''Brasyl'' is a 2007 novel by British author Ian McDonald. It was nominated for the 2008

Hugo Awards The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier a ...

in the best novel category. In 2008 it was nominated for, and made the longlist of, the £50,000

Warwick Prize for Writing The Warwick Prize for Writing was an international literary prize, worth £25,000, that was given biennially for writing excellence in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme that changes with every award. It was launched by the Univ ...

. It was also nominated for the

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...

and

John W. Campbell Memorial Award The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, or Campbell Memorial Award, is an annual award presented by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best science fiction no ...

for Best Novel, and in 2009, it was nominated for the

Nebula Award The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of profe ...

for Best Novel. It won the British Science Fiction Award for best novel in 2008.

Plot summary

Brasyl is a story presented in three distinct strands of time. The main action concerns Marcelina Hoffman; a coked-up, ambitious reality TV producer in contemporary

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, a striving amateur

capoeirista Capoeira () is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. Born of the melting pot of enslaved Africans, Indigenous Brazilians and Portuguese influences at the beginning of the 16th centu ...

who transcends the cliches of luvvy television phony and becomes a full-fledged, truly likable person as we watch her embark upon a mad new project. Marcelina is going to find the disgraced goalie who lost Brazil a momentous World Cup half a century before and trick him into appearing on television for a mock trial in which the scarred nation can finally wreak its vengeance. Another strand is set in mid-21st century

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

, at a moment when the first quantum technologies are reaching the street, which industriously finds its own use for these things. Q-blades that undo the information that binds together the universe, Q-cores that break the crypto that powers the surveillance state that knows every movement of every person and object in

Sampa __NOTOC__ The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It was originally developed in the late 1980s for ...

and beyond. The final strand is an 18th-century ''

Heart of Darkness ''Heart of Darkness'' (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel ...

'' adventure in the deep Amazon jungle, following an Irish-Portuguese

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into slaver territory where he is sent to end the mad, bloody kingdom of a rogue priest who scours the land with plague and fire. He is joined by a French natural philosopher, who intends to reach the equator and discover the shape of the world with a pendulum.

References

2007 British novels 2007 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Novels by Ian McDonald Novels set in Brazil Pyr books {{2000s-sf-novel-stub