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Remains
Set in the future when Earth has colonized the moon, Mars, and its orbitals, Remains follows the adventures of security officer Mace Preston, who learns that his wife, Helen, has been killed in a construction accident on Mars.
Mace takes it upon himself to figure out what happened – an investigation that eventually costs him his job. Convinced the accident was sabotage, Mace’s search for the truth is thwarted at every turn, and his quest becomes an obsession.
He discovers a zealous web of interplanetary terrorists and realizes he is falling in love with Nemily Dollard, a Cerebro-Augmented person sponsored by Helen for emigration to the colony Aea. With Nemily's ability to plug directly into computer systems, she may hold the clue to Helen's death, as well as a string of unexplained accidents across the galaxy—if only she knew how to access and process the information. Mace tries to help her, but time is running out for both of them as they grow closer to solving the truth about Helen's “accident.”
Mace takes it upon himself to figure out what happened – an investigation that eventually costs him his job. Convinced the accident was sabotage, Mace’s search for the truth is thwarted at every turn, and his quest becomes an obsession.
He discovers a zealous web of interplanetary terrorists and realizes he is falling in love with Nemily Dollard, a Cerebro-Augmented person sponsored by Helen for emigration to the colony Aea. With Nemily's ability to plug directly into computer systems, she may hold the clue to Helen's death, as well as a string of unexplained accidents across the galaxy—if only she knew how to access and process the information. Mace tries to help her, but time is running out for both of them as they grow closer to solving the truth about Helen's “accident.”
- GenresScience FictionFiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published June 10, 2005
1 person is currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Mark W. Tiedemann
68 books94 followersAlso credited as Mark Tiedemann and M. William Tiedemann.
Mark W. Tiedemann has published twelve novels---three in the Asimov's Robot Universe series, /Mirage, Chimera /and/ Aurora/---three in his own Secantis Sequence, /Compass Reach, Metal of Night, /and /Peace & Memory/---as well as stand-alones /Realtime, Hour of the Wolf/ (a Terminator novel), and /Remains/, plus /Of Stars & Shadows/, one of the Yard Dog Doubledog series, Logic of Departure, and the historical novel Granger's Crossing. As well, he has published over seventy-five short stories, all this between 1990 and 2023. /Compass Reach/ was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2002 and /Remains /was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2006.
For five years he served as president of the Missouri Center for the Book (http://books.missouri.org) from which position he has recently stepped down. He is now concentrating on writing new novels, a few short stories, and stirring a little chaos in the blogosphere at DangerousIntersection.org and his own blog at MarkTiedemann.com
Oh, he still does a little photography and has started dabbling in art again after a long hiatus.
Mark W. Tiedemann has published twelve novels---three in the Asimov's Robot Universe series, /Mirage, Chimera /and/ Aurora/---three in his own Secantis Sequence, /Compass Reach, Metal of Night, /and /Peace & Memory/---as well as stand-alones /Realtime, Hour of the Wolf/ (a Terminator novel), and /Remains/, plus /Of Stars & Shadows/, one of the Yard Dog Doubledog series, Logic of Departure, and the historical novel Granger's Crossing. As well, he has published over seventy-five short stories, all this between 1990 and 2023. /Compass Reach/ was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2002 and /Remains /was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2006.
For five years he served as president of the Missouri Center for the Book (http://books.missouri.org) from which position he has recently stepped down. He is now concentrating on writing new novels, a few short stories, and stirring a little chaos in the blogosphere at DangerousIntersection.org and his own blog at MarkTiedemann.com
Oh, he still does a little photography and has started dabbling in art again after a long hiatus.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 20, 2011
This is science fiction about adults, for adults. Everything about it is solid: the prose, the world-building, the characters. Both the central mystery and the central romance are well-paced and resolve satisfactorily. In short, it's damn good.
