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Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
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Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antedeluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle is an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire.

Leaving American now ruled by religious fundamentalism, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe.

Darwinia is a 1999 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.


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LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 4, 2007
ISBN9781429956185
Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
Author

Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson was born in California and lives in Toronto. His novel Spin won science fiction’s Hugo Award in 2006. Earlier, he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel A Hidden Place; Canada’s Aurora Award for Darwinia; and the John W. Campbell Award for The Chronoliths.

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Rating: 3.3632911898734177 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed the first half of the book, but once all of the "galactic" stuff was introduced, I felt a little let down. Like Emidawg, I had trouble keeping track of what exactly was going on regarding the seed sentiences, copies of people, etc.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An online friend mentioned that one of her favourite SF writers was Canadian Robert Charles Wilson. I was chagrined that I had not read any of his works and, judging by this book, that is a major hole in my reading life. This book was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1999 and I don't think it is any discredit that it didn't win because the winner that year was Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. (As an aside, Robert Sawyer also had a book on the shortlist that year, Factoring Humanity, so it was a good year for Canadian SF.) Wilson has won a Hugo Award for the book Spin and since that book is one the CBC list of 100 Novels that Make You Proud to be Canadian I think I will have to read it soon. In the alternate history described in this book March of 1912 saw a catastrophic change to Europe. In one night everyone who lived there disappeared and the flora and fauna changed dramatically. The new Europe was christened Darwinia as an homage to Charles Darwin who probably would have wanted to examine the beasts and birds of the new continent. The transformation was hailed by many as a miracle from God and ushered in a new wave of religious fervour in the rest of the world. It also created upheaval in the world's finances. People were thrown out of work and stock markets crashed. Guilford Law was fourteen years old and living in Boston when the world changed. Eight years later, with a wife and young daughter, he joined a scientific expedition led by Preston Finch to explore the interior of the continent. Guilford was a photographer, not a scientist, but he was anxious to see what they could discover. His wife, Caroline, and his daughter, Lilly, were going to stay in London with relatives while the expedition ventured up the river that used to be the Rhine as far as a steamer could take them. After that they would go overland as far as the Alps. Tom Compton who had lived and explored in and around the Rhine for years would guide the expedition. They were well equipped but perhaps not really ready to face the dangers of the "New World" which included men who prayed on unsuspecting travellers. A few members of the team were lost before they even reached the Alps. In the mountains they discovered what appeared to be the ruins of a city but one that did not seem to be built by humans. Guilford and a few others explored it and while they were away from camp it was attacked. Only Guilford, Preston Finch and Tom Compton survived but winter arrived and they had to stay in the mountains. The expedition was given up for lost and Caroline believed Guilford was dead. Yet Guilford lived on, recovered from illnesses and injuries that most men would succumb to. He had disturbing dreams of being a soldier in a field of mud. Then the soldier appeared in his waking life and told him something incredible. Read the book to find out what that was and what happened to Guilford. Wilson reveals the mechanics of the plot in tiny bits. That was probably wise; if he had started out with the full-fledged explanation at the beginning it would have seemed too improbable. This way the reader's understanding built up incrementally and going from one step to another did not seem improbable.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am a fan of Robert Charles Wilson, but it has been a while since I read any of his books. This one took me a while to get into, but I think that may have been as much my rusty reading habits as the slowness of the build-up. It was worth sticking with it -- Robert's writing style is fluid, illustrative but not flowery. There are moments when I just feel deeply those precious little moments, and I really love that gift he gives the reader.The story was poignant, and the ending really worked for me. His explorations of death and the afterlife made me wonder, and I kind of liked where he took things in this fantasy. As someone who has lost a dear family member, I appreciate being reminded of how precious a life is no matter how short. We need to remember things, preserve those memories...and I also wonder if immortality can exist through that preservation. This was a unique book, but classically Robert Charles Wilson in that the protagonist is a wanderer.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Hmmhh. I felt non-plused by Darwinia. Unmoved and untouched. It was an odd book but not I felt in a good way. It wasn't a bad book...it just didn't hold together enough for me to have much impact.It's also hard to tell you much about it without spoilers. But I will say that it felt somewhat disjointed. The initial premise changes radically by the end as we learn why the premise exists. There were many unwieldy premises shoved into the basic story. Imagine Out of Africa with extreme sci-fi premises welded into it. I'd also describe this as feeling roughly like a poor man's Southern Reach (by Jeff VanderMeer) crossed with The Matrix. And beyond the mashup of styles, I also just didn't care about the characters. It's not that Wilson wrote poorly, it's just his characters were rather uninteresting and didn't affect us emotionally. The whole book felt rather cold and distant. Not much to love nor dislike. Just meh.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Interesting concept but written in such a long winded, boring manner that its impossible to enjoy all the way through.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At first I was unsure about this title, but it’s surprisingly good.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The premise: ganked from BN.com: In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antedeluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle is an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire.Leaving American now ruled by religious fundamentalism, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe.Darwinia is a 1999 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.My Rating: Worth Reading, with ReservationsEven though this was the first Robert Charles Wilson book to ever come in my possession, I'm really glad it's not the first one I ever read. Not to say that this one was bad, but I'm not sure it would've left enough of a strong impression on me back then to read more of the author's work, whereas Spin was one of my favorite novels that I read in 2011. Be that as it may, this book does have a dizzying amount of things to offer: alternate history/parallel worlds, philosophy, suspense and thrillers, evolution and aliens, intergalactic conflict. It's certainly fascinating, and almost something that deserves two readers so that readers can really sink their teeth into what's going on, why it's going on, and therefore really appreciate the story. It's not a book that you can read with the television on, or while under the influence of cold medicine. It's a book that requires your absolute attention, and that's not a bad thing. It's just a thing to be aware of. The opening is great, but the rest of the book had its ups and downs for me. Definitely worth reading, but be focused when you do.Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. Part of the reason is so I can try and work out my understanding of the novel. The full review, WITH SPOILERS, maybe found in my blog. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome!REVIEW: Robert Charles' Wilson's DARWINIAHappy Reading!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm not really sure how much I can say about this book without ruining it for anyone who decides to read it. On a fine March evening in 1912, modern Europe as it was known disappears and is mysteriously replaced by an exotic, and dangerous, wilderness. But, what does it mean? What happened to all of the people? And what happens next? Experiments in Reading
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reminiscent of such diverse writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, and Philip K. Dick, Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson is an amazing piece of literary alchemy. Imagine, if you will, a reality where in 1912 Europe transforms into a strange land of nightmarish jungles and alien creatures. This so‑called Miracle is the centerpiece of this fascinating and truly different alternate history.

