Ian McDonald | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1960 (age 63–64) Manchester, England |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Website | |
| Ian McDonald on Twitter ianmcdonald | |
Ian McDonald (born 1960) is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Ian McDonald was born in 1960, in Manchester, to a Scottish father and Irish mother. He moved to Belfast when he was five and has lived there ever since. He lived through the whole of the Troubles (1968–1999), and his sensibility has been permanently shaped by coming to understand Northern Ireland as a post-colonial [1] society imposed on an older culture.
McDonald sold his first story to a local Belfast magazine when he was 22, and in 1987 became a full-time writer. [2] He has also worked in TV consultancy within Northern Ireland, contributing scripts to the Northern Irish Sesame Workshop production of Sesame Tree .[ citation needed ]
McDonald's debut novel was Desolation Road (1988), which takes place on a far future Mars in a town that develops around an oasis in the terraformed Martian desert. [3] He published a sequel, Ares Express , in 2001. [4]
Published between 1995 and 2000, the novels Chaga (US title Evolution's Shore) and Kirinya , with the novella Tendeléo's Story, form the 'Chaga Saga', which chronicles the effects of an alien flora introduced to Earth, and also analyses the AIDS crisis in Africa. The protagonist is Ulster journalist Gaby McAslin, whose outsider's eye both observes the African landscape and sees what the "UN quarantine zone" is doing to Kenya and Kenyans. Gaby's story, with that of her daughter, continues in Kirinya. Tendeléo's Story is seen through the eyes of a young Kenyan girl who escapes to the UK, only to be deported back to Kenya as an unwanted alien.
The image of the unstoppable wave of transformation was nicked from [1982 Star Trek movie] The Wrath of Khan : it's the Genesis device, slowed down, and once I had that, it became a rich source of metaphors: for colonialism, new technology, globalisation, change, death. If the Chaga is colonialism, it's a unique kind that allows the people of the poor South to use and transform it to meet their needs and empower themselves: it's a symbiosis. [5]
McDonald's River of Gods (2004) is set in mid-21st-century India; it won the BSFA Award, and was nominated for a Hugo Award and a Arthur C. Clarke Award. Brasyl (2007) is set in the 18th and 21st centuries in Lusophone South America; it won the BSFA award, [6] and was nominated for a Hugo Award and the Warwick Prize for Writing. McDonald began his Everness series of young adult fiction novels in 2011 with Planesrunner . [7] [8] He said in a 2014 interview, "I didn't want to get stuck doing the same SF books over and over, successful though they may be. I didn't want to keep writing books about the developing economy of the year—India, Brazil. I could feel myself getting trapped in that." [9] He has written two Everness sequels, Be My Enemy (2012), [10] [11] and Empress of the Sun (2014). [12]
McDonald published Luna: New Moon , the first volume of a proposed science fiction duology, in 2015. [9] [13] [14] It explores the dangerous intrigue that surrounds the five powerful families who control industry on the Moon. [9] McDonald said of the novel in August 2014, "I’m still writing about developing economies, it’s just that this one happens to be on the Moon." [9] Before critics called the novel " Game of Thrones in space", [13] [15] [16] McDonald himself dubbed it "Game of Domes" and " Dallas in space". [9] Luna was optioned for development as a television series before its release. [15] [17] The sequel, Luna: Wolf Moon , was released in March 2017. [18] A third novel, Luna: Moon Rising, [19] was released in March 2019. [20] McDonald previously published the novelette "The Fifth Dragon", a prequel to Luna in the same setting, in the 2014 anthology Reach for Infinity . [9] [21] [22]
McDonald's Time Was , a time travel romance novella about two men, was released in April 2018. [23]
Kenneth Macrae MacLeod is a Scottish science fiction writer. His novels The Sky Road and The Night Sessions won the BSFA Award. MacLeod's novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial awards for best novel on multiple occasions. A techno-utopianist, MacLeod's work makes frequent use of libertarian socialist themes; he is a three-time winner of the libertarian Prometheus Award. Prior to becoming a novelist, MacLeod studied biology and worked as a computer programmer. He sits on the advisory board of the Edinburgh Science Festival. MacLeod has been chosen as a Guest of Honor at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.
Glen David Brin is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a 1997 feature film starring Kevin Costner.
Gene Rodman Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short story writer and novelist, and won many literary awards. Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction", and was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Sheri Stewart Tepper was an American writer of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. She is primarily known for her feminist science fiction, which explored themes of sociology, gender and equality, as well as theology and ecology. Often referred to as an eco-feminist of science fiction literature, Tepper personally preferred the label eco-humanist. Though the majority of her works operate in a world of fantastical imagery and metaphor, at the heart of her writing is real-world injustice and pain. She employed several pen names during her lifetime, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant.
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis, commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major SF awards than any other writer—most recently the "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear (2010). She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.
Jonathan Strahan is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.
Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award—Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
Pyr was the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, launched in March 2005 with the publication of John Meaney's Paradox. In November 2018 it was sold to Start Publishing.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer. Originally a puppeteer by primary trade after receiving a bachelor's degree in art education, she became art director for science fiction magazines and by 2010 was also authoring her first full-length published novels. The majority of her work is characterized by science fiction themes, such as interplanetary travel; a common element present in many of her novels is historical or alternate history fantasy, such as in her Glamourist Histories and Lady Astronaut books.
Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer.
Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.
Kameron Hurley is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, in part about artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, and Translation State, published in 2023, are also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.
Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in 2013. It is Leckie's debut novel and the first in her Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, followed by Ancillary Sword (2014) and Ancillary Mercy (2015). The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. The cover art is by John Harris.
This is a list of the published works of Aliette de Bodard.
Becky Chambers is an American science fiction writer. She is the author of the Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series as well as novellas including To Be Taught, if Fortunate and the Monk & Robot series, which begins with the Hugo Award-winning A Psalm for the Wild-Built. She is known for her imaginative world-building and character-driven stories.
List of works by or about the British author Ian McDonald.
AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine, is an American author of science fiction literature. Her first novels A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2021), which form the Teixcalaan series, each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
