The Renegade Archaeologist & Other Tales

These new tales from Michael Cooney range far across space and time. In the title story, an archaeologist 30,000 years in the future journeys from Mexico to the ruined city of New York in pursuit of a world that vanished beneath the ice. In "Sole Surviving Victim" a present day drive-by shooting leads to a journey back into a time of slavery and arbitrary execution. And only a few years from now, a retired couple adjusts to an overheated world where climate denial is official policy, but cannot stop worrying about their rebellious grandson. A fugitive from a new Christian dictatorship only stops running when he learns to speak in tongues. In a brutal post-apocalyptic world a war chief tells the tale of his conquests to his own assassin. An ancient Hopi myth unlocks the only door to an escape from a dying world. An anthropologist addicted to old-fashioned methods visits the planet Drimmold, eager to prove that a band of monkeys is fully human despite the lack of fire, tools and violence. A space traveler named Jack Murphy arrives at another planet and is worshiped as a god but then he disappears. And a brave young woman tries desperately to save a doomed human colony in which all technology is based on the control of giant sea creatures.