    Young Guilford Law joins an expedition to explore this Darwinia. What they uncover shatters conception of reality and man's destiny in the universe. This book is at the essence of what makes SF wonderful!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Stellar set-up, disappointing payoff. The first half of this book is intriguing, but the second half belongs to an entirely different book, one that is both dull and implausible.

    Also, the only character with any real personality was Guilford (and even Guilford is fairly wooden). Caroline is a cliche and no one else is remotely memorable.

    But still it was a great premise, even though the denouement left me feeling a bit deflated.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    As fantasy it was a bit too realistic for me and I found the story boring. As *Ironmammoth* says, it just becomes some sort of muddled "claptrap."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I liked a good deal of this book, but ultimately I feel ambivalent about it. This book has layers, starting with a really great Alternate History story and then transitioning to a really abstract far future Sci-Fi plotline. I get that the second part was probably a large part of the author's purpose in writing the book, but the secondary reveal and deeper plot didn't work for me at all. They broke my suspension of disbelief every time they came up, robbed the plot of its stakes, and were largely uninteresting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very deeply weird.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    That was... interesting.

    This started out as I expected. Europe and some of the surrounding lands and waters are replaced one day, in 1912. One day it's the world we know, the next it's an alien world. Flora, fauna, the very ground, itself.

    Miracle? Scientific oddity? Something else? No one knows, but the Finch Expedition heads out to explore this new world. And that's only one of the stories that you'll follow, though the main protagonist is Guilford Law, the photographer on the expedition.

    I can't (and don't want to) tell you much of the story, beyond that, because it twists and turns in odd ways that I absolutely could not have foreseen. It's a science fiction story that reads almost like fantasy. And the mysterious background secrets unwind at a steady pace, throughout the entire novel.

    Demons and gods who are not that, at all, but may as well be. Ghosts of people who never lived. Fossils of creatures that could never have lived (and their histories). Possession by demonic intelligences from outside of reality. Predestined battles that have already been fought and will be fought, in times to come...

    Really, Mr. Wilson did not disappoint.

