Here is multiple-award winning author David Brin's most important, most ambitious, and most universal novel to date—a blockbuster epic that transcends his already distinguished body of work in scope and importance. A microscopic black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core, threatening to destroy the entire planet within two years. Some scientists are frantically searching for ways to prevent the disaster. But others argue that the way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the evolutionary clock rewind and start over again. Earth  is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, a kaleidoscopic novel peopled with extraordinary characters and challenging new visions of an incredibly real future: global computer networks that put limitless information at everyone's fingertips, and environment ravaged by the greenhouse effect, a quiet revolution by the politically powerful elderly. More than a compelling, masterfully told story, Earth  is a profound testament about our responsibility to our planet—a message so stirring, it reaches out from the pages to embrace and inspire us all. Praise for Earth “The Moby Dick  of the whole Earth movement.” — Locus “A powerful, cautionary tale.” — San Francisco Chronicle “The  Moby Dick  of the whole Earth movement.” — Locus “A powerful, cautionary tale.” — San Francisco Chronicle David Brin  is a scientist and the bestselling author of  Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, The Practice Effect, The Postman, Heart of the Comet  (with Gregory Benford),  Earth, Glory Season, Brightness Reef,  and  Infinity's Shore,  as well as the short-story collections  The River of Time  and  Otherness.  He has a doctorate in astrophysics and has been a NASA consultant and a physics professor. PART I   PLANET   First came a supernova, dazzling the universe in brief, spendthrift glory before ebbing into twisty, multispectral clouds of new-forged atoms. Swirling eddies spiraled until one of them ignited—a newborn star.   The virgin sun wore whirling skirts of dust and electricity. Gas and rocks and bits of this and that fell into those pleats, gathering in dim lumps … planets …   One tiny worldlet circled at a middle distance. It had a modest set of properties:   mass—barely enough to draw in a passing asteroid or two;   moons—one, the remnant of a savage collision, but big enough to tug deep tides;   spin—to set winds churning through a fuming atmosphere;   density—a brew that mixed and separated, producing an unpromising surface slag;   temperature—heat was the planet’s only voice, a weak one, swamped by the blaring sun. Anyway, what can a planet tell the universe, in a reedy cry of infrared? “This exists,” it repeated, over and over. “This is a condensed stone, radiating at about three hundred degrees, insignificant on the scale of stars.   “This speck, a mote, exists.”   A simple statement to an indifferent cosmos—the signature of a rocky world, tainted by salty, smoke-blown puddles.   But then something new stirred in those puddles. It was a triviality—a mere discoloration here and there. But from that moment the voice changed. Subtly, shifting in timbre, still faint and indistinct, it nevertheless seemed now to say,   “I … am …”   • CORE   An angry deity glowered at Alex. Slanting sunshine cast shadows across the incised cheeks and outthrust tongue of Great Tu, Maori god of war.   A dyspeptic idol, Alex thought, contemplating the carved figure. I’d feel the same if I were stuck up there, decorating a billionaire’s office wall.   It occurred to Alex that Great Tu’s wooden nose resembled the gnomon of a sundial. Its shadow kept time, creeping to the measured ticking of a twentieth century grandfather clock in the corner. The silhouette stretched slowly, amorously, toward a sparkling amethyst geode—yet another of George Hutton’s many geological treasures. Alex made a wager with himself, that the shadow wouldn’t reach its goal before the sinking sun was cut off by the western hills.   And at this rate, neither would George Hutton. Where the devil is the man? Why did he agree to this meeting, if he didn’t plan on bloody showing up?   Alex checked his watch again, even though he knew the time. He caught himself nervously tapping one shoe against the nearby table leg, and stopped doing it.   What have Jen and Stan always told you? “Try to learn patience, Alex.”   It wasn’t his best-known virtue. But then, he’d learned a lot the last few months. Remarkable how it focused your mind, when you guarded a secret that might mean the end of the world.   He glanced toward his friend and former mentor, Stan Goldman, who had set up this appointment with the chairman of Tangoparu Ltd. Apparently unperturbed by his employer’s tardiness, the slender, aging theoretician was immersed in the latest issue of Physical Review.   No hope for distraction there. Alex sighed and let his eyes rove George Hutton’s office on