The novel's main character and narrator, Lucy Stone, a computer programmer, grew up in the fictional Caucasian Soviet republic of Krassnia and in 2008 works for a videogame company in Edinburgh.[1] After Stone's mother, who once worked for the CIA, commissions her company to create an MMORPG based on Krassnian mythology, Stone becomes entangled in the region's politics and her own family history.[1][2]
The story is set in the year 2008.[3] MacLeod has said that he originally intended to set it in the near future, but the 2008 South Ossetia war made this impossible.[4][5]
Reviews of the novel have generally been positive.[1][2][3][6][7][8]Financial Times reviewer James Lovegrove writes that "Where his novel excels is in its depiction of the machinations used both by governments and families to coerce others into doing their bidding, and in its inquiry into the nature of reality."[1]
Iain Banks was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. After the success of The Wasp Factory (1984), he began to write full time. His first science fiction book, Consider Phlebas, appeared in 1987, marking the start of the Culture series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio, and television. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
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.
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Use of Weapons is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1990. It is the third novel in the Culture series.
Ian R. MacLeod is a British science fiction and fantasy writer.
John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, a Victorian era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include the Small Change series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown. Her fantasy novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history My Real Children received the 2015 Tiptree Award.
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.
The Star Fraction is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, his first, published in 1995. The major themes are radical political thinking, a functional anarchist microstate, oppression, and revolution. The action takes place in a balkanized UK, about halfway into the 21st century. The novel was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1996.
Learning the World is a science fiction novel by British writer Ken MacLeod, published in 2005. It won the 2006 Prometheus Award, was nominated for the Hugo, Locus, Clarke, and Campbell Awards that same year, and received a BSFA nomination in 2005. Since the book's publication MacLeod has written two short stories set in the same universe, "Lighting Out" and "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?".
James M. H. Lovegrove is a British writer of speculative fiction.
Juliet E. McKenna is a British fantasy author with over fifteen epic fantasy novels.
The Execution Channel is an alternate history science fiction novel by British writer Ken MacLeod, which focuses on the early decades of the 21st century. The military of the United States of America and some of its allies have conducted a War on Terror for some time and additional terrorist acts have continued, including an unspecified one at Rosyth in Scotland. Divisions between ethnic groups have formed as a result. The Execution Channel was nominated for a British Science Fiction award in 2007, and for both the Campbell and Clarke Awards in 2008.
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.
Cosmonaut Keep is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, published in 2000. It is the first book in the Engines of Light Trilogy, a 2001 nominee for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for best novel.
Sputnik Caledonia (2008) is a novel by Andrew Crumey, for which he won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award, the UK's largest literary prize at the time.
The Night Sessions is a 2008 novel by Scottish writer Ken MacLeod. Set in the year 2037, the novel follows Edinburgh police officers investigating the murder of a priest in a world in which religious believers are a small and marginalized minority. The novel won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel in 2008.
Firefly is an American space Western media franchise created by Joss Whedon and produced by Mutant Enemy Productions. The franchise includes the TV series Firefly, the film Serenity, and other media.
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.
Anne Charnock is a British author of science fiction novels. In 2018, she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in science fiction, for her novel Dreams Before the Start of Time.
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