Ian McDonald: Chaga / Evolutions Shore

about

Ian McDonald is a major SF writer, whose River of Gods (2004) won the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for the corresponding Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Fantasy Society awards.

Contents

Chaga (published in the US as Evolution's Shore) is the first novel of his' Chaga Saga' (1995 - 2000), about a very unusual alien invasion of Kenya and the southern hemisphere. It was short-listed for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel in 1996. This study contains Notes, detailed Annotations, an Essay and a Bibliography. The Essay, called' The Heart of Chaganess', details and investigates McDonald's use of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's famous novella of imperialism in Africa, as a central part of his devastating indictment of the' First World's' AIDS policy. Many illustrations and hyperlinks.

author

John Lennard is an independent scholar and editor of Fairleigh Dickinson University's online journal Exploring Globalization. He was from 2004-09 Professor of British & American Literature at the University of the West Indies - Mona, and has taught in Cambridge and London. His books include But I Digress (Clarendon Press, 1991), The Poetry Handbook (OUP 1996, 2005), and The Case of Ronald Merrick (HEB, forthcoming), as well as the precursor to this volume, Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (HEB, 2007). He has also written on Shakespeare, Nabokov, Paul Scott, Reginald Hill, Walter Mosley, Ian McDonald, Octavia E. Butler, and Tamora Pierce for Humanities Ebooks.