A Martian Poet in Siberia

Is their journey the death rattle of Humanity I (that’s us - gone like the dinosaurs) or the first faltering footstep of Humanity II? In a warm Siberia, in a world transformed and depopulated by a cosmic disaster, Han and his fellow Mars-born humans secure a precarious foothold on a battered but recovering Earth after a nine-month journey across the dismal distances of space. Florida is under water, the polar ice-caps have melted, and Greenland is once more green. They establish a camp beside the liquid Arctic Ocean (the new Mediterranean for a new civilization, but five time bigger)… and believe they are alone. Until, one morning, they come across the shaman couple. Thus starts the relationship between the Martian settlers, remnants of a human future which is now the past, and these freak survivors of the time before who are not quite the New Age icons they might at first appear (they are much smarter!). In this compelling narrative of survival against impossible odds, Han documents the tenacity - and impermanence - of life: beneath the domed atria of the Settlement where he was born, four hundred millions miles away, aboard the last space craft which takes them from their dead world to Gaia - the empty but living Earth, and in their growing community in one of the remotest regions of the planet. Will they survive or will only their message remain, like the rock paintings left by the cavemen who disappeared without trace twelve thousands years before them? The ultimate citizen of the world, at home everywhere and nowhere, Han draws on his multiple heritage - Asian and European - to create a vision and a philosophy for a different and possibly better future. Technology, Taoism, Throat-Singing and the poetic visions of the East and West (whatever that means any more) come intriguingly together in this off-beat and fascinating work - a cult novel for the 21st century and beyond.