    Lots of action, mystery, horror, adventure, romance, love and loss.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The novel started fairly quickly, but then it dragged on and on for too many pages. It was a good idea for a story, but there was too much waiting around for the characters to actually do something other than ponder the meaning of their lives.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In one of the chief storylines, Darwinia, a land from an alternate universe, has replaced or overlaid early 20th century Europe; North America and the other non-European areas are not affected. Some of the flora and fauna of Darwinia can be hostile to humans. An exploratory expedition, mostly American, encounters a “midden,” a circle of bones representing the boundary of a colony of carnivorous insects (chapter 14). Creatures that stray within the boundary are brought down and eaten alive to the bones by the colony drones. This functions as a metaphor for the backstory, a cosmological end of days scenario. It seems that the universe has actually come to an end eons ago and is only preserved as a virtual memory in islands of interconnected nodes of sentience in the memory of a cosmic computer. However, the memory is being damaged and destroyed by swarms of entropic algorithms that are programmed to devour sentience, much as the Darwinian insects devour the (virtually) living creatures they are able to capture. At another level, the mind and memory of the universe are in battle with the mindless, memory destroying, prionic, virus-like programs, a cosmic case of Alzheimers. In Wilson’s short story Utriusque Cosmi in the collection The New Space Opera 2 (see the review), the memory of worlds systematically being destroyed by dark matter is preserved in cosmic computer files. Darwinia carries the preserved memories into a future at the end of time. Unfortunately, the surface story itself, recalling H.G. Wells and John Wyndham, was rather dull; the climax to me resembles a pastiche of shopworn eschatologies, perhaps an acknowledgement of the limits of the Second Life of virtual memory.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well, along about 1892, the American Frontier, in the Classic sense was closed. There was no longer a place on the map where you head out for, in Twain's phrase. Robert Wilson's book has a really creepy answer to this problem , if you aren't an American. We'll drop a part of an Alien planet, with its ecosystem intact, and wipe out Europe!No other people to contest the fate of the world as anything but an American plaything, until say the 1960's.And even more frontier!What ever other virtues this book has that was the overriding impression I got from this effort! Made me mad, I confess.This is American Exceptionalism gone riot!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked the excitement and intrigue of the story, as well as the constant undertones of religion vs. science. But the alien plot was a little hard to follow, and the ending seemed a bit unreal to me.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Regrettably, this book had so much potential but which was never fully exploited, for me at least. The alternative Europe setting promised much excitement and suspense. But that world was never fully realized. I really wanted to know more about "Darwinia" but in retrospect it seems that Robert Charles Wilson never really considered that to be the driving point of his book.

    The characters were 2-dimensional and too many were killed-off nonchalantly to keep me interested in the plot.

    Robert Charles Wilson could have written this book even without any major alternative historical settings which, happily, would have stopped me from getting lured into reading this mediocre "science-thriller".

    A disappointing experience.

