Chronicles of the High Inquest: Utopia Hunters

by S.P. Somtow and Somtow Sucharitkul

Book Overview

"His multicultural viewpoint may yet give us the best SF novel of all time" - AnalogFor twenty thousand years, the godlike Inquestors have held sway over the one million worlds of the Dispersal of Man. S.P. Somtow's limitless imagination has created a universe of breathtaking majesty, amazing beauty, and shattering cruelty. In games of makrugh played in elegant floating palaces, planets are destroyed or saved to preserve the balance of the galaxy. Exotic languages and customs, servocorpses, tachyon bubbles, childsolders with implanted laser-irises, people bins that hold populations of entire planets, delphinoid ships that sail the overcosm, utopias that must be hunted down and destroyed in the name of the High Compassion, thinkhives that connect the galaxy via the space between spaces ... All this must end. And end it does, in what Theodore Sturgeon has described as "the greatest magnitude of color and spectacle since Stapledon."For the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the first Inquestor story in Analog, Diplodocus Press is bringing back revised editions of all four of the original Chronicles of the High Inquest - and releasing a fifth volume, Homeworld of the Heart. "he can create a world with less apparent effort than some writers devote to creating a small room ... yet these tales are intricately wrought as those handcarved oriental balls within balls"- The Washington Post"his dense, poetic prose is as unique as his name"- Los Angeles Times"One of SF's formidable talents "-Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1940999464
• ISBN13: 9781940999463
• Release Date: April 2019
• Publisher: Diplodocus Press
• Length: 390 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A magnificent series

The Inquestor series is one of the best written and most magical SF series of all time. It is too bad it is not better known. The delphinoid shipminds are somewhat of a rip-off of Frank Herbert's navigators, but the stories are in general refreshingly original and creative. The elite play the high stakes game of Makrugh with entire planets while child-soldiers carry out their whims with flashing laser eyes. Atta Heng!

Obscure masterpieces

This anthology introduces the universe and characters of the Inquest series, which is one of the few works of fiction that truly deserves to be described as "epic." It is the saga of the fall of a galactic empire, but don't let that summarization fool you. This is no cliche. The universe of the Inquest is as rich as Dune, and more sweeping and majestic than Foundation. The Inquestors present a godlike facade to their subjects, but are tragically human and fallible behind this facade. They have Clarke's "science which is indistinguishable from magic," and can indulge their every whim, whether for beauty or evil. Worlds rise and fall as the Inquestors' egos clash. This is the story of a small band of heretical Inquestors determined to restore humanity and freedom to the human race, and the civil war that ensues as the corrupt Inquestors strive to maintain their 20,000 year old tyranny. The author has a gift for the sounds of language, and words and phrases from the stories will resound through your mind for months. The ideas and images will stay with you even longer. These books have been inexplicably out of print for years, but are treasures worth the seeking. The other books in the series are: The Light on the Sound: The Dawning Shadow, The Light on the Sound: The Throne of Madness, and Darkling Wind.