Debudaderrah takes a concrete hard science future and layers it with myth and spirits and other core elements of humanity; those symbolic leaps that separate us from logic machines.

The threads of this tapestry include Picasso, Los Angeles, distant space colonies, killer robots, ancient spirits, unwanted voices in the head, dialogue, diatribe, diary, Gilgamesh, Uruk.

This is SF poetry with a sense of mystery, of actions unseen like dark planets whose gravitational pulls warp motives in actions seen, but whose reality and orbits must be deduced without firsthand observation.

An overlooked component of the scientific method is that experiments are encouraged to provoke more research and experiments. This book provokes the reader to create their own myths. When they read of "the last scout", "The launching of the Great Missile", and the "two lovers, Hiroshi and Sarai... nestled beneath the sand of Debudaderrah" the desire to grant each myth its own book is likely to push the reader into fits of reverie. This the author encourages, writing, "Here, please imagine your part of the story."

Imagine that the chapters of this book are a disorganized line of sake cups filled randomly with sake or plum wine. And just when you find a proper altitude within which to navigate the astral plane, the next cup is full of single-malt scotch, the kind that's *supposed* to burn.

When this asks "Do you remember?... What part of me was erased?" every one of us can feel the pull of the diminishing past that anchors us with shadows that pull too hard, that will not leave us free, you exist as no more than an absence of light.

Properly you should get whiplash reading this from your reality so frequently recreated.

-Herb Kauderer, author of FLYING SOLO