About the Book
The first adult novel in more than three years from the bestselling author of the Fairyland books
Radiance is a decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera
mystery set in a Hollywood — and solar system — very different from our own, from the phenomenonal talent behind the New York Times bestselling The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.
Severin Unck’s father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate
1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to
the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father’s films
of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts
making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the
levitator cults of Neptune or the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is
not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in
which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on
beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe.
But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving
colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is
preserved by the colony’s last survivor, Severin will never return.
Aesthetically recalling A Trip to the Moon and House of Leaves, and told using techniques from reality TV, classic film, gossip magazines, and meta-fictional narrative, Radiance is a solar system-spanning story of love, exploration, family, loss, quantum physics, and silent film.
