Cyberabad Days - Ian McDonald

Written by Ian McDonald
Read by Jonathan Keeble
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

The world: ‘Cyberabad’ is the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity and a population where males out-number females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas.

Cyberabad is a collection of 7 stories:

“Sanjeev and Robotwallah” What happens to the boy-soldier roboteers when the war of Separation is over?

“Kyle meets the River” A young American in Varanas learns the true meaning of ‘nation building’ in the early days of a new country.

“The Dust Assassin” Feuding Rajasthan water-rajas find that revenge is a slow, subtle process.

“An Eligible Boy” Love and marriage should be plain-sailing when your matchmaker is a soap-star artificial intelligence.

“The Little Goddess” Hugo nominee Best Novella 2006. In near future Nepal, a child-goddess discovers what lies on the other side of godhood.

“The Djinn’s Wife” Hugo nominee and BSFA short fiction winner 2007A minor Delhi celebrity falls in love with an artificial intelligence but is it a marriage of heaven and hell?

“Vishnu at the Cat Circus” A genetically improved ‘Brahmin’ child finds himself left behind as he grows through the final generation of humanity.

The stories are in the same setting as the novel River of Gods.

[Requested by Cybotage and Eruptum]