However, despite all efforts, the village gains a reputation as the haunt of devils. Led by the example of pastor Dietrich, a philosopher and scholar, the majority of the villagers come to accept the Krenken as God’s fellow-creatures rather than demons, which they resemble. They soon learn to communicate with the villagers via their “talking head” and eventually swear fealty to the village’s lord, Herr Manfred. The vessel’s occupants, the giant-grasshopper-like Krenken, were traveling via interdimensional wormhole rather than space when disaster struck. Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we learn what actually occurred in Eifelheim in the months before the “pest” arrived: An alien vessel crash-landed in the forest. Tom wonders why the Black Forest village Eifelheim wasn’t resettled following a deadly outbreak of the Black Death in 1349 according to all his computer simulations, it should have been. Theoretical physicist Sharon Nagy ponders a new, non-isotropic, 12-dimensional space-time structure, while her live-in significant other, historical-mathematician Tom Schwoerin, studies medieval German settlement patterns. Contemporary/historical alien-contact tale, from the author of the magnificent The Wreck of the River of Stars (2003).
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