The Bridge: Janine Ellen Young

When the Ring aliens first thought to contact other worlds, they didn't think other species might be constructed differently to them. They were deep space dwellers - more like large complex bundles of genetic information that physical entities. They sent their probes into the night hoping to build a bridge between them and others. Most probes vanished into the infinity of space for all time. But one found Earth, and one was all it took to utterly disrupt life as Earth knew it for all time. Because the Ring dwellers sent their information coded in the form of a virus - a virus that would prove deadly to 90% of humanity. The society that rose from the rubble was unlike any that had come before...Earth's survivors experienced visions, deep, dark, disturbing visions - some of building a vast, superphysical bridge between universes, others of navigational instructions. But no-one had all of the Ring dwellers' information. And so the new, fragmented, half-mad society had to build the bridge of co-operation before they could embark on humanity's greatest enterprise...Cover art by Chris Moore.