Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of the incredible breakthrough of mapping the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome. This achievement raises questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, longevity, and free will.
By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.
This book will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.
Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind.
But Lilith and all humanity must now share the world with uncanny, unimaginably alien creatures: their own children.
This is their story, a thrilling, epic adventure of man's struggle to survive after Earth's destruction, and a provocative meditation on what it means to be human.
By the end of the 30th century, humanity has the capability to travel the universe, to journey beyond Earth and beyond the confines of the vulnerable human frame.
The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural, and physical development divide into three groups: fleshers — true Homo sapiens; Gleisner robots — embodying human minds within machines that interact with the physical world; and polises — supercomputers teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis.
Diaspora is the story of Yatima — a polis being created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed — and of humankind. An astrophysical accident spurs the thousandfold cloning of the polises, leading to the discovery of an alien race and a kink in time that ensures humanity — in whatever form it takes — will never again be threatened by acts of God.
The eagerly awaited finale of a modern SF classic—May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, which began with Jack the Bodiless and continued with Diamond Mask. The mystery involving Jack the Bodiless, the metaphysically talented Dorothea, and Fury, the insane metaphysic creature determined to become sole ruler over all humankind, explodes anew.
By the mid-twenty-first century, humanity is beginning to enjoy membership in the Galactic Milieu. Human colonies are thriving on numerous planets, life on Earth is peaceful and prosperous, and as more humans are being born with metapsychic abilities, it will not be long before these gifted minds at last achieve total Unity.
But xenophobia is deeply rooted in the human soul. A growing corps of rebels plots to keep the people of Earth forever separate, led by a man obsessed with human superiority: Marc Remillard. Marc's goal is nothing less than the elevation of human metapsychics above all others, by way of artificial enhancement of mental faculties. His methods are unpalatable, his goal horrific.
And so Marc and his coconspirators continue their work in secret. Only the very Unity he fears and abhors can foil Marc's plans. And only his brother, Jack the Bodiless, and the young woman called Diamond Mask can hope to lead the metaconcert to destroy Marc, Unify humanity, and pave the way for the Golden Age of the Galactic Milieu to begin.
In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems. And throughout inhabited space, the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp.
But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet, a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race which inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it "The Reality Dysfunction." It is the nightmare which has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.
In this powerful and elegant story set in a future Earth very different from our own, a new kind of human has evolved to challenge the dominion of Homo sapiens. This new breed is stronger, smarter, and far more beautiful than their parent race, and are endowed with psychic as well as physical gifts. They are destined to supplant humanity as we know it, but humanity won't die without a struggle.
Here at last in a single volume are all three of Constantine's Wraeththu trilogy: The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate, and The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire.
Food of the Gods is an exploration of humans' symbiotic relationships with plants and chemicals. It presents information on prehistoric partnership societies and the roles of spices and spirits in the rise of dominator societies. The book delves into the politics of tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, and alcohol.
Why, as a species, are humans so fascinated by altered states of consciousness? Can altered states reveal something to us about our origins and our place in nature? In Food of the Gods, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna’s research on man’s ancient relationship with chemicals opens a doorway to the divine, and perhaps a solution for saving our troubled world.
McKenna provides a revisionist look at the historical role of drugs in the East and the West, from ancient spice, sugar, and rum trades to marijuana, cocaine, synthetics, and even television—illustrating the human desire for the “food of the gods” and the powerful potential to replace abuse of illegal drugs with a shamanic understanding, insistence on community, reverence for nature, and increased self-awareness.