Austral, paperback/paul mcauley

The great geoengineering projects have failed.

The world is still warming, sea levels are still rising, and the Antarctic Peninsula is home to Earths newest nation, with life quickened by ecopoets spreading across valleys and fjords exposed by the retreat of the ice.

Austral Morales Ferrado, a child of the last generation of ecopoets, is a husky: an edited person adapted to the unforgiving climate of the far south, feared and despised by most of its population.

Shes been a convict, a corrections officer in a labour camp, and consort to a criminal, and now, out of desperation, she has committed the kidnapping of the century.

But before she can collect the ransom and make a new life elsewhere, she must find a place of safety amongst the peninsulas forests and icy plateaus, and evade a criminal gang that has its own plans for the teenage girl shes taken hostage.

Blending the story of Australs flight with the fractured history of her family and its role in the colonisation of Antarctica, Austral is a vivid portrayal of a treacherous new world created by climate change, and shaped by the betrayals and mistakes of the past.

Paul McAuleys balanced grasp of science and literature, always a rare attribute in the writer of prose fiction, is combined with the equally rare ability to look at todays problems and know which are really problems, and what can be done about them.

William Gibson About the Author: Paul McAuley won the PHILIP K.

DICK AWARD for his first novel and has gone on to win the ARTHUR C.

CLARKE, SIDEWISE, BRITISH FANTASY and JOHN W.

CAMPBELL AWARDs.

He gave up his position as a research biologist to write full time.

He lives in London.