Mindscape [Paperback]

Andrea Hairston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award,

Mindscape takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epi-dimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protoge, Ellini, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?

What rich and provocative territory this amazingly written first novel explores, what memorable characters it compels us to confront---renegade gene scientists and ethnic throwbacks, slippery politicos and "expendable" Extras, ghost dancers and double consciousness diviners conjuring through an enigmatic veil---each struggling in complex circumstances to navigate survival, identity, and self in a world thrown off its course, each speaking in distinct voices that stay with you long after you've left their unforgettable stories.

Science fiction at its best, Andrea Hairston's Mindscape makes you want to cuss and shout for joy---it's vision, raw humanity, and ultimate hopefulness are exhilarating. What a pleasure it is to be invited into a world so large and muscular, so sensual and rooted in global history, a world in which not only the future but the past is at stake." Sheree Renee Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, winner of the 2001 and 2005 World Fantasy Awards

A fine debut novel! Andrea Hairston's voice is fresh and strong.---Greg Bear

Editorial Reviews

Review

Hairston's first novel blends speculative science with socially aware fiction to create a panoramic story that is at once personally relevant and philosophically significant. --Library Journal

..an intoxicating, almost hallucinogenic journey into a vision of Earth's future... --The Women's Times

...an ensemble cast of sufficient originality and variety to please a whole range of SFados from hard sf to queer feminist postcolonial... --New York Review of Science Fiction

About the Author

Andrea Hairston is a Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, as well as the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. Her plays have been produced at Yale Rep, Rites and Reason, the Kennedy Center, Stage West, and on Public Radio and Television. She has received many awards for her writing and directing, including an NEA Grant to Playwrights, a Ford Foundation grant to collaborate with Senegalese Master Drummer massamba Diop, and a Shubert Fellowship for Playwrighting. She is currently work on a new novel, for which she received the 2004 Speculative Literature Foundation's Older Writer Grant. Mindscape is her first novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 445 pages
• Publisher: Aqueduct Press (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933500034
• ISBN-13: 978-1933500034
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,170,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful book, April 30, 2006

By 

William Oram (Northampton, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mindscape (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book, exuberant, original, funny, moving, often confusing and always alive. It takes about seventy-five pages before you can make sense of the world and the plot (six major characters, all seeing and thinking differently, and lots of minor ones) but once you get a sense of what's at stake the book takes hold of you and won't let go.

It takes place on an earth divided up by a mysterious-possibly living-barrier of energy that keeps people in three "zones" corresponding to three different social systems and systems of value. Movement between zones is possible only at seasonal intervals (except for mutant "Vermittler" who can sing their way through the barrier), and there is a background of violence within zones and between them. A treaty to curb the violence and bring the zones together comes into being (along with an assassination) at the opening of the novel. In what follows different characters attempt either to extend the treaty or to destroy it. I won't say much more to avoid giving away the plot, which is full of surprises, but the ending seems to me both powerfully moving and fully justified.

In some ways the book reminds me of Clarke's Childhood's End, because it's so concerned with human transcendence (one of the characters is making a video called "The Transformers"), but its technique-moving between chapters from different points of view-is more complicated. The characters are a complicated mixture of love and anger, idealism and cynicism and longing. They're very real. The language of the novel, playfully moving between black slang and formal diction, sprinkled with phrases from Yoruba and German, blazing with wild metaphors, is a constant joy. It's the best science fiction novel I've read in the last year and I think it deserves a Nebula.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mindscape dances beyond the limits of the mind! What are the infinite possibilities?, May 1, 2006

By 

Joy Voeth (Miami, Los Angeles, Barbados) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mindscape (Paperback)

Whether you're into science fiction or not, Andrea Hairston draws you into an amazing world! Andrea's language is alive - it sings and moves in your body. Her language invites you to stretch beyond the range your daily tongue. Mindscape is full of possibilities beyond what we see in the world today - yet it is somehow hauntingly close to our current reality. Politics, science, art, healing, spirituality, consciousness, race, humanity, reality, hopes and dreams...Andrea Hairston explores and questions everything in a way that allows each character to expose unexpected parts of themselves and the world around them. What else do we know that we're pretending not to know? What else is really possible?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing novel!, May 7, 2006

By 

Kaye (Upstate NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mindscape (Paperback)

Andrea Hairson's /Mindscape/ introduces us to a society in which borders between countries (called "Zones" in the novel) are very real. Looking through the mind of six characters, we learn about the society and its problems---most notably the struggle to connect the three very different cultures. As previous reviews have stated, the novel seems a bit daunting at first, but it quickly becomes a rewarding reading experience.

On another note, this is science fiction, but it contains enough fantastic elements that fantasy readers will enjoy it.