"Desolate Places" is a science-fiction anthology which focuses on stories set in, as the title suggests, vast emptinesses and forlorn wastelands, principlally physical but sometimes psychological as well. What is the human reaction to such places? Awe, wonderment, terror, crushing loneliness - all of the above? How do they come to be, and is life still possible in the barren vastness?
My story, "Empty Epochs", involves times travel of a sort, and the setting is one both alien and very familiar: Earth, billions of years into the future, when the planet is slowly being cooked to death beneath a bloated red sun. The End of the World isn't exactly a vacation spot under normal circumstances, but for those who have traveled there for an illicit meeting, the wasteland of the far future may only be a reflection of the barren heart of humanity and the scrubbed-clean lies of our history.
To be honest, I choose the setting in the first place because I was curious about what kind of ecology one might find at the other end of time, after millenia of heat and erosion has scoured away seas and mountains. While the story is (as any story ought to be) about the characters, I do manage to include two possible 'animals' of the far future and their adaptations; hopefully you'll find those speculations interesting as well. |
