After a devastating nuclear war, American society has turned against modern science; rebuilding cities and technological expertise is banned and religious groups that opposed technology before the war now shape public life.

Several loosely connected characters across different eras encounter anomalies that call into question the nature of reality, time, and memory.

A human envoy arrives on a frigid, isolated planet to persuade its nations to join an interstellar confederation, but finds himself hampered by profound cultural and sexual differences.

On a world where robots abandoned human settlements long ago, a traveling tea-maker meets a robot who has returned and seeks to understand human purpose. Their low-stakes dialogue and small, everyday interactions become the site for questions about work, meaning, and how people live now that high technology is gone.

Six distinct narratives, each written in a different voice and set in a different time and place, are arranged so that echoes between them imply moral and causal connections across eras.

A man’s dreams have the power to change the real world, and those around him — including a psychiatrist — must confront the consequences of shaping reality through unconscious wishes.

An elderly Congregational minister composes an extended letter to his young son late in life, recounting his own family history, the tensions between pacifism and militant abolitionism in his forebears, and the spiritual convictions that shape his sense of duty and affection.

Set before and after a fictional, devastating influenza pandemic, the book traces several connected people — including actors who tour small settlements — as they navigate loss, survival, and the persistence of art.

Light stages several linked strands: high-tech spacefaring and scientific work, characters wrestling with gender and identity, and a persistent thread involving serial violence. The novel frames these pressures against questions about consciousness, causality, and human meaning across near-future and cosmic contexts.

Set in the near future, the novel traces efforts around an institutional body created under international agreements whose mandate is to secure the rights of future generations.

A conscripted young soldier joins an elite force fighting an alien species in an interstellar war; relativistic travel stretches years into decades for those on Earth.

An ancient, nonhuman presence aims to return to strength by manipulating human agents; decades later ordinary people in a rural community become entangled with that returning force.