Nine-year-old Prabir Suresh lives alone with his baby sister, Madhusree, and his biologist parents
on a tropical Indonesian isle. Teranesia is so small and remote, it’s not on the maps, and its strange
native species of butterfly remained undiscovered until the 21st century. Prabir never wants to leave,
but war forces him to flee with Madhusree. He believes he has saved his sister–until she returns to
Indonesia, a grad student seeking to carry on their parents’ forgotten work, pursuing reports of
strange new plant and animal species. Prabir follows, to discover birds and orchids even stranger
than the butterflies: mutants that are evidence of frightfully sped-up evolutionary changes with no
discernable cause.
Greg Egan has received the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He was
widely considered the best SF author of the ’90s, and one publication (Science Fiction Weekly) has
named him “perhaps the most important SF writer in the world” — high praise, but not unjustified. For
evidence, check out not only Teranesia, but works like Diaspora, Distress, and Quarantine.
—Cynthia Ward