Paul McAuley

'The underrated McAuley is in top form in this hard science fiction novel with heart.' Washington Post Book World On a giant artificial world surrounding an artificial sun, one man - a lucidor, a keeper of the peace, a policeman - is on the hunt. His target was responsible for an atrocity, but is too valuable to the government to be truly punished. Instead he has been sent to the frontlines of the war, to use his unique talents on the enemy. So the lucidor has ignored orders, deserted from his job, left his home and thrown his life away, in order to finally claim justice. Separated by massive seas, the various maps dotted on the surface of this world rarely contact each other. But something has begun to infiltrate the edges of the lucidor's map, something that genetically alters animals and plants and turns them into killers. Only the lucidor knows the depths to which his quarry will sink in order to survive, only the lucidor can capture him. The way is long and dangerous. The lucidor's government has set hunters after him. He has no friends, no resources, no plan. But he does have a mission.

War of the Maps

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 15 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 for ever 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...

Something Coming Through

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

Austral

WHAT WILL BECOME OF US? In the deep future beyond the burn line of the Anthropocene and the extinction of humanity, the city states of an intelligent species of bear have fallen to a mind-wrecking plague. The bears' former slaves, a peaceable, industrious and endlessly curious people, believe that they have inherited the bounty and beauty of their beloved Mother Earth. But are they alone? After the death of his master, a famous scholar, Pilgrim Saltmire vows to complete their research into sightings of so-called visitors and their sky craft. To discover if they are a mass delusion created by the stresses of an industrial revolution, or if they are real - a remnant population of bears which survived the plague, or another, unknown intelligent species. Risking his reputation and his life, Pilgrim's search for the truth takes him from his comfortable home in the shadow of a great library to his tribe's former home on the chilly coast of the far south, and the gathering of a dangerous cult in the high desert. Whether or not the visitors are real, one thing is certain. Pilgrim's world and everything he thought he knew about his people's history will be utterly changed. McAuley's fabulous far future, impacted by the consequences of global warming, colonisation and historical injustices, explores and reflects our own challenges while telling a fast paced story of discovery and adventure.

Beyond the Burn Line

Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was by Paul McAuley is a complex sf story about politics and xenophobia when human colonists on an Earth-like planet are faced with the possibility of reaching out to alien cultures, especially when a big organization that has previously done harm is in charge of the operation. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.Com Original

Something Happened Here, But We're Not Quite Sure What It Was

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.

In the Mouth of the Whale

Twenty-third century Earth has been ravaged by climate change, and is now dominated by a few powerful families, with millions of people in prison and millions more labouring to rebuild ruined ecosystems. Meanwhile on Jupiter and Saturn, live the Outers. They have built a wild variety of scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts. Now they want to colonise Earth and drive human evolution in a new direction. On Earth, some want to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Outers while others wish to exploit the talents of the gene wizards. It is clear that the fragile detente between the two branches of humanity is breaking down and they may be heading towards war . . .

The Quiet War

Mars, 600 years in the future, is dying. Five hundred years after the Chinese conquered the Red Planet, the great work of terraforming is failing. The human-machine Consensus of Earth had persuaded the AI Emperor to follow the Golden Path into a vast virtual reality universe, leaving behind an ungoverned planet swept by hunger riots and the beginnings of civil war. Enter Wei Lee, a lowly itinerant agricultural technician: rock 'n' roll fan, dupe, holy fool - and unlikely Messiah. After stumbling on an anarchist pilot hiding near the wreckage of her spacecraft, he's drawn into a revolutionary plot that has been spinning for decades. With the help of a ghost, the broadcasts of the King of the Cats, a Yankee yak herder, and a little Girl God, Lee travels across the badlands, swampy waterways and vast dust seas to a showdown at the summit of the biggest volcano in the Solar System. Not even the God-like Consensus can predict the outcome of his struggle to define his own destiny . . . Epic in scope, Red Dust's spectacular, fast-paced story brilliantly brings to life the planet that has captured our imagination like no other.

Red Dust

The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn 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, 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 Avernus, the Outers' greatest genius, 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 in Greater Brazil, the Outers' democratic traditions have infected a population eager to escape the tyranny of the great families who rule them. 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.

Gardens of the Sun

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.

Evening's Empires

Stephen Baxter

Ian McDonald

Peter F. Hamilton

This collection of four novellas of humanity's struggle for survival in the far future features "Watching Trees Grow" by Peter F. Hamilton; "Reality Dust" by Stephen Baxter; "Making History" by Paul McAuley; and "Tendeleo's Story" by Ian McDonald.

