Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Pyr (Amherst, NY, 2009). 1st edition, 1st printing. 279 pages. $15.00.
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.… (more)
Media reviews
We believe in this future India because all the invention (and there are masses of inventions casually crowded into these urban stories) do not feel imposed upon the setting but feel rather as if they have grown out of the setting. And because of this sense of natural growth, it is a future that is
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crowded, dirty, tumultuous, poor, thriving, smelly, joyous, colourful; a future, in other words, that feels like the real world around us. Show Less
While some stories are too slight for the welter of wordage employed, McDonald gives a refreshing take on the future from a non-western viewpoint.
Every story is simultaneously a cracking yarn, a thoughtful piece of technosocial criticism, and a bag of eyeball kicks that'll fire your imagination.
If you are simply looking for weird and smart science fiction that will surprise you, I recommend Cyberabad Days. It's a chance to see the future from a perspective that rarely shows up in Western scifi.
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
It took me a bit longer to read Cyberabad Days than it did River of Gods, Ian McDonald's novel that established the mid-21st-century Indian setting used in all of the stories in Cyberabad Days -- despite the fact that the novel is more than twice the length of the entire short story collection.
Many of the stories in the collection have children for protagonists, or at least begin during the childhood of their protagonists. Also, most especially with the novella "Vishnu and the Cat Circus" which closes the volume, the future history of the setting is made more explicit and set into a wider framework. In these respects, the book's status as a sequel reminded me of that of Ares Express, McDonald's novel continuing the far future Mars of his debut Desolation Road.
I had wondered and seen some discussion about whether this book could be profitably read before River of Gods. My tentative verdict is: about half. The first few stories could certainly be read without having read the novel, and "The Little Goddess" would actually make an interesting prologue to it. Among the later (and longer) stories, however, "An Eligible Boy," "The Djinn's Wife," and "Vishnu's Cat Circus" increasingly involve potential spoilering of some of the most surprising turns of the River. At the same time, these were some of the most satisfying to read after the novel, enlarging on themes and ideas that were introduced there.
The Cyberabad future is not one that leans on pre-fabricated tropes or genre cliches. McDonald's stories are full of fresh, big ideas about technology, social and cultural change, and human destiny. But the foreground is always taken up with interesting, compelling characters: their ambitions, cares, affections, and trials.
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Despite the multiple plot strands of River, it has an continuous (multiple) forward drive of events. By contrast, Days is made up of independent self-contained stories, which allow the reader to come up for air in between them. Many of the stories in the collection have children for protagonists, or at least begin during the childhood of their protagonists. Also, most especially with the novella "Vishnu and the Cat Circus" which closes the volume, the future history of the setting is made more explicit and set into a wider framework. In these respects, the book's status as a sequel reminded me of that of Ares Express, McDonald's novel continuing the far future Mars of his debut Desolation Road.
I had wondered and seen some discussion about whether this book could be profitably read before River of Gods. My tentative verdict is: about half. The first few stories could certainly be read without having read the novel, and "The Little Goddess" would actually make an interesting prologue to it. Among the later (and longer) stories, however, "An Eligible Boy," "The Djinn's Wife," and "Vishnu's Cat Circus" increasingly involve potential spoilering of some of the most surprising turns of the River. At the same time, these were some of the most satisfying to read after the novel, enlarging on themes and ideas that were introduced there.
The Cyberabad future is not one that leans on pre-fabricated tropes or genre cliches. McDonald's stories are full of fresh, big ideas about technology, social and cultural change, and human destiny. But the foreground is always taken up with interesting, compelling characters: their ambitions, cares, affections, and trials.
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LibraryThing member kgodey
Cyberabad Days is a book of short stories set in McDonald’s River of Gods universe – I’ve had an eye on it for a while, but finally had the opportunity to read it. I love speculative fiction and I’m from India (which really needs more sci-fi/fantasy representation), so these books are a
First, a note about the world. As with River of Gods, this is the part of the book I have the most trouble with; otherwise McDonald’s writing and concepts are excellent. He captures the chaos and the contradictions of India very well, but there’s no core holding it all together. Every Indian I know has a strong sense of community – to their family, friends or other networks; there is none of this in McDonald’s India. Everyone is too eager to be individualistic, to be virtual – it’s a hard leap to make, considering quite a few of my high school classmates don’t even use e-mail. Maybe that’s just McDonald’s writing style (I haven’t read any of his other books); but in that case, India isn’t a good fit for it.
The way that India has evolved also feels somewhat off to me – it’s like McDonald has taken all the most “exotic” things in India and made those India’s defining features, even if they’re currently in decline – the soap operas, child marriages, female foeticide, the hijras, even royalty (which doesn’t really exist anymore). Some of the terms used would be archaic now (although I suppose it is possible that nostalgia would make a comeback). It’s not that any one of the things he describes is impossible, but the whole picture combined just doesn’t feel right. Also, I have no idea why this book is called Cyberabad Days – Cyberabad is an area of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh (my home state!), and neither state nor city is barely even mentioned in the book.
Don’t get me wrong, though – this is a very good book! I just feel obligated to talk about the world since I’m from there and feel oddly protective about it.
There are seven stories in this book, and they’re a nice mix of lengths and styles. The protagonists run the gamut from a poor village boy to a rich, genetically superior “Brahmin”, and the stories span decades.
Since there are only seven stories, I’ll write a bit about each:
Sanjeev and Robotwallah: This is the classic story of the kid that wants to be cool but then discovers that the cool kids really aren’t that cool. It’s classic because it’s satisfying no matter how many times it’s done, and that definitely holds true here. It was also interesting to learn more about how warfare in India has evolved, and how the villages have stayed pretty much the same.
Kyle Meets the River: The only one of the stories with a non-Indian protagonist – a young American boy that’s curious about the real India. This story was depressingly real, right down to the parenting decision made at the end. I also liked seeing how the relationship between the US and India had evolved.
The Dust Assassin: One of my two favourite stories, this features a young water heiress who has been told her entire life that she is a weapon to be used against their rivals. When she finally finds out what that means, it has tragic consequences. This story was almost told like a myth, and I loved the sheer romance of it.
