The Man in the Tree
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
With The Man in the Tree, Locus Award-winning author Sage Walker has given us a thrilling hard science fiction mystery that explores the intersection of law, justice, and human nature.
Humanity’s last hope of survival lies in space…but will we even get there?
Helt Borresen is an Incident Analyst. What that means is that aboard the seed ship Kybele, he is the closest thing that the organization has to a security officer. But he doesn’t think that it’ll be a big part of his job, as all the candidates have been carefully screened.
Why the need for a seed ship? Because our planet is toast and the colonists that leave our world are the best shot that we have for our species to continue.
Everything is set…and then someone is found hanging dead just weeks before the launch. Fear and paranoia spread as the death begins to look more and more like a murder. The authorities want the case settled quickly and quietly so as not to cause panic.
And Helt is the one to prevent a murderer from sabotaging the entire mission.
“Rapid-fire storytelling from start to finish!”—Greg Bear
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this rich, intense novel of ideas, Locus Award winner Walker (Whiteout) meditates upon murder, law, and justice inside a generation spaceship in 2209. The seedship Kybele, the last hope of a damaged Earth, is nearing departure on a 200-year trip from which it might never return. When a worker is found messily dead, incident analyst Helt Borresen investigates, defining jurisdictions and setting precedents among the closed society of risk-takers on board Kybele. The ship's only experienced pathologist, Elena Maury, emerges as the chief suspect, and Helt must fight his growing attraction to her as he tries to prove her innocence and uncover a possible far-reaching conspiracy. The true mystery underlying Helt's investigation is how (and whether) human social contracts will be established and operate on Kybele in isolation, enabling a fragment of the human species to survive. The investigative and legal issues of the book's world are extraordinarily well thought out; how the mystery is solved and justice is addressed fit very tightly into the themes of "new world, new rules." Walker demonstrates new ways of thinking about futuristic social systems that are optimistic rather than dystopic. Fans of hard science fiction and philosophical mystery will enjoy this hopeful view of humankind's future.