    2.40 stars
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quick read in one of my favorite settings, the story is fleshed out as the chapters rotate through three main characters, some of them more interesting than others. The mechanism that explains the Miracle feels a bit like a cheat, but it appeals to my science fiction sensibilities, so I could not help but be taken in by it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Darwinia was an interesting and very good read. Most of the novel I enjoyed immensely. Good characters in here and a richly painted canvas of ideas. Darwinia is an alternate history of 20th century earth, when an event occurs in 1912 that is radically different than our world. Our world still exists, but the earth of Darwinia isn't a parallel world. When I began reading this I guessed that a parallel earth had somehow intersected with ours with the result that Europe was completely overlaid with the new wild land of Darwinia. But this proved to not be the case, although in way not far removed from it. I guess the best way to describe it is to say it is a galactic memory of our world that is having history rewritten. In the background which we learn imperfectly as the novel progresses is a strange sort of galactic war wherein the archives of all the life through the universe that has preceded it is being infiltrated and corrupted by something akin to a computer virus. Although this is the background behind the story, the majority of the novel is much more like a modern well written science fictional adventure/mystery story in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose stories incidently are referenced several times within the book.Parts of it are a little tough to swallow and flew somewhere high overhead for me, but the heart of the story was excellent and I'm glad to have finally tackled this interesting novel. The first third or so of the novel was really my favorite, and the ending wasn't quite up to the level of what had preceded it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed the first half of the book, but once all of the "galactic" stuff was introduced, I felt a little let down. Like Emidawg, I had trouble keeping track of what exactly was going on regarding the seed sentiences, copies of people, etc.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A favorite. Although last quarter isn't up to first three-quarters, I found it imaginative and compelling. Darwinia was my introduction to Robert Charles Wilson -- I've much enjoyed his oevre, but Darwinia remains what sticks in my mind.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a good book. When I began reading it I remembered what a strong writer Wilson is. I was reminded of two authors: Eileen Kernaghan, for the beauty and clarity of the language, and JG Ballard (think Crystal World) for the invented and fantastic wild land.A satisfying read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Like many readers no doubt, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book. It is in part an SF adventure novel of the alternate-history type, but it is other things apart from that, and some are not entirely to my taste. The transformation of Europe into a primeval jungle in 1912 produces a crisis in the contemporary creation-evolution debate. Since the event appears miraculous, or at least scientifically inexplicable, the creationist view is strengthened. Scientists argue that the "new" world appears to have had a past of its own prior to its appearance in 1912, but this might also be true of our own world prior to 4004 BC, if the Creator is prepared to create feigned fossils (as some 19th century creationists seriously argued). Perhaps more telling, because more subtle, is the rape of the new European continent by the Americans, just as the Europeans had in their time raped America, with the claims of indigenous peoples being quashed by brute force.The cosmic explanation for the whole scenario, introduced halfway through the book, seemed unnecessarily grandiose in its scope, as though the author was embarassed to write a mere adventure story and had to support it with some "hard" science. This rarefied back-story (Olaf Stapledon meets "The Matrix") rather jarred with the horror-fantasy direction in which the author takes the main adventure (Clark Ashton Smith meets "John Carter of Mars"). Overall, a reasonably entertaining read, but I found it a rather curious conglomeration of genres. MB 23-vii-2008
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I finished reading this book yesterday. When I first started reading it, it was pretty much as I had expected it to be: men from our world are exploring another world full of strange creatures that has somehow appeared on Earth--and wondered, where is the author going with this? I expected just another adventure story. It turns out to be not what I got at all. This book takes a much more science-fiction and disturbing turn than that. An interesting read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A LOT of people who read this did not like it, but I thought it was great. I would recommend it to people who enjoy a good science fiction story (not the really "hard" science fiction) and believe it or no, people who like the Cthulhu mythos stories might actually enjoy this one. In 1912, a young Guilford Law watches as a strange light takes over the sky; the next day he and his family wake up to a new world. Europe, it seems, has totally disappeared, including the millions of people who lived there; in its place is an almost prehistoric landscape, which of course, the US wants to claim for its own but that's another story. This new area is called by some "Darwinia." Fast forward to years later; Law is now a member of the first expedition to explore this new land, but there are those who do not want this expedition to succeed. Guilford begins to have strange dreams, as do the other expedition members, and they all point to a reality that Guilford does not want to believe.I must say, I read the first third or so of this book without stopping -- it was that good. The rest of the book, while not as brilliant as the first part, was okay and offered an entirely new view of history as we know it. I love this author and cannot wait to read more of his work; try Darwinia if you want something completely different.

Book preview

Darwinia - Robert Charles Wilson

PROLOGUE

1912: MARCH

Guilford Law turned fourteen the night the world changed.

It was the watershed of historical time, the night that divided all that followed from everything that went before, but before it was any of that, it was only his birthday. A Saturday in March, cold, under a cloudless sky as deep as a winter pond. He spent the afternoon rolling hoops with his older brother, breathing ribbons of steam into the raw air.

His mother served pork and beans for dinner, Guilford’s favorite. The casserole had simmered all day in the oven and filled the kitchen with the sweet incense of ginger and molasses. There had been a birthday present: a bound, blank book in which to draw his pictures. And a new sweater, navy blue, adult.

Guilford had been born in 1898; born, almost, with the century. He was the youngest of three. More than his brother, more than his sister, Guilford belonged to what his parents still called the new century. It wasn’t new to him. He had lived in it almost all his life. He knew how electricity worked. He even understood radio. He was a twentieth-century person, privately scornful of the dusty past, the gaslight and mothball past. On the rare occasions when Guilford had money in his pocket he would buy a copy of Modern Electrics and read it until the pages worked loose from the spine.

The family lived in a modest Boston town house. His father was a typesetter in the city. His grandfather, who lived in the upstairs room next to the attic stairs, had fought in the Civil War with the 13th Massachusetts. Guilford’s mother cooked, cleaned, budgeted, and grew tomatoes and string beans in the tiny back garden. His brother, everyone said, would one day be a doctor or a lawyer. His sister was thin and quiet and read Robert Chambers novels, of which his father disapproved.

It was past Guilford’s bedtime when the sky grew very bright, but he had been allowed to stay up as part of the general mood of indulgence, or simply because he was older now. Guilford didn’t understand what was happening when his brother called everyone to the window, and when they all rushed out the kitchen door, even his grandfather, to stand gazing at the night sky, he thought at first this excitement had something to do with his birthday. The idea was wrong, he knew, but so concise. His birthday. The sheets of rainbow light above his house. All of the eastern sky was alight. Maybe something was burning, he thought. Something far off at sea.