An Eligible Boy: A story that explores the consequences of female foeticide leading to a very warped gender ratio. Jasbir, a young middle-class professional, is desperate to find himself a city wife, and of course, hilarity ensues. When he does snare a girl, he finds out that it isn’t quite because of his charms. Probably the weakest story, but that’s only because it doesn’t stand out in any way – it’s still pretty good.
The Little Goddess: The adventures of a former living goddess from Nepal, and her search to find meaning in the new world. I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the Kumaris of Nepal, so I really enjoyed this story. It’s told from the first person perspective, and that adds a lot of authenticity to the telling. What does a former vessel for the divine do, when the divine have left her and the AIs are now gods?
The Djinn’s Wife: A famous Awadhi Kathak dancer falls in love and marries her biggest fan – a Charati diplomat AI trying to make peace between their two nations. However, the looming ratification of the Hamilton Acts (which ban high level AIs), and the sheer differences between the couple (think Laurie Jupiter and Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen) make it a hard time for the first human-AI marriage in history. I could’ve done without the framing story; I don’t think it added much, but otherwise, it was poignant.
Vishnu at the Cat Circus: This is the longest and most expansive story, and the only one that hasn’t been published elsewhere. The protagonist is a Brahmin (I was glad about this; they’re so often demonised by characters from other stories), and happens to be involved in (or know of) events throughout River of Gods as well as after. I don’t want to spoil much, since this was very plot-intensive. This is also a case where I could’ve done without the framing story, though.
Summary: Cyberabad Days makes a great companion book to River of Gods – we learn more about the history of India, what the events of River of Gods meant to the population that wasn’t involved in it, and how India and the world fared afterwards. (I wouldn’t recommend reading Cyberabad Days first, though, unless you’re not planning to read River of Gods – too many spoilers).
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natural fit for me.First, a note about the world. As with River of Gods, this is the part of the book I have the most trouble with; otherwise McDonald’s writing and concepts are excellent. He captures the chaos and the contradictions of India very well, but there’s no core holding it all together. Every Indian I know has a strong sense of community – to their family, friends or other networks; there is none of this in McDonald’s India. Everyone is too eager to be individualistic, to be virtual – it’s a hard leap to make, considering quite a few of my high school classmates don’t even use e-mail. Maybe that’s just McDonald’s writing style (I haven’t read any of his other books); but in that case, India isn’t a good fit for it.
The way that India has evolved also feels somewhat off to me – it’s like McDonald has taken all the most “exotic” things in India and made those India’s defining features, even if they’re currently in decline – the soap operas, child marriages, female foeticide, the hijras, even royalty (which doesn’t really exist anymore). Some of the terms used would be archaic now (although I suppose it is possible that nostalgia would make a comeback). It’s not that any one of the things he describes is impossible, but the whole picture combined just doesn’t feel right. Also, I have no idea why this book is called Cyberabad Days – Cyberabad is an area of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh (my home state!), and neither state nor city is barely even mentioned in the book.
Don’t get me wrong, though – this is a very good book! I just feel obligated to talk about the world since I’m from there and feel oddly protective about it.
There are seven stories in this book, and they’re a nice mix of lengths and styles. The protagonists run the gamut from a poor village boy to a rich, genetically superior “Brahmin”, and the stories span decades.
Since there are only seven stories, I’ll write a bit about each:
Sanjeev and Robotwallah: This is the classic story of the kid that wants to be cool but then discovers that the cool kids really aren’t that cool. It’s classic because it’s satisfying no matter how many times it’s done, and that definitely holds true here. It was also interesting to learn more about how warfare in India has evolved, and how the villages have stayed pretty much the same.
Kyle Meets the River: The only one of the stories with a non-Indian protagonist – a young American boy that’s curious about the real India. This story was depressingly real, right down to the parenting decision made at the end. I also liked seeing how the relationship between the US and India had evolved.
The Dust Assassin: One of my two favourite stories, this features a young water heiress who has been told her entire life that she is a weapon to be used against their rivals. When she finally finds out what that means, it has tragic consequences. This story was almost told like a myth, and I loved the sheer romance of it.
An Eligible Boy: A story that explores the consequences of female foeticide leading to a very warped gender ratio. Jasbir, a young middle-class professional, is desperate to find himself a city wife, and of course, hilarity ensues. When he does snare a girl, he finds out that it isn’t quite because of his charms. Probably the weakest story, but that’s only because it doesn’t stand out in any way – it’s still pretty good.
The Little Goddess: The adventures of a former living goddess from Nepal, and her search to find meaning in the new world. I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the Kumaris of Nepal, so I really enjoyed this story. It’s told from the first person perspective, and that adds a lot of authenticity to the telling. What does a former vessel for the divine do, when the divine have left her and the AIs are now gods?
The Djinn’s Wife: A famous Awadhi Kathak dancer falls in love and marries her biggest fan – a Charati diplomat AI trying to make peace between their two nations. However, the looming ratification of the Hamilton Acts (which ban high level AIs), and the sheer differences between the couple (think Laurie Jupiter and Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen) make it a hard time for the first human-AI marriage in history. I could’ve done without the framing story; I don’t think it added much, but otherwise, it was poignant.
Vishnu at the Cat Circus: This is the longest and most expansive story, and the only one that hasn’t been published elsewhere. The protagonist is a Brahmin (I was glad about this; they’re so often demonised by characters from other stories), and happens to be involved in (or know of) events throughout River of Gods as well as after. I don’t want to spoil much, since this was very plot-intensive. This is also a case where I could’ve done without the framing story, though.
Summary: Cyberabad Days makes a great companion book to River of Gods – we learn more about the history of India, what the events of River of Gods meant to the population that wasn’t involved in it, and how India and the world fared afterwards. (I wouldn’t recommend reading Cyberabad Days first, though, unless you’re not planning to read River of Gods – too many spoilers).
