Authors Pages 328 Originally published October 2013 Page count 328 Preceded by Dreams of Other Worlds | Publisher Dark Skies Press ISBN 978-0989817615 Genre Science Fiction Followed by Humble Before the Void | |
Publication date October 2013 (paperback) Media type Print (paperback) and electronic (e-book) Similar Talking About Life, How It Began, Dreams of Other Worlds, Humble Before the Void, The Living Cosmos | ||
Shadow World is a novel by the British astronomer and writer Chris Impey that explores the boundary between narrative fiction and science fiction. The point of view of protagonist Ian McEvoy is followed in episodes spanning twenty years of his life that track his increasing dislocation and psychic dissolution. He travels voraciously and meets people who invite him into the worlds of astronomy, anthropology, and archaeology. Meanwhile, his own world is dissolving. The book was published as a paperback by Dark Skies Press and an Amazon Kindle ebook in 2013. It is the first novel of the author, who also writes in the field of popular science.
Summary
Shadow World is a novel that follows the first person perspective of a charismatic but disconnected wanderer called Ian McEvoy. McEvoy is a truth-seeker. He has moments when he sees through the surface sheen of the world to a deeper reality, but also moments when his sense of self dissolves. The Scotsman is restless and curious. He flings himself into new relationships, even as he flees family secrets. In Shadow World, we see through McEvoy’s eyes as he grows from a boisterous youth to a man defined equally by darkness and light. We meet his demons and his lovers. His adventure unfolds like beads on a string, each episode separate yet connected. His journey takes him from the Arizona desert to the wilds of Patagonia, from the Silk Road in China to the lush countryside of Ireland, ending in a twilight zone near the Arctic Circle.
Shadow World inhabits the boundary between narrative fiction and science fiction. It explores the tension between artifacts and natural forms, between reality and illusion, between the science that is and the science that might be. The novel is filled with intriguing characters. We meet a death camp survivor for whom music is everything, a relentless archeologist who is rewriting the story of human civilization, a mercurial sculptor who has a personality that mirrors her art, identical twins who inhabit parallel worlds of science and religion, a brilliant but raunchy astrophysicist, and an enigmatic philosopher who seems to know McEvoy better than he knows himself. By the end of his twenty-year odyssey, McEvoy has gained a startling insight into his reality, and perhaps ours as well.