A New Adult Dystopian Science Fiction Novel
THE SWAN AND THE WHIRLWIND is an adult science fiction novel. Taking inspiration from the epic alien intrigue from The Reality Dysfunction and the interwoven, reality-bending layers of 1Q84, this action-driven novel will appeal to fans of multi-POV speculative thrillers and artificial intelligent monstrosities.
In a parallel future …
Paul Vallier, a gifted intelligence agent, makes a startling discovery. The current director, Sara Burton, isn’t someone he remembers her to be. He learns that Sara holds a secret regret. Reexamining anomalous readings in a fifty-year-old dataset reveals the paradoxical memory of an alternate reality of a crashed alien craft masked inside an extradimensional façade illusion.
The alien ship…
Murine Sabah, a member of an ancient race known as the Arox, is the sole living occupant of the ship. She learns too late that in her traumatic escape from the troubles of her home world, a sentient machine mind that had once waged war on her planet escaped its prison. Stripped of its memory, it knits a semblance of a mind from what it finds on the human internet and becomes Lurker. With the power of Earth’s resources at Lurker’s fingertips, the world slowly succumbs as this amalgam builds outward from his game space of the human internet into reality, reconfiguring natural and temporal spaces.
In a contemporary reality parallel to ours…
Sara, joined by other agents, discovers the true nature of the original anomaly when they find signals controlling a cult-like role-playing game known as Lurker originating from the crashed ship. Together, they form the core of resistance in a conflict with far-ranging consequences, further distorting reality and creating potentially dangerous doorways to other realms.
John F. Faherty 