Subtitled “A Mobile Utopia”, this pioneering novel about the meaning of space habitats for human history presents spacefaring as no book has ever done. George Zebrowski’s Macrolife is a utopia like no other, presenting a dynamic civilization that transcends the failures of our history.

Epic in scope, Macrolife opens in the year 2021. The Bulero family owns one of Earth’s richest corporations. As the Buleros gather for a reunion at the family mansion, an industrial accident plunges the corporation into a crisis, which eventually brings the world around them to the brink of disaster. Vilified, the Buleros flee to a space colony where young Richard Bulero gradually realizes that the only hope for humanity lies in macrolife–mobile, self-reproducing space habitats.

A millennium later, these mobile communities have left our sunspace and multiplied. Conflicts with natural planets arise. John Bulero, a cloned descendant of the twenty-first century Bulero clan, falls in love with a woman from a natural world and experiences the harshness of her way of life. He rediscovers his roots when his mobile returns to the solar system, and a tense confrontation of three civilizations takes place.

One hundred billion years later, macrolife, now as numerous as the stars, faces the impending death of nature. Regaining his individuality by falling away from a highly evolved macrolife, a strangely changed John Bulero struggles to see beyond a collapse of the universe into a giant black hole.

Inspired by the possibilities of space settlements, projections of biology and cosmology, and basic human longings, Macrolife is a visionary speculation on the long-term future of human and natural history. Filled with haunting images and memorable characters, this is a vivid and brilliant work.

Easton Press published Macrolife in its “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” series.

In the sequel to Macrolife, Cave of Stars , Old Earth is gone. Humanity has been scattered to the stars. Some left their dying planet in spaceship arks, in search of new worlds to inhabit. Others, nanoengineered for near-immortality, explore the far reaches of interstellar space in gargantuan macrolife mobiles.

An earthlike human society endures on the environmentally volatile planet of Tau Ceti IV–a rigid community of the faithful that has declared evil the science that caused the homeworld’s destruction. The Church is the absolute power here; obedience and belief the rule. But His Holiness Peter III, the New Vatican’s most powerful figure, himself harbors doubts, engendered by his love for his unacknowledged and illegitimate rebel daughter Josepha. And suddenly there is another assault on his tottering faith–and on the sacred tradtitions he has devoted his life to uphold. For an emissary, Voss Rhazes, has arrived from one of old Earth’s journeying mobiles–the first off-planet human visitor ever to Tau Ceti–bearing remarkable hated technology that could shred the fragile emotional fabric of a family…and bring devastating chaos to their world.

Zebrowski’s works have been translated into eight languages; his short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Brute Orbits, an uncompromising novel about a future penal system, was honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999.

Science fiction writer Greg Bear calls George Zebrowski “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration.”  Zebrowski has published more than seventy works of short fiction and more than a hundred and forty articles and essays. His best known novel is Macrolife which Arthur C. Clarke described as “a worthy successor to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker.” Library Journal chose Macrolife as one of the one hundred best science fiction novels, and The Easton Press included it in its “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” series. Macrolife and a related novel, Cave of Stars, are available on E-Reads along with a number of other Zebrowski masterpieces.

Brute Orbits, an uncompromising novel about the future of the penal system, was praised by reviewers for its characters, originality, and thought. Paul Di Filippo, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, said that “Zebrowski never ceases to invest his individual characters with three-dimensional roundness…Startling, sobering, provocative”, while Publishers Weekly called this novel “boldly speculative.” The book was also honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999.

It is the twenty-first century. Convicts are sentenced to asteroids that move in ever-widening solar orbits, timed to return when their terms run out. But a few ambitious administrators discover that small “errors” in velocity can rid them of selected groups altogether: the hardcore violent, the mentally defective, and especially the political dissidents. Enduring the black vise of interstellar space-time, these human rejects–men and women mixed together–create their own Darwinian societies, struggling to survive.

Back on Earth, a handful of sympathetic and curious scientists have not forgotten these lost citizens. When a technological breakthrough makes it possible to overtake these scattered asteroids, a courageous team sets out to go where none has willingly gone before. What they discover in these “brute orbits” is both provocative and moving–a startling vision of humanity you will never forget.

“A brilliant and dramatic philosophical reflection on the nature of society, technology . . . and humanity itself. Zebrowski is a deep thinker who writes about the big questions’ in the grand tradition of Wells, Stapledon, and Clarke.”
– Jack M. Dann, award-winning author of The Silent and The Memory Cathedral

See George Zebrowski’s author page for other great titles.

Greg Bear calls George Zebrowski “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration.” Zebrowski has published more than seventy works of short fiction and more than a hundred and forty articles and essays in every major fantasy and science fiction publication. E-Reads carries a number of his books, and we’re happy to say that some of his most visionary works are in production. We’ll be announcing them soon. Until we do, The Omega Point Trilogy will keep you well absorbed.

6599 A.D. The war between the Earth Federation and the Herculean Empire has been over for more than three centuries. The planet in the Hercules Globular Cluster is a cinder; the few descendants of the surviving Empire live half a galaxy away in what seems to be a religious commune. But on an unnamed planet deep within the Hercules Cluster, two survivors, father and son, gather their resources and plan a reign of terror against Federation worlds.

Rising to one of the most unusual climaxes in recent fantastic literature, this novel of chase and vengeance depicts a colorful, poetic future struggling to overcome its past. Filled with striking twists and vivid ideas, Omega Point Trilogy is space adventure at its most modern.

When you finish it, check out Sunspacers Trilogy. Then watch this space for news of E-Reads Zebrowski releases.

RC

George Zebrowski’s vision extends to the farthest reaches of the known universe, and maybe beyond that. His work has garnered high praise from peers who reside on the Olympus of today’s science fiction world. Greg Bear calls him “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration.” And Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master James Gunn wrote, “Young people, all of us, need dreams to achieve the human potential. The kinds of habitats George Zebrowski describes may one day be the natural home of the human race and the kind of questing, hardworking young people he portrays may build them, if they have dreams to shape them around.”

Of Zebrowski’s Sunspacers Trilogy, Michael Bishop says, “In this thoughtful novel George Zebrowski has created a convincing future society that spans our entire solar system. Its evocation of the challenge and excitement of building an interdependent community of space habitats from hollowed-out asteroids is impressive, and I can easily imagine delighted young readers emerging from the story determined to make their lives count for something…Good science and an optimistic but far from simple-minded glimpse of a tomorrow that we might reasonably try to bring about.”

– Richard Curtis