It’s like the aurora, his mother said, her voice hushed and uncertain.

It was an aurora that shimmered like a curtain in a slow wind and cast subtle shadows over the whitewashed fence and the winter-brown garden. The great wall of light, now green as bottle glass, now blue as the evening sea, made no sound. It was as soundless as Halley’s Comet had been, two years ago.

His mother must have been thinking of the Comet, too, because she said the same thing she’d said back then: It seems like the end of the world … .

Why did she say that? Why did she twist her hands together and shield her eyes? Guilford, secretly delighted, didn’t think it was the end of the world. His heart beat like a clock, keeping secret time. Maybe it was the beginning of something. Not a world ending but a new world beginning. Like the turn of a century, he thought.

Guilford didn’t fear what was new. The sky didn’t frighten him. He believed in science, which (according to the magazines) was unveiling all the mysteries of nature, eroding mankind’s ancient ignorance with its patient and persistent questions. Guilford thought he knew what science was. It was nothing more than curiosity … tempered by humility, disciplined with patience.

Science meant looking—a special kind of looking. Looking especially hard at the things you didn’t understand. Looking at the stars, say, and not fearing them, not worshiping them, just asking questions, finding the question that would unlock the door to the next question and the question beyond that.

Unafraid, Guilford sat on the crumbling back steps while the others went inside to huddle in the parlor. For a moment he was happily alone, warm enough in his new sweater, the steam of his breath twining up into the breathless radiance of the sky.

Later—in the months, the years, the century of aftermath—countless analogies would be drawn. The Flood, Armageddon, the extinction of the dinosaurs. But the event itself, the terrible knowledge of it and the diffusion of that knowledge across what remained of the human world, lacked parallel or precedent.

In 1877 the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli had mapped the canals of Mars. For decades afterward his maps were duplicated and refined and accepted as fact, until better lenses proved the canals were an illusion, unless Mars itself had changed since then: hardly unthinkable, in light of what happened to the Earth. Perhaps something had twined through the solar system like a thread borne on a breath of air, something ephemeral but unthinkably immense, touching the cold worlds of the outer solar system; moving through rock, ice, frozen mantle, lifeless geologies. Changing what it touched. Moving toward the Earth.

The sky had been full of signs and omens. In 1907, the Tunguska fireball. In 1910, Halley’s Comet. Some, like Guilford Law’s mother, thought it was the end of the world. Even then.

The sky that March night was brighter over the northeastern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean than it had been during the Comet’s visit. For hours, the horizon flared with blue and violet light. The light, witnesses said, was like a wall. It fell from the zenith. It divided the waters.

It was visible from Khartoum (but in the northern sky) and from Tokyo (faintly, to the west).

From Berlin, Paris, London, all the capitals of Europe, the rippling light enclosed the entire span of the sky. Hundreds of thousands of spectators gathered in the streets, sleepless under the cold efflorescence. Reports flooded into New York until fourteen minutes before midnight.

At 11:46 Eastern Time, the transatlantic cable fell suddenly and inexplicably silent.

It was the era of the fabulous ships: the Great White Fleet, the Cunard and White Star liners; the Teutonic, the Mauretania, monstrosities of empire.

It was also the dawn of the age of the Marconi wireless. The silence of the Atlantic cable might have been explained by any number of simple catastrophes. The silence of the European land stations was far more ominous.

Radio operators flashed messages and queries across the cold, placid North Atlantic. There was no CQD or the new distress signal, SOS, none of the drama of a foundering ship, but certain vessels were mysteriously unresponsive, including White Star’s Olympic and Hamburg-American’s Kronprinzzessin Cecilie—flagship vessels on which, moments before, the wealthy of a dozen nations had crowded frostrimmed rails to see the phenomenon that cast such a gaudy reflection over the winter-dark and glassy surface of the sea.

The spectacular and unexplained celestial lights vanished abruptly before dawn, scything away from the horizon like a burning blade. The sun rose into turbulent skies over most of the Great Circle route. The sea was restless, winds gusty and at times violent as the day wore on. Beyond roughly 15° west of the Prime Meridian and 40° north of the equator, the silence remained absolute and unbroken.

First to cross the boundary of what the New York wire services had already begun to call the Wall of Mystery was the aging White Star liner Oregon, out of New York and bound for Queenstown and Liverpool.

Her American captain, Truxton Davies, felt the urgency of the situation although he understood it no better than anyone else. He distrusted the Marconi system. The Oregon’s own radio rig was a cumbersome sparker, its range barely a hundred miles. Messages could be garbled; rumors of disaster were often exaggerated. But he had been in San Francisco in 1906, had fled along Market Street barely ahead of the flames, and he knew too well what sort of mischief nature could make, given a chance.

