New California
About this ebook
When the colony's founder resolves to commit suicide…
Desmond Park lets him succeed.
While the colony's decadent elite schemes to fill the power vacuum and find meaning in their hollow lives, Desmond blazes a new path. Combining evolutionary theory, brain science, and ritual, Desmond forges a new religion that draws the colony's unhappy youth…
…and raises hostile forces against him.
The elite manipulate the colony's politics to marginalize Desmond and his followers.
The corporation that dominates half the settled galaxy deploys intelligent robots and orbital weapons to monitor and destroy them.
And forces within Desmond's movement—and within his own mind—threaten to topple them from within.
Finally, men, women, and artificial intelligences collide in a conflict which could cost Desmond his life.
A conflict which could deny freedom to millions of colonists.
A conflict which could transform the destinies of billions of human beings across the galaxy and on Earth itself.
About the author
Raymund Eich is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose middle American upbringing is a launchpad for journeys to the ends of the universe.
His most popular works are military science fiction series The Confederated Worlds (novels Take the Shilling, Operation Iago, and A Bodyguard of Lies) and the Stone Chalmers series of science fiction espionage adventures (novels The Progress of Mankind, The Greater Glory of God, To All High Emprise Consecrated, and In Public Convocation Assembled).
He has over ten other published book-length works and more than forty published short stories. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Odyssey, Boundary Shock Quarterly, and the anthology Surviving Tomorrow, and has earned honorable mentions and a semi-finalist award in the Writers of the Future contest. His works are available worldwide in ebook, trade paperback, and audiobook editions.
After circling the world by age five, he grew up in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. He earned a B.A. and a Ph.D., both in biochemistry, from Rice University. Though he’s no longer a working scientist, hundreds of papers cite his graduate research.
In addition to his writing career, he works in patent law, won a national quiz bowl championship, is a husband and father, and agrees with Robert Heinlein that specialization is for insects.
He lives in Houston with his wife, son, and daughter. His last name has one syllable and is pronounced “eye-sh.” He can be found online at https://raymundeich.com.
