- Hardcover: 130 pages
- Publisher: Subterranean Press (October 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1596060069
- ISBN-13: 978-1596060067
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,813,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
An interplanetary expedition pays an unexpected visit to the dark side of science fiction in this gripping genre-jump by horror specialist Kiernan (Murder of Angels). In the 23rd century, Earth has just discovered signs of the first nonhuman civilization on Piros, a moon in a star system some 15 light years away. Extrasolar exopaleontologist Audrey Cather and three other crew members of the starship Montelius are dispatched to rendezvous with Gilgamesh, the exploratory ship that made the discovery, but when they make port they find that half the Gilgamesh crew has vanished on Piros while those on board are struggling with madness. Something has frightened the scientists to irrationality and driven at least one to spouting portentous passages from Blake's Book of Urizen. Suspense mounts excruciatingly as the crew of the Montelius hastens to Piros to confront the horror themselves. Echoes of other first-contact stories—from the transcendent 2001 to the paranoid gothic Alien cycle—reverberate through the narrative, setting the mood for an eerily unpredictable close encounter. Kiernan also draws on her training as a paleontologist for her rigorously plotted extraterrestrial environments. But this tale's focus is squarely on the human, and it asserts an authority that will convince readers of all tastes that "the alien" is a fundamental fear that can conjure primal horror out of a sophisticated SF setting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Fifty years after the Montelius' mission to Piros, its last surviving crew member lectures on paleontology and her month on Titan--things deemed safe by the powers that be--and writes her memoirs with reconditioned ballpoints. She wanders through her memories of arrival at Piros, where they found Gilgamesh crewed by robots, its crew lost on the surface except for two who, suicidal, remain on the ship. Something was out there: there are remains of an alien quarry and whatever killed the Gilgamesh shuttle crew. Back on Earth the remains played hopefully, as signs that we aren't alone in the universe. But Audrey Cather's memory says otherwise. While writing, Audrey is wrapped up in the old mission's contemporary repercussions when agency security comes to keep her from leaking her classified memories. All records of the mission were destroyed, you see, including the neural implants of another crew member. Kiernan plays on the frailty of memory, creating chilling fear without ever showing the monster her narrator's realistically rendered forgetfulness can't quite recall. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.1 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
All build-up with too little action, but still a delightful atmosphere with rich horror. Recommended, Mar 16 2009
By Juushika - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Dry Salvages (Hardcover)
An old woman recounts a long-ago journey with a small crew to investigate distant abandoned ruins, humanity's first proof of alien life. The mission brought the crew to madness and prompted a government cover-up; now, the narrator is the last record of what they really found in the ruins. At only novella-length, The Dry Salvages suffers from too much build up and not enough delivery. Nonetheless, the build-up and atmosphere are top notch, a combination of psychological and Lovecraftian horror, and on the whole this is an intriguing and enjoyable, if brief, read. I recommend it.
I've previous read and adored Kiernan's Threshold , and the aspects I loved of that book reappear here: Lovecraftian horror of the endless and threatening unknown, slow-building tension, and a wealth of scientific detail which makes the supernatural events all the more believable. The Dry Salvages also adds psychological horror--this brief book has little room for plot; instead, character interactions make up most of the action, following the crew's slow descent towards madness. All of these elements are skillfully rendered and incredibly enjoyable, creating a book which grips the reader and builds the sort of horror which I actually find frightening--a rarity, in literature, and something that I cherish.
And yet the book offers little more than that. The build up does lead somewhere, but it doesn't lead to a destination quite big enough for all that precedes it. At just over 100 pages, this book simply feels too short: there's enough time for foreshadowing but not enough time for action, and the conclusion is a miserably short ten pages. Things end as soon as they seem to begin, and it's simply frustrating. The anticipation is still delicious, and the short conclusion is a wonderful balance between madness and horror, but I wish there were more to this book. As a result, I prefer her novel-length works by a long ways, simply because they strike a better balance and have more to offer. But I did enjoy and do recommend The Dry Salvages. It's not perfect, but it's short and sweet and still worth the time it takes to read.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Creepy, without the gouging of eyes, Dec 26 2004
By Hayley Huston - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Dry Salvages (Hardcover)
Very unsettling. It remineded me of Event Horizon, but without the too-exact explanation of what the "bad thing" was. I find the unexplained and unknown more frightening than the diagrammed and dissected evil being that's just a trounced-up version of my neighbor. This book pulled that off perfectly. I especially liked the futuristic slang that the characters used, made it seem like a completely foreign world.
Now begins the excrutiating wait for Daughter of Hounds.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another fine work from Kiernan., Feb 15 2005
By Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Dry Salvages (Hardcover)
Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Dry Salvages (Subterranean, 2004)
There's something utterly cool about a book whose back jacket lists the author's last publication as a huge unpronounceable stream of words published in an obscure archaeological journal (well, obscure to everyone save archaeologists). Especially when the book you're holding will not be filled with the same types of unpronounceable words. Such is the case with The Dry Salvages, a short sci-fi novel from the always-fine pen of Cait Kiernan. The setting is Piros, a small red moon orbiting a gas giant in another galaxy. The players are four scientists and an unknown number of artificial persons headed to Piros to work with a bunch that's already there. The plot is... hmm. Well, basically nonexistent. This is a character study about the interactions of four people with themselves and others, told by one of them many years after the events in question.
After watching the flood of negative reviews come in for the last book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I can see a lot of people hating the way this novel ends. I, personally, thought it was the bees' knees. Your mileage may (and likely will) vary. Can't say more than that for fear of spoilage.
Kiernan hasn't yet writ the book not worth reading. This one is another fine addition to the library. ***
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