British author and critic Stableford adds a fifth novel to his Emortality series (Inherit the Earth, etc.) with this heavily speculative tale that puts the "science" in science fiction. Expanding on the episode of humanity's first extrasolar colony from The Fountains of Youth (2000), he devises an entire biosystem based on a dual coding genome rather than Earth's sole replicator molecule, DNA. That changes everything, as the colonists learn, from reproductive strategies and lifecycles to the basic taste (mildly unpleasant) of native food. Cultural as well as scientific conflicts afflict the passengers of the colony ship Hope, whose crew members seek to expand their mission to include other stars so that they can declare the colony self-sufficient. Unfrozen from suspended animation, Matthew Fleury, an ecologist and televangelist, must solve both the mystery of a murder and the mystery of life itself down on the planet called Ararat. Weaving the two plot lines together is the suggestion that the murder was committed by intelligent humanoid natives, builders of the abandoned city in which the crime took place. After talking with every faction on ship and planet, Matt travels by boat to the unexplored great plains downriver, and the novel picks up speed as his team adventures among the native flora and the very lively fauna. Despite his reputation as "an arrogant son of a bitch" and an "egomaniac," Matt is ultimately a sympathetic hero, whose intellectual and emotional leaps of faith justify the reader's belief in him.
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