A powerful, visionary epic from a celebrated voice in speculative fiction.
For millennia, the Imperium has held sway over Pangaea. The pure dreams of its great dreamers are used to elevate and pacify the consciousness of a society strictly divided by caste. Here eroticism is repressed for a higher cause, and sex is a shameful remnant of ages past. But when Pangaea's most beloved dreamer is brutally assassinated, it's clear that a dangerous group of revolutionaries is dreaming the old dreams of violence, uninhibited sex...and freedom.
For although Pangaea is the most benevolent of tyrannies, it is a tyranny nonetheless. Here an elite "pure" scientist and a lowly birthtank worker share a forbidden passion; a grief-stricken Imperial officer embarks on a fanatic crusade; a sensual erotician possesses powers beyond her understanding; and an "impure" terrorist and his vengeful daughter wreak a path of unspeakable destruction. As mysterious earthshocks shake Pangaea, they are drawn together by the outlawed Orb of Eternity--a feared and ancient oracle whose ambivalent message heralds either redemption...or apocalypse.
Stay safe and well in 2021! Please visit my website at http://www.lisamason.com for all my print books, ebooks, screenplays, Storybundles, interviews, blogs, my husband Tom Robinson's bespoke jewelry and artwork, cute cat pictures, and more!
My second collection, ODDITIES: 22 Stories, is available now as an ebook on Kindle worldwide and as a print book in seven countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. The collection includes stories previously published in OMNI, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum 5, and others, plus six new stories. A Locus Magazine Notable Book.
I've got eight other books available as beautiful trade paperbacks (and ebooks): CHROME, Summer of Love, The Gilded Age, The Garden of Abracadabra, Arachne, Cyberweb, One Day in the Life of Alexa, and Strange Ladies: 7 Stories.
Summer of Love was a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book, The Gilded Age was a New York Times Notable Book. My Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright as a feature film to Universal Pictures and is in development.
A most enjoyable complex book. This is a richly realized and fascinating imagination of a world that could be sited here on ancient Earth before the continents split apart and moved towards their present configuration. Multiple characters, distinct and strong, caught up in a sequence of events that thrust them with increasing speed towards a cataclysm that is as inevitable as their personal struggles and transformations. If I have a quibble it's that the world is so intricate that this necessitates a fair amount of telling, but the wealth of sensual detail balances this. I loved the geology, and the all too accurate depiction of characters and government denying coming change, however solid the physical evidence. Now that the author has made this conception real in our minds, what will she do next? I feel Pangaea is ripe for an entire series, and there's no question about the author's abilities not only with conceiving a world and interesting characters, but in building conflict. I just purchased the second book and am looking forward to the tumult to come.