Award-winning author Caitlín
R. Kiernan, best known for her contemporary settings, "gothnoir" tales
of pain and wonder, and atmospheric stories of Lovecraftian terror, was
first published as an author of dark science fiction. Now she returns
to sf with a masterful thirty-thousand word novella, The Dry Salvages.
Three centuries in the
future, though much of Earth has been crippled by war, pollution, and
catastrophic climatic change, man has at last traveled to the stars and
even found evidence of at least one extraterrestrial civilization. In a
bleak and frozen Paris, at the dawn of the 22nd Century, an old woman
is forced to confront the consequences of her part in these discoveries
and the ghosts that have haunted her for almost fifty years. The last
surviving member of the crew of the starship Montelius, exopaleontologist Dr. Audrey Cather struggles to remember what she's
spent so long trying to forget – the nightmare she once faced almost
ninety trillion miles from Earth.
The Limited edition of The Dry Salvages will include "The Worm in My Mind's Eye," an exclusive bonus chapbook, a mix of non-fiction and fiction.