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LibraryThing member TerryWeyna
The Philip K. Dick Awards were announced at Norwescon in Seattle on April 2, 2010, and Cyberabad Days won a special citation. I was surprised, because I was absolutely certain that Cyberabad Days would win the prize itself. It is a fully realized vision of a near-future India – indeed, of a
Cyberabad Days is set in the same universe as McDonald’s River of Gods, a highly praised novel that won the British Science Fiction Award in 2005, and received nominations for the Hugo and the Arthur C. Clarke Awards. In the seven stories of Cyberabad Days, linked by setting and technology but not by characters, McDonald imagines a mature India split asunder by politics and the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, but still a cluster of countries that constitutes a major world power. These are countries of immense contradiction, where the rich are richer than ever and the poor are completely left behind as technology changes, even completely transforms, those who can afford access to it.
The stories are arranged so as to gently introduce the reader to this near-future world. “Sanjeev and Robotwallah” begins the book with a tale of warriors who are really young men operating remote robots – and how quickly they become obsolete in a world changing at an incredibly rapid pace. Traditional warfare is also the theme of “Kyle Meets the River,” but it tells the story of how Western ideas are so alien to India that they become nonsensical. East and West cannot meet in this story; mingling is actually dangerous, or so the privileged members of the West believe.
The growing use and presence of aeais (we’d write it as AIs, meaning “artificial intelligences”) and other highly advanced technologies truly begin to come to the fore in “The Dust Assassin.” This tale, highly reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” is about one powerful family’s revenge on another. The revenge theme also reminds one of the Chinese proverb, “If you seek revenge, dig two graves.” No one truly survives this sad and bloody story.
The consequences of the use of abortion to choose the sex of one’s child are played out in “An Eligible Boy.” By the time of this story, that is, the middle of the twenty-first century, men hugely outnumber women in the middle class:
"Economists teach India’s demographic crisis as an elegant example of market failure. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states. A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. Multiply by the three hundred million of India’s emergent class. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first-century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million, and a middle class with four times as many males as females. Market failure. Individual pursuit of self-interest damages larger society. Elegant to economists; to fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful young men like Jasbir caught in a wife-drought, catastrophic."
The competition to catch a wife is enormous, which means that men must do every single thing they possibly can to make themselves desirable, from superifical ploys like radical dentristry to whiten the teeth to more sophisticated plots like using hidden aeais from moment to moment to suggest conversational gambits. And perhaps, when all else fails, there is another option to taking a female as a wife.
One of my favorite stories in this collection is “The Little Goddess,” about a girl who is appointed as – in religious thought, literally becomes -- the incarnation of a goddess as a very young child, chosen by surviving a gauntlet of horrors we in the West would never consider deliberately exposing a child to. The rules for her reign are that she no longer has a family, but is attended by two servants, called Kumarimas. She is confined to her palace, and leaves only six times a year, when she is carried in a palanquin; she cannot touch the earth, for if she does so, she will cease to be divine. And she cannot shed blood, not from a scrape or scratch, certainly not from menstruation. The minute she bleeds a single drop, the devi leaves her and she becomes merely human once again and is to be returned to her family.
All is well for many years – really, until the hormones of a typical young woman start to kick in, despite drugs taken to delay her maturation. And even then it is not her physical body but her mental and emotional development that lead to her downfall, and she is once again human. But of what use in the world is a former goddess? She is a novelty. Untrained to take up any of the tasks of a woman in India, she cannot find a husband even in a woman-starved world. At least, that is, until she is purchased by a Brahmin, a term that we find has an entirely different meaning in this brave new world than it does in ours. And her solution to this problem is even more dramatic. There is not a single false step in this story, which is so rich in both culture and technology that, once read, it cannot be forgotten.
“The Djinn’s Wife” is the tale of a woman who marries an aeai, and precisely how that works. More, though, it tells us how certain countries are coming to distrust aeais, even to outlaw them, and gives us the political reasons for these actions.
The education in realpolitik continues in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus,” which was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula. In this story, one of the Brahmins grows up, with all of the talents built into him at their greatest. What does such a man do? What does he become? Where does he find his equals? What kind of progeny will he produce? There is so very much in this story, from sexual politics to the effects of global warming to psychology to technology to mathematics. Reading it is like watching a fireworks display, with something new and wonderful to think of – with something terrible and dangerous to be afraid of – in virtually every paragraph.
By the time you finish Cyberabad Days, you will feel that you’ve learned something about the real India. You haven’t, not really, because this India is not the India of our world. It could be, though; it very well might be on the path to becoming the powerhouse it is in this collection. This is science fiction at its very best, challenging intellectually yet stylistically well-executed. These stories make you think, imagine and wonder even as they entertain. This collection is not to be missed.
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near-future world in which India is a major player, even more so than today. (If you doubt that India is already a major player, take a look at Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat.) The prose sparkles, the plots of the stories are uniformly tight, but it is the imagination, the picture of the future, that really works here. If you want that “sense of wonder” that science fiction is most famous for, this is the place to find it.Cyberabad Days is set in the same universe as McDonald’s River of Gods, a highly praised novel that won the British Science Fiction Award in 2005, and received nominations for the Hugo and the Arthur C. Clarke Awards. In the seven stories of Cyberabad Days, linked by setting and technology but not by characters, McDonald imagines a mature India split asunder by politics and the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, but still a cluster of countries that constitutes a major world power. These are countries of immense contradiction, where the rich are richer than ever and the poor are completely left behind as technology changes, even completely transforms, those who can afford access to it.
The stories are arranged so as to gently introduce the reader to this near-future world. “Sanjeev and Robotwallah” begins the book with a tale of warriors who are really young men operating remote robots – and how quickly they become obsolete in a world changing at an incredibly rapid pace. Traditional warfare is also the theme of “Kyle Meets the River,” but it tells the story of how Western ideas are so alien to India that they become nonsensical. East and West cannot meet in this story; mingling is actually dangerous, or so the privileged members of the West believe.
The growing use and presence of aeais (we’d write it as AIs, meaning “artificial intelligences”) and other highly advanced technologies truly begin to come to the fore in “The Dust Assassin.” This tale, highly reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” is about one powerful family’s revenge on another. The revenge theme also reminds one of the Chinese proverb, “If you seek revenge, dig two graves.” No one truly survives this sad and bloody story.
