Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36244 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Ian McDonald was born in Manchester in 1960. His family moved to Northern Ireland in 1965. He now lives in Belfast and works in TV production. The author of many previous novels including the groundbreaking Chaga books set in Africa Ian McDonald has long been at the cutting edge of SF. RIVER OF GODS won the BSFA AWARD in 2005.

Customer Reviews

River of Gods Companion
The blurb on the back of Cyberabad days describes it as a sequel to the excellent River of Gods, so I was slightly taken aback to discover a selection of short stories. This soon changed as I became immersed, once again, in Ian McDonald's stunning India of the mid-21st century.
This is not so much a sequel as a companion piece to River of Gods which provides extra background detail to many of the themes explored in Rver of Gods.
I would heartily recommend this read to anyone who enjoyed River of Gods,River of Gods or even as a prequel to set the scene for what is to come in the novel.

Just wonderful
I am puzzled that some SF-loving folk just don't seem to get Ian McDonald. That's their loss.

River of Gods was an out-and-out masterpiece. As an adjunct to that, this series of splintered visions of future India is an essential purchase.

I have lived for many years in Asia, and McDonalds' research and depth of undestanding of this culture constantly amazes.

Superb collection, with a unique theme
Superb collection of stories, set in the same future India as River of Gods: now a disintegrating, technological superpower, India is still struggling with its traditions, its over-population and its dependency on water in an increasingly dry world.

Sanjeev and Robotwallah

Young Sanjeev works hard for his father's pizza business, but what obsesses him are the robotwallahs who remotely pilot warrior droids, playing killing games for real. Sanjeev becomes their pizza boy and later graduates to their unpaid domestic wallah, much to his delight. But his adolescent dreams of reflected glory are shattered, as he learns how the adult world really works.

Kyle meets the river

Kyle lives in a gated foreign community, his father an American construction boss. His friend Salim is a Muslim who uses the latest in direct-brain interface gadgets to take Kyle secretly to a shared virtual game world they are building. A simple trip to the river Ganges with Salim washes away assumptions about traditional and modern values.

The dust assassin

A very traditional tale of two feuding families is given a modern twist. The Jodras and the Azads run competing water companies. The Jodra heir, Padmini, is told that she is a special weapon in this war, but has no idea how. One night the Azads attack and wipe out everyone at Jodra, except Padmini who escapes with the aid of a loyal neuter-gender retainer. Coached by the retainer and his accomplished neuter friends, Padmini re-enters society and then comes to the attention of Salim, heir to the Azads...

An eligible boy

Men outnumber women four to one, because of choice of sex for babies. Jasbir is one of a horde of very eligible bachelors, who compete with each other at arranged mass dating sessions (shadis). His friend Sujay (who works in IT and stays out of dating) suggests he uses a personal adviser AI, whose speciality is romance, having been created as a scriptwriter for 'Town and Country', the most popular soap opera. A fitting courtship ensues.

The little goddess

A girl is chosen to be a goddess, according to ancient tradition, However she breaks her vows and falls in with Ashok, an AI developer, and becomes a mule for him, smuggling illegal AIs in a protein chip in her head, Yet fate strikes again and she becomes a very modern kind of goddess.

The djinn's wife

A djinn is a spirit that can bewitch mortals. The story is told to us in the manner of a folk tale, as it is a modern day equivalent. Esha Rathore is a celebrity from the slums of Delhi, famous for her dancing. She falls in love with a dashing diplomat, A.J.Rao, who is a level 2.9 AI, human in all but body. Unfortunately, the Hamilton Acts are passed, forced by a reactionary USA, which outlaw high-level AIs. What then for the marriage?

Vishnu at the cat circus

By far the most far-ranging tale in the collection and the one to read as it sets all the others (and even the companion novel, River of Gods) in context. The narrator, Vishnu, is a Brahmin, who was been genetically engineered by his ambitious parents for both super-genius intelligence, and long-life combined with half-speed maturation. He tells of his very long youth, a meteoric rise, and then a swift descent to running a cat circus, as a family feud spills over into a world changing technological advance. Despite all the darkness in the story, it ends with a potential of rebirth, just like classical Indian stories. ( )