The quest to journey through Time to plunder the past has turned into a scramble for possession of the time-travel devices, and of those people already brought forward. Three-Rivers, now a time-bending teenager with a messiah complex, heads a large cast of time-travelers as diverse as a Greek philosopher, an apostate Franciscan monk, and a drug-addicted squirrel.

The quest to journey through Time to plunder the past of its human resources has turned into a scramble for possession of the remaining time-travel devices, as well as a struggle for the control of those humans who have already been brought out of the past. Behind the Sunset Veil tells the stories of eight individuals as the struggle to bend Space-Time for man’s own purposes draws them ever closer to a war without end. They are:

-Mister Sigmund Shuei a 29th Century time-traveler stranded among the savages of the hopelessly rude and divisive 21st Century.

-Jay Bracken, the most active time-traveler, is rapidly losing his mind due to Time Travel Psychosis. To make matters worse he is committed to conflicts and women in three parallel time-lines, and is liable to be recalled from the 21st Century without notice. All Jay wants is a month off to visit a girl he met outside of Charles Town West Virginia…and the really cute 17th Century Seneca chick he left with Miss Ann in Frederick Maryland.

-Charlie Robinson, designer of the time-travel hoops known as event capacitators, is a scientist surrounded by politicians and adventurers trying not to lose his relevance.

-Three-Rivers, once the angelic handicapped savant of the 16th Century Iroquois, brought forward by time-travelers in place of Hiawatha, lied, cheated and stole to get his hands on a time-travel hoop, and now it is stuck inside of him! Having morphed into a manipulative teenage alcoholic with a messiah complex, he prefers to be known as Thunderboy. He has the ability to bend Time, the companionship of a cunning pot-smoking pet squirrel, is haunted by the ghosts of the benevolent WhiteSkyCanoe and the malevolent Sunset Lady, is the adopted nephew of a Yakusa crime boss, and owns the undying devotion of the insane Whiteman he calls DeathSong. Thunderboy has decided that it is about time to turn the tables on the White rulers of the world he knows as Sunset—as soon as he and his squirrel cop some weed.

-Aristotle, father of logic and science and tutor of the world’s greatest conquer faces the threat of assassination following the death of his world-conquering student.

-Arlene Higgins, a time-hunter tasked with bringing Aristotle out of the past, or at least interviewing him and taking DNA samples, before he dies in 322 BC, must operate in one of the most sexist societies in history which is presently wracked by a vicious war of succession.

-Sebastian de Canete, an apostate 16th Century Franciscan monk working as a translator on Arlene’s three-person team, longs to see the wonders of ancient Greece and solve the mystery of Delphi—almost as much as he longs for Arlene.

-Joan Henderson is a CIA operative consulting with domestic security agencies concerning disappearances seemingly linked to magnetic field anomalies. Her investigation takes a bizarre turn after the incarceration of a man that appears to be a genetic weapon.

Behind the Sunset Veil is at once a rollicking science-fiction adventure and a darkly illuminated fantasy that veers between 17th Century messianic conclaves, 21st Century drug deals and incarceration, to brutally visualized scenes of 4th Century BC Hellenic combat.

-Eshmunazar, King of Sidon, from the translation by the Reverend Dunbar I. Heath, as quoted by Burton in 1883

This Science-Fiction Tetralogy consists of four linked but independent novels that chronicle the efforts of time-travelers to bring forward three great minds of the past; the conflicts between the various factions of time-travelers over the possession and use of their time-bending devices, and the fate of those they bring out of the past.

The Sunset Saga continues as the holders of the 12 extant time-travel devices widen the search for human treasures out of the past. Various individuals and organizations from the 29th, 24th, 21st, and 16th Centuries struggle to control man’s greatest invention and employ it to further their diverse agendas…

It is 2841 and Earth is in the grip of the New Ice Age. Most of humanity have boarded interstellar generation ships, immigrated to solar colonies, or accepted Upload. Those left behind are to upload into the solar database known as AGRAGATE as an alternative to extinction.

In 2845 AGRAGATE will begin a radical terraforming operation which shall render Earth uninhabitable for 16,000 years. Among the few remaining organic humans are the members of Sigmund Polities Consensus, led by Mister Sigmund Shuei, who have refused Upload. They possess an alternative, and a plan for colonizing the far future; called Second Genesis.

SPC has engineered a set of handheld time-travel devices known as ‘event capacitators’. The members of SPC do not, however, possess the genetic variation or primitive skills necessary to seed a viable colony on their own. So Mister Shuei and his bio-avatar have journeyed back through the 24th and 21st Centuries to set up ‘genetic reclamation’ operations, recruiting time-travelers to gather the best, brightest and most diverse individuals from Earth’s deep past.

It is 2013 in Laurel Maryland and Mister Shuei considers his efforts in this hectic young world with mixed feelings. His operatives have completed five missions, having retrieved 12 remarkable primitives. Unfortunately these time-travelers have split into rival factions…

…A handicapped 16th Century Iroquois boy with a messiah complex has stolen a capacitator, and a cannibalistic stone-age warlord squats on Mister Shuei’s own conference table with barred incisors, prepared to rip the throat out of the most highly evolved human who has yet lived…and so it goes, another trying day among the primitives…

Cities of Dust is a ‘tetralogy’ of four novels linked by common cast and story lines. The novels do not have to be read in sequence, and may be enjoyed without first reading the two previous books in the Sunset Saga.

The four tales that comprise Cities of Dust are:

*It is recommended that Behind the Sunset Veil be read before Den of the Ender.