Life on the Preservation

Inside the Seattle Preservation Dome, it’s always the Fifth of October, the city caught in an endless time loop. Outside, the world lies in apocalyptic ruin. “Reformed” graffiti artist Ian Palmer is the only one who knows the truth, and he is desperate to wake up the rest of the city before the alien Curator of the living museum erases Ian’s identity forever.

Small-town teenager Kylie is one of the few survivors to escape both the initial shock wave and the poison rains that followed. Now she must make her way across the blasted lands, pursued by a mad priest and menaced by skin-and-bone things that might once have been human. Her destination is the Preservation, and her mission is to destroy it. But once inside, she meets Ian, and together they discover that the Preservation’s reality is even stranger than it appears.

Jack Skillingstead grew up in a working class neighborhood south of Seattle. He dropped out of college to work in a cannery in Alaska, later tarevlling to Maine and then returning to the Pacific northwest. In 2000 Skillingstead won a writing competition sponsored by Stephen King and his hs first professional sale was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award in 2004. Since then he has published more than thirty short stories in publications including Asimov's, F&SF and Realms of Fantasy. His work has also appeared in various Year's Best volumes as well as the acclaimed Fast Forward and Solaris series of original anthologies. His first novel,Harbinger and short story collection Are You There both appeared in 2009 and received critical acclaim.