About Synthetic Eden:
When Earth falls to a devastating fungal plague, geneticist Dr. Samara Makinde joins humanity’s desperate bid for survival on DaVinci, a distant exoplanet meant to be their fresh start. But DaVinci has a secret: it harbors spores that wipe out every pregnancy, threatening to erase the colony before the next generation is born.
Samara believes she can save them with gene therapy, reengineering human DNA to live in harmony with the alien fungus. But psychologist Dr. Ayesha Basu sees only the shadow of her family’s past genetic “enhancements” that led to madness, and vows to stop Samara at any cost.
Defying the colony’s laws, Samara risks everything to secretly engineer her own child. Her daughter, Phoebe, should be a miracle. Instead, she becomes a spark for paranoia and revolt. When the ruins of DaVinci’s first settlement reveal a mass grave of genetically altered children, fear turns to fury, and the colony fractures into zealots and outcasts.
As Samara fights to protect Phoebe from those who would destroy her, a darker truth emerges: the first settlers aren’t entirely gone. Something twisted survived in the forests beyond the colony, watching … and waiting.
Now Samara must navigate betrayal, fanaticism, and an alien threat older than humanity’s second chance. If she fails, Phoebe won’t just be the last child of DaVinci; she’ll be the last child of mankind.
Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves meets Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary—with a haunting edge of Raised by Wolves.
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Author Bio:
Sean Platt has always been an entrepreneur, but stories were the business he was born to build.
When his wife bought him a laptop for his birthday in 2007, he dropped everything to write fiction.
After a short stint as creative director at a marketing agency — where he learned the kind of copywriting that could turn cliffhangers into an art — Sean wrote hundreds of novels (including international bestsellers), penned Hollywood scripts, and founded Sterling & Stone, an IP incubator where more than two dozen writers turn wild ideas into world-changing stories.
Originally from Long Beach, California, Sean now lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Cindy, and their dog, Fisher — both of whom remind him that real life makes the best stories.