The consequences of the use of abortion to choose the sex of one’s child are played out in “An Eligible Boy.” By the time of this story, that is, the middle of the twenty-first century, men hugely outnumber women in the middle class:
"Economists teach India’s demographic crisis as an elegant example of market failure. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states. A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. Multiply by the three hundred million of India’s emergent class. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first-century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million, and a middle class with four times as many males as females. Market failure. Individual pursuit of self-interest damages larger society. Elegant to economists; to fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful young men like Jasbir caught in a wife-drought, catastrophic."
The competition to catch a wife is enormous, which means that men must do every single thing they possibly can to make themselves desirable, from superifical ploys like radical dentristry to whiten the teeth to more sophisticated plots like using hidden aeais from moment to moment to suggest conversational gambits. And perhaps, when all else fails, there is another option to taking a female as a wife.
One of my favorite stories in this collection is “The Little Goddess,” about a girl who is appointed as – in religious thought, literally becomes -- the incarnation of a goddess as a very young child, chosen by surviving a gauntlet of horrors we in the West would never consider deliberately exposing a child to. The rules for her reign are that she no longer has a family, but is attended by two servants, called Kumarimas. She is confined to her palace, and leaves only six times a year, when she is carried in a palanquin; she cannot touch the earth, for if she does so, she will cease to be divine. And she cannot shed blood, not from a scrape or scratch, certainly not from menstruation. The minute she bleeds a single drop, the devi leaves her and she becomes merely human once again and is to be returned to her family.
All is well for many years – really, until the hormones of a typical young woman start to kick in, despite drugs taken to delay her maturation. And even then it is not her physical body but her mental and emotional development that lead to her downfall, and she is once again human. But of what use in the world is a former goddess? She is a novelty. Untrained to take up any of the tasks of a woman in India, she cannot find a husband even in a woman-starved world. At least, that is, until she is purchased by a Brahmin, a term that we find has an entirely different meaning in this brave new world than it does in ours. And her solution to this problem is even more dramatic. There is not a single false step in this story, which is so rich in both culture and technology that, once read, it cannot be forgotten.
“The Djinn’s Wife” is the tale of a woman who marries an aeai, and precisely how that works. More, though, it tells us how certain countries are coming to distrust aeais, even to outlaw them, and gives us the political reasons for these actions.
The education in realpolitik continues in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus,” which was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula. In this story, one of the Brahmins grows up, with all of the talents built into him at their greatest. What does such a man do? What does he become? Where does he find his equals? What kind of progeny will he produce? There is so very much in this story, from sexual politics to the effects of global warming to psychology to technology to mathematics. Reading it is like watching a fireworks display, with something new and wonderful to think of – with something terrible and dangerous to be afraid of – in virtually every paragraph.
By the time you finish Cyberabad Days, you will feel that you’ve learned something about the real India. You haven’t, not really, because this India is not the India of our world. It could be, though; it very well might be on the path to becoming the powerhouse it is in this collection. This is science fiction at its very best, challenging intellectually yet stylistically well-executed. These stories make you think, imagine and wonder even as they entertain. This collection is not to be missed.
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LibraryThing member RandyStafford
While it's set in the same future India as McDonald's vivid River of Gods, a world of old and new gods, soap operas, water wars, mech wars, gender imbalance, and new genders, it is in no way necessary to read that novel first. I read three of these seven stories before I read the novel, and they
Each story concentrates on one or more aspects of McDonald's India, and they mostly take place at various times before the novel's events.
"Sanjeev and the Robotwallah" covers the War of Separation when India breaks up into several countries from the nation we know. It's about a brief time in a man's life when, as a Japanese anima obsessed youth, he teleoperated the robots of that war. It's a type of war that may be physically safer, but the boys find, like many a veteran of the past, that society may not have much more use for them after the peace.
"Kyle Meets the River", while a decent story, is the weakest of the book. I think that's because its plot owes too much to the recent Iraqi War and the story's initial appearance in the themed Forbidden Planets anthology. India is viewed from the perspective of an American boy, his parents living in the Cantonment, a diplomatic compound of Westerners helping to build the newly independent nation of Bharat. Young Kyle first spends a lot of time viewing the massive artificial ecosphere simulation that features in River of Gods before he sees the equally strange world of India beyond the compound's wall. However, with the frequent terrorism in the Cantonment, Iraqi's Green Zone is unnecessarily brought to mind in a way that adds nothing to the story.
"The Dust Assassin" has the air and plot of a fairy tale. The Jodhra and Azad clans have been at war - a literal shooting war at times - in Jaipur for a long time, sometimes over water. The Azads wipe out the Jodhra clan except for Padmini, our young heroine, who goes into hiding with her nute retainers - a third gender artificially created and complete with its own methods of sexual gratification. Assured by her father before his death that she is a literal weapon, she undertakes martial arts training. But vengeance may lie in other directions -- if she even wants it anymore.
"An Eligible Boy" is an interesting, humorous and rather melancholy story centered around one of the key aspects of McDonald's future India: the vast gender imbalance caused by sex selective abortions eliminating millions of Indian women. In this topsy turvy, caste corroding world, men are the ones who must desperately appeal to the few women around. Our hero, Jasbir, has cosmetic surgery done and, at the suggestion of his roommate Sujay, who codes software for the soap operas the Indians are mad about, gets romantic tips from one of the starring artificial intelligences. Romance is found, lost, and, perhaps, missed all together.
"The Little Goddess", one of the best stories in the book, takes a seemingly autistic girl and makes her the chosen incarnation of the goddess Kumari Devi in Nepal. But it is the world she must navigate after being expelled from her position that is most fascinating. Here McDonald concentrates on the Brahmins - genetically engineered humans, superior in intelligence, more physically robust, but aging only half as fast as normal humans - and the Krishna Cops who try to keep America happy by patrolling the cybersphere for illegally advanced artificial intelligences.
"The Djinn's Wife", another fine story, also concentrates on those artificial intelligences, so-called aeais. Here one develops a romantic fixation on a classic Indian dancer. This being India, she even marries him. But the defining characteristic of aeais, their consciousness distributed in space and their concentration equally multiplied, conflicts with a female need for exclusivity.
