Absence - by Andrew Dana Hudson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The simplest explanation is usually the most likely--but in the world of Absence, nothing is simple. A moving, richly detailed sci-fi detective procedural for fans of The Leftovers and The City & the City.

People are "popping," disappearing one-by-one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.

Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalogue the crisis. His job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine--until his life is shaken up by an unexpected assignment from the central office.

A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she's been to the other side and back. Is her story true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for answers? Together with his no-BS partner Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.

A sweeping portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson's debut novel is a vividly imagined speculative mystery of cosmic proportions, examining the stories we tell to get by.

About the Author

Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, and futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, as well as dozens of short stories appearing in venues like Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Escape Pod, Analog, Long Now Ideas, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and many more. His nonfiction has appeared in Slate, Jacobin, and others. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the BSFA, and translated into Italian. In 2016 his story "Sunshine State" won the first Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, and in 2017 he was runner up in the Kaleidoscope Writing The Future Contest. His 2015 essay "On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk" has helped define and grow the "solarpunk" subgenre. He is an active member of SFWA and attended the prestigious 2022 Clarion Workshop. Follow his work via solarshades.club.