The third Phaethon Radamanthus vehicle (after The Golden Age [2002] and The Phoenix Exultant [BKL Ap 15 03]) starts with a battle for control of the starship Phoenix Exultant and ranges from the outer planets to the heart of the sun as Phaeton struggles to comprehend what's right and why and to prevent the destruction of the Golden Oecumene and his own near-utopian way of life. Meanwhile, the Golden Oecumene-Silent Oecumene face-off begins a war between the highly logical Sophotechs of the former and the machine minds of the latter, which are equipped to kill other AIs as a result of the refusal of self-aware machines to act as servants only, which makes them also capable of irrational behavior. The machine minds continue in some ways to be the most interesting characters in Wright's series, which is crammed with everything from bizarre high-tech space battles to the mental battles of obscure future philosophies. With this book, the first of Phaethon's trilogies concludes, freeing him to gallivant through the galaxy, spreading the Golden Oecumene.

At the conclusion of the first book, Phaethon of Radamanthus House, was left an exile from his life of power and privilege. Now he embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms, to recover his memory, to regain his place in society and to move that society away from stagnation and toward the stars. And most of all Phaethon's quest is to regain ownership of the magnificent starship, the Phoenix Exultant, the most wonderful ship ever built, and fly her to the stars.

In 1939, John Wright, a four-year-old boy from a deprived but loving Middlesbrough home, was uprooted from his family and evacuated to a large house in North Yorkshire, requisitioned as a nursery school. His story is not unlike any other during the upheaval of wartime, but in this remarkably lucid and detailed set of recollections, a seventry-three-year-old man tells his story of love, loss and life with the delight and fear of a wartime child. His poignant memories of cruelty and hurt are set against a beautiful voyage of discovery as a young boy explores the Yorkshire countryside and comes of age in a unique environment, only to be struck by an unbearable tragedy. A bittersweet tale of innocence and stark realities, Child From Home explores why wartime means so much to our collective memory - and reveals the devastating effect we have on children as we try to protect them from conflict.