by  Read a sample from the book.
winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award
finalist for the 2006 Philip K. Dick Award
Honor List for the 2006 James Tiptree, Jr. Award
Mindscape is the debut novel of the award-winning playwright and
Professor of Theater and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, Andrea
Hairston. Rich in complex characters and the vivid realization of their
conflicts—personal, political, and cosmic—Mindscape
plays deftly over a range of registers rarely attempted in first novels and
celebrates the best of humanity even as it grapples with the worst.
Pulling a bass note from her pelvic floor, [Elleni] slid
up her range, vibrating bones and organs until ultrasounds resonated in
her nasal passages and shot out her skull. Her fingers danced in and
out of the Barrier's domain. As she hit her highest notes, an archway
crystallized just beyond her fingertips, and she almost lost the song.
— Mindscape
Mindscape takes us to a future in which the world itself has been
literally divided by the Barrier. 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
protegée, Elleni, 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?
Advance Praise
"Andrea Hairston's Mindscape starts with a vision of the way things
ought to be and then takes us along on the amazing journey that must be
undertaken to make that vision a reality. Her ability to fully imagine an
alternate reality without sacrificing the familiar words and rhythms that
provide outsiders a way into the story make this a book not just for true
believers, but for those who still think they 'don't like science fiction.'
After Mindscape, my guess is they'll see how meaningless such
categories are. In the presence of a visionary author like Andrea Hairston,
all you have to like is good writing!"
— Pearl
Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day and Baby Brother's Blues
"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—its 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
Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative
Fiction and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, winner of the 2001
and 2005 World Fantasy Awards
ISBN: 978-1-933500-03-4 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Dec 1969
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