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Burning Paradise

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

From Robert Charles Wilson, the author of the Hugo-winning Spin, comes Burning Paradise, a new tale of humans coming to grips with a universe of implacable strangeness.
Cassie Klyne, nineteen years old, lives in the United States in the year 2015—but it's not our United States, and it's not our 2015.
Cassie's world has been at peace since the Great Armistice of 1918. There was no World War II, no Great Depression. Poverty is declining, prosperity is increasing everywhere; social instability is rare. But Cassie knows the world isn't what it seems. Her parents were part of a group who gradually discovered the awful truth: that for decades—back to the dawn of radio communications—human progress has been interfered with, made more peaceful and benign, by an extraterrestrial entity. That by interfering with our communications, this entity has tweaked history in massive and subtle ways. That humanity is, for purposes unknown, being farmed.
Cassie's parents were killed for this knowledge, along with most of the other members of their group. Since then, the survivors have scattered and gone into hiding. Cassie and her younger brother Thomas now live with her aunt Nerissa, who shares these dangerous secrets. Others live nearby. For eight years they have attempted to lead unexceptional lives in order to escape detection. The tactic has worked.
Until now. Because the killers are back. And they're not human.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 16, 2013
      Hugo-winner Wilson (The Chronoliths) casts a cold eye at SF clichés in this powerful novel designed to shake up lazy readers. In an alternate 2014, contented citizens are celebrating a century of “approximate peace” since the Armistice ended the war in Europe. Only members of the Correspondence Society realize that an alien entity encompassing the planet has been manipulating and pacifying humanity by controlling electronic communication and sending sims—artificial products of its hive mind—to kill anyone who discovers the truth. This is familiar stuff, and readers will expect to see heroic humans casting off the alien tyranny. Instead, Wilson focuses on the difficult moral choices his characters must face as they consider what has been done for (not just to) humankind, and as they discover sims among their closest companions. Heroism is set side by side with deep pain, and there are no easy answers. This is a deeply thoughtful, deliberately discomfiting book that will linger long and uneasily in the reader’s mind. Agent: Shawna McCarthy, McCarthy Agency.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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