Mindscape

A science fiction tale of global warfare and the people who profit from it, Mindscape was Hairston’s extraordinary debut novel, nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and short-listed for the Otherwise Award.

The world has been divided by the Barrier. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart a potential treaty to end the internal wars.

When the treaty’s architect is assassinated, her protegee, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, is forced to take up her mantle.

Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work.

Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?

Andrea Hairston is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the artistic director of Chrysalis Theatre. She is the author of Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the 2011 Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and Mindscape, short-listed for the Philip K. Dick and Otherwise Awards and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. In her spare time, she is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. Hairston has received the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic. She bikes at night year-round, meeting bears and the occasional shooting star.