Whole Wide World - Softcover

McAuley, Paul

3.48

105 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765340275 ISBN 13: 9780765340276

Publisher: Tor Books, 2003

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London, in the aftermath of the Infowar. Surveillance cameras stand on every street corner, their tireless gaze linked to an artificial intelligence system. Censors patrol the borders of the Internet. A young woman is murdered before the gaze of eager voyeurs.

A policeman sidelined to a backwater department seizes on the chance to contribute to this high-profile murder case, but soon finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue. Why was Sophie Booth's murder broadcast over the Internet? What is the link between her murder and London's new surveillance system? Who is the self-styled "Avenger," and why does he communicate only by e-mail?

Whole Wide World is a gripping conspiracy thriller set in a world where information is the universal currency and some people will do anything to be able to control it.

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Review:

If there is any justice, the excellent conspiracy thriller Whole Wide World will vault award-winning author Paul McAuley into the front rank of bestselling authors.

In the wake of a virulent "information war," England has become a police state with surveillance cameras on every street corner, linked by an evolving artificial intelligence. The government controls all access to the Internet. Privacy is a fantasy. Porn is illegal. But a young British woman manages to transmit her sexual escapades over the World Wide Web--and the acts culminate in the live broadcast of her own murder. But even as another woman is slain in the same manner, the war veteran-policeman Dixon finds himself being pressured off the case by powerful sources ranging from his superior officers to the dead woman's uncle, the powerful CEO who created the artificial intelligence that sees all and, perhaps, knows all.

Paul McAuley has received the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. --Cynthia Ward

About the Author:

Paul McAuley was born in England on St George's Day 1955. He has worked as a research biologist in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years was a lecturer in botany at St Andrews University. The first short story he ever finished was accepted by the American magazine Worlds of If, but the magazine folded before publishing it and he took this as a hint to concentrate on an academic career instead. He started writing again during a period as a resident alien in Los Angeles, and is now a full time writer.

His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and fifth, Fairyland, won the 1995 Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Awards. His other novels include Of the Fall, Eternal Light, Red Dust, Pasquale's Angel, the three books of Confluence, Child of the River, Ancients of Days, and Shrine of Stars, The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and the forthcoming White Devils. He has also published two collections of short stories, The King of the Hill, and The Invisible Country. A Doctor Who novella, the Eye of the Tyger, is due from Telos Books in November 2003, forty years after the author was scared behind the couch by the Daleks, and a third short story collection, Little Machines will be published by PS Publishing in 2004. He lives in North London.

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