Bones of the Earth
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
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| Author | Michael Swanwick |
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| Cover artist | Joe DeVito |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction, Paleontology novel |
| Publisher | Eos (HarperCollins) |
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Publication date
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2002 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 335 pages (1st edition) |
| ISBN | (1st edition) |
| OCLC | 47056437 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3569.W28 B66 2002 |
Bones of the Earth is a 2002 science fiction novel by Michael Swanwick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2002, and the Hugo,Campbell, and Locus Awards in 2003.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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Wikipedia