuances of a decades-long love while exploring issues of military and scientific might and the state of the contemporary book industry." — Booklist

"Cyberpunk''s first lyrical poem, mixing Kabbalah, manga, pop-culture trivia and Zen with enough style and dexterity to actually pull it off . . . [McDonald] does more in a page than most writers do in a chapter." —Neal Stephenson Words can control you, words can make you act against your own will...and words can kill. Ethan Ring discovers computer graphics with profound effects on human minds—fracters. Dark political forces want his power, and Ethan must face the consequences of his creation, and his actions. In search of redemption, he embarks on an ancient thousand-mile pilgrimage, but can he ever escape the forces that once controlled him, and can he resist the power of the deadly images tattooed onto his hands? This ebook edition also includes the 2008 novella, The Tear.

"For all the enjoyable intrigue he concocts, McDonald never lets us forget that the Moon is a frontier that basically just wants to kill us." ― Chicago Tribune A Dragon is dead. Corta Helio, one of the five family corporations that rule the Moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed. The remaining Helio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parent''s violent deaths, is now a ward—virtually a hostage—of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished off the surface of the moon. Only Lady Sun, dowager of Taiyang, suspects that Lucas Corta is not dead, and more to the point—that he is still a major player in the game. After all, Lucas always was the schemer, and even in death, he would go to any lengths to take back everything and build a new Corta Helio, more powerful than before. But Corta Helio needs allies, and to find them, the fleeing son undertakes an audacious, impossible journey—to Earth. In an unstable lunar environment, the shifting loyalties and political machinations of each family reach the zenith of their most fertile plots as outright war erupts. Luna: Wolf Moon continues Ian McDonald''s saga of the Five Dragons. "The fights and vengeance that follow are more vicious and intricate than anything in Game of Thrones, full of great acts of self-sacrifice and viciousness alike, brave cavalry charges and last stands, cowardice and avarice." ― Boing Boing

A FanFiAddict Most Anticipated Title! How to Train Your Dragon meets Mad Max in this story of an orphan in a fractured Southwest who just wants to ride a dinosaur under the lights. Come one, come all to the dinosaur rodeo! Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top. To become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American west to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A spell-binding tale of intrigue and empathy." — SF Site "A powerful and effective story." —Jo Walton They''re ancient, power, enigmatic, and here. Eight million alien Shian have come to Earth. Not as conquerors, or invaders, but as settlers. In exchange for their technology, they''re given places to live. One of those places in Northern Ireland, where eighty thousand Shian settlers disrupt the old, poisonous duality of Northern Irish life. The Shian remain aloof from the legacy of violence—until a Shian family is murdered down to the last child. Humans and aliens seem on a collision course, unless Andy Gillespie, ex-con, now Shian translator, can hunt down the killer before they strike again. But that''s not so easy in Northern Ireland...

The airship Everness makes a Heisenberg Jump to an alternate Earth unlike any her crew has ever seen. Everett, Sen, and the crew find themselves above a plain that goes on forever in every direction without any horizon. They''ve arrived on an Alderson Disc, an astronomical megastructure of incredibly strong material reaching from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Jupiter. Who could have built such a thing? The Jiju, the dominant species on a plane where the dinosaurs didn''t die out. They evolved, diversified, and have a twenty-five million year technology head-start on humanity. If they ever get off their plane, and into the worlds of the Plenitude... Everness has jumped right into the midst of a faction fight between rival nations, but can anyone be safe among the warring Jiju, and what is the price of their help? The crew of the Everness is divided in a very alien world, a world fast approaching the point of apocalypse. And back in the Plenitude of Known Worlds, Charlotte Villiers gathers allies and works her way deep into the corridors of power. Praise for Empress of the Sun "YA or not, the Everness series may be the most enjoyable ongoing series that SF currently has to offer." — Locus "The marvelous Everness series takes readers to a world with highly evolved dinosaurs in this third voyage through parallel universes... McDonald lets his imagination run rampant without abandoning credibility, tackling real scientific concepts such as confirmation bias, a feature lacking in far too much science fiction... Endlessly fascinating and fun." — Kirkus (Starred Review) "With strong characters covering all ages and genders, fine action sequences, and enough cool SF concepts that could fill a volume twice its size, EMPRESS OF THE SUN is an excellent entry in one of my favorite SF series." — SF Signal

The next installment of the multiple award-winning author''s exciting YA series. Everett Singh has escaped with the Infundibulum from the clutches of Charlotte Villiers and the Order, but at a terrible price. His father is missing, banished to one of the billions of parallel universes of the Panoply of All Worlds, and Everett and the crew of the airship Everness have taken a wild, random Heisenberg Jump to a random parallel plane. Everett is smart and resourceful, and, from a frozen earth far beyond the Plenitude, he plans to rescue his family. But the villainous Charlotte Villiers is one step ahead of him. The action traverses the frozen wastes of iceball earth; to Earth 4 (like ours, except that the alien Thryn Sentiency occupied the moon in 1964); to the dead London of the forbidden plane of Earth 1, where the remnants of humanity battle a terrifying nanotechnology run wild--and Everett faces terrible choices of morality and power. But Everett has the love and support of Sen, Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, and the rest of the crew of Everness. He learns that the deadliest enemy isn''t the Order, or the world-devouring nanotech Nahn--it''s yourself. From the Hardcover edition.

A Mars of the imagination, like no other, in a colorful, witty SF novel, taking place in the kaleidoscopic future of Ian McDonald''s Desolation Road, Ares Express is set on a terraformed Mars where fusion-powered locomotives run along the network of rails that is the planet''s circulatory system and artificial intelligences reconfigure reality billions of times each second. One young woman, Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim 12th, becomes the person upon whom the future -- or futures -- of Mars depends. Big, picaresque, funny; taking the Mars of Ray Bradbury and the more recent, terraformed Marses of authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Bear, Ares Express is a wild and woolly magic-realist SF novel, featuring lots of bizarre philosophies, strange, mind-stretching ideas, and trains as big as city blocks. REVIEWS " Ares Express is a long, adventure-filled, extravagantly colorful, often funny, quite moving, highly imaginative, excellently written story, set on a glorious Mars built partly of sharp-edged Kim Stanley Robinson-style extrapolation, but mostly of lush, loving, Ray Bradbury-style semi-SF, semi-Fantasy, Martian dreams.... I loved it wholeheartedly." – SF Site "Hugo-winner McDonald''s virtues have long been underappreciated by major North American publishers... McDonald''s fantastic Mars is vividly detailed and owes much to Bradbury''s Martian stories. Despite a bit of hand waving around technology that is glibly indistinguishable from magic, this sequel is entirely worthy of its rightly lauded predecessor [ Desolation Road]." – Publishers Weekly "One of the strangest, weirdest, fantastic reads of your life." – SF Crowsnest "McDonald is clever, lyrical... snarky, and utterly wondrous. The characters would be completely unbelievable in our world, but in theirs they are inevitable..." – Night Owl Reviews

Willkommen in Necroville! Im 21. Jahrhundert hat die Nanotechnologie die Welt verändert: Die Gesetze von Geburt und Tod sind außer Kraft gesetzt. Wer stirbt, kann problemlos wiedererweckt werden. Inzwischen machen die Wiedererweckten ein Drittel der Weltbevölkerung aus. Aber sie werden zu Stigmatisierten, zu Bewohnern gigantischer Städte, den Necrovilles, in denen sie unter ihresgleichen leben können. Sie entwickeln ihre ganz eigene, absolut fremdartige Kultur - mit furchtbaren Konsequenzen ...