Inga Nyström chose to leave Earth and help the colony of Nordenmark escape a looming ecological disaster. But by the time she arrives, the catastrophic degradation of the planet’s terraformed environment has already passed the point of no return, and she finds its people defeated, sleepwalking through a slow-moving death.
What’s more, the technology that brought Inga to this distant colony—beaming her consciousness out of her original body and into a synthetic one—has misfired. There are haunting gaps in her memory, pieces of herself lost to the void. As extinction takes species after species, Inga and the people of Nordenmark must find a way to survive, and a reason to live, in the spaces death leaves behind.
Praise for Summer In The House of the Departed
Lush, lyrical, and heartbreaking, No One to Hold the Distant Dead is fascinating science fiction as well as a moving elegy mourning lost selves, lost loves, and lost species. This story of a cosmic traveler grappling furiously with pain and sorrow offers us a grim sort of hope in the midst of despair.
— Ivy Grimes, author of Glass Stories
A lovely and melancholy exploration of loss, grief, and care for the dead. K.L. Schroeder has created something truly unique in this novella, confronting not just individual death, but looking a society mourning the immanent death of an entire planet.
— A.C. Wise, author of Ballad of the Bone Road
No One To Hold the Distant Dead is a searing, intensely evocative novella. KL Schroeder paints a gentle, otherworldly apocalypse, both ecological and personal, which by turns delights with its stunning prose and devastates with its incisive detail. This is a timely and fascinating novella that is richly populated with fascinating characters surviving in an all-too-real future. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
— David W. Goodman, author
Schroeder weaves together a visceral and timely tale of environmental collapse that pulls no punches about what’s coming. Heartfelt and infuriating at times, No One To Hold the Distant Dead leaves us with a realistic, but hopeful version of the future, one hovering somewhere between victory and defeat.
— A.D. Sui, author of The Dragonfly Gambit
No One To Hold the Distant Dead is a brutally beautiful story, deftly navigating ecological grief, the loss of self, and finding hope in the strangest forms. The dying world of Nordenmark will haunt me. It is as if Schroeder wrote this specifically to break my heart.
— Lorraine Wilson, author of We Are All Ghosts In The Forest
In No One to Hold the Distant Dead, Schroeder explores the intersections of nature and technology in a world facing ecological collapse, with thought-provoking beauty, intriguing concepts, and smooth and engaging prose. A taut, intelligent, moving, and compelling tale, this is eco and science fiction at its best.”
— Lyndsey Croal, author of Dark Crescent and Limelight and Other Stories
Beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s sadly rare to find an author like Schroeder who approaches the non-human with such compassion and respect. A must read.
— Ever Dundas, author of Goblin and HellSans
No One to Hold the Distant Dead offers a heartfelt meditation on grief and a reminder of the value of interspecies connections.
— Sarena Ulibarri, author of Steel Tree
Full title: No One To Hold the Distant Dead
Author name: K.L. Schroeder
Price: $13.99 Print $8.99 ebook
Publisher/Imprint: Psychopomp
Format: print / ebook
Pub date: Nov 11, 2025
Page count: 108
ISBN: 979-8-89116-020-0 (print)
Genre: Science Fiction
Distribution arrangements: Psychopomp.com // Ingram
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