The prose is of the sort that gets out of the reader's way, putting the story front and center. It's written in tight third person perspective, alternating fairly regularly between Mace and Nemily. The pacing is sure, doling out information about the characters, the world, and the mystery as needed and not before. There is a rough moment early on when the story jumps forward in time several years; I wish the part before the jump had been set aside in a prologue or a Part I to give that jump more visceral impact. But that's just a quibble.
The world-building is quite compelling. It's barely 100 years into our future, when the solar system is in the process of being settled but humans have yet to make it any further out. In that 100 years there has clearly been quite a bit of political upheaval, and figuring out the details of that history is at times a more intriguing mystery than the one Mace is investigating. There are a couple of infodumps when all action comes to a screeching halt, but for the most part Tiedemann manages to show a messy, precarious balance of power that is fascinating in its own right and increasingly relevant to the main plot.
But the thing that makes this book refreshingly adult fare is the characters. There's sex too, it's true, and more of it than I was expecting; but the far more groundbreaking elements are the ways in which Mace and Nemily are not your standard noir detective and ingenue. Much though he might want to be, Mace is not a loner: he is surrounded by people who care for him. Not a fellowship determined to aid him in his quest, but friends, of varying degrees, both people he'd trust his life to and people he wouldn't, but who want to celebrate his birthday with him anyway. And though Nemily looks at first like the typical cold, desperate woman with a secret, she just gets stranger and stranger, a convincingly alien future human. And over their entire relationship hangs the spectre of Mace's dead wife, who is not some gilded idol but instead a complex and achingly real woman whose death I felt more the further into the story I got.
If this book has a weakness it is the central mystery; part of the reason I found the world more intriguing than the plot was that I had figured out much of the mystery well in advance of the characters. The villains were also a shade too hissable for my liking. But overall this is a strong entry in the science fiction mystery canon, and one with a far better romantic subplot than most (actually, two romantic subplots, one forward and one backward). I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.
The prose is of the sort that gets out of the reader's way, putting the story front and center. It's written in tight third person perspective, alternating fairly regularly between Mace and Nemily. The pacing is sure, doling out information about the characters, the world, and the mystery as needed and not before. There is a rough moment early on when the story jumps forward in time several years; I wish the part before the jump had been set aside in a prologue or a Part I to give that jump more visceral impact. But that's just a quibble.
The world-building is quite compelling. It's barely 100 years into our future, when the solar system is in the process of being settled but humans have yet to make it any further out. In that 100 years there has clearly been quite a bit of political upheaval, and figuring out the details of that history is at times a more intriguing mystery than the one Mace is investigating. There are a couple of infodumps when all action comes to a screeching halt, but for the most part Tiedemann manages to show a messy, precarious balance of power that is fascinating in its own right and increasingly relevant to the main plot.
But the thing that makes this book refreshingly adult fare is the characters. There's sex too, it's true, and more of it than I was expecting; but the far more groundbreaking elements are the ways in which Mace and Nemily are not your standard noir detective and ingenue. Much though he might want to be, Mace is not a loner: he is surrounded by people who care for him. Not a fellowship determined to aid him in his quest, but friends, of varying degrees, both people he'd trust his life to and people he wouldn't, but who want to celebrate his birthday with him anyway. And though Nemily looks at first like the typical cold, desperate woman with a secret, she just gets stranger and stranger, a convincingly alien future human. And over their entire relationship hangs the spectre of Mace's dead wife, who is not some gilded idol but instead a complex and achingly real woman whose death I felt more the further into the story I got.
If this book has a weakness it is the central mystery; part of the reason I found the world more intriguing than the plot was that I had figured out much of the mystery well in advance of the characters. The villains were also a shade too hissable for my liking. But overall this is a strong entry in the science fiction mystery canon, and one with a far better romantic subplot than most (actually, two romantic subplots, one forward and one backward). I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.
November 19, 2025
Remains isn’t just a sci-fi mystery it’s a raw, human exploration of grief, obsession, and the thin line between love and madness. Set in a vividly realized future where humanity stretches across planets and orbitals, Mark W. Tiedemann crafts a story that feels both vast in scope and painfully intimate at its core.