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" straddles the events of River of Gods, has appearances by some of its characters, and goes further into the future for another dramatic reinvention of India. Its narrator, a Brahmin who is now an obsolete offshoot of human evolution, tells us of the world created by his always jealous older brother, a world where India's middle class again pushes aside the poor to achieve its ambitions. That ambition here is nothing less than immortality via uploaded consciousness. But every ecosystem has its limits. In real India, it's water. In the virtual world, it is a need for vast amounts of storage space.
A world worth visiting whether you've read McDonald before or not.
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were satisfactory on their own. However, I do think the one story original to this collection, the concluding novella "Vishnu at the Cat Circus", will have added pleasures if you've read the novel. Each story concentrates on one or more aspects of McDonald's India, and they mostly take place at various times before the novel's events.
"Sanjeev and the Robotwallah" covers the War of Separation when India breaks up into several countries from the nation we know. It's about a brief time in a man's life when, as a Japanese anima obsessed youth, he teleoperated the robots of that war. It's a type of war that may be physically safer, but the boys find, like many a veteran of the past, that society may not have much more use for them after the peace.
"Kyle Meets the River", while a decent story, is the weakest of the book. I think that's because its plot owes too much to the recent Iraqi War and the story's initial appearance in the themed Forbidden Planets anthology. India is viewed from the perspective of an American boy, his parents living in the Cantonment, a diplomatic compound of Westerners helping to build the newly independent nation of Bharat. Young Kyle first spends a lot of time viewing the massive artificial ecosphere simulation that features in River of Gods before he sees the equally strange world of India beyond the compound's wall. However, with the frequent terrorism in the Cantonment, Iraqi's Green Zone is unnecessarily brought to mind in a way that adds nothing to the story.
"The Dust Assassin" has the air and plot of a fairy tale. The Jodhra and Azad clans have been at war - a literal shooting war at times - in Jaipur for a long time, sometimes over water. The Azads wipe out the Jodhra clan except for Padmini, our young heroine, who goes into hiding with her nute retainers - a third gender artificially created and complete with its own methods of sexual gratification. Assured by her father before his death that she is a literal weapon, she undertakes martial arts training. But vengeance may lie in other directions -- if she even wants it anymore.
"An Eligible Boy" is an interesting, humorous and rather melancholy story centered around one of the key aspects of McDonald's future India: the vast gender imbalance caused by sex selective abortions eliminating millions of Indian women. In this topsy turvy, caste corroding world, men are the ones who must desperately appeal to the few women around. Our hero, Jasbir, has cosmetic surgery done and, at the suggestion of his roommate Sujay, who codes software for the soap operas the Indians are mad about, gets romantic tips from one of the starring artificial intelligences. Romance is found, lost, and, perhaps, missed all together.
"The Little Goddess", one of the best stories in the book, takes a seemingly autistic girl and makes her the chosen incarnation of the goddess Kumari Devi in Nepal. But it is the world she must navigate after being expelled from her position that is most fascinating. Here McDonald concentrates on the Brahmins - genetically engineered humans, superior in intelligence, more physically robust, but aging only half as fast as normal humans - and the Krishna Cops who try to keep America happy by patrolling the cybersphere for illegally advanced artificial intelligences.
"The Djinn's Wife", another fine story, also concentrates on those artificial intelligences, so-called aeais. Here one develops a romantic fixation on a classic Indian dancer. This being India, she even marries him. But the defining characteristic of aeais, their consciousness distributed in space and their concentration equally multiplied, conflicts with a female need for exclusivity.
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" straddles the events of River of Gods, has appearances by some of its characters, and goes further into the future for another dramatic reinvention of India. Its narrator, a Brahmin who is now an obsolete offshoot of human evolution, tells us of the world created by his always jealous older brother, a world where India's middle class again pushes aside the poor to achieve its ambitions. That ambition here is nothing less than immortality via uploaded consciousness. But every ecosystem has its limits. In real India, it's water. In the virtual world, it is a need for vast amounts of storage space.
A world worth visiting whether you've read McDonald before or not.
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LibraryThing member alexdallymacfarlane
So I recently read /Cyberabad Days/, and I noticed some things. Overall, I got the impression that McDonald’s view of future-India is pessimistic. Yes, there’s shiny fun technology, but the country fell apart into separate states and this situation isn’t always working so well; there have
Women in this future.
In “The Little Goddess”, the woman is made a Goddess as a child, for seven years, then winds up in a place where she is waiting to be married. (Women are in great demand, as there are four times as many men after sex selection was made possible.) After fleeing her husband, she works for another man, smuggling AIs, until she winds up fleeing police with 5 AIs in her head and decides to set herself up as a roadside goddess, using the knowledge of these AIs to appear wise. Quick aside: I wanted this story to start there, not end.
In “An Eligible Boy”, we see a scenario where men show up at dating agencies, hunting for brides. In “The Djinn’s Wife”, the main character was sold as a girl, trained to be a dancer, is now reasonably famous with an AI in love with her, and in a fit of jealousy at another woman’s success announces that she and the AI are getting married. She eventually betrays him, as the relationship fails.
In “The Dust Assassin”, a young woman is told repeatedly she’s a weapon against a rival family business, and eventually the way in which she’s a weapon is revealed: she causes a fatal allergic reaction to the last remaining person in the rival family when she kisses him at their wedding, which she’s been manipulated into by a member of her family.
I can’t remember now which one, but in a story there’s a mention of the “small” number of career women.
There’s kind a trend here.
Women are steered, lives slotted into other people’s, rather than driving their own plots. Women are wives, or are wanted/used in other ways. I’d like to read the Little Goddess’ story after McDonald’s story ends, because that’s the act of most agency she showed and I want to know how she leads her life after it.
I am pretty sure that right now, there are women in India who direct their own lives. In forty years’ time, I rather suspect (hope, at least) that even more women are in control of their careers, that women are more than pretty in-demand wives. I suspect there’ll also be women who are not, but does McDonald really have to tell their stories above all others? There’s a woman in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” who had a career, yes; she also had cosmetic surgery and desperately wanted to birth the best babies. Where are the women who live outside the expectations or machinations of others? There is one, the main character’s sister in that same story, but she is only a side character. She’s killed off, too, because of her choices. It disappoints me that McDonald’s future is so negative about women; I also don’t believe it.
