From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River, a hermit who uses the solitude and small towns of the American Southwest as the wellspring for these thoughtful, often optimistic stories of depopulated and low-tech futures. A scientist learning from silence to hear what is happening around and inside him (Counting Tadpoles), day laborers and subsistence farmers finding less horror from a giant lizard than from their local police (The Lizard), and a Hawaiian mariner dream questing to derelict radio telescopes in New Mexico (Geronimo's Buttons) find hope in turning to Nature's rhythms and requirements and away from the material world. River's slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building.