Click the arrow below to listen to the first episode of this free audio book:

From Hugo-award winning science fiction writer James Patrick Kelly comes a fiery adventure set in the far future. On a distant planet, the last remaining true humans have come together to form a utopia based on the principles of Walden. The posthuman population resists human encroachment by setting fire to their terraformed forests. Thoreau and terrorism, apples and baseball -- all figure in the mystery of the burn.

BURN has been selected for inclusion in Gardner Dozois's THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION published by St Martin's Press in July of 2006, BURN is currently a finalist for the World Science Fiction Convention's Hugo Award, to be given at LACon IV in August, 2006

Find out for yourself why so many critics have hailed BURN:

"Kelly's many-layered story pivots on a set of paradoxes, asking questions about the difference between innocence and willful ignorance, responsibility and balance and the true essence of nature." --Publisher's Weekly

"BURN combines maturity with the adventurous spirit of youth, as though the Mark Twain of HUCKLEBERRY FINN had come back with a yen to write science fiction." --Locus

"...the warm humanity and rural sympathies of this affectionate, winsome novel will make many recall Ray Bradbury at his best." --Booklist

"With his immaculate prose and perfect structural tricks, Kelly's book offers a richly satisfying blend of adventure and philosophy" --SciFiWeekly

Cover art by John Picacio

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License.