Another part of the future that I don’t believe is the separation of India into smaller states. None of the stories offered an explanation why. There are metaphors in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” that hint at internal divisions, perhaps driven by outside influences, but I wanted more explanation. Even more problematically, I wanted to see differences between the various states, to see convincing reasons why they are still separate. Two of the new states featured prominently in the stories and I couldn’t tell them apart.
Neither was I particularly impressed with the AIs in the stories. They tended to act just like humans with petty desires and so on (although I suspect the Level 3 AIs would act differently, but they sadly lack page-time). There’s an AI soap opera.
Two small syntax issues:
- McDonald has a tendency to drop commas when he’s showing excitement or myriad sights/sensory impressions at once, a technique that is occasionally fun, but wears thin. Especially when every single viewpoint character does it. Variety in narrative voice is a good thing.
- Another little annoying thing he does with language is write ‘aeai’ instead of ‘AI’, which really started to grate after 200 pages. There are other alternate words, some of which I didn’t mind; ‘gupshup’ for ‘gossip’ annoyed me, though. I guess this is very much a personal preference thing, but I wonder at the necessity, especially of ‘aeai’.
He also has a third gender, nutes, who are (with two exceptions) in traditionally feminine industries and tend to the faaabulous. The idea of a third gender really interests me -- Thailand’s katoey, for instance -- and I wanted the complexity of this to be examined more. Instead they’re mostly a cross between stereotypical gay men and old clichés about eunuchs. Decorative exotic flavour, not part of an interesting story.
Going back to the pessimism I mentioned at the beginning, I found myself overall doubting McDonald’s vision of India’s future. It’s hard to explain exactly why, except for that pessimistic/critical tone just not ringing true. To be honest, I wanted to read a vision of India’s future written by an Indian person, because I suspect they’d have a different -- and more nuanced, more true -- slant on their country. I could never quite shake the impression that I was reading stories by a white man, and that’s not a complimentary comment in this context.
Which is why it annoys me so much that McDonald gets all this praise for being “visionary” and “revolutionary” by writing about non-Western futures. I’d rather read Zelazny’s Lord of Light, and that’s about a group of non-Indians pretending to be Hindu gods. At least it wears its problematic nature on its sleeve. McDonald’s writing is more subtly wrong: he writes about this exotic, faraway place with the level of detail that will convince many readers, yet his extrapolations feel like harmful lies about India.
I’d also rather read books/stories by Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, Vandana Singh and Maureen McHugh, to name four women whose work I’ve enjoyed, who write convincingly and thoughtfully about non-Western futures. They are hardly alone. McDonald is really not revolutionary at all.
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been conflicts. And, the thing that’s getting to me the most:Women in this future.
In “The Little Goddess”, the woman is made a Goddess as a child, for seven years, then winds up in a place where she is waiting to be married. (Women are in great demand, as there are four times as many men after sex selection was made possible.) After fleeing her husband, she works for another man, smuggling AIs, until she winds up fleeing police with 5 AIs in her head and decides to set herself up as a roadside goddess, using the knowledge of these AIs to appear wise. Quick aside: I wanted this story to start there, not end.
In “An Eligible Boy”, we see a scenario where men show up at dating agencies, hunting for brides. In “The Djinn’s Wife”, the main character was sold as a girl, trained to be a dancer, is now reasonably famous with an AI in love with her, and in a fit of jealousy at another woman’s success announces that she and the AI are getting married. She eventually betrays him, as the relationship fails.
In “The Dust Assassin”, a young woman is told repeatedly she’s a weapon against a rival family business, and eventually the way in which she’s a weapon is revealed: she causes a fatal allergic reaction to the last remaining person in the rival family when she kisses him at their wedding, which she’s been manipulated into by a member of her family.
I can’t remember now which one, but in a story there’s a mention of the “small” number of career women.
There’s kind a trend here.
Women are steered, lives slotted into other people’s, rather than driving their own plots. Women are wives, or are wanted/used in other ways. I’d like to read the Little Goddess’ story after McDonald’s story ends, because that’s the act of most agency she showed and I want to know how she leads her life after it.
I am pretty sure that right now, there are women in India who direct their own lives. In forty years’ time, I rather suspect (hope, at least) that even more women are in control of their careers, that women are more than pretty in-demand wives. I suspect there’ll also be women who are not, but does McDonald really have to tell their stories above all others? There’s a woman in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” who had a career, yes; she also had cosmetic surgery and desperately wanted to birth the best babies. Where are the women who live outside the expectations or machinations of others? There is one, the main character’s sister in that same story, but she is only a side character. She’s killed off, too, because of her choices. It disappoints me that McDonald’s future is so negative about women; I also don’t believe it.
Another part of the future that I don’t believe is the separation of India into smaller states. None of the stories offered an explanation why. There are metaphors in “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” that hint at internal divisions, perhaps driven by outside influences, but I wanted more explanation. Even more problematically, I wanted to see differences between the various states, to see convincing reasons why they are still separate. Two of the new states featured prominently in the stories and I couldn’t tell them apart.
Neither was I particularly impressed with the AIs in the stories. They tended to act just like humans with petty desires and so on (although I suspect the Level 3 AIs would act differently, but they sadly lack page-time). There’s an AI soap opera.
Two small syntax issues:
- McDonald has a tendency to drop commas when he’s showing excitement or myriad sights/sensory impressions at once, a technique that is occasionally fun, but wears thin. Especially when every single viewpoint character does it. Variety in narrative voice is a good thing.
- Another little annoying thing he does with language is write ‘aeai’ instead of ‘AI’, which really started to grate after 200 pages. There are other alternate words, some of which I didn’t mind; ‘gupshup’ for ‘gossip’ annoyed me, though. I guess this is very much a personal preference thing, but I wonder at the necessity, especially of ‘aeai’.
He also has a third gender, nutes, who are (with two exceptions) in traditionally feminine industries and tend to the faaabulous. The idea of a third gender really interests me -- Thailand’s katoey, for instance -- and I wanted the complexity of this to be examined more. Instead they’re mostly a cross between stereotypical gay men and old clichés about eunuchs. Decorative exotic flavour, not part of an interesting story.
