Publisher's Synopsis
Very few of today's Young Adult or teen novels are actually written by teenagers. This is a very different and unique work of poetic SF, soaring beyond the stars in a far future empire of time and stars, where human nature and fate cross paths with the same melancholy truths as in all ages including our own. Cosmopolis or City of the Universe is a true teenage novel, written by A. T. Nager. He started writing this, his first major science fiction novel, as a high school sophomore at age 15, and completed a final draft at age 19. The current manuscript includes topical polishes made a few years later, making minimal changes and keeping the exact same plot structure and major characters (Jared Fallon, Princess Lyxa, President Cyrus Mbe, and Golden Girl Mala who becomes the great love of Jared's life). Jared Fallon, 24, hero of the story - a handsome, athletic, and brilliant young starfleet officer whose career is derailed by the selfishness of a beautiful and ruthless young princess-against the backdrop of civil war and external invasion as a crumbling empire is beset with violent unrest on the streets of its capital (Mercury City) and alien fleets probing its falling frontier defenses. Lyxa (Li Sha, Elizabeth), 25, last princess of Vega, schemes to make herself monarch and tyrant in a failing democracy; she is also a genius at manipulating people and amassing astounding wealth; she has derailed Jared Fallon's career and made him one of her sex pets as a staff officer, a position from which he desperately yearns to escape. Stella, a young demi-woman or Renjen (Roentgen Girl) engineered from the glowing energy of Lyxa's neural kelp (as sinister genetic engineers call it) is given to Jared by Lyxa as a gift. Stella and her kind have gender (male or female) but not sexuality. Lyxa becomes a beloved sister to Jared, his dearest and most loyal yet enigmatic companion. Too late, they both realize Lyxa is using Stella, through her neural transponder energy, to track Jared's every motion even as Jared constantly schemes to escape, to seek his freedom and adventure on the frontier worlds out in the remote galaxy. Lelli, another youthful neural cloud-clone of Lyxa, who stays with Lyxa and like all Renjen or djai (diaphanes, translucent persons with electron clouds instead of faces) is loyal unto death to her gene sister Lyxa; Lelli serves as a go-between in the complex geometry uniting Lyxa, Stella, and Jared, which involves neural transponding on hidden wavelengths Mala Alamala, 24, is the golden surfer girl (fully human, beautiful) and shop clerk in an idyllic beach town, with whom Jared falls in love. He must finally escape from the deadly webs and nets spun by Lyxa. With the empire crumbling, and violence and danger at every turn, Jared and Mala make a desperate gamble. They flee to the distant, pastoral planet Lethe to dream and be free-but fate has shocking and surprising outcomes in store for all the players in this complex story. Only a very young author (a teenager) would write such a melancholy but dazzling achievement of imagination and passion. Ranks with Dune and Norstrilia among the sweeping SF sagas that soar across galactic empires with a budding historian's eye for real tragedies that endlessly repeat themselves, and a Classics student's exposure to high tragedy like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Virgil's Aeneas and Dido, Edgar Allan Poe's haunting poems (Ulalume); and especially Ovid's Orpheus and Eurydice, a tale of love and loss in the Underworld. At the same time, the author captures the grand SF sweep of dark epics like Dune, Norstrilia, and the dark side of Star Wars among other examples.
