The Chronoliths » (First Edition)

Gahan Wilson's cartoons have appeared in Playboy, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Punch, Paris Match, and The National Lampoon. More than fifteen collections of his cartoons have been published, including Is Nothing Sacred?, Playboy's Gahan Wilson, and then we'll get him! and Still Weird. Wilson is widely considered to be the best living macabre cartoonist.

For children, Wilson has written and illustrated a series of adventures of Harry, the Fat Bear Spy. For adults, Wilson has written two mystery novels and a number of short stories, which have appeared in Playboy and Omni. Other graphic works for adults include adaptations of Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe, and Gahan Wilson's Big Book of Freaks

21st century Thailand, Scott is a slacker in a beach community of expatriates, barely supporting his family. One day he witnesses the appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior.

VOYA

Scott Warden and his family are living a marginal existence in southern Thailand in 2021 when the first chronolith arrives with a rumble and a shock wave of bitter cold and radiation. It is a massive, three-hundred-foot-high blue pillar, celebrating a military victory that will take place twenty years in the future. Scott is among the first to arrive on the scene, linking him inexorably with subsequent chronoliths. Some arrive in uninhabited areas;others devastate cities. All are monuments to victories by a mysterious future leader called Kuin. Later, Scott, divorced and living in the United States, is offered a job by physicist Sue Chopra, whom he had met while a student at Cornell. Sue is working on the chronoliths and making even more progress than her government bosses realize. As new chronoliths appear ever closer to Europe and America, economies crumble and violent cults appear in the name of Kuin. Scott undertakes a desperate mission to Mexico to rescue his own daughter, who has been drawn into a Kuinist cult. Although by now scientists can predict the arrival of a chronolith, they are still powerless to destroy them. Sue believes that if a chronolith could be destroyed, the mythic power of Kuin would erode. Wilson writes intelligent, well-crafted, original science fiction that results in an excellent read. The hero is a flawed being who gradually redeems himself. The other characters are likeable, self-centered, or frightening, but always believable. The author's premises might be less so, but the plot moves along nicely to a surprising and satisfying conclusion. VOYA CODES:5Q 3P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written;Will appeal with pushing;Senior High, definedas grades 10 to 12;Adult and Young Adult). 2001, Tor, 256p, $22.95. Ages 15 to Adult. Reviewer:Rayna Patton—VOYA, December 2001 (Vol. 24, No. 5)