Hailed for his grandeur of imagination and superb worldbuilding, winner of and nominee for more than fifty awards for his outstanding work, Mike Resnick has rightfully won a place as one of science fiction's master storytellers. Now, in Kirinyaga, Resnick presents the haunting and utterly compelling tale of one man's utopia.
By the twentieth second century in the African nation of Kenya, polluted cities sprawl up the flanks of sacred Mount Kirinyaga. Great animal herds are but distant memories. European crops now grow on the sweeping savannas. But Koriba, a distinguished, educated man of Kikuyu ancestry, knows that life was different for his people centuries ago--and he is determined to build a utopian colony, not on earth, but on the terraformed planetoid he proudly names Kirinyaga.
As the mundumugu--witch doctor--Koriba leads the colonists. Reinstating the ancient customs and stringent laws of the Kikuyu people, he alone decides their fate. He must face many challenges to the struggling colony's survival: from a brilliant young girl whose radiant intellect could threaten their traditional ways to the interference of "Maintenance" which holds the power to revoke the colony's charter. All the while, only Koriba--unbeknownst to his people--maintains the computer link to the rest of humanity.
Ironically, the Kirinyaga experiment threatens to collapse--not from violence or greed--but from humankind's insatiable desire for knowledge. The Kikuyu people can no more stand still in time than their planet can stop revolving around its sun.
Deeply moving, swiftly paced, and profound in its implications, Kirinyaga is Mike Resnick's most triumphant work to date. His Fable of Utopia is the book every science fiction reader will want to own and savor for years to come.
"Ambitious . . . Well-written . . . A novel of ideas."
--The New York Times Book Review
"RESNICK IS THOUGHT-PROVOKING, IMAGINATIVE . . . AND ABOVE ALL GALACTICALLY GRAND."
--Los Angeles Times
"Among the most highly respected--and controversial--of modern SF stories. Resnick's experiences in Africa form the basis for this epic tale of a leader of the Kikuyu people who leads his followers away from a polluted, overpopulated Kenya to the planet Kirinyaga, which in many ways resembles the Africa of his ancestors. There he attempts to recreate the culture of the past. . . . The situation is rich with complications. . . . the conflict between the environment and technology in certain situations and the role of religion in human affairs. Parts of the book will make you mad, parts will make you sad, and parts will make you proud, but none of the parts will bore you. If only one of Resnick's books will be remembered by history, this will be the one."
--Science Fiction Chronicle
"Nobody spins a yarn better than Mike Resnick. Best of all, when the story's over, you find that he's left something in your memory for you to draw on again and again: a clearer understanding of how nobility emerges from the struggles of life."
--ORSON SCOTT CARD
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Ender's Game
"It's such a very human thing to recreate the 'good old days' when life was simple and people behaved piously, when the old ways ruled and the world was a better place. Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga explores some of the problems of such a retreat into an idealized past. The book is subtitled A Fable of Utopia. Now, as we face the turn of the millennium, we need such fables, such simple reminders of what complicated beings we are."
--OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Kindred
