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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Science fiction

KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR

Sharman Apt Russell

On a hotter and more volatile earth in the twenty-third century, humans like Clare and Jon live in utopia, hunting and gathering in small tribal bands, engaged in daily art and ritual, reunited with old friends like the shaggy mammoth and giant ground sloth.

Even better, they still have solar- powered laptops and can communicate with each other around the world. The understanding of physics has also advanced. When scientists first cloned extinct species from the Pleistocene, they discovered that many of them were telepathic—that consciousness travels in waves. For most people, animism has become the preferred religion, a panpsychism compatible with the laws of a fractal holographic universe. As Clare tells one of her students, the return to an older, Paleolithic lifestyle is “one of humanity’s greatest achievements.” It’s too bad that utopia had to come at such a cost: a genetically engineered super-virus that wiped out most of earth’s human population. Humanity was shaken by that event, and humanity vowed to change. Now, on the 150th anniversary of that catastrophe, a small group of men and women—as well as a smarter-than-average dire wolf and saber-toothed cat—are suddenly faced with decisions in which the stakes are higher than ever before. Will earth repeat the cycle of unbridled hubris? Or is humanity’s destiny even stranger than that? Sharman Apt Russell is a longtime professor at Western New Mexico University and Antioch University in L.A. She is the award-winning author of numerous essays, short stories, and books, including Hunger and An Obsession with Butterflies. Additionally, she was the recipient of the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the New Mexico Zia Award, and the Rockefeller Fellowship.

Available products
Book Published 2016-01-12 by Skyhorse/Yucca

Comments

In classic science fiction style, Russell presents a devastated world reformed into a seeming paleolithic paradise… [a] suspenseful and gripping tale.

Sharman Apt Russell’s vibrant new novel will enthrall readers with its vision of a future in which animism, panpsychism and hard science come together to show us how the forces shaping consciousness and the universe are one and the same.

This postapocalyptic tale of sparse but still civilized humans in a world of cloned mammoths and telepathic saber-toothed tigers tries to find the balance between preservation and progress. Russell happily sets up a “Paleoterrific” primitive utopia and then allows the gritty reality of dying young and the discomfort of conforming to social norms in a small community to wear away at an eco-friendly life with nature. Big cats may mentally howl “I love you,” but they still want to eat you.

Russell’s intelligence and imagination shine.

A gripping read—I couldn’t put it down, but I didn’t want it to end! Sharman Russell knows how to pay tribute to the great traditions of science fiction storytelling—and how to make them new for the twenty-first century.

What a great read! Bringing back the animals—and reminding us of animal powers and minds—is an important message for the here and now. An engaging—and thoughtfully-informed—post-apocalyptic novel that stays with you for weeks afterward. Sharman Russell has a clever and also provocative imagination that leads the reader into deep reflection on who we are and who we might become.

Russell’s novel remains steadfastly optimistic. A refreshing alternative to near-future dystopias, she offers a glimpse of a ‘future primitive’ in which people live more sustainably and equitably, sustained by a sense of wonder when nature turns out to have been panpsychic all along.

A dazzling and hallucinatory myth…Beautifully written and vertiginous—Castaneda jacked into the Matrix, Einstein crunching numbers on the walls of Lascaux, a druid with a sickle and a laptop.

A voice keenly in tune with the discourses of science, ecology, rhetoric, and spirituality. . . . Russell’s vision of tomorrow imagines sobering consequences—and pathways to possible solutions—to the crises we face today.

An intriguing and compelling tale of humanity struggling to recover its indigenous allegiance to Earth and Earth Law despite the genie of physical science having well and truly escaped from the bottle.

Like Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of human reorientation within a radically reanimated world… an urgent story that immerses the reader in the agonizing entanglements and wonders of being.

A syncretic approach where hard science and the hard problem of consciousness merge into a welcome addition to the science fiction canon. What’s more, this is a piece of storytelling at its best!