FEATURED AUTHOR - After graduating from Duke University, Glen Dawson owned and operated a flexible packaging manufacturing plant for 23 years. Then, he sold the factory and went back to school to get his Master's degree in biostatistics from Boston University. When he moved to North Carolina, he opened an after-school learning academy for advanced math students in grades 2 through 12. After growing the academy from 30 to 430 students, he sold it to Art of Problem Solving. Since retiring from Art of Problem…
Read more
Recent comments: User reviews
Human civilization is scattered across planets which have been scouted and colonized. No other life found so far. Scouts contract to scan new planets in their single small ships and report back on the planetary environment and resources.
Overall government is divided into 2 main parts; there is the "Regency" and the "Authority". The former is in titular control, but really delegates all the authority and money to councils which can be very powerful political entities. The "Authority" is the military arm. Plenty of infighting goes on.
The protagonist is a scout named Rath Scampion who is an unlucky and unhappy guy. Not terribly likable either, but you can identify with him well enough. He has just scouted a planet called Fenrir and found nothing unusual. There good deposits of precious stones. He fills his hold and returns to buy a freighter and bring back more. This is against the law and he is caught.
The problem is that between his initial scout survey and his return, a scientific council has decided to seed Fenrir in secret with cloned life for study and philosophical comfort to humans who feel alone in the universe and will believe that new alien lifeforms have been discovered .
Rath knows the planet was lifeless on his initial scan and is now a liability. He must be convinced his scans were wrong.
What happens with the the political infighting and decisions that follow as the "secret" experiment goes wrong? The fate of Rath Scampion and the created Fenrites is the kind of mess that autocratic politics and it's subservient science can create when it tries to control social flow and experiment outside of law and good sense.
Read how it has changed him after many years and affected the way in which he greets his rescuers. Nice, and even touching, story.
Somewhat predictable outcome.
Inhabiting the creatures of earth is a revelation. It makes the reader appreciate how good we have it here. But the minds of earth dwellers can't be easily controlled unless they are insane....Is this a good or bad place for the alien species? It takes a bit of psychoanalysis to find out. Good story.