The Water Age & Other Fictions

By Tracey Warr

Octavio Paz meets J.G. Ballard meets David Attenborough in these suspenseful and lyrical future fiction tales of hybrid species and aqua technologies. ‘Meanda’ takes place on an ocean exoplanet and is a story of first contact. ‘Asbru’ tangles scientific researchers in the fronds of Icelandic algae. The stories e

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meanda Books
• Release date: Aug 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995490222

Tracey Warr

Tracey Warr is a fiction and non-fiction writer. She describes herself as writing in the vicinity of art. She has been an invited writer in the following international projects: Exoplanet Lot (Maison des Art Georges et Claude Pompidou), Frontiers in Retreat (HIAP, Finland) and Zooetics (Jutempus, Lithuania). She was a senior university lecturer including posts at Darlington College of Arts, Oxford Brookes University and Bauhaus University. Her historical novels, set in France, England and Wales, are published by Impress Books: Almodis the Peaceweaver (2011), The Viking Hostage (2014), Conquest I: Daughter of the Last King (2016) and Conquest II: The Drowned Court (2017). www.impress-books.co.uk. Her fiction has received awards from Literature Wales and Santander and was shortlisted for the Impress Prize. Her published work on contemporary art includes The Artist's Body (Phaidon, 2000), Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture (Routledge, 2015) and The Midden (Garret, 2018) and many essays published with Tate, Intellect, Merrell/Barbican and others. She is currently working on a biography entitled Three Female Lords, about three sisters who lived in southern France and northern Spain in the 11th century. The biography has been supported by an Authors' Foundation Award. traceywarrwriting.com

Book preview

The Water Age & Other Fictions

THE WATER AGE & OTHER FICTIONS

TRACEY WARR

Meanda Books

Copyright © 2018 by Tracey Warr

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Meanda Books

https://meandabooks.com

Cover by James A. Hudson

Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

The Water Age #1: The Water Age and Other Fictions/ Tracey Warr. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9954902-2-2

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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THE WATER AGE SERIES

The Water Age and Other Fictions (#1)

The Water Age Art and Writing Workshops (#2)

The Water Age Children’s Art and Writing Workshops (#3)

The Water Age is a series of three books by Tracey Warr. The books contemplate water and futures through fiction and through art and writing workshops. The books were produced as part of the Frontiers in Retreat project. They were co-produced by HIAP, with the support of the EU Culture Programme.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

CONTENTS

Earth’s Lament

Illustration: Tania Candiani

Illustration: James A. Hudson

Meanda

Illustration: Yohann Gozard

The Extraterrestrial

FORD

The Water Age

Asbrú

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Tracey Warr

EARTH’S LAMENT

Of things I’d rather keep in silence I must sing

so bitter do I feel toward you

whom I love more than anything.

You left me for another planet,

my forests silent, my seas emptied.

Come home now. I have healed the scars you graved.

It’s not right another celestial body takes you away from me.

Remember how it was with us in the beginning!

Come home. We could still have much time together

Before the death throes of the sun begin.

I send you there, on your exoplanet,

this song as messenger and delegate.

Come home my lovers, my humans.

Tania Candiani, Landscape Sound Amplifier , 2016. Site specific installation above the River Lot in Saint Cirq Lapopie, France, in the Exoplanet Lot exhibition organised by Maison des Arts Georges et Claude Pompidou. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Yohann Gozard. ‘Earth’s Lament’ was originally written to be heard through this sculpture.

Photo by James A. Hudson.

MEANDA

The water moved her silently through the purple lily patch towards the river bank, where she could get a better view of the white sphere.

Frank, the expedition artist, wrote in his journal:

Took first steps on exoplanet Kepler-55555b. Made hasty sketches. Planet covered in oceans, rivers, archipelagos, teeming with aquatic life. Swung round when I heard something big in the water near a patch of lilies but