Böcker av Bob Springett

Generations have passed and there is still no sign of the Creators. Radio telescopes have provided no hints. Meanwhile rocketry has improved and there is now the technical feasibility of going out into deep space themselves. Further development in theoretical physics has also opened up the possibility of time travel, but this takes enormous energy and would destroy any life within a few light-hours, a radius the size of their Solar System. Even if the time travel option of going back to the First Parents is adopted, that will still require a deep-space capability as one of the steps.Eventually the option of sliding back in time to meet the Creators is vetoed for political reasons. Instead, a generation starship is sent on a journey towards the most likely nearby star, a journey that will take longer than any of the crew expect to live. Their mission is to find the Creators and the descendants of the original crew are to report back to the home planet.The mission finds Earth more than a thousand years after the runaway Greenhouse Effect has destroyed civilisation, and humans have been reduced back to migratory herding in northern Siberia. The Argo decides to slide back in time to prevent this disaster, but learns that this can't be done. Instead, they discover the Creators themselves were an engineered species. They slide back even further, only todiscover that they themselves created the Creators.

The mission is complete, and now the Argo starts the journey back to report their activities and findings. What they are taking back is nothing like what was expected at the outset. On the way back, they leave some of their own crew on an abandoned human colony on Mars.As the Argo arrives in the Home System they receive a message from a mysterious vessel, apparently alien, warning them to be careful about how they approach their home planet. The warnings are proved right. The home government, appalled by their findings and fearful of civil unrest at news so radically unexpected, launches a probe to destroy their vessel and blame it on a meteor impact during the return. This probe is to continue back in time to destroy the Mars colony as well. The aliens then take action to inform the population of the Argo's achievements in a way that minimises disruption, and the Argo is eventually welcomed home after a peaceful revolution in quasi-religious attitudes. Eventually they discover the alien spaceship are the descendants of Mars Colony. They go back in time to destroy the probe sent to destroy the Mars colony, and meet the Creators. By this time, Creator technology is well behind what the Martians have achieved.

As the Earth collapses under the impact of Climate Change in the 22nd Century, a desperation mission plants a seed population of four pairs of genetically-modified humans on a nearby exoplanet which is given the name 'Erde'. (The ship is from the European Union and German is their working language).Over the centuries these First Parents give rise to increasingly sophisticated societies, each different but all matriarchal. Eventually they meet and work out a modus vivendi. Not always peacefully. One outcome is a semi-religious Zen-like philosophy 'The Way of the Hidden One', in which a True Man is one who has total self-control and dedicates himself to service. Two main schools arise, one emphasising a True Man's duty to his woman (sort of like an inverted 'submit to your husband in all things') and the other placing weight on being of value to the wider community.Time passes and their level of science and technology increases. Then they discover a shocking fact. All the ancient legends about their First Parents being the work of the mysterious Creators are found to have a scientific basis! The translation of the various textbooks found abandoned also provides an advance of a century or more in theoretical physics. Just imagine how much more could the Creators teach us now, after another thousand years of progress? It becomes a planet-wide quest to find these Creators. This spurs technologies to develop radio-telescopes and to travel through deep space and even time, but at a cost that demands a whole-of-planet effort. The three autonomous governments on the planet, one on each main continent corresponding to the successful three First Parents, start to co-operate. The beginnings of a Federation are set in train.The promises to the First Parents that their children will travel among the stars is now on the point of fulfilment!