A few hundred years into the future, a wave of space colonization
follows a disastrous earlier attempt to inhabit nearby extrasolar
planets. It is guided by a new computational method based on massive
data-driven socio-cultural and socio-epidemiological modeling and using
novel biological computers, fed with data on Earth's history of
successes and failures.
Yet, in the newly settled Simpac system, some unexpected and worrying
anomalies begin cropping up, making an urgent expedition to the system
necessary: is it the underlying data, the computations, or is some
unknown entity tampering with the space colonization program? A race
against time ensues as the lives of four strangers begin to converge.
While grounded in the social systems aspect, the author posits that the
future is likely to be characterized by more biology-based tools than
most contemporary science fiction - which most often relies entirely on
non-biological hardware in terms of advanced technologies - predicts.
The result is an entertaining and skillful blend of thriller and SF,
complemented by a nontechnical appendix describing the underlying
science.