The Dry Salvages

Dust jacket by Ryan Obermeyer

Award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan, best known for her contemporary settings, "gothnoir" tales of pain and wonder, and atmospheric stories of Lovecraftian terror, was first published as an author of dark science fiction. Now she returns to sf with a masterful thirty-thousand word novella, The Dry Salvages.

Three centuries in the future, though much of Earth has been crippled by war, pollution, and catastrophic climatic change, man has at last traveled to the stars and even found evidence of at least one extraterrestrial civilization. In a bleak and frozen Paris, at the dawn of the 22nd Century, an old woman is forced to confront the consequences of her part in these discoveries and the ghosts that have haunted her for almost fifty years. The last surviving member of the crew of the starship Montelius, exopaleontologist Dr. Audrey Cather struggles to remember what she's spent so long trying to forget -- the nightmare she once faced almost ninety trillion miles from Earth.

Trade deluxe hardcover edition and sold out at the publisher

Limited to 250 signed numbered copies and sold out at the publishers

The Limited edition of The Dry Salvages will include “The Worm in My Mind's Eye,” an exclusive bonus chapbook, a mix of non-fiction and fiction.

Not mentioned on Subterranean’ s Website but on Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Low Red Moon On Line Journal on Friday October 29th, 2004

….And now some news concerning The Dry Salvages, from Derek c. f. Pegritz and Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos (the folks who brought you the Our Thoughts Make Spirals in Their World CD that accompanied the chapbook, Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold:

Me n' the boyz here at HPL Laboratories have struck a deal with Subterranean Press to release a short EP of incidental musick we did to Cait's forthcoming The Dry Salvages! We've been working on these tracks for a couple of weeks now, and are really quite thrilled at the way they've turned out, and they're not even entirely done yet. For those of you who enjoyed Our thoughts make spirals in their world, this EP will be a further helping of the same good ol' Crawling Chaos weirdness...further enriched with hundreds of huge, deep-space sounds and all-new synth weirdness. Expect ominous soundscapes, skittery short-circuiting beats, amorphous antediluvian bass and sharp, insectile high-end, all beautifully packaged in a nifty new CD format complete with access to a website full of track listings, extra information, facts about the star Gliese 876, and so forth. This isn't just going to be an EP of music...it's going to be a full-fledged multimedia experience.

Right now, the plans are thus: The CD will accompany the LIMITED EDITION of The Dry Salvages, which will also come with an extra chapbook by Cait (The Worm in My Mind's Eye) — all three items for only $40. However, those who order the trade edition of The Dry Salvages for $25 will be getting the novella alone. There are still details about distribution, printing, and whatnot in the works, and I'll let everyone know what's up with that as soon as I know...but in the meantime, here are some sample mp3s to check out to whet your appetite for enormous labors and self-contemplating shadowy ambient:…

Our Copies of the Limited Edition are available with the signed limited book alone, book w/chapbook and book w/chapbook and CD shown below, limited quanties of each avalable