As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business—a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is Aj—the waif, the mind reader, the prophet—when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden. In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures—one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

A collection of eight stories, "Cyberabad Days" is a triumphant return to the India of 2047 (the India of [River of Gods](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278280.RiverofGods "River of Gods") ); a new, muscular superpower in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, strange new genders, and genetically improved children. contents: 9 • America is Not the Only Planet (2009) essay by Paul McAuley 13 • Sanjeev and Robotwallah (2007) short story 31 • Kyle Meets the River (2006) novelette 51 • The Dust Assassin (2008) novelette 79 • An Eligible Boy (2008) novelette 109 • The Little Goddess (2005) novella 155 • The Djinn's Wife (2006) novelette 199 • Vishnu at the Cat Circus (2009) novella