Sarah Colombo
Sarah Colombo is the author of Subterranean, for which she won the 2019 Indie Book Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Kirkus Reviews calls Subterranean "A thoughtful, trenchant adventure story." Contact her for questions or bookings. Her newest title, Why is Marigold? will be released on November 8.
Why is Marigold?
Marigold was created for a reason, she’s just not sure what that reason is.
An android, Marigold was raised at the Evangeline School for Girls on the Gulf Coast. Now an adult, she works on her creator’s compound, a desalination plant.
One day, Tom—a wandering human searching for a way to exist in peace—arrives at the compound. Soon, Tom is part of Marigold’s family, another reluctant adoptee of her creator. As Tom and Marigold bond, he reveals that he remembers Marigold from somewhere in his murky past. But, she doesn’t remember him at all.
As they unwind a web of their past connections, Marigold and Tom discover the reason for Marigold’s creation… and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Tom’s father’s death.
Praise for Why is Marigold?
"Set in a permanently impermanent world of trailers and camp sites, storm shelters and Dollar Stores, all in the grip of one vast company store, Why is Marigold? asks: What is human? What is possible? What is messing with nature? What is love? as one question that can't be answered or even quite asked. A lovely and disturbing novel."
— Carola Dibbell, author of The Only Ones, 2015 Favorite Books of the Year (Bustle, O, The Oprah Magazine); Best science fiction and fantasy books of 2015 (The Washington Post)
"Why is Marigold? by Sarah Colombo is a magical book that delights in shocking play, both with narrative structure as well as reader expectations. Corporate weirdness, gorgeous wilds, and the ever-present feeling of mystery. These are aspects of Florida in our consciousness and Colombo stokes this sense of place to create a novel intriguing, compelling, and yet also very human.”
— Jordan A. Rothacker, author of The Shrieking of Nothing
"With prose that elegantly chops up and spreads disquiet and wonder across every page, Colombo's Why Is Marigold? is an exploration of the deep-heart center of humanity's exhaustive experience––this thing we call 'reality.' Both on an individual level and on a universal level of 'the unspoken.' Like Douglas Coupland's Generation X (and A), but set in a world teetering on the edge of unraveling. Poignant, sincere, messy, kaleidoscopic. Brilliant.
— Tex Gresham, author of Violent Candy and Sunflower
Subterranean
Hil Mills is missing. Worse, her boyfriend Ronnie can’t find out anything about her because she’s been living off-the-grid since childhood, and doesn’t even have an online profile. In a world loaded with Screens, where robots do almost every job, Ronnie and a team of misfits try to solve the mystery of Hil’s disappearance. Through warehouse raves, transcendentalism-obsessed communes, and bougie corporate parties, Ronnie digs for answers. Meanwhile, Hil’s busy saving herself from her past, and a future she never wanted. Is it a conspiracy, a terror plot, or just a bad break-up? Spoiler alert: it’s all that and more.
Praise for Subterranean
"...Colombo’s characterization is strong; the portrait of HDT’s founder, Losi West, is especially well-rounded and poignant. Also, the author’s portrayal of the universal desire for connection is vividly real, moving, and relatable."
Sarah Colombo’s debut novel, Subterranean, is a rollicking adventure set in a not-too-distant future—one in which most people are completely consumed by technology, while others long for the past: whether that be the 1990s of ravers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Nirvana, or Henry David Thoreau’s mid-nineteenth century ‘cabin of clay and wattles made.’ But this book is also, like the best work of Vonnegut, Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick, a serious critique of our culture and the dangerous road down which we’re headed. Subterranean will have readers simultaneously weeping for what once was and what could potentially be, while still giving them pause to laugh at all the human folly in between.
David Armand, author of Harlow and My Mother’s House
In Subterranean, Sarah Colombo creates a rich and unsettling world of ubiquitous screens and surveillance, snarky robots and tech-resistant cults. The themes of struggle for human connection and establishing one’s identity in an over-documented and ego-obsessed culture are both surprising and familiar. Subterranean is a sci-fi adventure with humor and heart.
Bridget Erin, playwright of Sonata for Four Hands and In Our Backyard
Subterranean, at once both a missing-persons caper and an adorable love story, is set in a mildly dystopic, social-media obsessed future that effectively satirizes the modern, on-line, world without resorting to easy ham-fisted clichés. Other than the engaging story Subterranean weaves, it's greatest strength is the manner in which it deftly critiques the fully wired world yet does not make the denizens of that world seem overly foolish; it reminds its readers to put their phones down every once in a while, without making them feel stupid when they inevitably pick those phones back up.