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Fiction General

The Chronoliths

by (author) Robert Charles Wilson

Publisher
Tor/Forge
Initial publish date
Jun 2002
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780812545241
    Publish Date
    Jun 2002
    List Price
    $9.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780765325280
    Publish Date
    Mar 2011
    List Price
    $29.99
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780312873844
    Publish Date
    Aug 2001
    List Price
    $34.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past-and soon to be haunted by the future.

In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory--sixteen years in the future.

Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note?

Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

About the author

Robert Charles Wilson was born in California, but grew up near Toronto, Ontario. Apart from another short period in the early 1970s spent in Whittier, California, he has lived most of his life in Canada, and in 2007 he became a Canadian citizen. He resided in Nanaimo, British Columbia, and breifly in Vancouver. Currently he lives with his wife Sharry in Concord, Ontario, just north of Toronto. He has two sons, Paul and Devon. His novel Spin won science fiction’s Hugo Award in 2006. Earlier, he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel A Hidden Place; Canada’s Aurora Award for Darwinia; and the John W. Campbell Award for The Chronoliths.

Robert Charles Wilson's profile page

Awards

  • Hugo Award - Nominee
  • John W. Campbell Memorial Award - Winner

Editorial Reviews

"In his quiet way, Robert Charles Wilson has produced one of the most impressive bodies of work in contemporary science fiction . . . The Chronoliths stands with his best."--The New York Times

"Superb."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)