A Guide to Speculative Fiction at Gustavus Library: 1965-1980 : The New Wave

"This is the second of three volumes [Librarian's note: now five] that chart the history of the science fiction magazine from the earliest days to the present. The first volume, Time Machines, traced the development of the science fiction magazine from its earliest days and the creation of the first specialist magazine, Amazing Stories. This book takes up the story to reveal a turbulent period that was to witness the extraordinary rise and fall and rise again of science. It charts the science fiction boom years in the wake of the nuclear age that was to see the ‘The Golden Age’ of Science Fiction, with the emergence of magazines such as Galaxy, Startling Stories, and Fantastic, as well as authors like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Frank Herbert. The book then goes on to explore the bust years of 1954–1960, followed by the renaissance in the 1960s led by the new wave of British authors such as Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard, and the rise in interest of fantasy fiction, encouraged by The Lord of the Rings and the Conan books of Robert E. Howard. It concludes with an examination of the newfound interest in science fiction magazines during the late 1960s and the incredibly influential roles Star Trek, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and, above all, the first manned Moon landing played in transforming the science fiction magazine." - from the publisher

"In the period of major social change that spanned the 1950s through the 1970s, science fiction became an ideal vessel to illustrate a multifaceted upsurge of radical protest, with its focus on speculation, alternate worlds, and the future. Dangerous Visions and New Worlds details, celebrates, and evaluates how science fiction novels and authors depicted, interacted with, and were inspired by these cultural and political movements in America and Great Britain. It starts with progressive authors who rose to prominence in the conservative 1950s, challenging the era's narratives of technological breakthroughs and space-conquering male heroes, then moves through the 1960s, when authors shattered existing writing conventions and incorporated contemporary themes such as modern mass media culture, corporate control, state surveillance, the Vietnam War, and rising currents of counterculture, ecological awareness, feminism, sexual liberation, and Black Power. The 1970s, when the genre reflected the end of various dreams of the 'long Sixties,' is also explored along with the first half of the 1980s, which gave rise to new subgenres." -- Provided by publisher.

Librarian's Note: See all of Part II, "The New Wave."

"This third volume in a four-volume study of science fiction magazines focuses on the turbulent years of the 1970s, when the United States emerged from the Vietnam War into an economic crisis. It saw the end of the Apollo moon programme and the start of the ecology movement. This proved to be one of the most complicated periods for the science fiction magazines. Not only were they struggling to survive within the economic climate, they also had to cope with the death of the father of modern science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr., while facing new and potentially threatening opposition. The market for science fiction diversified as never before, with the growth in new anthologies, the emergence of semi-professional magazines, the explosion of science fiction in college, the start of role-playing gaming magazines, underground and adult comics, and, with the success of Star Wars, media magazines. The book explores how the traditional science fiction magazines coped with this, from the death of Campbell to the start of the major popular science magazine Omni and the first dreams of the Internet." - from the publisher

"Science fiction produced in the 1970s has long been undervalued. The New Wave was all but over and cyberpunk had yet to arrive. The decade polarised sci-fi; on the one hand it aspired to be a serious form, addressing issues such as race, Vietnam, feminism, ecology and sexuality; on the other hand it broke box office records with ‘Star Wars’, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, ‘Alien’, and ‘Superman: The Movie’. Across the political spectrum, writers perceived a series of invisible enemies: radicals addressed the ideological structures of racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, pollution, and capitalism and the possibility of new social structures, whereas conservatives feared the gains made by the civil rights movement, feminism, gay liberation, independence movements, ecology and Marxism and the perceived threats to the nuclear family. Sci-fi would never be the same again. This book examines the ways in which the genre confronted a new epoch and its own history, including the rise of fantasy, the sci-fi blockbuster, children's sci-fi, pseudoscience and postmodernism." - from the publisher

"Dangerous Visions is a science fiction short story anthology edited by American writer Harlan Ellison and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. It was published in 1967. A path-breaking collection, Dangerous Visions helped define the New Wave science fiction movement, particularly in its depiction of sex in science fiction. Writer/editor Al Sarrantonio writes how Dangerous Visions 'almost single-handedly [...] changed the way readers thought about science fiction.' Contributors to the volume included 20 authors who had won, or would win, a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, or BSFA award, and 16 with multiple such awards. Ellison introduced the anthology both collectively and individually while authors provided afterwords to their own stories." - from Wikipedia

"Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) is a science fiction short story anthology, edited by American author Harlan Ellison. It is the follow-up to Dangerous Visions (1967), also edited by Ellison. Cover art and interior illustrations are by Ed Emshwiller. Like its predecessor, Again, Dangerous Visions, and many of the collected stories, have received awards recognition. 'The Word for World is Forest', by Ursula K. Le Guin, won the 1973 Hugo for Best Novella. 'When It Changed', by Joanna Russ, won a 1972 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Harlan Ellison was recognized with a special Hugo Award for anthologizing, his second special award, in 1972. Again, Dangerous Visions was released as a two-volume paperback edition by Signet in the United States, and by Pan in the United Kingdom. A sequel was planned, The Last Dangerous Visions, but was never published." - from Wikipedia

"One anthology project Merril began in the early 1960s under contract to Lion Books in Chicago was aborted, but inspired her publisher's editor Harlan Ellison to go forward with his own version of the project, which yielded Dangerous Visions (Doubleday, 1967). As an initiator of the New Wave movement, she edited the 1968 anthology England Swings SF, whose stories she collected while living in England for a year." - from Wikipedia

Librarian's note: In this anthology, esteemed SF anthologist and editor Judith Merril collected stories from British New Wave authors -- who (according to scholar Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre) were instrumental in starting the New Wave movement with Michael Moorcock becoming editor of New Worlds in 1964.

"The Drowned World imagines a terrifying world in which global warming has melted the ice caps and primordial jungles have overrun a tropical London. Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kearns and his team of scientists as they confront a cityscape in which nature is on the rampage and giant lizards, dragonflies, and insects fiercely compete for domination."--Provided by publisher.

"Water. Man's most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilization itself begins to crack."

"Naomi Mitchison, daughter of a distinguished scientist, sister of geneticist J B S Haldane, was always interested in the sciences, especially genetics. Her novels did not tend to demonstrate this, and she did not publish a Science Fiction novel until almost forty years into her fiction-writing career. Isobel Murray's Introduction here argues that it is by no means 'pure' Science Fiction: the success of the novel depends not only on the extraordinarily variety of life forms its heroine encounters and attempts to communicate with on different worlds: she is also a very credible human, or Terran, with recognisibly human emotions and a dramatic emotional life. This novel works effectively for readers who usually eschew the genre and prefer more traditional narratives. Explorers like Mary are an elite class who consider curiosity to be Terrans' supreme gift, and in the novel she more than once takes risks that may destroy her life. Her voice, as she records her adventures and experiments, is individual, attractive and memorable. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen." - from the publisher

"This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells. In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task." - from the publisher

"In a frozen, apocalyptic landscape, destruction abounds: great walls of ice overrun the world and secretive governments vie for control. Against this surreal, yet eerily familiar broken world, an unnamed narrator embarks on a hallucinatory quest for a strange and elusive "glass-girl" with silver hair. He crosses icy seas and frozen plains, searching ruined towns and ransacked rooms, all to free her from the grips of a tyrant known only as the warden and save her before the ice closes all around. A novel unlike any other, Ice is at once a dystopian adventure shattering the conventions of science fiction, a prescient warning of climate change and totalitarianism, a feminist exploration of violence and trauma, a Kafkaesque literary dreamscape, and a brilliant allegory for its author's struggles with addiction--all crystallized in prose as glittering as the piling snow. Acclaimed upon its publication as one of the best science fiction books of the year, Kavan's 1967 novel has built a reputation as an extraordinary and innovative work of literature, garnering acclaim from China Mieville, Patti Smith, J.G. Ballard, Anaïs Nin, and Doris Lessing, among others. With echoes of dystopian classics like Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and J.G. Ballard's High Rise, Ice is a necessary and unforgettable addition to the canon of science fiction classics." - from the publisher

"By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn't afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep... They even built humans. Immigrants to Mars received androids so sophisticated it was impossible to tell them from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans could wreak, the government banned them from Earth. But when androids didn't want to be identified, they just blended in. Rick Deckard was an officially sanctioned bounty hunter whose job was to find rogue androids and retire them. But cornered, androids tended to fight back, with deadly results." - from the publisher

"The brilliant 1969 Hugo Award-winning novel from John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, now included with a foreword by Bruce Sterling. Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically---it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of now, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful." - from the publisher

"Finally together in one volume, the first three books in the world's most beloved science fiction series, THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN, by Anne McCaffrey, one of the great science fiction writers of all time: DRAGONFLIGHT, DRAGONQUEST, THE WHITE DRAGON. Those who know these extraordinary tales will be able to re-visit with Lessa, F'lar, Ruth, Lord Jaxon, and all the others. And for those just discovering this magical place, there are incomparable tales of danger, deceit, and daring, just waiting to be explored." - from the publisher

Librarian's note: With the first book in this omnibus, Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey became the first woman to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1968.

"Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters... Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction."