He had slept through the events of the night before. Let the passengers lose sleep gawking at the sky; he preferred the homely comfort of his bunk. Roused before dawn by a nervous radio operator, Davies reviewed the Marconi traffic, then ordered his Chief Engineer to stoke the boilers and his Chief Steward to boil coffee for all hands. His concern was tentative, his attitude still skeptical. Both the Olympic and the Kronprizzessen Cecilie had been only hours east of the Oregon. If there was an authentic CQD he would have the First Officer rig the ship for rescue; until then … well, they would keep alert.

Throughout the morning he continued to monitor the wireless. It was all questions and queries, relayed with cheery but nervous greetings (GMOMgood morning, old man!) from the gnomish fraternity of nautical radiomen. His sense of disquiet increased. Bleary-eyed passengers, aroused by the suddenly more furious pounding of the engines, pressed him for an explanation. At lunch he told a delegation of First Class worriers that he was making up time lost due to ice conditions and asked them to refrain from sending cables for the time being, as the Marconi was being repaired. His stewards relayed this misinformation to Second Class and Steerage. In Davies’ experience passengers were like children, poutingly self-important but willing to accept a glib explanation if it would blunt their deep and unmentionable dread of the sea.

The gusty winds and high seas calmed by noon. A tepid sunlight pierced the ragged ceiling of cloud.

That afternoon the forward lookout reported what appeared to be wreckage, perhaps a capsized lifeboat, floating to the northeast. Davies slackened the engines and maneuvered closer. He was on the verge of ordering the boats prepared and cargo nets rigged when his Second Officer lowered his looking glass and said, Sir, I don’t think it’s wreckage after all.

They came alongside. It was not wreckage.

What troubled Captain Davies was that he couldn’t say what it was.

It bobbed in the swell, lazy with death, winter sunlight glistening on its long flanks. Some immense, bloated squid or octopus? Some part of some once-living thing, surely; but it resembled nothing Davies had seen in twenty-seven years at sea.

Rafe Buckley, his young First Officer, gazed at the thing as it bumped Oregon at the prow and slowly drifted aft, turning widdershins in the cold, still water. Sir, he said, what do you make of it?

I’m sure I don’t know what to make of it, Mr. Buckley. He wished he hadn’t seen it in the first place.

It looks like—well, a sort of worm.

It was segmented, annular, like a worm. But to call it a worm was to imagine a worm large enough to swallow one of the Oregon’s stacks. Surely no worm had ever sported the torn, lacy fronds—fins? a sort of gill?—that arose at intervals from the creature’s body. And there was its color, viscid pink and oily blue, like a drowned man’s thumb. And its head … if that vacuous, saw-toothed, eyeless maw could be called a head.

The worm rolled as it fell away aft, exposing a slick white belly that had been scavenged by sharks. Passengers mobbed the promenade deck, but the smell soon drove all but hardiest of them below.

Buckley stroked his moustache. What in the name of Heaven will we tell them?

Tell them it’s a sea monster, Davies thought. Tell them it’s a Kraken. It might even be true. But Buckley wanted a serious answer.

Davies looked a long moment at his worried First Officer. The less said, he suggested, the better.

The sea was full of mysteries. That was why Davies hated it.

Oregon was the first vessel to arrive at Cork Harbor, navigating in the cold sunrise without benefit of shore lights or channel markers. Captain Davies anchored well away from Great Island, where the docks and the busy port of Queenstown were—or should have been.

And here was the unacceptable fact. There was no trace of the town. The harbor was unimproved. Where the streets of Queenstown should have been—should have teemed with exporters, cargo cranes, stevedores, emigrant Irishmen—there was only raw forest sweeping down to a rocky shore.

This was both inarguable and impossible, and even the thought of it gave Captain Davies a sensation of queasy vertigo. He wanted to believe the navigator had brought them by mistake to some wild inlet or even the wrong continent, but he could hardly deny the unmistakable outline of the island or the cloud-wracked coast of County Cork.

It was Queenstown and it was Cork Harbor and it was Ireland, except that every trace of human civilization had been obliterated and overgrown.

But that’s not possible, he told Buckley. Not to belabor the obvious, but ships that left Queenstown only six days ago are at dock in Halifax. If there’d been an earthquake or a tidal wave—if we’d found the city in ruins—but this!

