Background
Paul McAuley was born on April 23, 1955 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.
(The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Ju...)
The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, founded by descendants of refugees from Earth’s repressive regimes, the Outers, have fallen to the Three Powers Alliance of Greater Brazil, the European Union, and the Pacific Community. A century of enlightenment, rational utopianism and exploration of new ways of being human has fallen dark. Outers are herded into prison camps and forced to collaborate in the systematic plundering of their great archives of scientific and technical knowledge, while Earth’s forces loot their cities and settlements and ships, and plan a final solution to the ‘Outer problem.’ But Earth’s victory is fragile, and riven by vicious internal politics. While seeking out and trying to anatomise the strange gardens abandoned in place by the Outers’ greatest genius, Avernus, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her. The diplomat Loc Ifrahim soon discovers that profiting from victory isn’t as easy as he thought. And on Earth, in Greater Brazil, the democratic traditions preserved and elaborated by the Outers have infected a population eager to escape the tyranny of the great families who rule them. Meanwhile, in the outer reaches of the Solar System, a rag-taggle group of refugees struggle to preserve the last of the old ideals. And on Triton, fanatical members of a cabal prepare for a final battle that threatens to shatter the future of the human species. After a conflict fought to contain the expansionist, posthuman ambitions of the Outers, the future is as uncertain as ever. Only one thing is clear. No one can escape the consequences of war -- especially the victors.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616141964/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(A novel of a savage future war, perfect for fans of Alast...)
A novel of a savage future war, perfect for fans of Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton. Humanity's future rests on the shoulders of a Child from the past, and she must never know of the battles being fought for her ... In the system of Fomalhaut, a war is being fought. The Quicks came long ago, refugees from the Solar System. The True arrived later, to find a declining civilisation and a system ripe for the taking. Then the Ghosts appeared, no longer human, unknowable, powerful and determined to drive out the Quick and the True. The battle continues, but the outcome is uncertain. Three lives will intersect, because there is something at the centre of their universe, something dangerous and growing and powerful. Something that is worth fighting for. And it will change everybody's life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575100753/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroi...)
In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroid. His ship has been stolen, his family kidnapped or worse, and all he has on his side is a semi-intelligent spacesuit. The only member of the crew to escape, Hari has barely been off his ship before. It was his birthplace, his home and his future. He's going to get it back. McAuley's latest novel is set in the same far-flung future as his last few novels, but this time he takes on a much more personal story. This is a tale of revenge, of murder and morality, of growing up and discovering the world around you. Throughout the novel we follow Hari's viewpoint, and as he unravels the mysteries that led to his stranding, we discover them alongside him. But throughout his journeys, Hari must always bear one thing in mind. Nobody is to be trusted.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575100818/?tag=2022091-20
2014
(Confluence - a long, narrow, artificial world, half ferti...)
Confluence - a long, narrow, artificial world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. A world beyond the end of human history, served by countless machines, inhabited by 10,000 bloodlines who worship their absent creators, riven by a vast war against heretics. This is the home of Yama, found as an infant in a white boat on the world's Great River, raised by an obscure bureaucrat in an obscure town in the middle of a ruined necropolis, destined to become a clerk - until the discovery of his singular ancestry. For Yama appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the revered architects of Confluence, able to awaken and control the secret machineries of the world. Pursued by enemies who want to make use of his powers, Yama voyages down the length of the world to search for answers to the mysteries of his origin, and to discover if he is to be the saviour of his world, or its nemesis.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/057511942X/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(The great geoengineering projects have failed. The world ...)
The great geoengineering projects have failed. The world is still warming, sea levels are still rising, and the Antarctic Peninsula is home to Earth's newest nation, with life quickened by ecopoets spreading across valleys and fjords exposed by the retreat of the ice. Austral Morales Ferrado, a child of the last generation of ecopoets, is a husky: an edited person adapted to the unforgiving climate of the far south, feared and despised by most of its population. She's been a convict, a corrections officer in a labour camp, and consort to a criminal, and now, out of desperation, she has committed the kidnapping of the century. But before she can collect the ransom and make a new life elsewhere, she must find a place of safety amongst the peninsula's forests and icy plateaus, and evade a criminal gang that has its own plans for the teenage girl she's taken hostage. Blending the story of Austral's flight with the fractured history of her family and its role in the colonisation of Antarctica, Austral is a vivid portrayal of a treacherous new world created by climate change, and shaped by the betrayals and mistakes of the past. 'Paul McAuley's balanced grasp of science and literature, always a rare attribute in the writer of prose fiction, is combined with the equally rare ability to look at today's problems and know which are really problems, and what can be done about them.' William Gibson
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1473217318/?tag=2022091-20
(The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have co...)
The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have come to help, gave humanity access to worlds littered with ruins and scraps of technology left by long-dead client races. But although people have found new uses for alien technology, that technology may have found its own uses for people. The dissolute scion of a powerful merchant family, and a woman living in seclusion with only her dog and her demons for company, have become infected by a copies of a powerful chunk of alien code. Driven to discover what it wants from them, they become caught up in a conflict between a policeman allied to the Jackaroo and the laminated brain of a scientific wizard, and a mystery that spans light years and centuries. Humanity is about to discover why the Jackaroo came to help us, and how that help is shaping the end of human history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1473203996/?tag=2022091-20
(The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordi...)