"Bug Jack Barron is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Norman Spinrad, first serialized in the New Worlds magazine under the editorship of Michael Moorcock. It was nominated for the 1970 Hugo Award.The novel is notable for its lyrical style and unique use of cut-up phrases. In this regard, Spinrad has cited the influence of Beat writers William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac." - from Wikipedia

"A HEADLONG RIOT OF HILARIOUS SCIENCE FICTION SATIRE -- MEET SOME INSUFFERABLY WONDERFUL CHARACTERS, from the mad, gay, heady world of the "arts" -- GASPARD DE LA NUIT—human journeyman writer. He has problems with his rampant lover, Heloise Ibsen (assigned to him by his pub­lisher). What he really loves is the giant computer-word-machine that produces his novels—read by other humans—which he oils with devoted care. His closest friend is ZANE GORT—a fine, upstanding, self-employed robot writer. Zane writes books for other robots and is madly in love with MISS BLUSHES—a censor-robix (female robot) of delicate pink. Miss Blushes is something of a prude and rather hysterical: very logical when you consider that her circuits are wired for censorship, but it makes life difficult for Zane. He turns for help to NURSE BISHOP—a small, but formidably beautiful human, who (in addition to the remarkable advice she offers Zane) plays nursemaid to a mysterious group of near-human entities owned by FLAXMAN AND CULLINGHAM—human publishers, whose language is frequently deplorable. To say nothing of the peculiar interest at least one of them has in a luscious platinum robut no, the daring reader must discover this for himself... AND THERE ARE MANY, MANY MORE..." - from the publisher

"Angered by the complacency of middle-class blacks and the two-faced liberalism of whites, Dan Freeman, posing as an Uncle Tom, gains the training--as a token black CIA agent--and the status--as the director of a social work program--to establish groups of militant young blacks who will fight for freedom for their people." - from the publisher

"Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, a rotating wheel artificial world, an alien construct in space 186 million miles (299 million kilometres) in diameter. Niven later added three sequel novels and then cowrote, with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels in the Ringworld series tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971." - from Wikipedia

"Discover the beloved classic that Stephen King called “THE great time-travel story,” now with masterfully restored original artwork and an all-new foreword by Audrey Niffenegger, the New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife. When advertising artist Si Morley is recruited to join a covert government operation exploring the possibility of time travel, he jumps at the chance to leave his 20th-century existence and step into New York City in January 1882. Aside from his thirst for adventure, he has good reason to return to the past—his friend Kate has discovered a mysterious, half-burned letter dated from that year, and Si has good reasons to want to trace its origins. But when Si begins to fall in love with a woman he meets in the past, he will be forced to choose between two worlds—forever. “Pure New York fun” (Alice Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author), Time and Again is a deeply researched rich portrait of life in New York City more than a century ago, and a swift-moving adventure novel with timeless themes at its core. With digitally remastered art, fall in love with this refreshed classic all over again." - publisher description of later edition

"Driftglass is a 1971 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Samuel R. Delany. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Worlds of Tomorrow, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, If and New Worlds or the anthologies Quark/3, Dangerous Visions and Alchemy & Academe. In 2019, Driftglass was selected as one of the '50 Unapologetically Queer Authors Share the Best LGBTQ Books of All Time' in O, The Oprah Magazine." - from Wikipedia

Librarian's note: Contains some of SFWA Grandmaster Delany's most acclaimed stories, including "Aye, and Gommorah" and "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones."

"The classic science fiction novel, now back in print. Clay is a man from the 20th Century who is somehow caught up in a time-flux and transported into a distant future. The earth and the life on it have changed beyond recognition. Even the human race has evolved into many different forms, now coexisting on the planet. The seemingly omnipotent Skimmers, the tyrannosaur-like Eaters, the sedentary Awaiters, the squid-like Breathers, the Interceders, the Destroyers—all of these are "Sons of Man". Befriended and besexed by the Skimmers, Clay goes on a journey which takes him around the future earth and into the depths of his own soul. He is human, but what does that mean?" - from the publisher

"Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction is a collection of short stories by American writer Harlan Ellison. Published in the United States in 1971, it as a ten-year retrospective of Ellison's short stories. It was later published in the United Kingdom in two volumes as All the Sounds of Fear in 1973 and The Time of the Eye in 1974 (the 1974 volume only containing a new introduction). All of the stories in this collection center around isolation and alienation, and were selected from previous short story collections to fit this theme. The book was dedicated to, among others, four student protesters who were killed in the Kent State shootings of 1970. This dedication prompted a response from a reader calling the students 'hooligans' who were 'Communist-led radical revolutionaries and anarchists, and deserved to be shot'. This letter was reprinted in the introduction to Ellison's subsequent 1974 short story collection Approaching Oblivion. Ellison states that this letter frightened him and was one of the things that led him to change that collection from a call to action to a cry of frustration and disillusionment." - from Wikipedia

Librarian's note: Collects some of Ellison's most famous stories, including "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman."