Davies had spent the night with his First Officer on the bridge. The passengers, waking to the stillness of the engines, began to mob the rails again. They would be full of questions. But there was nothing to be done about it, no explanation or consolation Davies could offer or even imagine, not even a soothing lie. A wet wind had risen from the northeast. Cold would soon drive the curious to cover. Perhaps over dinner Davies could begin to calm them down. Somehow.

And green, he said, unable to avoid or suppress these thoughts. Far too green for this time of year. What sort of weed springs up in March and swallows an Irish town?

Buckley stammered, "It’s not natural."

The two men looked at each other. The First Mate’s verdict was so obvious and so heartfelt that Davies fought an urge to laugh. He managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll send a landing party to scout the shoreline. Until then I think we ought not to speculate … since we’re not very good at it.

Buckley returned his smile weakly. There’ll be other ships arriving … .

And then we’ll know we’re not mad?

Well, yes, sir. That’s one way of putting it.

Until then let’s be circumspect. Have the wireless operator be careful what he says. The world will know soon enough.

They gazed a few moments into the cold gray of the morning. A steward brought steaming mugs of coffee.

Sir, Buckley ventured, we aren’t carrying enough coal to take us back to New York.

Then some other port—

If there is another European port.

Davies raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t considered that. He wondered if some ideas were simply too enormous to be contained by the human skull.

He squared his shoulders. We’re a White Star ship, Mr. Buckley. Even if they have to send colliers from America, we won’t be abandoned.

Yes, sir. Buckley, a young man who had once made the mistake of studying divinity, gave the captain a plaintive look. Sir … is this a miracle?

More like a tragedy, I should say. At least for the Irish.

Rafe Buckley believed in miracles. He was the son of a Methodist minister and had been raised on Moses and the burning bush, Lazarus bidden back from the grave, the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Still, he had never expected to see a miracle. Miracles, like ghost stories, made him uneasy. He preferred his miracles confined between the boards of the King James Bible, a copy of which he kept (and left shamefully unconsulted) in his cabin.

To be inside a miracle, to have it surround him from horizon to horizon, made him feel as if the floor of the world had opened under his feet. He couldn’t sleep more than a pinch. He was red-eyed and pale in the shaving mirror the next morning, and the razor trembled in his hand. He had to steady himself with a mixture of black coffee and flask whiskey before he lowered a launch from the davits, per Captain Davies’ orders, and steered a party of nervous seamen toward the pebbly beach of what had once been Great Island. A wind was rising, the water was choppy, and rain clouds came raggedly from the north. Chill, nasty weather.

Captain Davies wanted to know whether it might be practical to bring passengers ashore if the necessity arose. Buckley had doubted it to begin with; today he doubted it more than ever. He helped secure the launch above the tide, then walked a few paces up the margin of the island, his feet wet, his topcoat, hair, and moustache rimed with saltwater spray. Five grim bearded White Line sailors trudged up the gravel behind him, all speechless. This might be the place where the port of Queenstown had once stood; but Buckley felt uncomfortably like Columbus or Pizarro, alone on a new continent, the forest primeval looming before him with all its immensity and lure and threat. He called halt well before he reached the trees.

The sort-of trees. Buckley called them trees in the privacy of his mind. But it had been obvious even from the bridge of the Oregon that they were like no trees he had ever imagined, enormous blue or rust-red stalks from which needles arose in dense, bushy clusters. Some of the trees curled at the top like folded ferns, or opened into cup-shapes or bulbous, fungal domes, like the crowns of Turkish churches. The space between these growths was as close and dark as a badger hole and thick with mist. The air smelled like pine, Buckley thought, but with an odd note, bitter and strange, like menthol or camphor.

It was not what a forest ought to look like or smell like, and—perhaps worse—it was not what a forest should sound like. A forest, he thought, a decent winter forest on a windy day—the Maine forests of his childhood—ought to sound of creaking branches, the whisper of rain on leaves, or some other homely noise. But not here. These trees must be hollow, Buckley thought—the few fallen timbers at the shore had looked empty as straws—because the wind played long, low, melancholy tones on them. And the clustered needles rattled faintly. Like wooden chimes. Like bones.

The sound, more than anything, made him want to turn back. But he had orders. He steeled himself and led his expedition some yards farther up the shingle, to the verge of the alien forest, where he picked his way between yellow reeds growing knee-high from a hard black soil. He felt as if he should plant a flag … but whose? Not the Stars and Stripes, probably not even the Union Jack. Perhaps the star-and-circle of the White Star Line. We claim these lands in the name of God and J. Pierpont Morgan.

’Ware your feet, sir, the seaman behind him warned.

