First published 1995
The starship Search completes its seven-hundred-year mission and approaches Earth. The crew expected to find their home world ready to welcome them back. Instead, they discover a planet transformed beyond recognition. Earth's population has exploded far beyond sustainable levels. Society has collapsed into anarchistic fragments that reject any form of organized authority. When the crew attempts to make peaceful contact, Earth's hostile inhabitants respond with violence and suspicion. The returning space travelers find themselves strangers on their own world, caught between their duty to share what they learned among the stars and a civilization that wants nothing to do with their offerings. The crew must navigate this dangerous new reality while questioning whether they still have a place in humanity's future. Turner explores what happens when explorers return home to find that home no longer exists as they remember it.
Genres: science-fiction, dystopia, adventure, space-opera
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, stranger-in-a-strange-land
Setting: Earth
Period: Future
416 pages · Paperback · Avon Books