Palimpsest

✍ Scribed by Charles Stross

• Book ID: 100329484
• Publisher: ePubLibre
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 153 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Welcome to the Stasis, the clandestine, near-omnipotent organization that stands at the heart of Charles Stross’s Hugo Award-winning novella, Palimpsest.

By mastering the mysteries of the Timegate, the Stasis has repeatedly steered mankind away from the brink of utter extinction. Through countless millennia, through the “mayfly flickerings” of innumerable transient civilizations, its members have intervened at critical junctions, reseeding the galaxy with viable potential survivors. In the process, they have reconfigured the basic structure of the universe, all in the name of human continuity.

Pierce is a newly recruited member of the Stasis, serving out a complex twenty-year apprenticeship while struggling to find his way through the paradoxical maze of history (and unhistory) that surrounds him. As his once simple existence expands and replicates over vast stretches of time, Pierce uncovers a new and unexpected destiny, one that will embroil him in the larger purposes of the Stasis and in the ultimate, unresolved fate of humanity itself.

Skillfully merging the threads of an individual life with the grandest, most overarching concerns, Palimpsest offers both visionary brilliance and narrative excitement in equal measure. Powerfully imagined, beautifully constructed, and written throughout with great economy of means, it is the kind of mind-expanding mini-epic that only science fiction-and only a master practitioner like Charles Stross-could produce.

Subterranean Press, 2011. Hardcover (limited to 1000 copies), 144 pp.

***

From Publishers Weekly

Stross’s Hugo Award-winning novella… is a detailed look at the Stasis, a time travel organization, and the training and subsequent career of Pierce, one of its recruits. Pierce’s story is related in a series of short chapters that describe his missions as small parts of a much longer life. Experienced SF readers will enjoy this intelligent look at the intricacies of time travel fiction.

From SFRevu

Stross noted that this story wanted to be novel length but that he kept it short to include it in his book of short stories. It's a powerful story deserving of longer treatment, and we can only hope that Stross will revisit this world in future.

From SF Crowsnest

As a novella, Palimpsest is densely packed with extraordinary ideas, facts and speculation. It also manages to pack in an absorbing story to wrap all this around… Woven through the personal this amazing story is powerful and poetic, making us realise how small and finite we really are. Pierce’s sense of self, affected by his time travel, is also part of this journey in which we are allowed glimpses into the heart of the cosmos.