About this item

John Kessel, one of the most visionary writers in the field, has created a rich matriarchal utopia, set in the near future on the moon, a society that is flawed by love and sex, and on the brink of a destructive civil war.In the middle of the twenty-second century, over three million people live in underground cities below the moon's surface. One city-state, the Society of Cousins, is matriarchy, where men are supported in any career choice, and can have all the sex they want, but no right to vote - and tensions are beginning to flare as outside political intrigues increase. After participating in a rebellion that caused his mother's death, Erno has been exiled from the Society of Cousins. Now, he is living in the Society's rival colony, Persepolis, when he meets and marries Amestris, the defiant daughter of the richest man on the moon.



About the Author

John Kessel

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls John Kessel, "one of the writers capable of bending the tools of science fiction upon the human psyche." In a starred review of his 1997 story collection The Pure Product, Publisher's Weekly said, "Kessel is our American Brian Aldiss, capable of the most artful and rigorous literary composition, but with a mischievous genius that inclines him toward speculative fiction . . . he writes with subtlety and great wit . . . plus, his sense of comedy is remarkable." A writer of erudite comic and satiric short fiction, Kessel received the Nebula Award for his early novella "Another Orphan", a fantasy about a commodities broker who awakes one morning to find himself trapped in the novel Moby Dick, and for "Pride and Prometheus", in which Mary Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice meets Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein. His short fiction has been collected in three volumes, Meeting In Infinity (which contains "Another Orphan") , The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence (which contains "Pride and Prometheus") . Kessel has published five novels: "Freedom Beach" (with James Patrick Kelly) , "Good News from Outer Space," "Corrupting Dr. Nice" (which writer Kim Stanley Robinson has called, "the best time travel novel ever written") , "The Moon and the Other," and "Pride and Prometheus" (an expansion of his Nebula-Award winning story) . Kessel's story "A Clean Escape" was dramatized as the first episode of the 2007 ABC TV series Masters of Science Fiction, starring Sam Waterston and Judy Davis. Though he's taken time out to write plays and perform a role in the independent film "The Delicate Art of the Rifle," Kessel teaches literature and creative writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He is married to Therese Anne Fowler, author of the best-selling "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald."



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