Synopses & Reviews
Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past-and soon to be haunted by the future.
In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory--sixteen years in the future.
Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note?
Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
Review
"In his quiet way, Robert Charles Wilson has produced one of the most impressive bodies of work in contemporary science fiction . . . The Chronoliths stands with his best."--
The New York Times"Superb."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Synopsis
One day in Thailand, 21st-century slacker Scott Warden witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory…sixteen years hence.
As more pillars arrive all over the world, all apparently from our own near future, a strange loop of causality keeps drawing Scott into the central mystery—and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
About the Author
Gahan Wilson's cartoons have appeared in
Playboy, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Punch, Paris Match, and
The National Lampoon. More than fifteen collections of his cartoons have been published, including
Is Nothing Sacred?,
Playboy's Gahan Wilson, and then we'll get him! and
Still Weird. Wilson is widely considered to be the best living macabre cartoonist.
For children, Wilson has written and illustrated a series of adventures of Harry, the Fat Bear Spy. For adults, Wilson has written two mystery novels and a number of short stories, which have appeared in Playboy and Omni. Other graphic works for adults include adaptations of Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe, and Gahan Wilson's Big Book of Freaks