The Wellstone

Humanity has conquered the Solar System. What’s more, death itself has been vanquished. Wellstone—programmable matter—insures that no one need every die, or indeed, age past adulthood. But for the children of immortal parents, life remains a constant state of arrested development. And a prince shall remain a prince forever, never inheriting the throne. So what is a minor royal to do?


Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui is tired of his parents—the Queen of Sol and her consort—treating his complaints as so much teenage whining. Exiled to a “summer camp” on a planette, where he will be out of his royal mother’s hair, he decides to do something about his lot in life. Along with his fellow malcontents, he manages to make an improbable spaceship and set out for the far reaches of the colonized space. With hijacked weapons and programmable matter at their disposal, Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui and his companions are set to prove themselves a force to be reckoned with.


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About Wil McCarthy:


"McCarthy is an entertaining, intelligent, amusing writer, with Heinlein's knack for breakneck plotting and, at the same time, Clarke's thoughtfulness."—Booklist


“‘Imagination really is the only limit.’”—The New York Times


“The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place.”—Publishers Weekly


"A bright light on the SF horizon.”—David Brin


“Wil McCarthy demonstrates that he has a sharp intelligence, a galaxy-spanning imagination, and the solid scientific background to make it all work.”—Connie Willis


“In nearly every passage, we get another slice of the science of McCarthy’s construction, and a deeper sense of danger and foreboding . . . McCarthy develops considerable tension.”—San Diego Union-Tribune


“An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns.”—Kirkus


Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi Channel), where his popular "Lab Notes" column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers' Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of "P2," from the novel Lost in Transmission, was rated one of the 10 best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and SF Age, and his novels include the New York Times Notable Bloom, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K" The Collapsium (a national bestseller), and To Crush the Moon. He has also written for TV, appeared on the History Channel and the Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science.


Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics and founder/president/CTO of RavenBrick LLC, McCarthy now writes patents for a top law firm in Dallas. He holds patents of his own in 7 countries, including 29 issued U.S. patents in the field of nanostructured optical materials.