Paul J. McAuley is a British botanist and award-winning author. A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel. McAuley began with far-future space opera Four Hundred Billion Stars, its sequel Eternal Light, and the planetary-colony adventure Of the Fall. Red Dust, set on a far-future Mars colonized by the Chinese, is a planetary romance filled with all the latest SF ideas: nanotechnology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, personality downloads, virtual reality. The Confluence trilogy, set in an even more distant future, is one of a number of novels to use Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory as one of its themes. About the same time, he published Pasquale's Angel, set in an alternate Italian Renaissance and featuring Niccol� Machiavegli and Leonardo da Vinci as major characters. McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings: Fairyland describes a dystopian, war-torn Europe where genetically engineered "dolls" are used as disposable slaves. 

April 23rd, 1955 in Stroud (Age 69)