The Visitor - Softcover

Sheri S Tepper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575074477 ISBN 13: 9780575074477

Publisher: Gollancz Paperbacks, 2003

Synopsis

Sheri Tepper, one of the foremost science fiction writers in the world, gives us an exciting, evocative and thought-provoking tale where science and magic meet head-on. A group of colonists, waking every few hundred years to see what's been happening on the planet they fled to from a dying Earth, watch as the systems and rules they set in place so long ago become debased and decayed. The corrupt leaders govern by oppression, but technological resources run low and the knowledge of how to replace them is lost in the mists of time. Instead, the power-hungry leaders turn to sorcery of the blackest kind, kindled by pain and despair. And when they launch a religious crusade to wipe out all those who won't conform to the government's ever-more-stringent dictates, not even the original colonists - the new gods - are safe from the ravaging sorcery-fuelled armies of the righteous ...

About this title

Review

Do people change their ways? The Visitor explores this question on a number of levels in a postapocalyptic setting. Centuries after a catastrophic asteroid strike on Earth, survivors have rebuilt a society of religious conservatism and repression. Past technology is remembered as magic, and violent sorcery is a common political tool. Young Dismé Latimer is only concerned with surviving her abusive childhood until she discovers the journal of ancestor Nell Latimer, a scientist chosen to survive the asteroid and preserve as much human knowledge as possible. As the forces of good and evil, of science and magic, begin to converge and conflict, Dismé learns the truth about the world that came before and begins to understand that she, like Nell, has a role to play in the current preservation of Earth.

Tepper's writing is always skillful and eminently readable, and she's not afraid to tackle big ideas as well as individual stories of growth and change. Although the novel loses some focus toward the end, it paints a compelling picture of a society on the point of disintegration and graphically demonstrates how humans who are unaware of their own history are in fact likely to repeat it. --Roz Genessee

About the Author

Sheri S. Tepper is the author of several resoundingly acclaimed novels, including the Arthur C. Clarke nominated Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Six Moon Dance, The Family Tree, A Plague of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel of the Year by readers of Locus and will be appearing as part of the Fantasy Masterworks series.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gollancz Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0575074477
• ISBN 13: 9780575074477
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 416