Spanning millions of years and the breadth of the universe, The Sigil Trilogy is an epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, belief, and love.From Nature Editor Henry Gee comes a story of breathtaking scope and beloved characters. Spanning millions of years and the breadth of the universe, The Sigil Trilogy is an epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, belief, and love.The Universe is dying from within. No one knows how to save it, so the Elders give a young Drover a last ditch chance to stop the rot. If only she knew where to begin.Unaware of the threat to the universe, Ruxhana Fengen Kraa, Admiral of the 17th Rigel Fleet, is about to be cashiered for a stupendous tactical error. But Special Ops has an important and most bizarre job for him.Eons away in time, Jack Corstophine is an archaeologist on Earth with an intuition about the land that he can't put into words—until the beautiful and brilliant Jadis Markham comes into his life. Together, they discover that the landscape of Europe is far from natural. The Earth bears the scars of an ancient civilization that goes back millions of years — and has terrible implications for the future of mankind.The Sigil Trilogy traces the lives of compelling characters — people... entities... and... species... — through time and space. It's magnificent in background, beautifully written, and with the most memorable characters. The Sigil Trilogy is spellbinding, funny, thoughtful, and touching all at the same time. Complete with complex mysteries, massive battles, romance, hot aliens, steampunk cities, good scotch, armageddon, it's all here — you won't be able to put it down.Siege of Stars is the first volume of The Sigil Trilogy, Henry Gee's incredible opus.The second and third volumes, SCOURGE OF STARS and RAGE OF STARS, are all now available as individual volumes as well as in an collected, omnibus edition, all in both ebook and print — see the sidebar for links.Praise for THE SIGIL TRILOGY: "Henry Gee stakes his claim to excellence with these startling, beautifully written tales of cosmic adventure. Brisk, funny, triumphant--and utterly compelling." —Greg Bear, award-winning author of Darwin's Radio "Great stuff. Touches of Douglas Adams, Barrington Bayley, David Britton and Steve Aylett only emphasise the splendid originality of this book. Henry Gee is thoughtful, funny, original. And pretty thoroughly mind-expanding in the tradition of Wells, David Lindsay, Stapledon and Clarke. In fact everything you yearn to find in a very good contemporary SF novel. Really enjoyed it!" —SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock "Coming to a science fiction novel by Henry Gee I was expecting a work knowledgeable about the world and all its ways, but who would have guessed it would also reveal Henry to be a visionary space voyager of the first order? The Sigil is in the grand tradition of Stapledonian space opera, and provides not only an explanation for why this universe is the way it is, but gives us the many vivid wild adventures on the part of some (very appealing) conscious characters acting to make it that way. Awesome stuff, and a true pleasure to read page by page." —Kim Stanley Robinson, award-winning author of Red Mars "Fast-moving, insanely inventive science fiction in the grand manner—seldom has the fate of the galaxy been handled on such a large scale. Gee draws on archeology, geology, physics, and biology to create a rich tapestry with surprises woven into every thread." —Nancy Kress, award-winning author of Beggars in SpainDr. Henry Gee is senior editor at the renowned science journal Nature and editor of the award-winning Nature Futures science fiction short story series. He has written over a dozen books, including The Science of Middle Earth and A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. He lists his recreations as playing blues organ, supporting Norwich City FC and falling asleep. His blog 'The End Of The Pier Show' continues to delight its three regular readers. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, England, with his family and numerous pets.

This book brings together 97 short stories that seek to answer the question 'what will the future look like?' First published in the leading science journal Nature, these 900-word tales come from scientists, journalists and many of the most famous SF writers in the world.Initially published in book form as Futures from Nature, this is the first time this collection has been available as an eBook. A unique blend of satires, vignettes, fictional book reviews, science articles and journalism, Nature Futures offers an eclectic mix of ideas and attitudes about the future.With contributions from: Arthur C. Clarke; Bruce Sterling; Charles Stross; Cory Doctorow; Greg Bear; Gregory Benford; Oliver Morton; Ian Macleod; Rudy Rucker; Greg Egan; Stephan Baxter; Frederik Pohl; Vernor Vinge; Nancy Kress, Michael Moorcock, Vonda N. McIntyre; Kim Stanley Robinson; John M. Ford; and 79 more.

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe. Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.