The Cretaceous Past

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Pub Date 31 May 2021 | Archive Date 01 Jun 2021

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Description

All the years of human civilization represent an infinitesimal fraction of the time since life first burgeoned on planet Earth. How likely is it, then, in those great depths of time, that humanity alone benefitted from the spark of intelligence which gave rise to culture?

This is the question posed by China’s preeminent science fiction writer for more than twenty years and Hugo-Award-winner for The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu in his magisterial new short novel, The Cretaceous Past. The answer he offers is unexpected, supposing an unlikely alliance between the largest creatures in the world of the deep past and some of the smallest.

And it all begins with a toothache.

When a Tyrannosaurus rex suffers pain from meat trapped between its enormous teeth, a nearby colony of ants risks entering the great creature’s maw to make their own repast from the remains of the dinosaur’s most recent meal. From this humble beginning, over the course of millennia, a symbiotic civilization achieves amazing advances, reaching dizzying heights in countless endeavors scientific and social, facing dangers and exploiting opportunities at every turn. 

In this absorbing tale, Cixin Liu manages to describe the history of successive epochs of a might-have-been world, doing for the past what Olaf Stapledon’s classic Last and First Men did for the future. Here, Liu embarks on a new journey, sure to please the legions of devoted readers of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy.

The Cretaceous Past offers Liu at his finest, demonstrating flights of imagination and depths of speculation sure to reward new fans and old alike.

All the years of human civilization represent an infinitesimal fraction of the time since life first burgeoned on planet Earth. How likely is it, then, in those great depths of time, that humanity...


Advance Praise

Publishers Weekly:
“Liu (the Three-Body Problem trilogy) delivers a sharp allegory of ant-dinosaur relations in this high concept alternate history… Liu mingles real science with prescientific beliefs and invests his critters with enough anthropomorphic attributes to make them understandable but not so much as to render them humans in costumes, similar to Orwell’s masterful pigs and sheep in Animal Farm. Fans of smart, politically charged sci-fi should check this out.”

Publishers Weekly:
“Liu (the Three-Body Problem trilogy) delivers a sharp allegory of ant-dinosaur relations in this high concept alternate history… Liu mingles real science with prescientific beliefs...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781645240150
PRICE $40.00 (USD)

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