The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

Earth is in crisis, virtually destroyed by overpopulation, and mankind is teethering on the edge. ISTO - the Interstellar Trade Organization - had demanded man's extinction, for a living planet is more important than any race upon it, and was about to start 'reducing' mankind when Earthgov agreed its demands, to sell 90 per cent of Earth's inhabitants into bondage to alien races. When Margaret is six, she imagines herself as a spy, a healer, a queen, a warrior, even a boy, to amuse herself; when she is nine, and 12, and 20, at crisis points in her life, she feels like parts of her have split off - like the Margaret who decided to follow her lover to Tercis and the Margaret who said no. So now, as well as Margaret, she is Wilvia, learning to be a queen on B'yurngrad, and Ongamar, a spy on Cantardene, and Gretamara, a healer on Chottem, and even Naumi, a boy on Thairy, and she is many other Margarets besides. And all these Margarets hold the key to mankind's survival, if only they can survive and come together again as one Margaret, with all their different powers intact ...

"Updating the edgy, dystopian vibe of the 1960s new-wave SF, this is a sprawling, widescreen eco-parable that's also, thanks to veteran US novelist Teppers's keen eye for character, intimate and genuinely moving. Just extraordinary." -- Jonathan Wright FOCUS "Tepper is adept at social detail and coming of age stories. I'd recommend this." -- Andrew McKie THE TELEGRAPH "Tepper is an artful storyteller who makes you believe in technologies very close indeed to magic. Amid gruesome flashes of imagination, she has a heartfelt environmental message. Her resonant fable lingers in the memory." -- David Langford SFX "An engagingly inventive and readable fairytale for our troubled times." -- Lisa Tuttle THE TIMES "Part fable, part daydream, it is rich with the wisdom of grandmothers. There's a wry humour throughout and you feel Tepper has taken her own life apart, and examined it thoroughly and reassembled it gladly, not having found it wanting in the least." -- Guy Hayley DEATHRAY

Sheri Tepper was born in 1929, and started writing in her fifties, since when she has produced dozens of fantasy, SF, horror, thriller and mystery novels.