Ian McDonald

"August 15, 2047--Happy hundredth birthday, India. As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business--a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is Aj--the waif, the mind reader, the prophet--when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden. In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation."--Page 4 of cover.

Ian MacDonald explores the gestalt of transhumanism in a radically unfamiliar dystopian future. Terminal Cafe projects the future of the United States if we stopped pretending Brazil doesn't exist and embraced the Afro-Carribbean elements of our memetic function. This book is a hideously detailed, grotesquely erogenous exploration of a future that, correct me if wrong but virtually nobody since the 1980s has seriously looked at. If you geek out over the unique and Byzantinely complex, this book should leave you hankering for more; unfortunately there is no more, at least as far as I know he has never written a prequel or sequel. Too bad! The astrological-scale themes he deftly maneuvers into position stretch the imagination to such an extent that you might forgive some cartoonish characters. Actually, MacDonald's heroes are realistically imperfect: the powerful lawyer YoYo Mok comes from a really bad neighborhood, for instance, and she has a believable backstory with which Asian cyberpunk fans may very well identify. Santiago Columbar, one of the main movers and shakers, is a designer drug guru right off the game master's board at a Cyberpunk convention. Remember Cyberpunk? Nanotechnology, Non-Apocalyptic Fall of Christianity, World Domination by Corporations, Animist Cultism, Interplanetary Colonialism, and Ultra-Progressive Immortalism are all game pieces for MacDonald. The circumvallation he sets in place provides covering fire for a typically Brazilian acceptance of Transgender people and Sex Workers. Ian MacDonald has taken so many threads of ideation to their logical conclusion in one book that it beggars belief he has never touched this skein since. This book positively begs for a prequel. So many story lines are hinted at, so many plots laid down and never expanded. Have you ever read Footfall by Niven and Pournell? Remember how heavy it felt when you picked it up? This book ought to have weighed that much. Terminal Cafe is a hallucinogenic cocktail offered one time only, at a bargain price. Unfortunately, it's from private stock; no-one knows when or if any like it will be offered again. That is why this reviewer has read it over.. and over... and over. This novel is unique; it is worlds away from contemporary popular novels. As with any well-written SF novel, this future is plausibly achievable within our lifetime! It's not that far off the mark. Some of this is bound to come to pass. This novel is visionary; it has some adolescent passages. I beg you to forgive them and look at the overarching themes. Plenty got lost in the transition to the 21st century. Read Ian MacDonald and recover your future.

Regan's brother Liam can't stand the person he is during the day. Like the moon from whom Liam has chosen his female namesake, his true self, Luna, only reveals herself at night. In the secrecy of his basement bedroom Liam transforms himself into the beautiful girl he longs to be, with help from his sister's clothes and makeup. Now, everything is about to change-Luna is preparing to emerge from her cocoon. But are Liam's family and friends ready to welcome Luna into their lives? Compelling and provocative, this is an unforgettable novel about a transgender teen's struggle for self-identity and acceptance.

Seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core--the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself--that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller.

This book has been written as a practical guide for people working in any type of library who are involved in decisions relating to the acquisition and management of electronic material including computer software, CD-ROMs and online services such as e-journals, databases and other material.

382 pages : 24 cm

This is a collection of the best science fiction stories set on planet Earth published in 2023 by leading authors of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. - "A Soul in the World" by Charlie Jane Anders—A childless woman is given a most unusual child to raise as her own. - "A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk" by Cécile Cristofari—An elderly couple fend for themselves on a deserted island while waiting out an epidemic. - "LOL, Said the Scorpion" by Rich Larson—Wealthy tourists wear bio-filtering suits to go on live vacations to impoverished countries. - "A Borrowing of Bones" by Karin Lowachee—Reality blurs as people become menageries of other lives. - "Devil in the Deep" by Lucie Lukačovičová—A Bolivian mining community blames lady scientists for their bad luck. - "Gravesend, or, Everyday Life in the Anthropocene" by Paul McAuley—An army veteran, suffering from the aftereffects of a psych bomb, convalesces in the eco-stressed marshes of the Thames. - "Sigh No More" by Ian McDonald—The show must go on despite a solar flare that has crashed London’s power grid. - "Cuttlefish" by Anil Menon—A family seeks to escape the modern world at an old fashioned Indian guesthouse. - "Highway Requiem" by T. R. Napper—A trucker’s way of life on the roads of the Outback is threatened by automation. - "Contracting Iris" by Peter Watts—A novel microbial infection changes the behavior of a woman diagnosed with MS. - "Deep Blue Jump" by Dean Whitlock—Children are forced to pick drug-like dreamberries in desert canyons under austere conditions.

"From the vantage point of later middle life, Ian McDonald's collection looks into the heart of time passing: the coming death of ageing parents, the old men, the 'archive' of a disappearing Guyana who die one by one, the sight of 'my own lines of age' and the loss of pleasure in the glittering carnival of the senses. There are rich blessings of the arrival of a new child coming unexpected at this stage of life; and the consolations from books and in the power of art to preserve - at least for a time. But the very joys are made more piquant by the inescapable sense of the transitoriness of all things"--Back cover.