Claudia Casper’s novel, The Mercy Journals, won the Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction at a ceremony in Seattle on April 12, 2017.
The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society.
The Mercy Journals (Arsenal Pulp Press), is an unsettling novel set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy’s children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness to look for them, only to find that the line between truth and lies is trespassed, challenging Mercy’s own moral code about the things that matter amid the wreckage of war and tragedy.
Set against a sparse yet fantastical landscape, The Mercy Journals explores the parameters of personal morality and forgiveness at this watershed moment in humanity’s history and evolution.
“From the opening paragraph, I dove into the deep end of a dystopian world that was terrifying, familiar,and thrilling, and made me keep reading until the shocking end … It’s a masterpiece.” —Jamie Lee Curtis
“Casper employs clear, concise prose that moves at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man’s account, of what it means to outlive one’s purpose is tightly constructed.” —Publishers Weekly