Description:

In a world where the age of dinosaurs never ended, the young saurian Afsan becomes apprentice to the court astrologer, when he discovers something about the Face of God that will test his faith and may save his world from disaster. ** ### From Publishers Weekly Sawyer ( Golden Fleece ) postulates a world (not the earth) in which dinosaurs, called Quintaglios, have evolved to humanlike levels of civilization--cities, formal government and religion. While on a sea pilgrimage to a heavenly body known as the Face of God, Afsan, a prodigy and apprentice to the court astrologer, makes some astounding discoveries with a "far-seer" (i.e., telescope). He realizes that the stars and planets and moons are at varying distances from his world; that the world is round; that the planets revolve around the sun; that their planet is also a moon that will crash into the planet it revolves around and that they must build flying machines to save themselves. Unfortunately, the planet they revolve around is the Face of God, and Afsan's discoveries go against the Quintaglios' religion, though some see him as a messiahlike prophet. Sawyer does a fine job presenting the physiological features of Quintaglios but is less convincing in making one young stargazer play the combined roles in Quintaglio society of Pythagoras, Magellan, Copernicus, Galileo, da Vinci and Jesus of Nazareth. Science Fiction Book Club alternate. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### About the Author Robert J. Sawyer has been called “the dean of Canadian science fiction” by *The Ottawa Citizen*. He is one of only seven writers in history—and the only Canadian—to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won in 2003 for *Hominids*), the Nebula (which he won in 1995 for *The Terminal Experiment*), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won in 2005 for *Mindscan*). In total, Rob has authored over 18 science-fiction novels and won forty-one national and international awards for his fiction, including a record-setting ten Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”) and the Toronto Public Library Celebrates Reading Award, one of Canada’s most significant literary honors. In 2008, he received his tenth Hugo Award nomination for his novel *Rollback*. His novels have been translated into 14 languages. They are top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada and have hit number one on the Locus bestsellers’ list. Born in Ottawa in 1960, Rob grew up in Toronto and now lives in Mississauga (just west of Toronto), with poet Carolyn Clink, his wife of twenty-four years. He was the first science-fiction writer to have a website, and that site now contains more than one million words of material.