To Save the Sun

The time is centuries hence; the human race has grown to fill an Empire of a hundred star systems. Earth is a backwater, save for one vital fact:

The handful of “primitives” left on Earth are the baseline for human genetic stock. Every other human world sends regular delegations to check their own genetic pool against “Earth normal.”

Then the Empire’s scientists learn ancient Earth is doomed. Its Sun will explode, not millions of years hence but in mere lifetimes—violently enough to scour Earth clean and leave humanity’s genetic future adrift. Their official position, all too typical of the Empire’s stagnation, is that nothing can be done. Then, over massive opposition, a single young woman makes her way to the Emperor with that rarity, a new scientific insight—and, flowing from its implications, a plan to mobilize the Empire’s slumbering energies toward a stupendous, millennium-long feat of applied astrophysics, of engineering carried out on the hearts of stars. A plan to save the Sun.

To Save the Sun is the tale of that plan, of the undertaking that will forever change the Empire and humankind. Of the dying Emperor whose final act is to defy his advisors and restart the march of human progress, too long stalled. Of Crown Prince Javis and his transformation from feeble aristocrat to visionary in the service of his father’s cause. Of scientists terrified of the new order, and scientists enthralled. Of politicians determined to reverse the project, and politicians who aim to make it serve their ends. Of rough-hewn Earthmen long ignored by the Imperial court, and—beyond the Empire’s frontiers—aliens who fear humanity’s new vigor and watch with a cold and envious eye. And finally, of Adela de Montgarde, the woman willing to give up everything she loves to see her vision accomplished. To save the Earth. To save the Sun.