All systems fail . . . All societies crumble . . . All worlds end.

WHERE THE AXE IS BURIED 
April 1 2025 

"Where the Axe is Buried Shows how the embers of hope smolder long after they should have been extinguished, and how they are always ready to be kindled into a roaring, system-consuming wildfire" -- Cory Doctorow

"[Where the Axe is Buried] boldly imagines how we might escape authoritarianism . . . Deserves to be read and discussed for its futuristic, philosophical exploration of our era's problems.  The questions [Nayler] asks could not be more timely or better formed." -- The Washington Post

​"An engrossing exploration of consciousness, autocracy and global politics, Where the Axe is Buried is a cybernetically enhanced thriller with the pacing of a literary novel." -- BookPage

"Thought-provoking in the extreme . . . will trap fans of technothrillers in its web." -- Library Journal

“A bold, epic sf story and an inspiring tale about taking down all forms of authoritarianism . . . Nayler’s political thriller has spectacular surprises [and is] grounded by realistic, complex characters determined to change their world, however hopeless it may seem.” -- Booklist starred review 


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In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favour of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
 
As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo.
 
Each of them must navigate seemingly insurmountable dangers and threats to remain free and, ultimately, put humanity’s future back into its own hands.
 
A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

​​"In Ray Nayler's hands, encounters with other minds -- animal ones, especially, with their radically different forms of experience -- serve as a means of complicating and enriching every proposition or claim. His books are stories of human minds opening themselves to dialogue with their seemingly mute others, a dialogue that might expose us to new forms of care and different notions of justice." -- The Washington Post

Ray Nayler is the author of the Locus Award winning novel The Mountain in the Sea.  Positively reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Publisher's Weekly and many others, The Mountain in the Sea was a best book of the year at the London Times, and has been named one of Esquire’s best science fiction books of all time. Mountain has been translated into over a dozen languages. Ray's second book, the novella The Tusks of Extinction, was published in January 2024. Amal El-Mohtar of The New York Times called it " A compact novella that reads like a superb science fiction inversion of Ernest Hemingway’s 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.'" The Washington Post wrote that the book is "both breathtaking and heartbreaking" and Publishers Weekly calledTusks is "impassioned and impressive . . . an uncompromising climate fiction that strikes like a spear to the gut." It was named a Best Book of the Year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

For nearly half his life, Ray has lived and worked outside the United States in the Foreign Service, the Peace Corps, and in international development. He was Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer at the U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. He most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as a diplomatic fellow and visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy. He lives in Washington, DC.

Ray is represented by Seth Fishman at the Gernert Company.

Full bio and bibliography here

Read "Yesterday's Wolf", winner of the 2021 Clarkesworld Reader's Choice Poll
​Read "Sarcophagus", Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award Finalist