The Dammerung

Fifteen-year-old Avan has less than an hour to find shelter if he is going to survive the night. He opened his eyes in the middle of nowhere, wearing someone else’s clothes, his last memory of stepping outside the sandwich shop to run a quick errand for his boss.

In 2045, a ship packed with scientists and lucky lottery winners leaves Earth to explore a habitable planet and is never heard from again. Presumed lost for two hundred years, an unmanned rover eventually discovers the descendants of that ship as they scrabble out their existence in the short hours between deadly insect scurrups. Tantalized by this virtually untouched world and an unprecedented opportunity for social engineering, Earth’s most powerful stratum decides to colonize. Inviting only its memory-enhanced geniuses, basic-enhanced professionals, and a select pool of uneducated laborers to do the work of terraforming, Earth’s brightest triumphantly return to “rescue” the descendents of that first ill-fated mission. Tensions escalate as the native population blocks their efforts to change the face of the planet, until a final skirmish changes the nature of identity itself.

The attack strands Avan miles from cover in a malformed body, the family that depends on him scattered and unrecognizable. Narrated by Avan and the family he desperately searches for, The Dammerung explores the lives of the forgotten during and after the conflict, those who made none of the decisions but have to live with the consequences.

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