Desolation Road was no more. The wind had blown everything away. The houses were gone, the streets were gone, the fields were gone, the hotels and inns were gone, God and Mammon were gone; everything was as it had been in the beginning: bare rock and steel. The refugees waited and waited and waited. Twice Rael Jr. thought he heard the whistle of a locomotive, twice he leaped to his feet in anticipation, twice he was disappointed. The wind slackened, the orange opacity grew less impenetrable. Baby Haran Mandella warbled and moaned. Kwai Chen Pak pressed him close to her and suckled him beneath the safety of her windproof robes.
“Listen!” cried Rael Jr., mad-eyed from five days of dust-devils. “There! Did you hear it? I heard it. Listen!” Santa Ekatrina and Kwai Chen Pak listened as bidden and this time, yes, they did hear it, a locomotive whistle, far off down the line. Then a light glowed through the blowing dust and there it was again, the call of the whistle and the last train in history ground into Desolation Road and took the refugees aboard.
As the train pulled away, Rael Mandella Jr. took his tiny son into his arms and kissed him. The Great Dust passed over toward the north and the sun came out from behind the clouds of dust and shone down on the desolation.
Desolation Road was gone. There was no need for it now. It had served its purpose and could return thankfully to the dust; its time over, its name forgotten.
But its name could not be forgotten, for the things that had happened there in the twenty-three years it bore that name were too wonderful to be forgotten and in the Pelnam’s Park district of Meridian its last child grew into manhood: kind, respected, and beloved by all. One summer’s day that man’s father called his son into the bee-busy garden and said to him, “Son, in three weeks you will be ten years old and a man: what will you do with your life then?”
And the son said, “Father, I am going to write a book about all the things you have told me, all the wonders and miracles, all the joys and sadnesses, the victories and the failures.”
“And how do you intend to write this book? There is more to the story than I have told you.”
“I know,” said the son, “for I’ve seen it all written in this.” He showed his father a strange, glowing tapestry, of intricate, brilliant craftmanship, marvelous and magical.
“How did you come by this?” the father asked his son. And the son laughed and said, “Father, do you believe in little green men?”
So he wrote that book, the son, and it was called Desolation Road: the story of a little town in the middle of the Great Desert of the North West Quartersphere of the planet Mars, and this is the end of it.
About the Author
Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including Desolation Road; King of Morning, Queen of Day; Out on Blue Six; Chaga; Kirinya; River of Gods; and Brasyl. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the BSFA Award, been nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award, and has several nominations for both the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The Washington Post called him “one of the best SF novelists of our time.” He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Visit Ian McDonald online at ianmcdonald.livejournal.com.
Praise for
DESOLATION ROAD
“This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do-extraordinary and more than that!”
“Desolation Road is wild, original, exuberant, profound, moving, magical, hilarious, fantastic, fabulous…. It is also good science fiction.”
“Most exciting and promising debut since Ray Bradbury’s…. Here’s a first novel brimming with colourful writing, poetic imagination, and outrageous events recounted in a persuasively matter-of-fact manner… hugely readable.”
“…destined to be a classic… perhaps a work of true genius. Desolation Road will drift along timelessly, undoubtedly outliving its creator-though may he live long and prosper-and occupying its own special place by the dust-blown literary highways travelled by countless generations of future readers.”
“A spectacular first novel. A lively wit leavens the dense complexity of this epic tale. From the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Has Ever Known to a mysteriously transported Glenn Miller (father of the Martian swing craze) and the technoevangelist Inspiration Cadillac, the characters are madly memorable, the most extraordinary mix of human and not-quite human since Cordwainer Smith’s tales of Norstrilia.”
“McDonald is a truly original stylist, somewhat reminiscent of Jack Vance, yet still somehow unique. This is a dangerous trick for a writer to attempt, because if he fails the book will be unreadable. McDonald pulls it off, and his prose sings… the author tells a real story populated by real characters. Desolation Road and its inhabitants will haunt you… poetic, moving, and unforgettable. It deserves to be a classic.”
“The quality of the writing is superb…. Most of the truly gigantic cast are memorable and distinct. There is enough invention in this one novel to fuel sixty thousand trilogies… this is a strange book and its strangeness makes it memorable. Unpack your sense of wonder and buy a ticket to Desolation Road. You won’t regret it.”
“…not since Walter Miller’s master work A Canticle for Leibowitz have I been so profoundly affected by a writer’s breadth of vision and prescience…. I have seen the future and it is Desolation Road.”
Other Pyr® Titles by Ian McDonald
Brasyl
Cyberabad Days
River of Gods
Copyright
Published 2009 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Desolation Road. Copyright © 1988 by Ian McDonald. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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