
Stormland
John Shirley
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Description
They call it Stormland: a sprawling, largely abandoned region of the southeastern coast of the USA, where climate change's extreme weather conditions have brought about a "perfect storm" of perpetual tempests; where hurricane-strength storms return day after day, 365 days a year.
The heart of Stormland is Charleston, South Carolina, a flooded ruin where hundreds of people remain for their own peculiar reasons; where thugs prey on the weak, and a strangely benevolent cult tries to keep everyone insanely sane. Here, plutocratic evil takes advantage of Stormland's lawlessness to cultivate a weirdly puppeted theater of cruelty.
Swept into the turbulent vortex of Stormland is an unlikely duo--a former serial killer and a former US Marshal--who must work together to bring light to America's late twenty-first century heart of darkness.
A cyberpunk detective thriller set in a maelstrom of climatic upheaval, classism, and corrupt power, Stormland paradoxically dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit.
Product Details
Publisher | Blackstone Publishing |
Publish Date | April 13, 2021 |
Pages | 338 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781094017822 |
Dimensions | 8.9 X 6.3 X 1.4 inches | 1.5 pounds |
About the Author
John Shirley is one of the original cyberpunk writers. He is the author of numerous novels, including Demons, Crawlers, Wetbones, Cellars, Bleak History, City Come A-Walkin', Bioshock: Rapture, and the Song Called Youth trilogy. His story collections include the Bram Stoker Award-winning Black Butterflies. He is coscreenwriter of The Crow, has written an episode of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine television series, as well as animation scripts.
Reviews
"A tightly paced, well thought-out cyberpunk thriller that entices after the very first chapter...Spare, no-nonsense prose like that of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Karl Edward Wagner, but with a cyberpunk twist that's all [Shirley's] own. It's a sort of cyberpunk noir mixed with a biting commentary on mankind's greed. Stormland is a big, sprawling read with plenty for just about everyone, a fun way to pass the time if stuck at home or on a bus."
-- "New York Journal of Books""This swampadelic adventure transmogrifies such real-time disasters as Katrina-flooded New Orleans into the stuff of speculative nightmares."
-- "Paul Di Filippo, Locus""With this gripping dystopian novel, Shirley extrapolates a grim vision of a late-twenty-first-century US wracked by climate change...Howling super-hurricanes, grisly torture scenes, and the horrors of scientific experimentation on human brains make for harrowing reading. This is a sober warning about the seductive dangers of power."
-- "Publishers Weekly""Snapping, snarling, vigorously wrought drama."
-- "Kirkus Reviews""Stormland is a headlong sci-fi thriller about the punk squalor of post-disaster situations. It's also got some remarkably interesting speculative technologies, so I'd say that Mr. Shirley is quite on top of his game with this one."
-- "Bruce Sterling, editor of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology""One of our best and most singular writers. A powerhouse of ideas and imagery."
-- "William Gibson, author of Agency and Neuromancer""John Shirley's acerbic humor is a perfect match for his sense of doom and adventure. One of his best. Buckle in!"
-- "Greg Bear, author of Blood Music and The Unfinished Land""A powerful and necessary story for these times."
-- "Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series""Set in a nightmarish future where extreme weather perpetually batters the coast, Stormland portrays human tenacity and ingenuity within a Hobbesian universe. John Shirley has created a vivid, hurricane-soaked canvas and a cast of memorable characters, none more so than a reluctant detective and a reformed serial killer who work in tandem to solve a series of perplexing crimes. A feat of dystopian imagination, Stormland cements Shirley's voice in the upper echelon of the cyberpunk genre."
-- "Jon Bassoff, author of Captain Clive's Dreamworld"Earn by promoting books