Ian McDonald is an award-winning British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.

Biography
McDonald was born in 1960, in Manchester, to a Scottish father and Irish mother, but moved to Belfast when he was five, and has lived there ever since. He therefore lived through the whole of the 'Troubles' (1968-99), and his sensibility has been permanently shaped by coming to understand Northern Ireland as a post-colonial (and so, in his view, de facto 'Third World’ society imposed on an older culture.

He became a fan of SF from childhood TV, began writing when he was 9, sold his first story to a local Belfast magazine when he was 22, and in 1987 became a full-time writer.[2] He has also worked in TV consultancy within Northern Ireland.

As his many nominations and awards show, McDonald has built a considerable career and is increasingly widely admired both in developed nations and in the developing nations whose cultures often feature in his work. His 1990s 'Chaga Saga' is particularly notable for its analysis of the AIDS crisis in Africa, and his most recent works, River of Gods (2004), set in mid-twenty-first-century India, and Brasyl (2007), collocating the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries in Lusophone South America, extend McDonald's powerful attention to SF as a discourse intimate with colonialism.

Desolation Road
McDonald's first novel. It won a number of awards on first publication and is frequently compared with works of R.A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, although these references appear to be given as a measure of quality rather than a note of similarity in style. In fact, this book is highly similar to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in its portrayal of a remote community over time, as well as with elements of magic realism.

On a partially terraformed Mars (comfortable temperature and atmosphere, although still mostly desert) a lone scientist is hunting a mysterious being across the desert, using a device best described as an anti-gravity sailboard for transportation. While taking a rest, he neglects to secure the board thoroughly and wakes up in time to see it blown away by the wind. Stranded in the desert, he is fortunate to discover an artificial oasis (created by a long-lost terraforming AI) near a line of railway. With all the necessities of life around him, he awaits rescue or company. Eventually, he is joined by other strays and castaways, and together they found the town of Desolation Road.

The novel outlines the history of the town through the next few decades, generally focussing on one major event at a time and dealing with in-between events in quick outlines. When characters leave town to seek fortunes elsewhere, the viewpoint often follows them on their adventures, revealing McDonald's Mars as a complex and rich world. The style is witty and highly poetic, with a strong eye to character.

Many of the numerous sub-stories of which the novel is constructed would have made fine short stories in their own right. Although not especially long, the book has the feel of an epic. If the novel has a noticeable flaw, it is that it occasionally resorts to using "Gee whiz" sci-fi (as opposed to science-fiction) devices and inventions as Deus ex Machina to resolve some story arcs. This does not happen often enough to irritate the reader, but it is a feature nonetheless and continues to make its appearance in some of McDonald's later work.

Although not a steampunk novel, much of the technology featured in the book, such as locomotives (albeit Fusion) and propellor-driven aircraft, appears to harken back to Earth's near-history rather than to standard visions of the future. This gives the novel an atmosphere of anachronism and timelessness.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org