Calypso - Hardcover

by Oliver K. Langmead (Author)

"Ambitious and immersive...an elegantly told meditation on how we can't leave ourselves behind." -Esquire Magazine - The Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024

A ground-breaking, mind-bending and wildly imaginative epic verse revolution in SF. A saga of colony ships, shattering moons and cataclysmic war in a new Eden.

Truly unforgettable and richly lyrical eco-fiction, for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role as engineer on the colony ark, Calypso. But she finds the ship has transformed into a forest, populated by the original crew's descendants, who revere her like a saint.

She travels the ship with the Calypso's creator, the enigmatic Sigmund, and Catherine, a bioengineered marvel who can commune with the plants, uncovering a new history of humanity forged while she slept.

She discovers a legacy of war between botanists and engineers. A war fought for the right to build a new Earth - a technological paradise, or a new Eden in bloom, untouched by mankind's past.

And Rochelle, the last to wake, holds the balance of power in her hands.

Author Biography

Oliver K. Langmead is an author and a poet based in Glasgow. His novels include Glitterati, Birds of Paradise and Metronome, and his long-form poem, Dark Star, featured in the Barnes and Noble and the Guardian's Best Books of 2015. Oliver is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Glasgow, where he is researching terraforming and ecological philosophy, and in late 2018 he undertook a writing residency at the European Space Agency's Astronaut Centre in Cologne, writing about astronauts and people who work with astronauts.