The dragons of Springplace

An eternal tomb for the nuclear age... Imagine a vast plateau, with smooth glass walls hundreds of meters high, the summit a dark and mysterious jungle. Within the jungle are venomous insects, poisonous plants, carnivorous reptiles, human statues in attitudes of unremitting agony, and dragons—great genetically tailored creatures whose purpose is to ward off the unwary wayfarer. Springplace is a man-made repository for the corrosive effluvia of the Nuclear Age—old reactor cores, dirty plutonium, dismantled bombs—and from this striking scenario, Robert Reed presents a gripping tale of intrigue, treachery, and adventure, as a renegade misfit conquers the dragons and renews the threat of nuclear chaos. Even more mind-boggling is "Aeon's Child," a sprawling intergalactic epic that takes place aboard the ship: the rock-and-metal core of a giant world, its interior laced with tunnels, sunken seas, and apartments without number. After human beings have salvaged and commandeered this massive generation starship, it becomes the setting for a titanic struggle between two alien entities who engage in a monumental battle for survival. Reed is more than a cosmic visionary whose virtuosic imagination spans the millennia, however; his insights into the human condition are both searching and profound. Thus "Chrysalis" portrays yet another ancient starship traveling through the mysterious interstices between the galaxies. Millions of years earlier, after an annihilatory war, humans built—and voluntarily surrendered themselves to—mechanical Artisans to protect their species from its own nihilistic nature. When a landing party from the ship decides to investigate an icy unknown planet, the author explores not just an alien milieu but the nature of man himself.