Austral Coming Through

Bound proof copies of Austral have arrived: the penultimate stage in the alchemical process of thought to words to book. A few early reactions:

'Bleakly beautiful, Austral is both a finely-honed character study and a powerful evocation of landscape and change, delivered with icy clarity. This is the kind of fiction we will need as the Anthropocene takes hold.' Alastair Reynolds

'An exquisite human story set on an undiscovered continent of our near future. Austral may be McAuley’s best yet.' Stephen Baxter

And over on Goodreads, this from Joanne Harris:

'I was sent this proof by the publishers, and oh boy, it's a good one. A cracking setup; great writing; great pacing; a genuinely fresh narrative voice, and for once - hooray! - a male author writing a complex, first-person female narrator who is neither a broflake's wet-dream, nor a wooden stereotype. Austral is big, strong, powerful, and yet with real vulnerabilities; a flawed and relatable heroine with agency, feelings and spirit.'

Soft Launch

A while back I promised a Kindle edition of my short story collection A Very British History. And then actual life intervened, and the delay in publication stretched into very nearly a year. Now it has finally gone live, and is available for purchase in the UK, the US, and all points north, south, east, and west of the Pecos.

It's a look back at the first twenty-five years of my career (and was first published by PS Publishing in 2013: I really am as old as dirt) - from my first publication in Interzone to 'The Choice', which won the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Because it's a best-of collection, some of the twenty-three stories have been published in Little Machines, Stories from the Quiet War, and Life after Wartime. So if you've bought any of those and feel that you don't need to buy this as well, I quite understand. But if you're new to my stuff, this is a selection of what I think are the best stories in the first half of my career. There are also notes on every story, and a short biographical essay, 'My Secret Super-Power.'

Table of Contents

'Little Ilya and Spider and Box'
'The Temporary King'
'Cross Road Blues'
'Gene Wars'
'Prison Blues'
'Children of the Revolution'
'Recording Angel'
'Second Skin'
'All Tomorrow's Parties'
'17'
'Sea Change, With Monsters'
'How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen'
'A Very British History'
'The Two Dicks'
'Meat'
'Rocket Boy'
'The Thought War'
'City of the Dead'
'Little Lost Robot'
'Shadow Life'
'The Choice'
'Searching for Van Gogh at the End of the World'
'Karl and the Ogre'
'My Secret Super-Power.'