Of Mycelium and Men

The generational fleet was supposed to land on a new world in eighty years. Eleven planets and four hundred years later, they finally found a home. The only problem is something already lives there, and it's big. Agetha and her husband Daved have lived in zero-G in the fleet their whole short lives. Now they are thrown into turmoil as the fleet lands, surrounded by a vibrant biomass consisting of a single fungal alien organism spanning the entire planet. Together, they must build a new home, brave a dangerous organism, and decide when and if they might raise a family in this new inhospitable landscape. Jane Brighton holds tenuous command over the entire colony and the other administrators who once commanded the ships of the fleet. She and the other gene-modded leaders who have stayed in suspended animation for the four hundred year journey of the fleet find crew who are much different than the ones they started out with on Old Earth. Jane must direct the fragile colony, ever in danger of being overrun by the fast-growing biomass. The generational crew of the ships have their own agendas, but Jane and the other leaders will live many times longer than the colonists. They must balance the growth and survival of the colony with the fleeting lives of those who would build it. But there is something none of the colonists know. The massive organism that spans the planet is not simply a fungal mass, nor even simply a chimerical combination of species that once roamed free on the planet. The biomass has desires and goals, and one of those is to know these strange beings carving out a new home in its midst. Find out how--and whether--the colony can survive in Of Mycelium and Men!