New Sun Rising: Two Stories

These are linked stories, in the spirit of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. They are about a sixteen-year old girl, Kedzie Greer, who was raised in a utopian community and leaves home to make her way in a dystopian society. The year is 2199; the place, the Reunited States.

New Sun Rising is magical realism in the internet age. In the stories, technology coexists with a haunted world. There are witches and robots, ghosts and e-beasts. Networld, too, is haunted. At the heart of the stories is Kedzie, who was raised in a place of mystical beauty.

If you want to get into the main plot  at once, begin with “Leaving Home.” It is about Kedzie's decision to seek a life outside the town gates.

If you want to begin with background on the utopian community, start with “The Town With Four Names.” The town has had a long strange trip from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, when it resembled the Chautauqua Institution, to 2199.