In the near future, humankind finds itself increasingly beleaguered by a whole range of threats including accelerating climate change, burgeoning over-population and brutal power struggles including but not limited to terrorism. The apparent impossibility of sharing Earth's diminishing resources fairly between too many people is ever more daunting. Some seek desperate measures to break out. In 2050, a test flight of a joint European/Russian sponsored prototype faster-than-light starship takes place. The mission is doomed, but the survivors' return to Earth with a view of a wider perspective on the place of intelligent life in the universe and an awesome store of knowledge and advanced technology suggests that a mature humankind could aspire to one day take its place in the stars. But to do so, it seems that man now faces an evolutionary hurdle at least as great as when a forebear first climbed down from the trees and walked on the plain: the human race will need to avoid self-destruction by shaking off some of the most the deeply embedded, brutal legacies of its early evolution. The news, and the unfettered release of the huge, indigestible bounty brought back rocks Earth side's vested interests and power structures to their very core. Paranoia reigns and barriers go up; leaders of many nations are in denial. But the genie cannot be put back in the bottle; it quickly becomes clear that human civilization, and even the species itself, can never be the same again.