A man is about to kill a cow. He discusses life and death and his right to kill with the compliant animal. He begins to suspect he may be about to commit murder. But kills anyway …

It began when the animal rights movement injected domestic animals with artificial intelligences in bid to have the status of animals realigned by the international court of human rights. But what is an animal that can talk? Where does its intelligence end at its machine intelligence begin? And where might its soul reside?

As we place more and more pressure on the natural world and become more and more divorced, Adam Roberts’ new novel posits a world where nature can talk back, and can question us and our beliefs.

Adam Roberts is an award-winning author at the peak of his powers and each new novel charts an exciting new direction while maintaining a uniformly high level of literary achievement.

An ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU for the 21st century. A science-fiction novel that draws in the never more timely issues of Artificial Intelligence and our relationship with the natural world.

Adam Roberts is Professor of 19th-century literature at London University. His novel JACK GLASS won the BSFA AWARD and JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for Best Novel and three of his novels have been shortlisted for the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD. He maintains at least three separate critical blogs. He has also published a number of academic works on both 19th-century poetry and SF.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gollancz; 1st edition (30 September 2014)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0575127686
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9780575127685
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 2.9 x 24.1 cm