Going back to the pessimism I mentioned at the beginning, I found myself overall doubting McDonald’s vision of India’s future. It’s hard to explain exactly why, except for that pessimistic/critical tone just not ringing true. To be honest, I wanted to read a vision of India’s future written by an Indian person, because I suspect they’d have a different -- and more nuanced, more true -- slant on their country. I could never quite shake the impression that I was reading stories by a white man, and that’s not a complimentary comment in this context.
Which is why it annoys me so much that McDonald gets all this praise for being “visionary” and “revolutionary” by writing about non-Western futures. I’d rather read Zelazny’s Lord of Light, and that’s about a group of non-Indians pretending to be Hindu gods. At least it wears its problematic nature on its sleeve. McDonald’s writing is more subtly wrong: he writes about this exotic, faraway place with the level of detail that will convince many readers, yet his extrapolations feel like harmful lies about India.
I’d also rather read books/stories by Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, Vandana Singh and Maureen McHugh, to name four women whose work I’ve enjoyed, who write convincingly and thoughtfully about non-Western futures. They are hardly alone. McDonald is really not revolutionary at all.
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LibraryThing member jackdeighton
This is a collection of shorter pieces of varying length, companions to McDonald’s novel River Of Gods. Cyberabad Days extends the vision of a future India laid out in the novel into a bigger round, replete with water wars, IT wars, robots, virtual reality technology embedded in earpieces called
McDonald’s focus is always on the characters caught up in the events surrounding them, whether it be a woman who marries an aeai, The Djinn’s Wife, another who is destined to be the unwitting agent of final victory in an inter-family feud, The Dust Assassin, a child who is made a Dalai Lama-like goddess (and a pawn) but has that role taken from her and has to find her own way in the world, The Little Goddess, a man used as a surrogate by an aeai to further an affair, An Eligible Boy, a Western child whose life is lived in a compound and who loses his best friend - an Indian boy - after they venture outside together, Kyle Meets The River. Then there is Vishnu At The Cat Circus on which I commented here.
This is big, bold SF treating with issues of concern to the world but never losing sight of the need to tell a story and of the necessity of rounded characters. That it is set outwith the confines of the Western world view is doubly refreshing. The India McDonald has constructed here feels entirely believable – and exciting.
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hoeks, AIs (Indianised to aeais) and nano dust, not to mention cricket and soap opera. As in Brasyl, McDonald once again manages to dragoon football into his scenarios.McDonald’s focus is always on the characters caught up in the events surrounding them, whether it be a woman who marries an aeai, The Djinn’s Wife, another who is destined to be the unwitting agent of final victory in an inter-family feud, The Dust Assassin, a child who is made a Dalai Lama-like goddess (and a pawn) but has that role taken from her and has to find her own way in the world, The Little Goddess, a man used as a surrogate by an aeai to further an affair, An Eligible Boy, a Western child whose life is lived in a compound and who loses his best friend - an Indian boy - after they venture outside together, Kyle Meets The River. Then there is Vishnu At The Cat Circus on which I commented here.
This is big, bold SF treating with issues of concern to the world but never losing sight of the need to tell a story and of the necessity of rounded characters. That it is set outwith the confines of the Western world view is doubly refreshing. The India McDonald has constructed here feels entirely believable – and exciting.
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LibraryThing member kd9
This book is a continuation of Ian McDonald's wonderful and award winning novel, River of Gods. Although it is a series of short stories, it reads like a novel, starting with "Sanjeev and the Robotwallah", the story of a poor boy's fascination with telepresence robots fighting the wars between the
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breakaway Indian territories, and moves to "Kyle Meets the River", where a Western child escapes his secure compound to see the real India. Each story is a gem, but builds up to larger and larger stories of the transformation of society by gene engineering and ubiquitous computing. My favorite story is probably "The Little Goddess" about a Nepalese girl who is a Tibetan goddess as long as she does not bleed. She later moves to India as a potential wife for the Indian men who outnumber their women by four to one and becomes an AI smuggler. But the last story, "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" is a breathtaking tour de force of a gene engineered Brahmin who has an extended lifespan at the cost of a much reduced physical maturity. I highly recommend these stories to anyone who loves the science fiction of near future predictions of a world completely changed by technology. Show Less
LibraryThing member kaipakartik
This is an absolutely fantastic collection of stories of varying length. I never thought science fiction set in India could be done so well until I read this and River of Gods.
The way Ian McDonald writes it seems that he has lived in India forever and his observations about the culture, the ways
There are seven stories in all each of them covering ample terrain.My favorites include
1) The little goddess
A child who is annointed as a goddess gets thrust into the real world the moment her blood is spilled. She becomes a carrier of high level AIs. Absolutely brilliant.
2) Vishnu at the cat circus
Places the whole of river of gods novel into context. A tale of how a genetically re engineered Brahmin has to live his life. Must be read to be experienced.
3) The Djinn's wife
A human and an AI fall in love.
4) The Dust Assassin
A tale of rivalry between the two ancient houses of Rajupatana and the Mughals and how a princess is engineered to be a weapon from the time she is born.
This is how you write short fiction. I couldn't put the collection down till I had read all of them cover to cover.
An extract which I think is growing ever more pertinent in modern India.
"Economists teach India’s demographic crisis as an elegant example of market failure. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states. A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. Multiply by the three hundred million of India’s emergent class. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first-century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million, and a middle class with four times as many males as females. Market failure. Individual pursuit of self-interest damages larger society. Elegant to economists; to fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful young men like Jasbir caught in a wife-drought, catastrophic."
The way Ian McDonald writes it seems that he has lived in India forever and his observations about the culture, the ways
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the caste system works, the preference for a male child are spot on. His prose is electric and Ian McDonald turns even spiritual discourses into absolute page turners.There are seven stories in all each of them covering ample terrain.My favorites include
1) The little goddess
A child who is annointed as a goddess gets thrust into the real world the moment her blood is spilled. She becomes a carrier of high level AIs. Absolutely brilliant.
2) Vishnu at the cat circus
Places the whole of river of gods novel into context. A tale of how a genetically re engineered Brahmin has to live his life. Must be read to be experienced.
