A Guide to Ian McDonald 'Chaga / Evolution's Shore'

By: John Lennard

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Genre Fiction Sightlines are guides to popular fiction, pointing out the richness of texts that are too often read only in a cursory fashion. 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. '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 Annnotations, 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. John Lennard's books include ‘The Poetry Handbook’ (1996; 2005), and with Mary Luckhurst ‘The Drama Handbook’ (2002). He is the general editor of the Humanities-Ebooks Genre Fiction Sightlines and Genre Fiction Monographs series, and has written several Sightlines titles, as well as two critical collections, 'Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction' (2007) and 'Of Sex and Faerie; further essays in Genre Fiction’ (2010), both of which are available in Kindle editions as well as in paperback direct from Troubador.co.uk.