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Now it is Tartarus, shut off from the face of heaven by a huge platform which completely envelopes the world. Living in a technological utopia, the inhabitants of the platform have long forgotten that other men still live in the grim underworld that they forsook.

But one man descends to the Tartarean depths. He discovers that under the accelerated evolutionary conditions of this hothouse underworld a whole new ecology of grossly mutated life-foms has emerged. Now the True Men share their environment with rat-men, cat-men and gigantic waterworms...

Cover art by Patrick Woodruff

Published by Quartet in 1976.
ISBN:0 704 31194 1

After laboring for thousands of years, the people of Earth, fleeing ecological disaster, have built a new, clean, stable world on a worldwide platform erected over the entire land surface of the Earth.

Everything is going well--except for Carl Magner, the man who's been having bad dreams. He shouldn't be having dreams at all, because dreams have been banished from the society of the Euchronian Millennium, but somehow he is, and his dreams are showing him the "Underworld."

The real surface of the Earth, the Underworld that the Euchronian Millennium has left behind, still maintains life, human and otherwise, life that's adapted to a world without sky or sun, still evolving in response to extreme environmental challenges. Dreams are only dreams, but they're a provocation nevertheless, not merely for Carl Magner, but for the whole of Euchronian society. Can Heaven be truly Heaven, if Hell still festers in its entrails?

The first book in a stunning SF trilogy, The Realms of Tartarus!

Cover art by Peter Hires

Published by The Borgo Press in 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-4344-4571-1

In omnibus The Realms of Tartarus.
Translated into German as: Die Erde über uns;
Translated into Japanese.

Reviews by Ian Braidwood

Cast of Characters:
Carl, Joth, Ryan and Julea Magner. Chemec, Camlak, Porcel, Ermold, Nita, Sada, Old Man Yami, Huldi, Rafael Heres, Abram Revelent, Thorold Warnet, Enzo Ulicon, Jervis Burnstone, Yvon Emerich, Eliot Rypeck, Randal Harkander Iorga, Joel Dayling, Sisyr, Gregor Zuzara, Vicente Soron, Javan Sobol, Joachim Casirati, Alwyn Ballow, Luel Dascon, Germont.

Imagine a world, where to escape its own pollution, the populace has built a platform encompassing the entire surface, like an astounding eggshell. This is the Earth of The Realms of Tartarus, set at a time soon after it's completion.

While the people the platform have been busy, so has evolution below. With their primary energy source cut, most plants have died off; leaving Earth to domination by fungi and those creatures adaptable enough to consume them.

This is a considerably more complex book than the Hooded Swan series, concerning three separate communities and the internal conflicts of each.

The platform-livers are the beneficiaries of The Euchronian Millennium headed by a body known as the Hegemon, which oversees the plan.

Below, people - of whatever species - live in small closed settlements and of these, just two are described with brutal clarity: Stalhelm and Walgo live in an atmosphere of simmering hostility, which neither has the resources to pursue.

Carl Magner's family is unusual among those of the Euchronian Millennium, in that it has been touched by tragedy and this may be why Carl is now tormented by dreams of the world below. These dreams lead him to write a book: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and he becomes a centre of attention, which in turn leads the Hegemon to plan an expedition into the twilight world beneath...

Don't be put off by the contrived nature of the world in this book, Brian is far too intelligent to be sucked into simplistic dystopian clichés; while life below is hard, it isn't an unremitting Hell and the Euchronian society, though prosperous, is no utopia.