The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hybernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship’s three Organic Mental Cores—disembodied human brains that control the vessel’s functions—go insane. An emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: to create an artificial consciousness in the Earthling’s primary computer, which could guide them to their destination . . . or could destroy the human race.
Frank Herbert’s classic novel that begins the epic Pandora Sequence (written with Bill Ransom), which also includes The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.
A sentient Ship with godlike powers (and aspirations) delivers the last survivors of humanity to a horrific, poisonous planet, Pandora—rife with deadly Nerve-Runners, Hooded Dashers, airborne jellyfish, and intelligent kelp. Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Lon Flattery is brought back out of hybernation to witness Ship’s machinations as well as the schemes of human scientists manipulating the genetic structure of humanity. Sequel to Frank Herbert’s Destination: Void, the first book in Herbert & Ransom’s Pandora Sequence.
In The Jesus Incident Herbert and Ransom introduced Ship, an artificial intelligence that believed it was God, abandoning its unworthy human cargo on the all-sea world of Pandora. Now centuries have passed. The descendants of humanity, split into Mermen and Islanders, must reunite … because Pandora’s original owner is returning to life!
Pandora’s humans have been recovering land from its raging seas at an accelerated pace since The Lazarus Effect. The great kelp of the seas, sentient but electronically manipulated by humans, buffers Pandora’s wild currents to restore land and facilitate the booming sea trade. New settlements rise overnight, but children starve in their shadows. An orbiting assembly station is near completion of Project Voidship, which is the hope of many for finding a better world.
Pandora is under the fist of an ambitious clone from hibernation called The Director, who rules with a sadistic security force led by the assassin Spider Nevi. Small resistance groups, like the one led by Twisp Queets and Ben Ozette, have had little effect on his absolute power. The Director controls the transportation of foodstuffs; uprisings are punished with starvation.
The resistance fighters’ main hope is Crista Galli, a woman believed by some to be the child of God. Crista pools her talents with Dwarf MacIntosh, Beatriz Tatoosh, and Rico LaPush to transcend the barriers between the different species and overthrow The Director and the sinister cabal with which he rules.
In waking life, he is a combat vet with a mysterious sleep disorder, confined to a VA hospital bed. When he sleeps, he roams the plains of another world, invading the minds of the people as they dream and forcing them to do his will. They call him . . . Jaguar.
In both worlds, there are those who know the Jaguar’s secret. They are learning to link their minds across the void between worlds, following the dreampaths the Jaguar created—all the way back to where his body lies helpless . . . an easy target for their justice.
In the private laboratory known as ViraVax, Rico Toledo has uncovered a horrifying truth. In this place, run by a mysterious group called the Children of Eden, the worst suspicions of ex-intelligence officer Toledo have been confirmed: his partner has been genetically programmed for assassination—and Toledo may have been altered too.
A vivid and gritty thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, BURN takes today’s genetic research one step into a terrifying future, a “Hot Zone” world gone mad about a man-made contagion that literally leaves no one untouched. It is called GenoVax, and the death it brings is horrifying. It is the most frightening weapon mankind has ever created, and when it is unleashed, the human race will know what it is like to burn. . . . From the author of Jaguar and ViraVax and the coauthor, with Frank Herbert, of The Jesus Incident.
