The novel “The Chronoliths” by Robert Charles Wilson was published for the first time in 2001. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Scott Warden remained in Thailand with his wife and daughter after finishing a job as a software developer. He spends a lot of time with Hitch Paley, another American who does illegal jobs, especially as a smuggler. The two men are among the first to see a kind of monolith that has appeared in the jungle under very strange circumstances. The object bears an inscription commemorating a military victory by a mysterious Kuin twenty years in the future.

An infection contracted by Kaitlin, Scott Warden’s daughter, is the main cause of the divorce between him and his wife. The experience with the monolith leads Scott to meet Sue Chopra, a scientist who was his teacher during his college years and is studying the monoliths that started appearing one after another around the world. No one knows who the mysterious Kuin is, yet more and more political and social movements claim to be inspired by him, upsetting the political landscape of various nations.