Desolation Road
It all started thirty years ago on Mars. By the time it was finished, the town of Desolation Road had been witness to every abnormality yet seen on the Red Planet. From Adam Black’s Wonderful Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ‘Stravaganza, to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar, nowhere else boasts such sights for the wandering lucky traveller.
Its inhabitants are just as storied. From Dr. Alimantando — founder and resident genius — to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother with a child grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo whose way with machines bordered on the mystic, to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with – and married – the same woman.
There’s nowhere quite like Desolation Road. Once you go there, you may never be the same again.
Its inhabitants are just as storied. From Dr. Alimantando — founder and resident genius — to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother with a child grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo whose way with machines bordered on the mystic, to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with – and married – the same woman.
There’s nowhere quite like Desolation Road. Once you go there, you may never be the same again.
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Reviews
This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do . . . extraordinary and more than that
Desolation Road pays homage to David Byrne's Catherine Wheel, to Ray Bradbury's entire canon and to Jack Vance, blending all these disparate creators in a way that surprises, delights, then surprises and delights again
Flavoured with a voice that blends the delightful prose of Jack Vance with the idiosyncratic stylings of Cordwainer Smith
it absolutely bowled me over . . . some of the most beautiful prose imaginable . . . If you ever want to demonstrate how different science fiction can be, what an incredible range and sweep of things are published with a little spaceship on the spine, Desolation Road is a shining datapoint