Blue Remembered Earth - Tapa blanda

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans. After the death of Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur, something awkward has come to light on the Moon, and Geoffrey is tasked - well, blackmailed, really - to go up there and make sure the family's name stays suitably unblemished. But little does Geoffrey realise - or anyone else in the family, for that matter - what he's about to unravel.

Eunice's ashes have already have been scattered in sight of Kilimanjaro. But the secrets she died with are about to come back out into the open, and they could change everything.

Or shatter this near-utopia into shards . . .

Earth, the 22nd century.

The Mechanism knows everything. It knows where you are. It knows what you are thinking, what you are feeling. There is no crime. You are safe.

But in a Utopia like this keeping a secret can be a deadly business.

Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya want no part of their family and its wealth. The Akinyas have ridden Africa 's economic boom into orbit and beyond. Wherever mankind has gone in the Solar system the Akinyas have profited.

But Geoffrey and Sunday have rejected it all. Geoffrey conducts research into elephant cognition in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, Sunday makes her way as an artist beyond the reach of The Mechanism on the far side of the moon.

But when their Grandmother dies she leaves behind a secret that throws Geoffrey and Sunday into a desperate race against their family. A race run beneath the unblinking eye of The Mechanism.

In Alastair Reynolds' superb new novel the death of an African family's Matriarch throws the reader into a wild new world, a world where global warming has changed everything, where everything is known.

A world where one last secret could change Mankind's future.

It is at once a thrilling adventure and a vivid dream of a world on the cusp of a new era.

www.alastairreynolds.com

978 0 575 08828 3
£14.99