Emergence

Emergence is a science fiction novel by American writer David R. Palmer. It first appeared as a novella published in Analog Science Fiction in 1981; the same magazine also published Part II, "Seeking", in 1983. The completed novel then was published by Bantam in 1984. The plot follows a precocious 11-year-old orphan girl, living in a post-apocalyptic United States. It had three printings through July 1985, and was republished in 1990 as a "Signature Special Edition" with a few minor edits and a new afterword by the author. Emergence was Palmer's first published novel. It was developed from a pair of Hugo and Nebula award nominated novellas originally published in Analog magazine. The novel itself was nominated for a Hugo Award, a pair of Locus awards (for first novel and science fiction novel), was a finalist for a Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Compton Crook Award. Palmer's sequel to Emergence, entitled Tracking, was serialized in Analog in 2008. Wormhole Press was short-listed to release Tracking and re-release Emergence as both paperbacks and in hardcover, but by October 2010 the publisher appeared to be out of business. After the novel being out of print and hard to find for over a decade, Palmer made arrangements with Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press in 2018 to have his works reprinted. Plot summary