Cyberpunk. Zoo City: hard-boiled South African urban fantasy makes murder out of magic. South African writer Lauren Beukes's second novel Zoo City, is a remarkable, gritty, noir urban fantasy set in a Johannesburg where criminals and sinners are marked out by animal familiars that mysteriously appear after the commission of a great evil and attach themselves for life.
When your animal dies, you are taken by The Undertow, a malevolent black hole in space that arrives within moments of your animal's death and reduces you to ash. But being animalled isn't all bad: the animalled get magical powers, randomly assigned by whatever fate grants you your familiar. Author J.G. Ballard dies after lengthy illness - Times Online. SL Conference on Literature August 4 and 6.