The Secret Of Life

Winner of both the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick Awards, Paul McAuley has emerged as one of the most exciting new talents in science fiction. Now he enters the twenty-first century with a vivid and prescient novel in which science, politics, greed, and terrorism compete for nothing less than The Secret of Life. 2026: A strange fungus-like organism is growing in the Pacific Ocean, threatening Earth's entire food chain. Christened the slick, this bizarre life form contains alien DNA that may have come from the planet Mars. Dr. Mariella Anders is recruited by NASA to join an urgent mission to the Red Planet to search for life beneath Mars' polar icecap--and perhaps uncover the secret of the slick. But who can she trust to safeguard one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history?