Jellyfish Dreaming - by D K McCutchen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Jellyfish Dreaming is a head trip like nothing you've read, weaving together climate, genetics, gender, biology and dreams in such a way it's impossible to miss how they were always all one thing to begin with.

--Michael J. DeLuca, author of Night Roll

This post-apocalyptic, post-gender, coming-of-age story pulses with plot twists and intrigue. It contemplates the tenacity of life and the capacity of hope, even when all seems lost.

On the cliffs above the Great Garbage Ocean, in a university's aging experimental facility, Jack floats in a tank of poisonous jellyfish. The 200-year-old intersex street kid remembers things nobody else does, from before the environmental catastrophes that erased the world as we know it.

Now, jellyfish and insects are food staples, and everyone is sterile. Everyone, that is, except for some of the town's orphaned survivors. Two of the University's researchers believe they are humanity's last hope.

Jack agrees to help, but then falls for his best friend, Joon - a tough, ageless "Warehouse kid" whose arrival complicates everything. As Jack's feelings for Joon grow, so does the danger around them. When old bigotries erupt into violence, Jack must scramble to protect those he loves from a madman and save a dying world. But at what cost?

Review Quotes

"Jellyfish Dreaming is one of the most inventive stories I've read in a very long time."

--Rosanne Parry, author of the NYT Bestseller, A Whale of the Wild

Jellyfish Dreaming is a head trip like nothing you've read, weaving together climate, genetics, gender, biology and dreams in such a way it's impossible to miss how they were always all one thing to begin with.

--Michael J. DeLuca, author of Night Roll

"Jellyfish Dreaming's protagonist, Jack, is the embodiment of story, holding the history of a post-apocalyptic world in his DNA. He's been recycled, uploaded and spit out, a witness to the living story of earth - while becoming unwitting glue to the future of the planet."

-- Kirsten Mosher, artist & author of

Soul Mate 180° & Plea$e Steal Me for 100 Plus Dollar-zz

About the Author

After a decade of sailing the world with researchers in summer and assisting a glassblower in winter, D. K. McCutchen teaches writing for College of Natural Sciences, University of Massachusetts, and is an Associate Director of the Junior Year Writing Program. Currently they live on a river with two brilliant daughters and a flightless Kiwi, and write LGBTQIA-friendly, gender-bender, post-apocalyptic speculative fiction.

Books include JELLYFISH DREAMING, winner of a Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize, and WHALE ROAD, a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book and Pushcart nominee about chasing whales through the South Pacific. JELLYFISH DREAMING's companion novel, ELECTRIC ICE, winner of a Speculative Literature Foundation grant, will be released soon.