| Bones of the Earth | |
 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
|
| Author | Michael Swanwick |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Joe DeVito |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction, Paleontology novel |
| Publisher | Eos (HarperCollins) |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 335 pages (1st edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-380-97836-9 (1st edition) |
Bones of the Earth is a 2002 science fiction novel by Michael Swanwick. Michael Swanwick (born November 18, 1950) is an American Science fiction author The United States of America —commonly referred to as the English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of Literature or Information &ndash the activity of making information available for public view HarperCollins is a Publishing company owned by News Corporation. A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) is a Book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with Cloth Paperback, softback, or softcover describe and refer to a Book by the nature of its binding. See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. A novel (from Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new" "news" or "short story Michael Swanwick (born November 18, 1950) is an American Science fiction author It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2002 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2003. The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA for the best Science fiction / Fantasy fiction Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best Science fiction or Fantasy works and achievements of the previous year Winners of the Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy Novel, along with all the nominees are presented here
Plot introduction
Expanded from his Hugo Award-winning story "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur," Bones of the Earth spans geologic time, not just centuries but millennia, from the pre-historic past to the distant and unknown future. The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best Science fiction or Fantasy works and achievements of the previous year Most of the novel's events take place in the age of the dinosaurs. The "bones" of the title refer to the time traveling team players described in the story that study throughout Earth's history and pre-history.
Plot summary
Paleontologist Richard Leyster has reached the pinnacle of his profession: a position with the Smithsonian Museum plus a groundbreaking dinosaur fossil site he can research, publish on, and learn from for years to come. Palaeontology redirects here For the Scientific journal, see Palaeontology (journal. The Smithsonian Institution (smɪθsoʊnɪən is an educational and research institute and associated Museum complex administered and funded by the Government of A museum is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development open to the public which acquires conserves researches communicates and exhibits the There is nothing that could lure him away - until a disturbingly secretive stranger named Harry Griffin enters Leyster's office with an ice cooler and a job offer.
In the cooler is the head of a freshly killed stegosaurus. Stegosaurus (ˌstɛgəˈsɔrəs is a Genus of stegosaurid armoured Dinosaur from the Late Jurassic period ( Griffin has been entrusted with an extraordinary gift; an impossible technology on loan to humanity for an undisclosed purpose from beings known to a select few as the Unchanging. The only stipulation being is not to alter recorded history. If the taboo is broken, the contract becomes null and void. A taboo is a strong Social prohibition (or ban) against words objects actions or discussions that are considered undesirable or offensive by a group culture
Time travel has become a reality millions of years before it rationally could be. With it, Richard Leyster and his colleagues make their most cherished fantasies come true. They study dinosaurs up close, in their own time and environment. Also, individual lives have the freedom to turn back on themselves. People meet, shake hands, and converse with their younger or older versions at various crossroads in time. One wrong word, a single misguided act, could be disastrous to the project and to the world. Griffin's job is to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen, no matter who is destined to be hurt. . . or die.
And then there's Dr. Gertrude Salley - passionate, fearless, and brutally ambitious - a genius rebel in the tight community of "bone men" and women. Alternately, both Leyster's and Griffin's chief rival, trusted colleague, despised nemesis, and inscrutable lover at various junctures throughout time, Salley is relentlessly driven to tamper with the working mechanisms of natural law, audaciously trespassing in forbidden areas, pushing paradox to the edge no matter what the consequences may be. A paradox is a true statement or group of statements that leads to a Contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or inversely And, when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever lived, the consequences become terrifying indeed, resulting in a team of "bone men" becoming stranded for two years in the Mesozoic Era. The Mesozoic Era is one of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon.
Apart from failed attempts to rescue the team from the past, slowly, something begins to happen. The temporal mechanics are altered in such a way that two time streams emerge. The first focuses on the struggling team in the Mesozoic's Maastrichtian Age some 65,000,000 B. The Maastrichtian is the last stage of the Cretaceous period, and therefore of the Mesozoic era. C. In the far future, in what will be known as the Telezoic Era, a younger version of Gertrude Salley meets an older version of herself - the one who was responsible for the split in the timeline - now happily living in the center of the new supercontinent of Ultima Pangea. In Geology, a supercontinent is a Landmass comprising more than one Continental core or Craton. Pangaea Ultima (also Pangaea Proxima, Neopangaea, or Pangaea II) is a possible future Supercontinent configuration and an alternative to the There, they also finally meet the mysterious benefactors known as the Unchanging, who are actually an evolved avian species that inherited the Earth upon the extinction of the human race.
Preparing to beg the Unchanging not to shut down the whole enterprise of time travel and the sciences based upon it, Gertrude also discovers their apparent fascination with humanity and that their gift of time travel was simply a means to study the human race in their own right. She also realizes the difficulty in the ability of the incomprehensible far-future species to forgive, for incomprehensible reasons, the creation of a deeply dangerous timeline anomaly back in the 21st century. However, interestingly, the team trapped in the Maastrichtian Age makes a remarkable discovery.
One of the team members arrives at a genuinely unique explanation for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately ( Ma) was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically They had already determined that predator dinosaurs farm and ranch their prey, singing infrasound commands that lead their ultimate prey to green pastures. Infrasound is Sound with a Frequency too low to be heard by the human Ear. One of the team speculated that dinosaur migration might be similarly controlled by the song of the Earth, the song of tectonic plates shifting in the crust of the planet. This article discusses the geologic usage for the philosophical or architectural usage see Architectonics ' Or see Plate tectonics. And the possibility of the Chicxulub meteor having been so great as to detune the song of the Earth for a decade or a century, deafening the dinosaurs so they could not migrate, causing them to starve.
In the end, the Unchanging decide to retroactively remove the time travel science from human hands, thereby rendering all of the events up to that point irrelevant. But, out of the ashes of this paradox, its tangles and attenuations mercifully forgotten, a love of the world is retained - a deep unselfish love of learning the world and all its creatures.
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