Geodyssey

About the Geodyssey series

Geodyssey traces the same handful of recurring souls — reincarnated across tens of thousands of years, from prehistoric human migration out of Africa through the rise of agriculture, early civilization, and eventually the modern era — using each incarnation's story to dramatize a different stage of human cultural and technological development. Rather than a single continuous plot, the series is closer to a fictionalized survey of human prehistory and history: each book picks up the same small ensemble of character-types (broadly, a leader, a shaman/artist, a worker, and others) in a new era and setting, letting Piers Anthony use fiction to speculate concretely about how early humans might have lived, loved, fought, and innovated.

It's a considerable departure from Anthony's fantasy and science-fiction work — closer to speculative anthropology or a fictionalized big-history project than to Xanth or Bio of a Space Tyrant — reflecting his stated interest in evolutionary biology, prehistory, and the origins of human behavior and belief. The five novels span publication from 1993 to 2010, with real gaps between volumes as the project continued intermittently across nearly two decades.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with Isle of Woman. Each novel follows the same recurring cast of reincarnated characters through a different era of human prehistory and history, so reading in order lets you track how the same character-types recur and change across huge spans of time — though each book's setting and story are largely self-contained.