Moonkind (ePub)

In another Century and a half, the world, as we know it, will be greatly changed. This book foresees changes that most of us could scarcely dream of. It imagines a world where current international tensions have mostly dissolved, where continental solidarity has supplanted most national boundaries, and where global warming has actually abated. It is a time when space exploration is of prime importance and when robotically operated stations exist on our own Moon and on Mars and Venus.But several traditional earthly problems have not been resolved. One of these is the periodic emergence of infectious diseases that (by means of insidious mutations) have evaded all modern efforts to prevent or control them. Enter Q-strain, an astoundingly pernicious mutation of Ebola virus which, over the period of a few years, totally wipes out all humans on the Earth. There is time, however, in the interim, to transport the very earliest stage (blastocysts) of the clones from many very accomplished humans to the robotic station on the Moon. (These clones had been acquired years before the epidemic and stored in suspended animation in liquid nitrogen).Roughly a century later, when the "e;all clear"e; for absence of the Ebola Q-strain mutant on the Earth has been biologically verified, these "e;celebrity clones"e; are given birth on the Moon and raised to adulthood by robotic guides and caretakers. The story then centers on the development of fourteen spirited "e;celebrity clones"e; who must find ways to realistically coexist, and then to ultimately return a human presence to our now Ebola-free blue planet. This sounds like quite a challenge, and in fact, that's just what it is.