Fire on the Mountain (25 page)

Grissom had brought them in his little hummer, and even stayed for a piece of chess pie. He was an expert at relating to old people.

The world below was as dark as the night at the end of the first day. Lights were scattered up and down the valley, showing mankind’s work: still so meager compared to the stars.

12:45. According to the slowly moving line on the liquid-crystal display in the lounge, they had just crossed into Nova Africa. Harriet looked down for a sign of the border, but it was just one dark, sleeping world from up here.

A few night people were in the far corner of the lounge watching vid: life discovered on mars! Her Dad would have liked that. Harriet would have gotten up to watch, but she didn’t want to wake her mother. Besides, she was tired too. She was glad to be going home. She had a year of school to look forward to, and though she hadn’t yet dared mention it to her mother, her first actual flight training.

Plus a new baby brother, on the way.

Plus such beautiful shoes.

Author Terry Bisson’s interest in abolitionist John Brown dates from his days as an activist in the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee.

In addition to his award-winning Science Fiction stories and novels, Bisson has written children’s books, comics, screenplays and biographies of Brown, Nat Turner and Mumia Abu Jamal.

A native of Kentucky, and a New Yorker for thirty years, Bisson currently lives in California.

PM PRESS
OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS

The
Left
Left Behind
Terry Bisson 978-1-60486-086-3
$12

Hugo and Nebula award-winner Terry Bisson is best known for his short stories, which range from the southern sweetness of “Bears Discover Fire” to the alienated aliens of “They’re Made out of Meat.” He is also a 1960s’ New Left vet with a history of activism and an intact (if battered) radical ideology.

The
Left Behind
novels (about the so-called “Rapture” in which all the born-agains ascend straight to heaven) are among the bestselling Christian books in the US, describing in lurid detail the adventures of those “left behind” to battle the Anti-Christ. Put Bisson and the Born-Agains together, and what do you get?
The
Left
Left Behind
-a sardonic, merciless, tasteless, take-no-prisoners satire of the entire apocalyptic enterprise that spares no one-predatory preachers, goth lingerie, Pacifica radio, Indian casinos, gangsta rap, and even “art cars” at Burning Man.

Plus: “Special Relativity,” a one-act drama that answers the question: When Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, J. Edgar Hoover are raised from the dead at an anti-Bush rally, which one wears the dress? As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred and all-bets off: an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of our Outspoken Author. Surprises are promised.

PM PRESS
OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS

The Lucky Strike
Kim Stanley Robinson
978-1-60486-085-6
$12

Combining dazzling speculation with a profoundly humanist vision, Kim Stanley Robinson is known as not only the most literary but also the most progressive (read “radical”) of today’s top rank SF authors. His best-selling “Mars Trilogy” tells the epic story of the future colonization of the red planet, and the revolution that inevitably follows. His latest novel,
Galileo’s
Dream
, is a stunning combination of historical drama and farflung space opera, in which the ten dimensions of the universe itself are rewoven to ensnare history’s most notorious torturers.

The Lucky Strike
, the classic and controversial story Robinson has chosen for PM’s new Outspoken Authors series, begins on a lonely Pacific island, where a crew of untested men are about to take off in an untried aircraft with a deadly payload that will change our world forever. Until something goes wonderfully wrong.

Plus:
A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions
, in which Robinson dramatically deconstructs “alternate history” to explore what might have been if things had gone differently over Hiroshima that day.

As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred and all-bets off: an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of our Outspoken Author.

PM PRESS
FOUND IN TRANSLATION

Lonely Hearts Killer
Tomoyuki Hoshino

Translated by
Adrienne Carey Hurley
978-1-60486-084-9
$15.95

What happens when a popular and young emperor suddenly dies, and the only person available to succeed him is his sister? How can people in an island country survive as climate change and martial opportunities for local sustainability law are eroding more and more opportunities for local sustainability and mutual aid? And what can be done to challenge the rise of a new authoritarian political leadership at a time when the general public is obsessed with fears related to personal and national “security”? These and other provocative questions provide the backdrop for this powerhouse novel about young adults embroiled in what appear to be more private matters – friendships, sex, a love suicide, and struggles to cope with grief and work.

PM Press is proud to bring you this first English translation of a full-length novel by the award-winning author Tomoyuki Hoshino.

About the Author:
Since his literary debut in 1997, Tomoyuki Hoshino has published twelve books on subjects ranging from ‘terrorism’ to queer/trans community formations; from the exploitation of migrant workers to journalistic ethics; and from the Japanese emperor system to neoliberalism. He is also well known in Japan for his nonfiction essays on politics, society, the arts, and sports, particularly soccer. He maintains a website and blog at
http://www.hoshinot.jp
/

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