Calypso
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
"Ambitious and immersive...an elegantly told meditation on how we can't leave ourselves behind."
- Esquire Magazine - The Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024
A ground-breaking, mind-bending and wildly imaginative epic verse revolution in SF. A saga of colony ships, shattering moons and cataclysmic war in a new Eden.
Truly unforgettable and richly lyrical eco-fiction, for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Jeff VanderMeer.
Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role as engineer on the colony ark, Calypso. But she finds the ship has transformed into a forest, populated by the original crew's descendants, who revere her like a saint.
She travels the ship with the Calypso's creator, the enigmatic Sigmund, and Catherine, a bioengineered marvel who can commune with the plants, uncovering a new history of humanity forged while she slept.
She discovers a legacy of war between botanists and engineers. A war fought for the right to build a new Earth – a technological paradise, or a new Eden in bloom, untouched by mankind's past.
And Rochelle, the last to wake, holds the balance of power in her hands.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this demanding novel-in-verse from Langmead (Glitterati), mad genius Sigmund aims to create the planet colony New Terra as a second chance for Earthlings. For now, the future colonists are "hanging like pupae" in "bulging frozen sacs" aboard space station Calypso, a vast laboratory to which Sigmund summons a team of engineers from Earth, including Catherine, a botanist who has turned her body into a living terrarium; and Rochelle, a philosopher specializing in "colonial ethics" who agrees to leave behind her two young children for the job. The women make the eon-long journey locked in cryogenic sarcophagi. When they emerge, they discover a world-in-progress steeped in ancient rituals. Rochelle must endure being treated as an idol by the colonists; Catherine prepares for her own self-sacrifice, though thinks of it as a metamorphosis into New Terra's communal garden; and Sigmund busies himself creating New Terra's seasons with the grand spectacle of the Old Testament mixed with Fantasia. Design choices enhance this lush sensory experience: in Catherine's sections, the words are laid out to look like roots and flora, while the lines in Sigmund's sections trail across the page like the plumes of a departing rocket. At the climax, however, polyphony turns to cacophony and the latent Christian themes become overpowering. Still, readers up for the challenge will find plenty to reward them in this ambitious work.
