In the 25th Century the effects of overpopulation and global warming on Earth have led to the
formation of human colonies on the Moon Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System yet the
limited number of viable places forces humanity to look to the stars. A crash program has been
developed to send Protos 1 a giant multigenerational star ship to a newly discovered
Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. The plan is for awake crewmembers to run the ship and
for people in suspended animation to be roused before planet fall to use their skills in
exploration and colony formation. To fulfill the goals of the mission and ensure that the
in-flight population does not deplete the limited resources the Protos Mandate is set up to
govern a tightly controlled social system for the duration of the journey which will take
several generations. But problems threaten to sabotage the mission during its launch and
transit and what finally awaits the crewmembers shocks them in an unpredictable way. This novel
chronicles the trials and tribulations of this epic first interstellar mission.The scientific
appendix at the end of the book discusses the challenges of such an interstellar mission based
on an extensive literature review and it links these challenges to specific episodes in the
novel. Issues that are considered include interstellar propulsion systems economic
considerations of interstellar flight psychological and sociological factors inherent in a
multigenerational space mission problems with suspended animation current knowledge of
exoplanets and issues related to colonizing a distant planet and the possible discovery of
extraterrestrial life. A history of interstellar missions in science fiction is also
reviewed.Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San
Francisco where he directed the group therapy training program. For over 20 years he conducted
research on group therapy and for nearly 20 years after that he was the Principal Investigator
of NASA-funded research on astronauts and cosmonauts. He is the co-author of Space Psychology
and Psychiatry which won the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Book
Award and the author of Humans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles which won the 2016
International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Book Award. Dr. Kanas has presented talks on
space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and Worldcon science fiction
conventions. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London) he has been an amateur
astronomer for over 50 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He is also the author of
two non-fiction books (Star Maps: History Artistry and Cartography and Solar System Maps:
From Antiquity to the Space Age) and two science fiction novels (The New Martians andThe Protos
Mandate) all published by Springer.
