Whole Wide World

Paul McAuley

Dec 2003 · Macmillan

About this ebook

London, in the aftermath of the Infowar. Surveillance cameras stand on every street corner, their tireless gaze linked to an artificial intelligence system. Censors patrol the borders of the Internet. A young woman is murdered before the gaze of eager voyeurs.

A policeman sidelined to a backwater department seizes on the chance to contribute to this high-profile murder case, but soon finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue. Why was Sophie Booth's murder broadcast over the Internet? What is the link between her murder and London's new surveillance system? Who is the self-styled "Avenger," and why does he communicate only by e-mail?

Whole Wide World is a gripping conspiracy thriller set in a world where information is the universal currency and some people will do anything to be able to control it.

About the author

Paul McAuley was born in England on St George's Day 1955. He has worked as a research biologist in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years was a lecturer in botany at St Andrews University. The first short story he ever finished was accepted by the American magazine Worlds of If, but the magazine folded before publishing it and he took this as a hint to concentrate on an academic career instead. He started writing again during a period as a resident alien in Los Angeles, and is now a full time writer. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and fifth, Fairyland, won the 1995 Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Awards. His other novels include Of the Fall, Eternal Light, Red Dust, Pasquale's Angel, the three books of Confluence, Child of the River, Ancients of Days, and Shrine of Stars, The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and the forthcoming White Devils. He has also published two collections of short stories, The King of the Hill, and The Invisible Country. A Doctor Who novella, the Eye of the Tyger, is due from Telos Books in November 2003, forty years after the author was scared behind the couch by the Daleks, and a third short story collection, Little Machines will be published by PS Publishing in 2004. He lives in North London.