Ian McDonald‘s Philip K. Dick Award-winning CYBERABAD DAYS is now available in Italy! Published by Urania as I GIORNI DI CYBERABAD, here’s the synopsis…

“I giorni di Cyberabad” è una raccolta di sette racconti ambientati nell’India del futuro.

Cyberabad, fratturata in una dozzina di staterelli in guerra tra loro, è una terra traboccante di affascinanti contraddizioni, che spaziano dall’estrema povertà alle più innovative tecnologie, dalla siccità dilagante alle piscine lussuose, da antiche credenze a nuovi sgargianti orizzonti sul futuro dell’umanità.

E mentre un ragazzino di Ahraura sogna di diventare un robotwallah e poter pilotare un bot da guerra nel conflitto che si abbatte sul suo villaggio, il figlioletto di un ingegnere americano sgattaiola fuori dalle alte mura dell’Accantonamento per sbirciare quel mondo esterno e tanto estraneo, come un Siddharta in miniatura, immergendosi in una cultura per lui aliena, che sulle sponde del fiume Gange mescola i colori della vita e della morte in modi inimmaginabili, avvolti in una accecante quanto struggente bellezza.

Allo stesso modo, la solitudine di una innocente dea bambina, scongiurata da folle adoranti di far scendere la pioggia su un mondo flagellato dalla siccità e dai cambiamenti climatici, è fin troppo simile a quella provata dall’unica figlia di una ricca e potente dinastia che l’acqua la controlla, e che ha trasformato la bambina in un’arma contro la famiglia rivale.

Tra IA di contrabbando e una nuova casta di brahmini geneticamente modificati, ogni racconto si schiude e richiude come un fiore di loto, una carezza e un pugno al tempo stesso, nel drammatico chiaroscuro di tradizione e futuro tracciato dalla penna di uno dei migliori scrittori di fantascienza del nostro tempo.

Ecco i titoli dei racconti contenuti nel volume:

• • “Sanjeev e i robotwallah”
  • “Kyle incontra il fiume”
  • “L’assassino di polvere” 
  • “Un buon partito” 
  • “La piccola dea”
  • “La moglie del djinn”
  • “Vishnu e il circo dei gatti”

CYBERABAD DAYS, the second novel in McDonald’s India 2047 duology (the first is RIVER OF GODS), is published in the UK by Gollancz, and in North America by JABberwocky. Here’s the English-language synopsis…

The world: ‘Cyberabad’ is the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of 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 out-number females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas. Cyberabad is a collection of 7 stories:

• • The Little Goddess. Hugo nominee Best Novella 2006. In near future Nepal, a child-goddess discovers what lies on the other side of godhood.
  • The Djinn’s Wife. Hugo nominee and BSFA short fiction winner 2007. A minor Delhi celebrity falls in love with an artificial intelligence but is it a marriage of heaven and hell?
  • The Dust Assassin. Feuding Rajasthan water-rajas find that revenge is a slow, subtle process.
  • Jasbir and Sujay go Shaadi. Love and marriage should be plain-sailing when your matchmaker is a soap-star artificial intelligence
  • Sanjeev and Robotwallah. What happens to the boy-soldier roboteers when the war of Separation is over?
  • Kyle meets the River. A young American in Varanas learns the true meaning of ‘nation building’ in the early days of a new country.
  • Vishnu at the Cat Circus. A genetically improved ‘Brahmin’ child finds himself left behind as he grows through the final generation of humanity.

Here are some of the reviews CYBERABAD DAYS has received since it was first published, in 2009…

‘The sheer number of ideas and plotlines can sometimes make McDonald’s novels seems dense, but the stories here are sharp, focused and witty.’  —  BBC Focus

‘McDonald’s partitioned India of 2047, which he returns to in the seven stories in CYBERABAD DAYS, is a heaving, complexly imagined society that is, helplessly of course, the work of a westerner.’  —  Deathray

‘McDonald’s India engulfs you with an overwhelming, perfumed, stinky embrace. A hugely impressive collection. Seven nifty, witty stories.’  —  SFX

‘He considers India’s political future as a rising superpower and the cold realities of ethnic and religious diversity turning hot and divisive, with obvious analogies to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As with all short-story collections, some work better than others, but taken as whole, this is a fascinating read, rich in texture, imagery and language.’  —  Dreamwatch Total Sci-Fi

‘All in all, CYBERABAD DAYS is a terrific book and a satisfying return to the world of RIVER OF GODS. Ian McDonald is a genius, pure and simple.’  —  Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist

‘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.’  —  Guardian

‘McDonald gives sci-fi its sense of wonder back, and creates a landscape in which nothing can be taken for granted.’  —  Independent

‘One of the great pleasures of science fiction is the escape it offers readers from commonplace, everyday surroundings into strange new worlds, and nobody does it better than Ian McDonald. Although CYBERABAD DAYS is set on Earth, and only a few decades into the future, McDonald’s vision of a newly repartitioned India, warring over water and at the cutting edge of technologies based on artificial intelligence, is practically hallucinogenic in style and intensity.’  —  Times

Ian’s acclaimed latest series, Luna, is also published in the UK by Gollancz, is published in North America by Tor Books, and is available in a growing number of translated editions around the world. Below is a selection of covers for the various editions of NEW MOON, book one in the series…