Ice & Iron

The time might well be today in this intriguing science fiction tale in which the vagaries of weather open the door to an unknown civilization from the past—or is it the future? Across the globe a new ice age is encroaching. From Alberta to Ontario most of Canada is deserted, its people resettled in the southern United States and Mexico, while mile by mile, century by century, the glacier grinds down their former homes. Fisher Yann Highsmith is a scientist stationed, with a few colleagues, on the edge of the ice field, recording its relentless growth and the destruction of life in its path. In the midst of this barren landscape the team recovers a weird assortment of artifacts that seem to appear suddenly out of thin air, and Highsmith fits them together into a fantastic theory of another dimension. Then the search parties begin to find bodies out of time and place and Highsmith’s history of parallel worlds becomes a chilling reality. * According to Locus #186 (February 29, 1976),the October 1975 Ballantine edition has a new ending.