Mace Preston’s world shatters the moment he learns that his wife, Helen, has died in a supposed construction accident on Mars. What begins as a simple desire for closure quickly turns into an unrelenting quest for truth one that strips Mace of his career, his peace, and nearly his sanity. The deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that Helen’s death wasn’t an accident. And in that realization lies the haunting truth that drives the novel: sometimes the dead don’t leave us we chase them into the darkness, hoping the answers will hurt less than the silence.
The introduction of Nemily Dollard a Cerebro-Augmented woman capable of directly interfacing with data systems adds both a futuristic intrigue and a surprising tenderness to the narrative. Her fragile humanity, hidden beneath the machinery of her augmentation, mirrors Mace’s own fractured soul. Their connection is slow-burning, filled with tension and quiet desperation. You can feel the ache in every shared moment between them two broken people bound by grief, technology, and the need for truth.
Tiedemann’s writing is sharp and immersive, his worldbuilding detailed but never cold. He paints Mars not as a distant red wasteland, but as a place of loss and memory a planet haunted by ghosts of human ambition and regret. And through it all, the novel pulses with emotional intensity: love colliding with obsession, logic battling grief, and humanity confronting its own fragile remains.
Remains will stay with you long after the final page not because of its futuristic setting, but because it exposes something timeless: the way grief can consume us, and how even in the emptiness of space, the human heart refuses to let go.
Mace Preston’s world shatters the moment he learns that his wife, Helen, has died in a supposed construction accident on Mars. What begins as a simple desire for closure quickly turns into an unrelenting quest for truth one that strips Mace of his career, his peace, and nearly his sanity. The deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that Helen’s death wasn’t an accident. And in that realization lies the haunting truth that drives the novel: sometimes the dead don’t leave us we chase them into the darkness, hoping the answers will hurt less than the silence.
The introduction of Nemily Dollard a Cerebro-Augmented woman capable of directly interfacing with data systems adds both a futuristic intrigue and a surprising tenderness to the narrative. Her fragile humanity, hidden beneath the machinery of her augmentation, mirrors Mace’s own fractured soul. Their connection is slow-burning, filled with tension and quiet desperation. You can feel the ache in every shared moment between them two broken people bound by grief, technology, and the need for truth.
Tiedemann’s writing is sharp and immersive, his worldbuilding detailed but never cold. He paints Mars not as a distant red wasteland, but as a place of loss and memory a planet haunted by ghosts of human ambition and regret. And through it all, the novel pulses with emotional intensity: love colliding with obsession, logic battling grief, and humanity confronting its own fragile remains.
Remains will stay with you long after the final page not because of its futuristic setting, but because it exposes something timeless: the way grief can consume us, and how even in the emptiness of space, the human heart refuses to let go.
July 14, 2010
Mark Tiedemann's book, REMAINS, is a science fiction mystery set in the early twenty-second century at a time when mankind has established itself on outposts throughout the solar system. The colonies consist of corporate-sponsored settlements on Earth's moon, Mars, several small to large space stations, and a distant foothold on Ganymede. The bulk of the story transpires on the fictional space station, Aea, a space community large enough (twenty kilometers by seven) to house and employ a managed population of roughly a hundred thousand inhabitants.
Tiedemann's protagonist is one Macefield Preston, a high-tech security man whose wife turns up missing, presumably dead, in a catastrophic incident at a construction site on Mars. Mace inserts himself into the investigation amid nagging suspicions of industrial espionage and thereby becomes entangled in corporate intrigue and the politics of competing space communities.
