Milena isn’t sure if she’s mad or if she’s the only sane person left in the world she only knows that she wants to escape to her own private Fairyland and live forever. Before he met the brilliant, hypnotic child Milena, Alex Sharkey had never played with dolls-blue-skinned, gengineered lifeforms. despite Paul McAuleys Austral being set in a world that has been reshaped by catastrophic climate change, it hasnt got the entirely miserable. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel. At the cost of three hours of his life, he finds an unlikely ally in a scary, super-smart little girl called Milena, but his troubles really start when he helps Milena quicken intelligence in a Doll, turning it into the first of the fairies. Four Hundred Billion Stars, his first novel, won the Philip K. In London, Alex Sharkey is trying to make his mark as a designer of psychoactive viruses, whilst staying one step ahead of the police and the Triad gangs. Europe is divided between the First World bourgeoisie, made rich by nanotechnology and the cheap versatile slave labour of genetically engineered Dolls and the Fourth World of refugees and homeless displaced by war and economic upheaval.

Fairyland by Paul McAuley