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Desolation Road

Ian McDonald

384 pp
ISBN: 978-1-59102-744-7
Trade Paperback (6" x 9")
$17
July 2009
Cover Illustration: © Stephan Martiniere

NOMINATED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD


It all began thirty years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality from Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ‘Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel) to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. Its inhabitants ranged from Dr. Alimantando, the town’s founder and resident genius, to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother who just wants her own child—grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo who has a mystical way with machines to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with—and married—the same woman.

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Reviews:



Praise for IAN McDONALD

"...one of the most interesting and accomplished science fiction writers of this latter-day era. Indeed, maybe the most interesting and accomplished." —Asimov's

"McDonald deserves to be going up against most of the world's top fiction writers, period."

—Amazon's Bookstore Blog     

Praise for Desolation Road

“Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is one of the books that has influenced me the most as a writer. Funny and sad and wildly imaginative... What a book!” —Cory Doctorow

"This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do. Desolation Road is a rara avis... Extraordinary and more than that!" —Philip José Farmer

“Flavoured with a voice that blends the delightful prose of Jack Vance with the idiosyncratic stylings of Cordwainer Smith, this novel is, most of all, about the dusty town of Desolation Road in the middle of the red Martian desert. Episodic in scope, it would also work as short stories. An elderly couple get lost in the infinite space of their garden, a baby growing in a jar is stolen and replaced with a mango, a man called The Hand plays electric guitar for the clouds and starts the first rain for one hundred and fifty thousand years.” —SFSite.com





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About
the
Author:
Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including Brasyl, River of Gods, Cyberabad Days, King of Morning, Queen of Day, Out on Blue Six, Chaga, and Kirinya. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award and the BSFA Award, been nominated for a Hugo Award and a Quill Book Award, and has several nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Visit Ian McDonald online at ianmcdonald.livejournal.com.