"For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same. At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon."

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards • “[Arthur] Clarke is quite splendid. . . . We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative.”—The New York Times

"At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams . . . and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits—just behind a Raman airlock door." - from the publisher

"The men of the Holdfast had long treated with contempt the degenerated creatures known as 'fems.' To give themselves the drive to survive and reconquer the world, the men needed a common enemy. Superstitious belief had ascribed to the fems the guilt for the terrible Wasting that had destroyed the world. They were the ideal scapegoat. The truth was lost in death and decay and buried in history."

"The monumental Hugo and Nebula award winning SF classic [...] The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand--despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries..." - from the publisher

"Two astronauts travel on the first manned expedition to the planet Venus. When the mission is mysteriously aborted and the ship returns to Earth, the Captain is missing and the First Officer, Harry M. Evans, can't explain what happened. Under psychiatric evaluation and interrogation, Evans provides conflicting accounts of the Captain's disappearance, incriminating both himself and lethal Venusian forces in the Captain's murder. As the explanations pyramid and the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story falter, Evans' condition and his inability to tell the "truth" present terrifying expressions of humanity's incompetence, the politics of space exploration, and the intricate dynamics of psycho-sexual relations . . . Originally published in 1972, BEYOND APOLLO incited controversy, polarizing critics and fans despite winning the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Always disinclined to sell out or compromise his vision, Malzberg became disillusioned with the SF genre, which purported to be THE genre of innovation. Paradoxically, many SF editors and publishers worried about unsettling readers' comfort zones and insisted that authors write in accordance with a set of rules, formulas and codes. Malzberg would neither heel nor kneel; disillusioned, he unofficially retired from the genre in the late seventies and hasn't looked back. What he produced as a science fiction writer, however, remains among the best published during the twentieth century-important in its historical context, but also entertaining and thought-provoking in its own right. Dark, acerbic, funny and smart, BEYOND APOLLO may be Malzberg's greatest accomplishment." - from the publisher

"From the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them. A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart. To visit Urras—to learn, to teach, to share—will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change."

"Katherine Mortenhoe lives in a near future very similar to the present day. Only in her time, dying from anything but old age is unheard of; death has been cured. So when Katherine is diagnosed with a terminal brain disease brought on by an inability to process an ever increasing volume of sensory input, she immediately becomes a celebrity to the “pain-starved public.” But Katherine rejects her tragic role: She will not agree to be the star of a Human Destiny TV show, her last days will not be documented or broadcast. What she doesn’t realize is that from the moment of diagnosis she’s been watched, not only by television producers but by a new kind of program host, a man with a camera behind his unsleeping eyes. Like Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and the television series Black Mirror, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe is a thrilling psychological drama that is as wise about human nature as it is about the nature of technology." - from the publisher

"John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans, or at least half of him was, which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war. M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed."

"In one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel 'to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s' (Jonathan Lethem, bestselling author of Fortress of Solitude). Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man—poet, lover, and adventurer—known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism." - from the publisher

"Living in an altered past that never saw the end of the Great Depression, Jeannine, a librarian, is waiting to be married. Joanna lives in a different version of reality: she's a 1970s feminist trying to succeed in a man's world. Janet is from Whileaway, a utopian earth where only women exist. And Jael is a warrior with steel teeth and catlike retractable claws, from an earth with separate-and warring-female and male societies. When these four women meet, the results are startling, outrageous, and subversive."

"He was the most dangerous fugitive alive, but he didn’t exist! Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes . . . but technically he didn’t exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code—then he escaped. Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster. He didn’t care how he did it—but the government did. That’s when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs . . . and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education." - from the publisher

"Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy’s landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures—and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity—and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow." - from the publisher

"The Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel from the New York Times–bestselling author of The King’s Daughter. On an Earth scarred by nuclear war, Snake harnesses the power of venom to cure illnesses and vaccinate against disease. The healer can even ease patients into death with the power of her dreamsnake. But she is not respected and trusted by all, and when she tries to help a sick nomad child, the frightened clan kills her dreamsnake. Ashamed of being misjudged and grieving the loss of her dreamsnake, Snake has one choice to maintain her livelihood: she must travel to the city, which jealously guards its knowledge. And before she faces the prejudices and arrogance of the people there, Snake must make her way across a barren desert, surviving storms and radiation poisoning, helping those she can—all while a madman stalks her every move . . ."