Cyberabad Days

Readers of Ian McDonald will be delighted to see the future India presented in his River of Gods returns with renewed focus in CYBERBAD DAYS. Here is 2047 India, a new superpower in a world of artificial intelligences, drought, water wars, new genders and genetically-improved kids who age at half the rate of the old norm. Seven stories centered in this world form CYBERBAD DAYS, which deserves ongoing high recommendation for any serious science fiction collection.

the stories contained within this book are great in themselves and even better as they connect to the story contained without that is 'river of gods'. not all of the stories in this book are excellent but all are at their least enjoyable and at their best exceptional in their form. you would do well to read this book after having read 'river of gods'.

The assembled stories are somewhat uneven but vary between pretty good and fantastic. Slicker than River of Gods - which is high praise indeed.

Cyberabad Days is a collection of seven tales set in the world that McDonald created for his popular River of Gods novel, of which one was a Hugo winner and one a Hugo nominee. Each touches on timely, relevant idea about our society today and is set in near future India. McDonald seems unapologetic about tackling difficult topics with a particular focus on unbridled, unhindered technology and its effect on culture. McDonald has a literary writing style, and so the use of analogy and metaphor are common, and not always obvious. This tale reminded me a lot of Peter Beagle, Jeffrey Overstreet, and Patricia McKillip in its form and content, beautiful writing, full of electric emotions. I highly recommend you take the time to read Cyberabad Days. This book is a good entry point to McDonald's writing, and an exemplar of some of his best work. In particular An Eligible Boy and The Little Goddess are exemplary. Like other British writers before him - Kipling, Forster, and Masters - McDonald has managed to give Western civilization a glimpse of the exotic and beautiful country that is India. Reviewed by John Ottinger III

Ian McDonald is one of science fiction's finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for. Cyberabad Days returns to McDonald's India of 2047, a balkanized state that we toured in his 2006 novel River of Gods, which was nominated for the best novel Hugo Award. The India of River of Gods has fractured into a handful of warring nations, wracked by water-shortage and poverty, rising on rogue technology, compassion, and the synthesis of the modern and the ancient. In Cyberabad Days, seven stories (one a Hugo winner, another a Hugo nominee) McDonald performs the quintessential science fictional magic trick: imagining massive technological change and making it intensely personal by telling the stories of real, vividly realized people who leap off the page and into our minds. And he does this with a deft prose that is half-poetic, conjuring up the rhythms and taste and smells of his places and people, so that you are really, truly transported into these unimaginably weird worlds. McDonald's India research is prodigious, but it's nothing to the fabulous future he imagines arising from today's reality. All seven of these stories are standouts, but if I had to pick only three to put in a time-capsule for the ages, they'd be: 1. The Djinn's Wife: this Hugo-winning novelette is a heartbreaking account of a love affair between a minor celebrity and a weakly godlike artificial intelligence. The special problems of love with an "aeai" (AI) are incredibly, thoroughly imagined here, as are the possible glories. Here, McDonald perfectly captures the stepping-off-a-cliff feeling of the new kinds of romance that technology enables, and of the wonderful, terrible sense of the wind rushing past your ears as the ground screams towards you. 2. Sanjeev and Robotwallah: a story that will be anthologized in two of this year's "Best Of" anthologies, Sanjeev and Robotwallah is the story of a young, displaced boy who finds temporary glory in acting as batsman for a squadron of amped-up teen mecha pilots. The pathos here arises when the war ends and the glamorous warriors are retired, leaving Sanjeev in limbo, his aspirations smashed with the lives of the older boys. Like all of McDonald's stories, the ending is bittersweet, rich and unexpected. 3. Vishnu at the Cat Circus: the long, concluding novella in the volume is an account of three siblings: one genetically enhanced to be a neo-Brahmin, one a rogue AI wallah who is at the center of the ascension of humanity's computers into a godlike state, and one who remains human and bails out the teeming masses who are tossed back and forth by the technological upheaval. A story of character, Vishnu blends spirituality and technology to look at how the street might find its own use for things, when that street is rooted in ancient traditions that are capable of assimilating enormous (but not infinite) change. Cyberabad Days has