Four Novellas

Futures

2026: Something is growing in the Pacific Ocean. "The Slick" appears to be a strange, fungus-like organism, but its DNA is unlike anything else on the planet. Rumours start to fly. Was life discovered deep beneath the Martian icecaps on a recent Chinese space mission? If it was, no-one is confirming it, but could that same life now be spreading through the ocean and threatening Earth's entire food chain? Brilliant scientist Dr. Mariella Anders is recruited to join an urgent NASA mission to Mars to see if she can uncover the truth of this organism, but this is no straightforward investigation. Corporate powers are committed to exploiting the secrets of the Slick for profit; radical eco-terrorists strike out against rampant genetic engineering; and a second Chinese mission to Mars at the same time has its goals shrouded in mystery. The secret of life on Earth and Mars might be found on the red planet, but who can Mariella trust with the truth once it's found? And what price will she have to pay for it?

The Secret of Life

Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was

Florence in the year 1518 is riven by scientific and sociological change caused b the wonderful devices of the Great Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. Now he is old and lives as a recluse working behind the walls of his castle. The Raphaelites, artists and anti-technologists led by Raphael of Urbino, call for his excommunication. Pasquale di Cione fiesole, an apprentice painter witnesses an assassination attempt on Raphael at a Cathedral service. The weapon falls into his hands, and he is soon on the run from engineers and artists, desperate to prove his innocence.

Pasquale's Angel

Neil Clarke

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Rachel Swirsky

Ted Kosmatka

Michael Poore

An Owomoyela

Kim Robinson

Nick Wolven

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art. Our Feburary 2016 issue (#113) contains: Original fiction by Paul McAuley ("The Fixer"), Benjanun Sriduangkaew ("That Which Stands Tends Toward Free Fall"), Nick Wolven ("In the Midst of Life"), and An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky ("Between Dragons and Their Wrath"). Reprints from Ted Kosmatka and Michael Poore ("Blood Dauber") and Kim Stanley Robinson ("Mercurial"). Non-fiction by Dan Koboldt (Six Quirks of the Human Genome), an interview with Lawrence Schoen, an Another Word column by Fran Wilde, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

Clarkesworld

On an artificial world created and seeded with ten thousand bloodlines by the long-vanished Preservers, young Yama's ancestry is unique, for he appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the worshipped architects of Confluence. And on a day near the end of the world, Yama must finally acknowledge the power he neither anticipated nor desires. In the dust of many crumbling bureaucracies, Yama searches for an identity and a history - awed and fearful of his ever-growing capacity to awaken the terrible machines of destruction that his world's absent gods left slumbering. To the common folk - the unshaped and aboriginal - he is the fulfillment of age-old prophecies. To the functionaries of the Department of Indigenous Affairs, he is a weapon to be molded and used in the bloody civil war raging at the planet's midpoint - a seemingly endless battle that pits those who revere the Preservers' laws against the dangerous Heretics who would obliterate all antiquated values and codes of conduct. But there are still others who have taken notice of Yama as he pursues the hidden secrets of his past. Intelligent powers older than the Builders - as old, perhaps, as the Preservers themselves - are pursuing Yama in turn. And they will stop at nothing to control his present-and, as a result, the future of everything that lives-in anticipation of the ultimate triumph of the Ancients of Days.

Confluence

Ancients of Days

Confluence - a long, narrow man-made world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. It is a world at the end of its time, a place of savagery, bureaucracy and war, inhabited by countless flying micro-machines and ten thousand bloodlines ruled by devotion to absent gods. It is the home of a singular young man named Yama. An infant who was discovered in a bier on the river, he was raised by the prelate of Aeolis until it was learned that his ancestry was unique. Yama appeared to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the worshipped architects of Confluence. Now, awed and fearful of his increasing ability to awaken the machines the Builders left behind, Yama searches for his identity and a history that is both his and his world's.

Child of the River

Ken MacLeod

Nancy Kress

Catherynne M. Valente

Sean Wallace

Robert Reed

Genevieve Valentine

Rich Horton

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sandra McDonald

The history of the world is the history of war. From feats of valor and loyalty to hideous violence and carnage, the human species has always been its own best rival - and worst enemy. But out beyond the stars, the ultimate enemy awaits. The world's future - the future of the universe itself - lies in the hands of the warriors who must use the weapons, take on the missions, make the decisions, assume the risk, and defeat the menaces, alien or otherwise, who would dare try to conquer!

Paul McAuley

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