title: The Secret of Life
author:  Paul J. McAuley 
description: Having completed the Books of Confluence, his much-praised trilogy set in the distant future, Clarke and Dick awards winner McAuley (Shrine of Stars) here tries his hand at a near-future, hard-science thriller. The year is 2026, and the world is still recovering from the Firstborn Crisis, a virus that threatened humanity's continued existence until it was stopped by a team led by the brilliant biologist Dr. Mariella Anders. Now, however, a new plague has appeared a strange growth in the waters of the Pacific containing genetic material that apparently originated on Mars. With two other crack scientists, Mariella is sent to the red planet, where she soon discovers that one of her colleagues, an employee of Cytex, the genetic engineering company that's partially funding the mission, knows considerably more about what's going on than she does and has motives that are far from altruistic. Indeed, it eventually becomes clear that a number of private companies, governments and radical green organizations all want a piece of the strange Martian lifeform called the Chi. The author's main targets are corporate greed and left-wing Luddism, both of which he sees as antithetical to good science. Mariella, a misfit who, despite her fame, lives in a trailer in the Arizona desert and has a passion for both piercings and rough sex, is a thorny but believable protagonist. Although not quite the equal of his Confluence novels, McAuley's latest should appeal to fans of thoughtful hard-science fiction.
zlib_text: Paul McAuley - The Secret of Life
  
   **THE SECRET OF LIFE**
  
  _**Paul McAuley**_
  
  <>NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that
  this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the
  publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment
  for this "stripped book."
  
  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
  novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
  
  THE SECRET OF LIFE Copyright © 2001 by Paul McAuley
  
  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
  thereof, in any form.
  
  Edited by Ellen Datlow
  
  A Tor Book
  
  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
  
  175 Fifth Avenue
  
  New York, NY 10010
  
  www.tor.com
  
  Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
  
  ISBN: 0-765-34193-X
  
  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001027121
  
  First edition: June 2001
  
  First mass market edition: May 2002
  
  Printed in the United States of America
  
  0987654