Set four hundred years in the future, Frederick Turner's epic poem, The New World, celebrates American culture in A.D. 2376. As the book opens, the nation-state has been fragmented and replaced by new political forms: the Riots, violent anarchistic matriarchies, whose members are addicted to psychedelic joyjuice; the Burbs, populations descended from the old middle classes and now slaves to the Riots; the Mad Counties, religious theocracies dominated by fanatical fundamentalists; and the Free Counties, Jeffersonian democracies where arts and sciences flourish. 
Within this setting, Turner's epic tells the story of a tragic family feud involving Ruth Jefferson, daughter of the political leader, Shaker McCloud; Antony Manse, a handsome aristocrat; Ruth's half-brother, the ambitious Simon Raven McCloud, who is under the influence of his grandmother, the witch Faith Raven; and the hero, James George Quincy. When banished from the Free Counties, the vengeful Simon Raven transforms himself into a messianic figure who inspires a league of Mad Counties to launch a holy war to annihilate the Free Counties. 
Turner's epic calls for a cultural commitment to transcend the contemporary choice between blind faith and hedonistic relativism. This bold work challenges many conventional assumptions about modern poetry and its relationship to other literary forms and the culture at large. 
Praise for Frederick Turner 
"This is a grand, glowing poem.... A thousand bravos!" - James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize winning poet 
"The New World may be the first straight-forward heroic epic since Tennyson that really works. Turner's stroke of genius was to place the story in the future and tell it in a science-fiction mode. Suddenly all the epic formulas become not only permissible again but credible." - Dana Gioia 
"What astonishes me most is the way this poem builds and builds. To begin with, I was taking note of particular things that I found thrilling or delightful, but the deeper I got into the narrative, the more sustained the richness of it as a whole, and the seamless coherence of the tragic horror with the joyousness that I see as its central meaning. The poem inspires us to go back to the epics of the past, whose roots it shows us to be so much alive after all." - Amy Clampitt 
"If the use of epic poetry is to be more than a conceit, it has to be in the service of a tale for which it is better suited than the novel.... [The epic poem] has historically enjoyed a greater ability to convey a culture's character and spirit through language. Turner uses the strengths of the epic form to good effect.... The New World is an ambitious work and Turner pulls off what he set out to accomplish: He's written good science fiction while creating and presenting a possible future in a way that a novel could not have accomplished. It's good poetry, too." - Dani Zweig 
"Myth, religious parable, and science fiction are genetically recombined into lyrical new forms of being. Turner has taken up the most ancient challenges of the poet, delivering work as intellectually charged as formally challenging." - Paul Lake 
"Frederick Turner comes across in his poems as a man of impressively broad experience, intellectual brilliance, and originality. His vocabulary alone is a tour de force. He's at his best when he unleashes his extraordinary powers of observation." - Richard Tillinghast

The New World: An Epic Poem

Literature & Fiction

Turner, Frederick

Genre Fiction

Ilium Press

Originally published in 1988, Genesis was the first major work of fiction that addressed the idea of terraforming Mars. It not only suggested the idea, but provided a feasible solution for doing so. During its initial publication, Genesis was on the list of recommended reading at NASA, and has since gone on to enjoy cult status. Its acknowledged list of admirers includes such literary luminaries as Brian Aldiss, Amy Clampitt, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas M. Disch, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Merrill. It is with great pride that Ilium Press brings this influential and prescient work back into print. Praise for Frederick Turner's epic poetry "The poem inspires us to go back to the epics of the past, whose roots it shows us to be so much alive after all." - Amy Clampitt "Vivid, effortless narration ... such as I don't think I've ever seen in a poem since the good old days. ... This is a grand, glowing poem. ... A thousand bravos!" - James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize winning poet "Frederick Turner comes across in his poems as a man of impressively broad experience, intellectual brilliance, and originality. ... He's at his best when he unleashes his extraordinary powers of observation." - Richard Tillinghast "Myth, religious parable, and science fiction are genetically recombined into lyrical new forms of being. Turner has taken up the most ancient challenges of the poet, delivering work as intellectually charged as formally challenging." - Paul Lake "If the use of epic poetry is to be more than a conceit, it has to be in the service of a tale for which it is better suited than the novel. The epic poem...has historically enjoyed a greater ability to convey a culture's character and spirit through language. Turner uses the strengths of the epic form to good effect. His poems describe and mythologize futures which are more than just extrapolations of our present. He's written good science fiction while creating and presenting a possible future in a way that a novel could not have accomplished. It's good poetry, too." - Dani Zweig "Frederick Turner is a polymath as well as a poet and I love his work. I have his extraordinary poem Genesis in a place of honor next to those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton." - Martyn J. Fogg, President, British Interplanetary Society "Fred Turner reclaims for poetry its antique privilege of heroic action, its right and, perhaps, primal compulsion to tell a story more sharply, with more economy than can that later idiom which is prose." --George Steiner "Fluent and full of surprises...its sustained narrative is an enviable achievement..." - Irving Feldman "...verse narrative of great power." - Guy Davenport "A beautiful and impressive long poem." - Charles Edward Eaton

Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

Poetry

J. M. W. Turner, Britain's greatest and most revolutionary artist, has died. While reviewing the contents of Turner's vast artistic legacy for Britain's National Gallery, John Ruskin, Turner's greatest supporter, discovers a considerable body of previously unknown erotic sketches. Both shocked and outraged, Ruskin abruptly burns the materials he finds offensive. But through betrayal and theft, some of the erotica has escaped the flames... William James Stillman, a young American artist and diplomat, pursues a dangerous quest across Britain, Europe, and the Eastern United States to save the remaining sketches. He is convinced that the surviving erotic studies are not only invaluable to British art history, but contain a secret clue to the master's celebrated body of public work. Unlocking this secret becomes an obsession that threatens to consume Stillman and blind him to his obligations to his friends, his family, and even to himself. Based on actual people and events, this thrilling work features not only Turner himself, but such luminary characters as Allegra Fullerton, the Rossetti brothers, other artists from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Britain's greatest swordsman and adventurer, Sir Richard Burton.

The Turner Erotica: A Biographical Novel

Begiebing, Robert J.

Apocalypse: An Epic Poem

It’s 2067. The Antarctic ice sheets have collapsed. World sea levels have risen several feet and are rising faster still. The climate has changed catastrophically, and meteorological disasters are becoming a daily occurrence. Yet global power structures fail to respond, remaining frozen in political and ideological gridlock. To confront this chaos, billionaire Noah Blazo recruits a team of genius misfits to bypass the political paralysis. With support from a coalition of island and coastal nations that are vulnerable to these catastrophes, his team launches an unsanctioned geo-engineering effort to restore the Earth’s ecological balance—an activity that prompts a global power struggle immediately leading to war. Events in the center of this conflict inadvertently trigger the emergence a quasi-divine being, Kalodendron, who dwells within the Internet. With her arrival comes a further threat to the Earth—the appearance of the dark star Wormwood, which looms within our solar system and is drawing closer. With Kalodendron’s help, can Blazo’s team avert this two-fold threat to the Earth’s destruction? Or do the tragedies that quickly follow ensure the planet’s final destruction? Apocalypse features a rich cast of fully realized characters, including the old Texan, Noah Blazo, a beneficent Captain Ahab with his own secret grief; Anneliese Grotius, the internet genius who is also the curator of the Amsterdam Museum’s Flemish collection; big gloomy Ala Ifu-Eshu, who has dealt with her Boko Haram husband and becomes a leader in the art of seawater farming; the mathematicians Chandrasekhar Engineer and his son Gopal; the British naval maverick Peter Frobisher; the two popes, Pius XIII and Francis III; and the troubled narrator, Nemo, who has been commissioned by Noah to compose the poem itself as its events occur. Apocalypse is a major new work on the poetic landscape, an odyssey that addresses the global anxieties, emerging technologies, and spiritual yearnings of our time. Addressing themes of humanity’s capacity for creation, destruction, rebirth, and redemption, Apocalypse is a transformative vision of the deepest and most passionate relationships that define us and give our lives meaning.

It’s 2067. The Antarctic ice sheets have collapsed. World sea levels have risen several feet and are rising faster still. The climate has changed catastrophically, and meteorological disasters are becoming a daily occurrence. Yet global power structures fail to respond, remaining frozen in political and ideological gridlock. To confront this chaos, billionaire Noah Blazo recruits a team of genius misfits to bypass the political paralysis. With support from a coalition of island and coastal nations that are vulnerable to these catastrophes, his team launches an unsanctioned geo-engineering effort to restore the Earth’s ecological balance—an activity that prompts a global power struggle immediately leading to war. Events in the center of this conflict inadvertently trigger the emergence a quasi-divine being, Kalodendron, who dwells within the Internet. With her arrival comes a further threat to the Earth—the appearance of the dark star Wormwood, which looms within our solar system and is drawing closer. With Kalodendron’s help, can Blazo’s team avert this two-fold threat the Earth’s destruction? Or do the tragedies that quickly follow ensure the planet’s final destruction? Apocalypse features a rich cast of fully realized characters, including the old Texan, Noah Blazo, a beneficent Captain Ahab with his own secret grief; Anneliese Grotius, the internet genius who is also the curator of the Amsterdam Museum’s Flemish collection; big gloomy Ala Ifu-Eshu, who has dealt with her Boko Haram husband and becomes a leader in the art of seawater farming; the mathematicians Chandrasekhar Engineer and his son Gopal; the British naval maverick Peter Frobisher; the two popes, Pius XIII and Francis III; and the troubled narrator, Nemo, who has been commissioned by Noah to compose the poem itself as its events occur. Apocalypse is a major new work on the poetic landscape, an odyssey that addresses the global anxieties, emerging technologies, and spiritual yearnings of our time. Addressing themes of humanity’s capacity for creation, destruction, rebirth, and redemption, Apocalypse is a transformative vision of the deepest and most passionate relationships that define us and give our lives meaning.

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Books by Ilium Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Ilium Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The New World: An Epic Poem

Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

The Turner Erotica: A Biographical Novel

Apocalypse: An Epic Poem

Apocalypse: An Epic Poem