Best Selling Books by David Brin

One of the oldest notions in fantasy is a hero''s confrontation with the supernatural. Humans are forever pondering some way to change the hand they''re dealt. From Gilgamesh and Odysseus to Faust and Daniel Webster, fascinating characters have tried arguing with fate or divine will... or the Devil. Here, with a hyper-modernist and rather science-fictional take on that theme, comes author and scientist David Brin, ready to share some fun with you, along with fresh takes on Genesis and Babel, destiny and randomness, reshuffling the deck and challenging the Grand Order of Things.

Interstellar kidnapping... or opportunity? A thousand teens and their teachers were stunned when the alien Garubis yanked Twenty-Nine Palms High School right out of California''s Mojave desert, plopping it into a jungle many light years away. It was supposed to be a "gift"-a new settlement for humanity. But tell that to Mark, Alexandra, Barry and Sophie when strange parasites attack... and they don''t know what to eat... and the island of Earth-buildings runs out of water! Some claim to have spotted strange tool-users in the forest. Are the Garubis back? Or is this some other possible alien menace? Whatever the skyjacked teenagers and their small number of adult companions face, they will need guts, ingenuity, hard work... and luck! But maybe the worst threat will come from the former students themselves. From basic human nature.

Do you ever get that sense of deja vu ... a feeling that you''ve experienced something before? As computers get more and more complex, they are able to replicate the nature of reality in ever finer detail. How would we recognize if we were living in a computer simulation? a highly accurate world of virtual reality? Perhaps this isn''t your first time ...