A Great Day for the Irish

Bridget Kelly has traveled across the galaxy to New Eden, a freshly terraformed planet humanity is racing to claim. As the first entomologist on site, she's tasked with understanding the insect ecosystem before human settlement disrupts it completely. But the planet's ecology is more fragile, and more treacherous, than anyone anticipated. What begins as a routine scientific survey becomes a desperate race to understand an alien ecosystem before it collapses - or before the colonists destroy it in their ignorance. Hopf, writing in the early 1960s, gives us a female scientist who refuses to be ignored in a genre dominated by male heroes. The title carries quiet irony: Bridget is an Irishwoman reaching for the stars, but this great day brings no easy victories, only the hard work of understanding a world that doesn't care about human ambition.