The Battle For Terra Two (Biofab)

John Harrison, a hero of the Biofab War, traces a few renegades to an alternate universe, where the Biofabs are rebuilding for another war

Biofab: biological fabrication. Biofab is a term growing in vogue with those who strive to engineer synthetic life.  (Never thought I'd write that as fact.)  I may be the progenitor of the term, having coined it in 1980 for The Biofab War, but I'm not militant about it. There's a collective unconscious of science fiction archetypes that slips quietly from generation to generation, Jules Verne to E.E. "Doc" Smith, Smith to Heinlein, Heinlein and Smith to many others.  We read, we forget and yet we don't: biofab.

My former student, the much-loved Christopher Blair of Venice, Florida, to whom this book is dedicated, died last year.  He was 20.  A tall thin blond kid with an infectious grin, an unruly shock of hair and an other-worldly affect, he'd read all my books, memorizing them in startling detail.  He toted Terra Two around more than the other titles.  (Though rumor has it he had two copies, one for reading and one for stashing.)  

A lad out of time, Chris would have been happy on Implacable, a Fleet commando, M11A blaster strapped low, the battle klaxon banging away as he rushed for the assault boats and another desperate fight.

Upshield, upship, Chris. Godspeed.