Buckley jerked his head down in time to see something scuttle away from his left boot. Something pale, many-legged, and nearly as long as a coal shovel. It disappeared into the reeds with a whistling screech, startling Buckley and making his heart thump.

Jesus God! he exclaimed. This is far enough! It would be insane to land passengers here. I’ll tell Captain Davies—

But the seaman was still staring.

Reluctantly, Buckley looked at the ground again.

Here was another of the creatures. Like a centipede, he thought, but fat as an anaconda, and the same sickly yellow as the weeds. That would be camouflage. Common in nature. It was interesting, in a horrible sort of way. He took a half step backward, expecting the thing to bolt.

It did, but not the way he expected. It moved toward him, insanely fast, and coiled up his right leg in a single sudden twining motion, like the explosive release of a spring. Buckley felt a prickle of heat and pressure as the creature pierced the cloth of his trousers and then the skin above his knee with the point of its daggerlike muzzle.

It had bit him!

He screamed and kicked. He wanted a tool to pry the monster off himself, a stick, a knife, but there was nothing to hand except these brittle, useless weeds.

Then the creature abruptly uncoiled—as if, Buckley thought, it had tasted something unpleasant—and writhed away into the undergrowth.

Buckley regained his composure and turned to face the horrified sailors. The pain in his leg was not great. He took a series of deep, lung-filling breaths. He meant to say something reassuring, to tell the men not to be frightened. But he fainted before he could muster the words.

The seamen dragged him back to the launch and sailed for the Oregon. They were careful not to touch his leg, which had already begun to swell.

That afternoon five Second-Class passengers stormed the bridge demanding to be allowed to leave the ship. They were Irishmen and they recognized Cork Harbor even in this altered guise; they had families inland and meant to go searching for survivors.

Captain Davies had taken the landing party’s report. He doubted these men would get more than a few yards inland before fear and superstition, if not the wildlife, turned them back. He stared them down and persuaded them to go belowdecks, but it was a near thing and it worried him. He distributed pistols to his chief officers and asked the wireless operator how soon they might expect to see another ship.

Not long, sir. There’s a Canadian Pacific freighter less than an hour away.

Very well. You might tell them we’re waiting … and give them some warning what to expect.

Yes, sir. But—

But what?

I don’t know how to say it, sir. It’s all so strange.

Davies put his hand on the radioman’s shoulder. No one understands it. I’ll write a message myself.

Rafe Buckley was running a fever, but by dinner the swelling in his leg had gone down, he was ambulatory, and he insisted on accepting Davies’ offer to join him at the captain’s table for dinner.

Buckley ate sparingly, sweated profusely, and to Davies’ disappointment, spoke little. Davies had wanted to hear about what the ship’s officers were already calling the New World. Buckley had not only set foot on that alien soil, he had been sampled by the wildlife.

But Buckley had not finished his roast beef before he stood uncertainly and made his way back to the infirmary, where, to the Captain’s astonishment, he died abruptly at half past midnight. Damage to the liver, the ship’s surgeon speculated. Perhaps a new toxin. Difficult to say, prior to the autopsy.

It was like a dream, Davies thought, a strange and terrible dream. He cabled the ships that had begun to arrive at Queenstown, Liverpool, the French ports, with news of the death and a warning not to go ashore without, at least, hip boots and a sidearm.

White Star dispatched colliers and supply ships from Halifax and New York as the sheer enormity of what had happened began to emerge from the welter of cables and alarms. It was not just Queenstown that had gone missing; there was no Ireland, no England, no France or Germany or Italy … nothing but wilderness north from Cairo and west at least as far as the Russian steppes, as if the planet had been sliced apart and some foreign organism grafted into the wound.

Davies wrote a cable to Rafe Buckley’s father in Maine. A terrible thing to have to do, he thought, but the mourning would be far from singular. Before long, he thought, the whole world would be mourning.

1912: AUGUST

Later—during the troubled times, when the numbers of the poor and the homeless rose so dramatically, when coal and oil grew so expensive, when there were bread riots in the Common and Guilford’s mother and sister left town to stay (who could say for how long?) with an aunt in Minnesota—Guilford often accompanied his father to the print shop.

He couldn’t be left at home, and his school had closed during the general stroke, and his father couldn’t afford a woman to look after him. So Guilford went with his father to work and learned the rudiments of platemaking and lithography, and in the long interludes between paying jobs he re-read his radio magazines and wondered whether any of the grand wireless projects the writers envisioned would ever come to pass—whether America would ever manufacture another DeForrest tube, or whether the great age of invention had

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