Michael Barley

Northline Michael Barley

Northline, combining elements of intrigue, mystery, espionage, science-fiction, political drama, and romance, offers readers a unique glimpse of a possible future, one in which a megalithic railroad corporation has an almost unshakeable grip on North America. The Northline Railroad carries nothing but refuse, collected from every corner of the continent, transporting it in remote-controlled, 30-mile-long super-trains. Satellite controlled, the trains race at upwards of a hundred miles an hour to enormous dumpsites in the northern territories -- the tundra, the arctic regions of what was originally Canada -- which have now become a combination of new states and regional districts merged with the USA. The right-of-way is a toxin-saturated strip of land that no one works or lives near by choice, and "if any of the trains had an engineer, he could well be the devil himself."