Dark Eden

Description

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among you recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross between worlds. One day, the Oldest say, they will come back for you. You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, beneath the light and warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of an alien, sunless world. You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to abandon the old ways, the first to kill another, the first to venture in to the Dark, and the first to discover the truth about Eden.

Chris Beckett is a university lecturer living in Cambridge. He has written over 20 short stories, many of them originally published in Interzone and Asimov's. He is the winner of the Edge Hill Short Story competition, 2009, for The Turing Test, as well as the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award, 2013, for Dark Eden.

A classic theme, beautifully told * Sunday Telegraph * This is a world I'm desperate to return to -- Alison Flood * Guardian * There's no justice if Dark Eden, with its beautiful, terrifying planet, slowly revealed, fails to bring Beckett awards * Sunday Times * A captivating and haunting book * Daily Mail * A dazzlingly inventive science-fiction writer -- A. N Wilson Dark Eden is stunningly written * SciFiNow * Dark Eden is an incredible novel * SFBooks * Beckett should be on the radar of anyone who professes concern for science fiction as a literary form -- Alastair Reynolds