He is the author of the novels The Light Ages and The House of Storms, which are set in an alternate universe nineteenth century England, where aether, a substance that can be controlled by the mind, has ossified English society into guilds and has retarded technological progress.

MacLeod's debut novel, The Great Wheel, was published in 1997, and won the Locus Award for Best First novel.

MacLeod's novella The Summer Isles (Asimov's Science Fiction Oct/Nov 1998) won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Short Form and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It is an alternate history where Britain, having been defeated in the World War I, develops its own form of fascism in 1930s. The narrator is a closeted homosexual Oxford historian who had known the leader in youth. It was written as a novel, which however could not sell; MacLeod published the cut version, with the full-length version only being published in a limited edition in 2005. This novel version also won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Long Form, thus becoming the only story to win the same award twice in two differing formats, novel and novella.

MacLeod won the World Fantasy Award again in for his 2000 novelette The Chop Girl. His shorter fiction has been collected in Voyages by Starlight, Breathmoss and Other Exhalations and Past Magic.

MacLeod was Guest of Honour at the 38th Novacon, held in November 2008.

Novels

• The Great Wheel (Harcourt, 1997) (1998 Locus Award for Best First Novel)
• The Light Ages (Earthlight, 2003)
• The House of Storms (Simon & Schuster, 2005)
• The Summer Isles (Aio Publishing, 2005) (2005 Sidewise Award) Expanded version of the original 1998 novella, which also won the award.
• Song of Time (PS Publishing, 2008) (2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award)

Short story collections

• Voyages by Starlight (1996, Arkham House)
• Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (2004, Golden Gryphon Press)
• Past Magic (2006, PS Publishing)

Interviews

• Interview at Infinity Plus
• Interview at scifi.com
• Interview at sfsite.com
• Asimov's online chat at scifi.com, 2004

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