Bioverse

Four galaxy-spanning novels by an award-winning author with a “gift for creating fully realized cultures” (Booklist). In Fool’s War, Katmer Al Shei has done well with the starship Pasadena, cutting corners where necessary to keep her crew paid and her journeys profitable. But there are two things she will never skimp on: her crew—and her fool. For a long space journey, a certified Fool’s Guild clown is essential, to amuse, excite, and otherwise distract the crew from the drudgeries of interstellar flight. Her newest fool, Evelyn Dobbs, is a talented jester. But does she have enough wit to save mankind? In Playing God, the planet of the Dedelphi has been riven by war for two centuries. Though delicate, swanlike creatures, the planet’s natives are fierce in battle, and their ceaseless conflict has reduced their world to a wasteland. To save themselves and their world, the Dedelphi have forged a fragile peace and called for outside intervention. The Earth corporation Bioverse constructs a plan to heal the shattered planet. It’s the most ambitious engineering project the universe has ever seen, and if it backfires, the result will almost certainly be genocide. In The Quiet Invasion, Dr. Helen Failia is nearing middle age at eighty-three, but has lost none of her fighting spirit. The founder of Earth’s first fully functioning colony on Venus, she will do anything to ensure that the home she’s built and nurtured not only survives, but thrives. Despite her constant work, funding for the colony is running out, and she’s dreading telling the ten thousand colonists they must move to Earth, a world some of them have never even seen. When one of her probes returns with the unprecedented proof of an ancient alien artifact on the surface of Venus she cannot believe her luck. This is the first evidence that humanity is not alone, and the discovery will surely secure the research colony’s future. In Reclamation, Eric Born knows his way around the universe. He’s a quick-thinking merchant blessed with natural telekinetic skill. He’s also that rarest of creatures, a human being. Humans have been scattered across the universe, powerless and oppressed, dispersed so widely that no one knows what planet they first came from. Eric survives by selling his talents to the mysterious galactic tyrants known as the Rhudolant Vitae, but has never forgotten he belongs to the human race, and the distant world, the Realm of the Nameless Powers. The Realm may be a backwater, but Eric will do anything to protect his home from the merciless and powerful Vitae.

DIVTo save an alien world, a human architect must risk destroying it/divDIV For two centuries, the planet of the Dedelphi has been riven by war. Though delicate, swanlike creatures, the planet’s natives are fierce in battle, and their ceaseless conflict has reduced their world to a wasteland. To save themselves and their world, the Dedelphi have forged a fragile peace and called for outside intervention. The Earth corporation Bioverse constructs a plan to heal the shattered planet. It’s the most ambitious engineering project the universe has ever seen, and if it backfires, the result will almost certainly be genocide./divDIV /divDIVHired to oversee the massive undertaking is architect Lynn Nussbaumer. Rebuilding the planet will take decades, and Nussbaumer’s first challenge is to arrange for a generation of Dedelphi to live out their lives in orbit around their home. When old conflicts and fresh violence emerge aboard the station and on the planet’s surface, she finds that it takes more than a talent for design to draft a blueprint for peace. /div

For as long as humans have been on Earth, we have looked up to the stars for clues to our own existence. Medical doctor and evolutionary biologist William B. Miller, Jr. suggests that we may find more meaningful solutions at the end of a microscope rather than a telescope. Using powerful analogies and exacting science, Bioverse explores the wonders of the perpetual partnership between our personal cells and the microbial world, resulting in an entirely new view of our living planet. To understand life in all its varieties, we must undertake to understand our cells. While the partnership between our cells and our microbes has largely been thought of as that of “host” and “guest,” Miller reveals the true partnership under which both our microbial fraction and our own personal cells conduct a life-long dialogue, redefining our traditional conceptions of intelligence and problem-solving. This radical new approach explains exactly how our human choices are centered within the same cellular rules that enable our cells to seamlessly sustain our lives. We are now entering the “Era of the Cell,” a time in history during which medical and scientific innovations have spurred growth far beyond ever imagined by our ancestors. For the first time, we are not only building machines to enhance our lives but engineering living organisms to assist our futures. From the biological origins of evolution to the invention of the compound microscope by a Dutch lens maker in the 17th century, to new research that reveals surprising links between our microbiome and our moods and behavior, and surprising stories of the cellular world from the deepest oceans, wildest jungles, and outer reaches of our solar system, Miller introduces readers to a greater understanding of our impact on the planet and the world’s reciprocal impact on each of us. By exploring the extent of our deeply integrated cellular world, Bioverse provides profound insights about ourselves, our health and well-being, our social systems, and our permanent relationship to the planet and the cosmos.

How to grow your own green business from the ground up.

It has a plan . . . Leon is stuck in England. Grace is on her way to New Zealand and Freya to the 'New United States' in Cuba. The virus has assimilated all of humanity except for these three communities and now it is prepared to talk with them. How they each choose to respond to the virus, will ultimately decide their fate in Plague World, the apocalyptic finale to the Remade trilogy from bestselling author of the TimeRiders series, Alex Scarrow.