''The Dry Salvages'' is a futuristic

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

story of novella length by American writer

Caitlín R. Kiernan Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan (born 26 May 1964) is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novella ...

, published in 2004 as a stand-alone hardback volume by Subterranean Press. The story consists of two parallel narratives, one set in the novella's present-day (early 24th-Century

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) and the other in the novel's past (the 23rd Century). Told as a first-person narrative, the story is being written down with three antique ballpoint pens by Audrey Cather, an exo

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and the lone survivor of an ill-fated mission to an

extrasolar planet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

, Cecrops, a

gas giant A gas giant is a giant planet composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Gas giants are also called failed stars because they contain the same basic elements as a star. Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants of the Solar System. The term "gas giant" ...

orbiting the low-mass

red dwarf star ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave (TV channel), Dave since 2009, gaining a ...

Gliese 876 Gliese 876 is a red dwarf approximately 15 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. It is one of the closest known stars to the Sun confirmed to possess a planetary system with more than two planets, after Gliese 1061 ...

. The ''Montelius'' mission included two other human astronauts, Peter Connor (also a paleontologist) and Joakim Hamilton (a

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

), and one parahuman astronaut, Umachandra Murdin (a computer scientist), along with a number of

androids An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids were completely within the domain of science fiction and frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot techno ...

. Its object was to investigate evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization which had long ago mined Piros, a moon of Cecrops. A blend of dystopian science fiction,

Lovecraftian Lovecraftian horror, sometimes used interchangeably with "cosmic horror", is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named a ...

horror, and

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and c ...

, along with elements of space opera, the novella paints a grim view of the future and of interstellar travel and alien contact. Earth has been ravaged by war, pollution, and violent climatic changes, and the menacing intelligence the crew of the ''Montelius'' (and its predecessor, the ''Gilgamesh'') discover on Piros leads to a government cover-up. The author uses Audrey Cather's three reconditioned ballpoint pens as a literary device, dividing the story into three sections, "The First Pen", "The Second Pen", and "The Third (and Final) Pen". ''The Dry Salvages'' provides an example of an

unreliable narrator An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unr ...

, as Audrey Cather continually makes mistakes and contradicts herself regarding events aboard the ''Montelius''. The cover art was provided by Ryan Obermeyer. Kiernan's title is a reference to T. S. Eliot's

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

of the same name.

Exopaleontology

In part, ''The Dry Salvages'' is concerned with the discovery of extraterrestrial

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s. In the story, Kiernan names a number of these discoveries: * ''Piros piros'' ("europmolluscans" from Europa) * ''Deinopharyngos'' (from Piros, an armored predatory

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

, more than 7.6 meters long) * Pseudotrilobitamorpha (from Piros, blind,

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the ...

-like creatures) * ''Osmolskia ceratognathus'' (from Piros, a huge

sea slug Sea slug is a common name for some marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary time ...

-like creature) In the novella, we are told that life on Piros predated terran

biosphere The biosphere (from Greek βίος ''bíos'' "life" and σφαῖρα ''sphaira'' "sphere"), also known as the ecosphere (from Greek οἶκος ''oîkos'' "environment" and σφαῖρα), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also ...

s by almost a billion years and that marine life flourished on Piros until a time coequal to Earth's

Silurian Period The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the shortest period of the Paleozo ...

Chordate A chordate () is an animal of the phylum Chordata (). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five synapomorphies, or primary physical characteristics, that distinguish them from all the other taxa. These fi ...

s never evolved there, despite five billion years of evolution, and the Pirosan biosphere collapsed when its seas abruptly dried up in less than a hundred thousand years. No evidence of land-dwelling organisms is discovered. We are told that the crew of the ''Gilgamesh'' collected fossils representing a minimum of 20,000 species.

External links

Page at Internet Speculative Fiction Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dry Salvages 2004 science fiction novels Novels set in the 23rd century Novels set in the 24th century 2004 novels American novellas Lovecraftian horror Subterranean Press books