The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country's most acclaimed and consistently brilliant SF novelists of the last 30 years. The Jackaroo have given humanity fifteen worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo's previous clients. Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could forever alter humanity - or even destroy it. Chloe Millar works in London, mapping changes caused by imported scraps of alien technology. When she stumbles across a pair of orphaned kids possessed by an ancient ghost, she must decide whether to help them or to hand them over to the authorities. Authorities who believe that their visions point towards a new kind of danger. And on one of the Jackaroo's gift-worlds, the murder of a man who has just arrived from Earth leads policeman Vic Gayle to a war between rival gangs over possession of a remote excavation site. Something is coming through. Something linked to the visions of Chloe's orphans, and Vic Gayle's murder investigation. Something that will challenge the limits of the Jackaroo's benevolence ...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MNGZXHE/?tag=2022091-20
(Dorothy Yoshida is a telepath, and a really rather good o...)
Dorothy Yoshida is a telepath, and a really rather good one at that. She's also a scientist, and when a small planet begins to manifest some unusual signs she is sent to investigate. The planet is more than it seems, and on further investigation the scientists begin to suspect it has been artificially altered. But despite their suspicions the only life they can detect is on the surface, none of which has advanced far above the level of animals. And despite the hopes of mankind to find something which will help them in a burgeoning war against other species, there seems to be nothing there to aid them. With Dorothy's arrival, however, they are in for some surprising discoveries.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GHN2YE/?tag=2022091-20
(On a distant world littered with the ruins and artifacts ...)
On a distant world littered with the ruins and artifacts of vanished civilisations, a small-town sheriff finds herself in the middle of a fight over ownership of an enigmatic - and deadly - biological mystery.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OR1MMU/?tag=2022091-20
(The 21st century. Europe is divided between the First Wor...)
The 21st century. Europe is divided between the First World bourgeoisie, made rich by nanotechnology and the cheap versatile slave labour of genetically engineered Dolls and the Fourth World of refugees and homeless displaced by war and economic upheaval. In London, Alex Sharkey is trying to make his mark as a designer of psychoactive viruses, whilst staying one step ahead of the police and the Triad gangs. At the cost of three hours of his life, he finds an unlikely ally in a scary, super-smart little girl called Milena, but his troubles really start when he helps Milena quicken intelligence in a Doll, turning it into the first of the fairies. Milena isn't sure if she's mad or if she's the only sane person left in the world; she only knows that she wants to escape to her own private Fairyland and live forever. Although Milena has created the fairies for her own ends, some of the Folk, as fey and dangerous as any in legend, have other ideas about her destiny ...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1473215161/?tag=2022091-20
Paul McAuley was born on April 23, 1955 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.
McAuley graduated from Bristol University with Bachelor of Science degree in 1976, as well as with Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1980.
During the mid-1980s, McAuley’s short fiction began appearing in magazines devoted to the science fiction genre, and these works were later collected in 1991s The King of the Hill, and Other Stories.
His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, was published in 1988. In it McAuley depicts a setting several hundred years in the future, when humans have colonized alien worlds. The plot centers on the discovery of an ancient form of alien life that destroys the colonists’ notion of the development of life, in particular the development of humanity.
McAuley’s second novel, Secret Harmonies, which was published in the United States as Of the Fall, depicts a revolution that ensues in an alien world when contact between Earth and human colonists is severed.
Eternal Light, published in 1991, continued McAuley’s consideration of the nature of the universe. Dorothy Yoshida, a telepath who also served as the protagonist of Four Hundred Billion Stars, is joined in this story by a disparate group of colleagues who travel deep into space where they make significant discoveries about alien life and the history of the galaxy.
The science fiction anthology In Dreams, issued in 1992 and edited by McAuley with Kim Newman, contains contributions by twenty-seven science fiction writers on the subject of the 45 RPM record.
Set six hundred years in the future, McAuley’s 1993 novel Red Dust recounts the adventures of Wei Lee, an agronomist attempting to release the water necessary to revitalize the barren Martian landscape. Gerald Jonas offered a favorable review of Red Dust in the New York Times Book Review.
Representing a departure from McAuley’s earlier space operas, Pasquale's Angel, published in 1994, presents an alternate history. Set in Renaissance Florence, where the fine arts have been supplanted by engineering as the dominant force in cultural life, the work details a sixteenth-century industrial revolution, complete with air pollution and oppressive working conditions.
McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings: Fairyland describes a dystopian, war-torn Europe where genetically engineered "dolls" are used as disposable slaves. Since 2001 he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.
Concerning his botanist's career, McAuley worked as a cell biologist at Oxford University, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of St. Andrews.
For his achievements in writing sphere, McAuley received several awards such as Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for Best New Novel in 1989, for his Four Hundred Billion Stars. Also he won Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best British Novel in 1995, for Fairyland.
Then he obtained Sidewise Award in 1995, for Pasquale’s Angel.
That same year he won British Fantasy Society Short Story Award for “The Temptation of Dr. Stein”.
(On a distant world littered with the ruins and artifacts ...)
(The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have co...)
(Confluence - a long, narrow, artificial world, half ferti...)
2015(A novel of a savage future war, perfect for fans of Alast...)
2012(Dorothy Yoshida is a telepath, and a really rather good o...)
(In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroi...)
2014(The great geoengineering projects have failed. The world ...)
(The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Ju...)
2010(The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordi...)
(The 21st century. Europe is divided between the First Wor...)
Quotations: “The future is an unknown country that minute by minute becomes the present. I’m honored to be one of the advance party which maps its possible hazards and wonders.”
