The Dry Salvages is a futuristic science fiction story of novella length by American writer Caitlín R. Kiernan, published in 2004 as a stand-alone hardback volume by Subterranean Press.
Told as a first-person narrative, the story is being written down with three antique ballpoint pens by Audrey Cather, an exopaleontologist and the lone survivor of an ill-fated mission to an extrasolar planet, Cecrops, a gas giant orbiting the low-mass red dwarf star Gliese 876.
A blend of dystopian science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and cyberpunk, along with elements of space opera, the novella paints a grim view of the future and of interstellar travel and alien contact.
Earth has been ravaged by war, pollution, and violent climatic changes, and the menacing intelligence the crew of the Montelius (and its predecessor, the Gilgamesh) discover on Piros leads to a government cover-up.
The Dry Salvages provides an example of an unreliable narrator, as Audrey Cather continually makes mistakes and contradicts herself regarding events aboard the Montelius.