Books

IN THE YEAR 2154, HENRY VIII, dead for over five centuries, sits on a television stage in San Francisco talking about his life to Robert Delacroix, a real live interviewer. Henry is the first of several fascinating historical characters created from information fed to a mysterious machine called MONTY. Its ability to process the information is not fully understood by the inventors, but the result is an apparently real person who can talk, think, laugh, scream invective, and pound the walls of the cubicle enclosing it. When the cubicle is figuratively up-ended, the world changes, and the story veers in a different direction.

PUSHED TO CHANGE, ONE UNIVERSITY research department finds that they have lived comfortably on the sidelines for too long. Sleepy, almost disenfranchised, and caught unaware, this group is flung into a competitive race to keep a position in their department. Here is the hidden world behind the plants that farmers grow, that you buy, and that ultimately sustain the world. Is traditional science ready to defend itself when asked, Why is your work important? On a small scale, in a small university, in a relatively small town, the question is put to the test.