Set more than four thousand years in the future, Summertide introduces a galaxy widely populated by humans and a variety of intelligent aliens, all of whom live in the shadow of the vanished race known only as the Builders. Nothing is known about the Builders, but the gigantic artifacts they have left behind - many of them still hardly understood - dominate the areas of space in which they are found. One such is the double-planet system of Opal and Quake - the former covered in water, the latter in desert - connected by a Builder device called the Umbilical. It is to this system that a variety of humans and aliens come, ostensibly to witness Summertide - the annual tidal wave which sweeps across Opal.
- ISBN10 0575050217
- ISBN13 9780575050211
- Publish Date 9 May 1991 (first published April 1990)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 July 2000
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Gollancz
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
- Pages 272
- Language English