This sci-fi tale spans 20,000 years, from the Ice Age to a future ruled by Human Fabrication Corporations and follows nine people: a Neanderthal shaman; a purpose built man-hunter; a Native American messiah; a reformed crack dealer; an ancient philosopher; a boy trapped in an innocence exhibit; a white supremacist; a ‘trashed’ immersion gamer; and a federal agent.

This sci-fi tale spans 20,000 years, from the Ice Age to a future ruled by the HBCs [Human Fabrication Corporations] and follows nine people in their struggle to define their lives:

Tusk, Ghost Walker of the Original People, is called upon to face a supernatural menace.

Jay Bracken’s yearning to lead a normal life has ebbed since his discovery that he is a genetically engineered war-freak. However, his short-term goals: nubile companionship and the slaughter of foes, have not changed, and are in concord with his first ever long-term goal: waging a one-freak war against his creators. But first—confident he has put that ‘impulsive cannibalism thing’ behind him—he is headed to a fancy store to buy a bikini for that pretty girl he yanked out of the 17th Century and a bathrobe for the nice old lady he left her with.

Three-Rivers is the messiah of a doomed people who has merged with that spirit the medicine-men of Sunset call a ‘singularity’, which he knows as The Sunken Star. He is now able to travel through Time at will to seek enlightenment and to contend with the Whiteman. But the teen-age prophet is troubled by his own evolving nature and torn between the contentious ghosts of his parents who both haunt his Oneness. He has also begun to wonder if a Natural Person, even one who commands the Thunderbirds, can ever win a war against the Whiteman.

Eddie thought that selling crack in East Baltimore was a rough job! Then he hooked up with his crazy friend Jay-bone and got into the time-travel biz, hoping to smoke a joint with some Ancient Aliens at Machu Picchu. Serving as a medic on a 17th Century battlefield was bad enough. Now he’s being sucked into some messed-up past—guts first—and is scared, to death!

Aristotle was spirited away from his Athenian enemies by people claiming to hail from 2,335 years in the future. And what an ‘Athenian’ future it is; nothing but squabbling barbarians and annoyingly willful Amazons rushing about in a dizzying variety of mechanical conveyances.

Scooter played Cartels of Titan 2,062 times without a caffeine injection, causing his avatar to suffer a psychotic break and his uplink implant to flat-line, totally trashing his halo-drive. Now he sits unplugged and unable to interface with the Necessity Terminals, hoping that an experimental implant will be tested on him by a street-technician in exchange for a meal.

Brant has always lived alone with his parents and Lassie. But yesterday he got new parents, and he doesn’t like them. The last time his parents changed one at a time and were better. And what is worst of all, today, he got a new Lassie; a nice Lassie, but not his Lassie.

Randy Bracken followed his meat-head half-brother into a time-travel scheme run by some black mad scientist, and is now the most conflicted White Supremacist alive. If only he could get his hands on a bigger, better gun, he might feel better about this inverted existence.

Joan Henderson, CIA, was brutally raped while attempting to interrogate a cannibalistic cop-killer in the most secure black ops facility in the world. Now she’s pregnant with the maniac’s child, and is heading up the search for her vanished attacker; thought by some to be a Cold War era genetic weapon, and believed by others to be a psychopathic ‘time-hunter’. Whatever he is, he owes her 18 years of child support, and Joan means to collect.

-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.