Paul J. McAuley

"The Congo, roughly thirty years from now. Plague, civil war, and rampant genetic engineering have spawned widespread chaos and devastation throughout Africa. Nicholas Hyde is investigating a reported massacre in a remote corner of the Congo when his team is attacked by a band of fierce apelike creatures, possibly the result of illegal genetic experimentation on chimpanzees. Nick survives the encounter, only to discover himself at the center of a massive cover-up." "Obligate, the supposedly eco-friendly transnational that now controls the Congo, denies the existence of the "white devils," and will stop at nothing to suppress all evidence to the contrary. Although Nick has secrets of his own to conceal, he becomes determined to uncover the origin of the mysterious creatures - and why certain individuals will kill to bury the truth." "But even the atrocities he has already witnessed cannot prepare him for the terrifying secret of the white devils."--Jacket.

A teenage girl, naked and badly injured, is discovered by two fishermen in mountain forest in Macabee County, Oregon. Before lapsing into a coma, she asks for someone called Billy, and dies before reaching hospital. The dead girl is identified as Edie Collier, last known to be living on the streets of Portland after quarrelling with her mother. That's how Summer Zeigler, a newly qualified police detective in the Portland Police Bureau gets involved: she arrested Edie for shoplifting six months before. Then the body of Edie's boyfriend, Billy, turns up in the Nevada desert. His manner of death, a wound caused by a crossbow bolt and the removal of his heart and eyes, links him to several other murders. Summer's investigations will lead her to the strange mansion of software millionaire Dirk Merrit, who made his fortune from a computer role-playing game known as Trans. But cyberspace is no longer enough to fulfil Merritt's grotesque fantasies. He wants to play a real-life version of his game. A game with deadly consequences.

"The first Turing gate, no bigger than a fleck of dust, is forced open in 1963, at the high-energy physics laboratory in Brookhaven; three years later, the first man to enter an alternate history is sent through a much larger version, and an empire is born." "For fifteen years, the version of America that calls itself the Real has used Turing gates to infiltrate a wide variety of alternate Americas, rebuilding those wrecked by nuclear war, and fomenting revolutions to free others from Communist or Fascist rule, establishing a Pan-American Alliance. Then a nation exhausted by endless strife elects Jimmy Carter on a reconstruction and reconciliation ticket, and the Real begins to wage peace instead of war." "But some people believe that it is the Real's manifest destiny to impose its idea of truth, justice and the American way in every known alternate history, and they're prepared to do anything to reverse Carter's peacenik doctrine. Adam Stone, one of the CIG's covert field agents, or Cowboy Angels, volunteers for reactivation after an old friend begins a killing spree across alternate histories. His mission uncovers a startling secret about the operation of the Turing gates, and leads him into the heart of an audacious conspiracy to change the history of every America in the multiverse - including our own."--BOOK JACKET.

Adam Stone's mission uncovers a startling secret about the operation of the Turing gates, and leads him into the heart of an audacious conspiracy to change the history of every America in the multiverse -- including our own.

In a near-future Europe, gene-hacker Alex Sharkey has created a new life form: fairies - genetically-altered dolls with human intelligence. As the fairies develop their own societies, it become apparent that one group has sinister intentions, and Sharkey must try and put an end to their plans.

The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have come to help, gave humanity access to worlds littered with ruins and scraps of technology left by long-dead client races. But although people have found new uses for alien technology, that technology may have found its own uses for people. The dissolute scion of a powerful merchant family, and a woman living in seclusion with only her dog and her demons for company, have become infected by a copies of a powerful chunk of alien code. Driven to discover what it wants from them, they become caught up in a conflict between a policeman allied to the Jackaroo and the laminated brain of a scientific wizard, and a mystery that spans light years and centuries. Humanity is about to discover why the Jackaroo came to help us, and how that help is shaping the end of human history.

"Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems." "On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition." "The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards. Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war ..." "From the prison cities of Earth to the scrupulously realised landscapes of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, The Quiet War is an exotic, fast-paced space opera that turns on a single question: who decides what it means to be human?"--BOOK JACKET.

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.