The Exile Waiting

The Exile Waiting was the first novel by the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelist Vonda N McIntyre, published in 1975. It introduces the world that McIntyre later made famous with Dreamsnake: a post-apocalyptic world in which Center, an enclosed domed city, is run by slave-owning ruling families who control the planet's resources, and are strangling the city's economy by their decadence. Mischa is a thirteen-year old sneak thief, struggling to support her drug-addict elder brother Chris, and their predatory uncle who uses their telepathic link with their captive younger sister Gemmi to control them. The alien pseudosibs Subone and Subtwo have come to Earth to take over Center's resources. Subone is attracted by the decadent living on offer and begins to unlink from his sibling's conditioning. Subtwo is now trapped on Earth, and he has fallen unexpectedly in love with a slave. When Mischa defends Chris from Subone's malice, Subtwo hunts her beneath Center's foundations, and only then realises how terrible Center's cruelty has been to the weakest of its inhabitants. They have to rescue them and leave, but how? The richness of McIntyre's imagination, her perfect storytelling and the timeless theme of compassion for the weak make The Exile Waiting an outstanding science fiction rediscovery. Vonda N McIntyre's most well-known novel is Dreamsnake (1978), which won the 1979 Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel. She is a biologist by training, and the author of several Star Trek and Star Wars novels and many short stories. Her most recent novel, The Moon and the Sun (1997), was filmed in 2013 as The King's Daughter. She lives in Seattle. Una McCormack, New York Times best-selling sf author and Anglia Ruskin academic, has written the Introduction. Jane Cornwell created the original cover artwork.