The Cretaceous Past

Written by Cixin Liu

Narrated by BJ Harrison

All the years of human civilization represent an infinitesimal fraction of the time since life first burgeoned on planet Earth. How likely is it, then, in those great depths of time, that humanity alone benefitted from the spark of intelligence which gave rise to culture?

This is the question posed by Hugo Award winner Cixin Liu, in his magisterial new short novel The Cretaceous Past. The answer he offers is unexpected, supposing an unlikely alliance between the largest creatures in the world of the deep past and some of the smallest. And it all begins with a toothache.

When a Tyrannosaurus rex suffers pain from meat trapped between its enormous teeth, a nearby colony of ants risks entering the great creature's maw to make their own repast from the remains of the dinosaur's most recent meal. From this humble beginning, over the course of millennia, a symbiotic civilization achieves amazing advances, facing dangers and exploiting opportunities at every turn.

In this absorbing tale, Cixin Liu manages to describe the history of successive epochs of a might-have-been world, doing for the past what Olaf Stapledon's classic Last and First Men did for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Dec 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666176360

Cixin Liu

Cixin Liu is China's #1 SF writer and author of The Three-Body Problem – the first ever translated novel to win a Hugo Award. Prior to becoming a writer, Liu worked as an engineer in a power plant in Yangquan.

Reviews for The Cretaceous Past

[sarita · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not my favourite of Liu's books, but i got my favourite feeling that I *get* from his books: kind of like someone's removed my brain and just squished it around enough that it still works, but suddenly you can't help thinking in a new, off kilter way.