3) The Djinn's wife
A human and an AI fall in love.
4) The Dust Assassin
A tale of rivalry between the two ancient houses of Rajupatana and the Mughals and how a princess is engineered to be a weapon from the time she is born.
This is how you write short fiction. I couldn't put the collection down till I had read all of them cover to cover.
An extract which I think is growing ever more pertinent in modern India.
"Economists teach India’s demographic crisis as an elegant example of market failure. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states. A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. Multiply by the three hundred million of India’s emergent class. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first-century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million, and a middle class with four times as many males as females. Market failure. Individual pursuit of self-interest damages larger society. Elegant to economists; to fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful young men like Jasbir caught in a wife-drought, catastrophic."
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LibraryThing member HanGerg
This book is billed as a sequel to River of Gods ,though it is actually more a collection of short stories set in the same universe as the original story, rather than a conventional sequel. However, the last of the short stories does directly address what happened in the first book and continues on
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that story to some sort of conclusion. The main joy of these stories is that the universe McDonald created is just such an enthralling place to be. The setting is India, 30-40 years into the future. In many ways, this world is one that we would recognise, but with many subtle or not so subtle differences. Global warming has meant all of India suffers from a severe shortage of water, that leads to conflict between the regions that then fracture into 12 seperate states. Many of these states now lead the world in computer technology, especially in the creation of "aeais"- basically computer intelligences that range from small programmes that will overseer basic domestic management tasks through to fully sentient beings that are indistinguisable from humans 99% of the time. We also see some of the social trends of present day India played out to full effect, so the current demographic time bomb of young men outnumbering young women four to one is examined in more than one story in the collection. Then there are new developments in this world that we could not predict now, such as the invention of a third sex, created when men or women decide to step away from all the baggage associated with their gender and literally remake themselves from the cell level up. Aside from these really interesting themes, the book is also made great by the details of this fully realised world, that just leap off the page in all their richly textured and atmospheric glory. And finally, the actual stories themselves are just so compelling and brilliantly told, that the whole package is just absolutely irresistable. Once I finished it, I just wanted to start all over again, as the text is just so rich I think it's impossible to take it all in in one reading. Actually, I would probaly re-read the first book again, and then this one, as I'm sure there are a lot of minor characters and other details that overlap between the two that I may have overlooked. If you have already read the first book in this series, I can 100% guarantee you will love this. If you haven't read either yet, what are you waiting for? I think you could probably read this one before "River..." actually, as you don't need any prior knowledge from the previous book, but the final story might ruin certain aspects of the first book for you if you are intending to read both. On this evidence, I am tempted to make one of those grand statements that publishers put on the back covers of books. I may not be fully qualified to say this, not having read a huge amount of contemporary Sci-Fi, but what the heck, after a book this good I'm feeling exuberant: Ian McDonald is the best Sci-Fi writer currently at work in the world today!. Show Less
LibraryThing member DRFP
There's not much I can add to the information already provided by previous reviewers, just my thoughts on the quality of the stories themselves.
I thought the first three stories (Sanjeev and Robotwallah / Kyle Meets The River / The Dust Assassin) fairly so-so; stories that only existed to
Things pick up after that though. An Eligible Boy makes some real characters out of its two romancing leads. The Little Goddess is, I think, the best story in the collection. It has an authentic voice and great scope (it could easily be expanded into a novel of its own). The Djinn's Wife is decent but a little unconvincing in portraying a romance between a human and an aeai. Vishnu at the Cat Circus is a wonderful examination of what life might be like for the Brahmins of India and its ties to RoG are nice too. If only the story had been a little shorter - it seemed pointless to go beyond the end point of RoG but to do so in a small number of pages. Either such information should feature in a dedicated story (be it novel or short) or not feature at all.
I greatly enjoyed returning to, "the India of 2047," but this is still a fairly average collection of short stories, so my rating reflects that. The Little Goddess is certainly a gem and certain other stories shine quite brightly, but not all. The remainder are decent but they don't stand up on their own, which I think is crucial. This isn't a collection like Gibson's Burning Chrome that featured stories that weaved into the Sprawl trilogy and other stories that were brilliant tales in their own right.
I thought the first three stories (Sanjeev and Robotwallah / Kyle Meets The River / The Dust Assassin) fairly so-so; stories that only existed to
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illuminate aspects of McDonald's India that had been touched upon in River of Gods. I don't think they're great stories in their own right. Anyone reading them without having read RoG won't think much of them.Things pick up after that though. An Eligible Boy makes some real characters out of its two romancing leads. The Little Goddess is, I think, the best story in the collection. It has an authentic voice and great scope (it could easily be expanded into a novel of its own). The Djinn's Wife is decent but a little unconvincing in portraying a romance between a human and an aeai. Vishnu at the Cat Circus is a wonderful examination of what life might be like for the Brahmins of India and its ties to RoG are nice too. If only the story had been a little shorter - it seemed pointless to go beyond the end point of RoG but to do so in a small number of pages. Either such information should feature in a dedicated story (be it novel or short) or not feature at all.
I greatly enjoyed returning to, "the India of 2047," but this is still a fairly average collection of short stories, so my rating reflects that. The Little Goddess is certainly a gem and certain other stories shine quite brightly, but not all. The remainder are decent but they don't stand up on their own, which I think is crucial. This isn't a collection like Gibson's Burning Chrome that featured stories that weaved into the Sprawl trilogy and other stories that were brilliant tales in their own right.
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LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
I liked one of his short stories, so I've vowed to try one of his novels. If there's a better one I should read, please suggest it!
LibraryThing member wunder
This is a bit more than a collection of stories. The stories illuminate different parts and aspects of a longer history.
Do NOT read this before River of Gods, because it has huge spoilers for that work. And you really should read River of Gods.
Do NOT read this before River of Gods, because it has huge spoilers for that work. And you really should read River of Gods.
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Collection — 2010)
British Fantasy Award (Nominee — Collection — 2010)
Philip K. Dick Award (Nominee — 2009)
Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (Winner — 2013)
Locus Recommended Reading (Collection — 2009)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2009-02
Physical description
279 p.; 6.08 inches
ISBN
9781591026990