The aliens are here. And they want to help.
The Jackaroo have given humanity 15 worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo's previous clients.
Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could for ever alter humanity - or even destroy it.
Chloe Millar works in London, mapping changes caused by imported scraps of alien technology. When she stumbles across a pair of orphaned kids possessed by an ancient ghost, she must decide whether to help them or to hand them over to the authorities. Authorities who believe that their visions point towards a new kind of danger.
And on one of the Jackaroo's gift-worlds, the murder of a man who has just arrived from Earth leads policeman Vic Gayle to a war between rival gangs over possession of a remote excavation site.
Something is coming through. Something linked to the visions of Chloe's orphans, and Vic Gayle's murder investigation. Something that will challenge the limits of the Jackaroo's benevolence...
The extraordinary new project from one of the country's most acclaimed and consistently brilliant SF novelists of the last 30 years.
Review
Something Coming Through is as tight and relentlessly paced as an Elmore Leonard thriller, and full of McAuley's customary sharp eye for dialogue and action. What's really impressive, though, is that it achieves a seamless fusion of the day-after-tomorrow SF novel - it's as interested in gritty Earthbound near-futurism as William Gibson or Lauren Beukes - with the cosmological themes of McAuley's galaxy-spanning space operas. It's the freshest take on first contact and interstellar exploration in many years, and almost feels like the seed for an entire new subgenre Alistair Reynolds
Highly recommend everybody buy Something Coming Through because it is great Pat Cadigan
McAuley's latest is smart, it's challenging, and as an exploration of the social consequences of sudden science fictional change, it's very impressive indeed SFX
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.