The great geoengineering projects have failed.
The world is still warming, sea levels are still rising, and the Antarctic Peninsula is home to Earth's newest nation, with life quickened by ecopoets spreading across valleys and fjords exposed by the retreat of the ice.
Austral Morales Ferrado, a child of the last generation of ecopoets, is a husky: an edited person adapted to the unforgiving climate of the far south, feared and despised by most of its population. She's been a convict, a corrections officer in a labour camp, and consort to a criminal, and now, out of desperation, she has committed the kidnapping of the century. But before she can collect the ransom and make a new life elsewhere, she must find a place of safety amongst the peninsula's forests and icy plateaus, and evade a criminal gang that has its own plans for the teenage girl she's taken hostage.
Blending the story of Austral's flight with the fractured history of her family and its role in the colonisation of Antarctica, Austral is a vivid portrayal of a treacherous new world created by climate change, and shaped by the betrayals and mistakes of the past.
'Paul McAuley's balanced grasp of science and literature, always a rare attribute in the writer of prose fiction, is combined with the equally rare ability to look at today's problems and know which are really problems, and what can be done about them.' William Gibson
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Paul McAuley won the PHILIP K. DICK AWARD for his first novel and has gone on to win the ARTHUR C. CLARKE, SIDEWISE, BRITISH FANTASY and JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARDs. He gave up his position as a research biologist to write full time. He lives in London.
Austral combines a solid science scenario with a taught thriller in an all too plausible future. For an SF reader, or indeed any reader that considers matters beyond the day after tomorrow, what is there not to like?―CONCATENATION
A chase thriller set in late 21st-century Antarctica that combines elements of Jack London,J.G. Ballard and William Gibson. A significant contribution to writing about the anthropocene.―THE ECONOMIST
A beautifully worked tale of post-environment collapse Antarctica, and a genetically-tweaked cold-adapted woman's attempt to escape. As ever McAuley writes superbly: his prose is always elegant without being showy, expressive and clear without ever being pedestrian. And he's capable of gorgeous descriptive vividness. Plus: rounded characterisation and a tremendous command of tension and pace . . . There's something deceptively simple about Austral: you read it quickly, and it lives in your head for a long time after.―Adam Roberts
Cli-fi transcendent.
An exquisite human story set on an undiscovered continent of our near future.
Austral may be McAuley's best yet. And the best near-future novel yet written.
Paul McAuley has quickened science fiction. The future has changed.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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