Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti

by Joe M. McDermott

Read a sample from the book.

Wind was born in south Texas. Her childhood is in run-down residential neighborhoods around Austin. At 17, her mom gets custody and takes her to the domed cities of Tau Ceti F and a future life terraforming a hostile world. Both Earth and Tau Ceti will carry her memory forever, in their ways.

Advance Praise

"McDermott dishes out a lyric mosaic novel with imagination and a powerful sense of prognostication. Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti is a mesmerizing science-fictional tumble through the brutal landscapes of childhood, old age, loneliness, loss, and love."
 —Alexandra Renwick, author of HORN

“Can you call a science fiction novel “realistic”? This book may take place in a future that includes space colonization, but Wind and her family members, both born and found, are the kind of people you and I might know, living in the margins of a despoiled Earth and leaving it to build a new world on Tau Ceti, 12 light years away. On Earth, people get by any way they can; on Tau Ceti they cope with issues ranging from poorly designed systems to radiation to bureaucracy that cares little for them. This is a story that spans generations – from Wind’s childhood with her grandmother on Earth to her relationship with her own granddaughter on Tau Ceti – but unlike all too many of such tales that set out the rise and fall of some powerful family, this one deals with real people and how they survive. Given the current broligarch fantasies of humans living among the stars, Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti is the kind of science fiction we need right now.”
 —Nancy Jane Moore, author of For the Good of the Realm and The Weave

“Joe McDermott masterfully shows the human impact of technology and space colonization from all angles, giving voice to those often silenced or forgotten by the magnificent scope of history across generations—and the universe. Five (Tau Ceti) stars!”
 —Eric Bosarge, author of The Time Train and Sky is Over

“A naturalistic, well-observed mosaic novel telling the story of space colonist and the lives that intersect with hers, Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti is a quietly brilliant book. Through over a dozen overlapping vignettes from multiple perspectives, we're given a vivid pointillist picture of the future on a decaying Earth, in a city on the moon, and on a colony orbiting the titular Tau Ceti. It resembles nothing so much as a lost novel from the great Maureen McHugh; the sort of ground-level, matter of fact SF that has been sadly uncommon in recent years. But McDermott is dealing in far more than pastiche or tribute here: his spare but evocative prose elevates the narrative above the humdrum atmosphere 'mundane' SF can tend towards and instead gives us a narrative that foregrounds the very personal joys and traumas inherent in living a life - the one hand in hand with the other”.
 —Eddie Clark, nerds of a feather, flock together, judge for the 2026 Crawford Fantasy Award

ISBN: 978-1-61976-286-2 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Dec 2026
paperback 310 pages