Team Snow 3: VIRIDESCENCE, Adult Science Fiction

Title: VIRIDESCENCE
Genre: Adult Science Fiction
Word Count: 87,000

Is your antagonist hot or cold? Dr. Kerris Jane Knight: Some would say I’m cold, and it’s possible I am. After all, I make the hard choices Grayson is too soft to make. We’ll live fine for some time in the void of space, even if it’s under imperfect circumstances. But I won’t let us relive history and wipe out a sentient native race, just because we need land. The coup will happen. Casualties will occur. We will stop the xenocide. And humanity will survive. Even if the human race doesn’t.

Query:

Dr. Zera Lewin’s research was only meant for a small terraforming program. But an asteroid destroys Earth and kills her family as she watches, helpless. What’s left of humanity is now stranded in space, and her 3D bioprinting project becomes the lynchpin to human survival. The United World Government military has found the perfect planet to terraform—except the planet is already occupied by a civilization of hive-like humanoid aliens.

The military declares war and destroys the layered, homogenous cities so they can use Zera’s work to create a new home for humanity. But not all humans support the massacre. Led by an extreme idealist, protests rise all over the space station. After a suicide bomber threatens Zera’s life, the protesting rebels kidnap her. The rebels demand she create a genetic key to bioprint the aliens and save the beings from extinction but Zera fears disobeying humanity’s heavy-handed government.

When the protests breed a rebellion, Zera finds herself drawn to their cause. Her new friends plan a coup, but the insurgence against the xenocidal military could mean the destruction of the entire space station. Now Zera needs to find a way to save her newfound companions and the aliens, while ensuring the word “humanity” still means compassion.

With a similar voice to Peter Newman’s The Vagrant, VIRIDESCENCE is a standalone science fiction novel with series potential, and will appeal to fans of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves.

250 Words:

The missiles sparkled. Six iridescent stars in the distance. And an asteroid that, from so far away, looked the size of a basketball, like one her sister used to play with. An irregular, grey rock that somersaulted, heavy with its own gravity, and trailed by glittering dust and debris. Sun reflected off the minerals and ice.

A rock rose in Zera’s throat.

Shifting her weight from one foot to another on the enormous observation deck, Zera tuned out the broadwave transmission, alternating between haunting music and a variety of different religions’ prayers.

Those six missiles were set to strategically split the asteroid so it bypassed Earth’s gravity well. Leaving the earth intact.

They had to succeed.

Her parents. Her sister. Her sister’s family. They were all on Earth, still without a pass onto one of the stations or colonies.

This strike was their only chance. Humanity’s only chance.

Zera breathed deep. She traced the path of the missiles with her finger on the cold, thick glass separating her and the vacuum of space. Atmosphere to asteroid. So far away. They looked like they moved a micrometer per second. An illusion of the massive distance.

Other scientists and researchers lined the observation deck of the station with her. If they spoke, they whispered. Breath catching. Everyone stood. Anticipating.

Zera glanced at the black-haired man behind her, Scientific Development Director Dr. Stephen Acosta. He exhaled, inhaled, stuttered soft. “No. No. No.”