cover image Counting Tadpoles

Counting Tadpoles

Uncle River, . . PS Publishing, $30 (283pp) ISBN 978-1-906301-41-5

If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River, a hermit who uses the solitude and small towns of the American Southwest as the wellspring for these thoughtful, often optimistic stories of depopulated and low-tech futures. A scientist learning from silence to hear what is happening around and inside him (“Counting Tadpoles”), day laborers and subsistence farmers finding less horror from a giant lizard than from their local police (“The Lizard”), and a Hawaiian mariner dream questing to derelict radio telescopes in New Mexico (“Geronimo's Buttons”) find hope in turning to “Nature's rhythms and requirements” and away from the material world. River's slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building. (Feb.)