Mindscape

by Andrea Hairston

Book Overview

An SF tale of global warfare and the people who profit from it. Hairston's extraordinary debut novel, first published by a small press in 2006.

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250808766
• ISBN13: 9781250808769
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 336 Pages

Customer Reviews

An amazing novel!

Andrea Hairson's /Mindscape/ introduces us to a society in which borders between countries (called "Zones" in the novel) are very real. Looking through the mind of six characters, we learn about the society and its problems---most notably the struggle to connect the three very different cultures. As previous reviews have stated, the novel seems a bit daunting at first, but it quickly becomes a rewarding reading experience. On another note, this is science fiction, but it contains enough fantastic elements that fantasy readers will enjoy it.

Mindscape dances beyond the limits of the mind! What are the infinite possibilities?

Whether you're into science fiction or not, Andrea Hairston draws you into an amazing world! Andrea's language is alive - it sings and moves in your body. Her language invites you to stretch beyond the range your daily tongue. Mindscape is full of possibilities beyond what we see in the world today - yet it is somehow hauntingly close to our current reality. Politics, science, art, healing, spirituality, consciousness, race, humanity, reality, hopes and dreams...Andrea Hairston explores and questions everything in a way that allows each character to expose unexpected parts of themselves and the world around them. What else do we know that we're pretending not to know? What else is really possible?

This is a great book!!!!

Hey this book is a mindblowing journey! Like if Jimmy Hendrix met Shakespeare and they collaborated with Octavia Butler on a sci-fi adventure. It will open your eyes and shift your world around! Sure, folks, it might be a little intense to wade through at first - but it is WORTH every second of reading! I recommend it highly. This writer is HOT!

This is a wonderful book

This is a wonderful book, exuberant, original, funny, moving, often confusing and always alive. It takes about seventy-five pages before you can make sense of the world and the plot (six major characters, all seeing and thinking differently, and lots of minor ones) but once you get a sense of what's at stake the book takes hold of you and won't let go. It takes place on an earth divided up by a mysterious-possibly living-barrier of energy that keeps people in three "zones" corresponding to three different social systems and systems of value. Movement between zones is possible only at seasonal intervals (except for mutant "Vermittler" who can sing their way through the barrier), and there is a background of violence within zones and between them. A treaty to curb the violence and bring the zones together comes into being (along with an assassination) at the opening of the novel. In what follows different characters attempt either to extend the treaty or to destroy it. I won't say much more to avoid giving away the plot, which is full of surprises, but the ending seems to me both powerfully moving and fully justified. In some ways the book reminds me of Clarke's Childhood's End, because it's so concerned with human transcendence (one of the characters is making a video called "The Transformers"), but its technique-moving between chapters from different points of view-is more complicated. The characters are a complicated mixture of love and anger, idealism and cynicism and longing. They're very real. The language of the novel, playfully moving between black slang and formal diction, sprinkled with phrases from Yoruba and German, blazing with wild metaphors, is a constant joy. It's the best science fiction novel I've read in the last year and I think it deserves a Nebula.