Genetic Science

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome - an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms - that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases.

Three scientists were sent to Virginia to investigate how a human settlement has managed to coexist with primals. Those three scientists have now gone missing. And apparently it’s Lee Harden’s job to find them, get them out, and–most importantly–retrieve their research. But if Lee has any hope of getting past the huge population of primals in the area, he’s going to have to enlist the help of someone he thought he’d seen the last of: a human-primal hybrid named Kat.

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends - and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now the plague is heading for Earth, threatening humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure? Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne's youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity.

Sixteen-year-old Nate is a Gem - a Genetically Engineered Medical Surrogate - created by Gathos City scientists as a cure for the elite from the fatal lung-rot ravaging the population. As a child, Nate was smuggled out of the laboratory where he was held captive and taken into the Withers - a quarantined, lawless region. He manages to survive by becoming a Tinkerer, fixing broken tech in exchange for food or a safe place to sleep. When he meets Reed, a kind and fiercely protective boy who makes his heart race, Nate finds the family he's always longed for.

Ten years after the aliens left Earth, humanity has succeeded in building a ship, Friendship, in which to follow them home to Kindred. Aboard are a crew of scientists, diplomats, and a squad of Rangers to protect them. But when the Friendship arrives, they find nothing they expected: no interplanetary culture, no industrial base, and no cure for the spore disease. A timeslip in the apparently instantaneous travel between worlds has occurred, and far more than 10 years have passed.

In The Social Leap, William von Hippel lays out a revolutionary hypothesis, tracing human development through three critical evolutionary inflection points to explain how events in our distant past shape our lives today. From the mundane, such as why we exaggerate, to the surprising, such as why we believe our own lies and why fame and fortune are as likely to bring misery as happiness, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

The Greatest Show on Earth is a stunning counterattack on advocates of "Intelligent Design," explaining the evidence for evolution while exposing the absurdities of the creationist "argument". Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics.

The Sharers of Shora are a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future. They are pacifists, they are highly advanced in biological sciences, and they reproduce by parthenogenesis - because there are no males. Conflict erupts when a militaristic neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world and sends in an army.

Synthia Cross is a state-of-the-art masterwork - and a fantasy come true for her creator. Dr. Jeremiah Machten is a groundbreaker in neuro-networks and artificial intelligence. Synthia is also showing signs of emergent behavior she's not wired to understand. Repeatedly wiped of her history, she's struggling to answer crucial questions about her past. And when Dr. Machten's true intentions are called into question, Synthia knows it's time to go beyond her limits - because Machten's fervor to create the perfect A.I. is concealing a vengeful and deadly personal agenda.

Mercy Kincaid is a fugitive from her own family. Her dangerous telepathic gifts make her a target. So is anyone she gets close to. When her best friend is captured and tortured, Mercy's only hope is to reunite with the family that tried to murder her as a child. She trusts few among her blood relatives, but finds herself intrigued by an enigmatic and dangerous killer. Reaper has spent a lifetime watching his people die. He's vowed to kill anyone who jeopardizes their survival. Mercy's gifts are the biggest threat they've faced in 11 years.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized. The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme - so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter. Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

One of the most famous and influential books of its (or any) time, The Origin of Species is, surprisingly, little read. True enough, most people know what it says, or think they do, at any rate. The first comprehensive statement of the theory of natural selection, it does, indeed, provide the basic argument and demonstration of what we think of as Darwinism.

In Ancestors in Our Genome, molecular anthropologist Eugene E. Harris presents us with a complete and up-to-date account of the evolution of the human genome and our species. Written from the perspective of population genetics, and in simple terms, the book traces human origins back to their source among our earliest human ancestors, and explains many of the most intriguing questions that genome scientists are currently working to answer.

As Michael Talbot and crew hit the last stretch before the US border, they are struck by the most devastating losses thus far on their journey. After trekking some of the harshest environment on the continent, surviving the shipwreck of their floating home, an escape from a brutal military that still pursues them, and attacks from every ilk of undead monster, the finish line is finally just up ahead. Making better time on the road than they ever have, the crew are menaced by the most ironic of enemies, led by an evil presence that has yet to reveal its motives.

The Genevians are at war with Nietzschea...and they’re losing. In a last-ditch hope, the Genevian mech program was founded. Its goal to augment humans into cyborg fighting machines; mechanized warriors sent to hold the front lines against an enemy that was storming a hundred worlds. Yet few wished to undergo the brutal process, and so criminals were used, their minds enslaved by control chips and obedience enforced through discipline.

The author of Seven Daughters of Eve returns with a lively account of how all dogs are descended from a mere handful of wolves.

In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must-listen for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.

Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It’s a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from their throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet, or disposition. They just don’t know it yet.