O Master Caliban!

A Science-Fictional Tempest!

The classic novel of man against machine by Canada’s greatest science fiction writer.

It’s all-out combat, Man and Mutant vs. Machine in a gigantic battle for survival and control of GalFed’s trash planet, Barrazan Five, also known as Dahlgren’s World. Years ago, geneticist Dahlgren arrived on the planet with 100 humans and 1,000 ergs.  Then the robot-ergs, their intelligence expanded by Dahlgren’s experiments, rebelled and slaughtered their masters. Now it’s a war for possession of Dahlgren’s World, a brutally hot, highly radioactive and barely habitable jungle in space. On one side of the conflict are the ergs, who have evolved into sophisticated artificial intelligences.  They are opposed by the mutants, including a talking goat, a mothering gibbon, and a four-armed youth. The mutants are allied with the remaining humans, including Shirvanian, a crybaby boy prodigy who can communicate telepathically with machines and may be man’s last hope for regaining control of the planet.

And then there is the creator, Dahlgren himself ... and a game of chess unlike any other, with the fate of a planet and a people as the stakes.

DAHLGREN MEETS ERG-DAHLGREN

He was brought into a small room in which there was a screen with a chair in front of it. They locked him in and he sat down.

The screen flickered ...

“Android robot,” Dahlgren murmured, feeling fear.

The body had two arms, five fingers on each. It was boned in gears and spindles, muscled in wires and flexes.

Above the neck it seemed to be flesh: it had eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, beard. Dahlgren’s.

The erg-android blinked, straight into Dahlgren’s eyes, blue for blue, pulled back the pink lip corners into the beard, into Dahlgren’s rare smile, and raised a steel-tendoned arm, palm outward.

“Hello, Dahlgren Zero,” it said. “I am Dahlgren One.”