To this humble editor, the story seems to turn on two futuristic themes: the handling of information and the management of closed societies within high-risk environments. Tiedemann approaches both of these themes with thoughtful imagination and meticulous detail. As we so often hear, information is the key to power. How information is passed and secured is central to story development. Since REMAINS' main character is a security expert well-versed in data management, we are taken on an inside tour of how off-planet communities would deal with the realities of shared, and unshared, knowledge. As a key component of this scenario, Tiedemann inserts the concept of cyberlinks, people who can accept and store digital input via artificially enhanced brains. This is certainly not a new concept to the science fiction genre, but Tiedemann's portrayal of a cyberlink's persona (Nemily Dollard, Mace's romantic interest) is accomplished with a humanistic style that adds much depth and sympathy to the character. As the tour progresses, we are reminded that the orderly progression of technological societies is apparently accompanied by restrictions to freedom, as we currently understand the term. This is illustrated via the use of constant public surveillance and by the often heavy-handed tactics of the corporate authorities. Although Tiedemann does not discuss it at length, readers cannot help but consider what it would be like to live in an environment where an individual mistake, or worse, an overt act of espionage, could wipe out an entire community in a matter of minutes.
Tiedemann has a beautiful writing style that showcases his intelligence as well as his knowledge of story-building. His characters are drawn with fine detail; their passions and motives fully exposed for the reader's consideration. Such characterization truly adds depth to Tiedemann's work and is part of why Tiedemann stands out among his contemporaries.
Mark W. Tiedemann is an American science fiction and detective fiction author. He has written novels based on Isaac Asimov's Robot universe as well as within his own original universe, tagged as the Secantis Sequence. REMAINS was published in 2005 by BenBella Publishing and was shortlisted for the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2006. More can be learned about author Tiedemann and his other works at his web site: http://www.marktiedemann.com.
Tiedemann's protagonist is one Macefield Preston, a high-tech security man whose wife turns up missing, presumably dead, in a catastrophic incident at a construction site on Mars. Mace inserts himself into the investigation amid nagging suspicions of industrial espionage and thereby becomes entangled in corporate intrigue and the politics of competing space communities.
To this humble editor, the story seems to turn on two futuristic themes: the handling of information and the management of closed societies within high-risk environments. Tiedemann approaches both of these themes with thoughtful imagination and meticulous detail. As we so often hear, information is the key to power. How information is passed and secured is central to story development. Since REMAINS' main character is a security expert well-versed in data management, we are taken on an inside tour of how off-planet communities would deal with the realities of shared, and unshared, knowledge. As a key component of this scenario, Tiedemann inserts the concept of cyberlinks, people who can accept and store digital input via artificially enhanced brains. This is certainly not a new concept to the science fiction genre, but Tiedemann's portrayal of a cyberlink's persona (Nemily Dollard, Mace's romantic interest) is accomplished with a humanistic style that adds much depth and sympathy to the character. As the tour progresses, we are reminded that the orderly progression of technological societies is apparently accompanied by restrictions to freedom, as we currently understand the term. This is illustrated via the use of constant public surveillance and by the often heavy-handed tactics of the corporate authorities. Although Tiedemann does not discuss it at length, readers cannot help but consider what it would be like to live in an environment where an individual mistake, or worse, an overt act of espionage, could wipe out an entire community in a matter of minutes.
Tiedemann has a beautiful writing style that showcases his intelligence as well as his knowledge of story-building. His characters are drawn with fine detail; their passions and motives fully exposed for the reader's consideration. Such characterization truly adds depth to Tiedemann's work and is part of why Tiedemann stands out among his contemporaries.
Mark W. Tiedemann is an American science fiction and detective fiction author. He has written novels based on Isaac Asimov's Robot universe as well as within his own original universe, tagged as the Secantis Sequence. REMAINS was published in 2005 by BenBella Publishing and was shortlisted for the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2006. More can be learned about author Tiedemann and his other works at his web site: http://www.marktiedemann.com.
December 21, 2010
This is a very good science fiction/mystery set about a hundred years in the future. The scientific extrapolations are especially convincing, the characters quite well-deleloped for the most part, and the cultures interesting. It's a captivating read, and I enjoyed it very much. The cover doesn't seem to fit too well; I found the book shelved in the children's section, where it most decidedly does not belong.
May 7, 2015
thought it was OK. its a sci-fi , murder , mystery, love story. The end seemed like a game of clue
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews