Humanity chose to suffer. The alternative was extinction.
Modern civilization conquered nature, eliminated the selection pressures that shaped our species — and froze its genome. Deleterious mutations accumulate with no mechanism to purge them. The models project functional collapse within forty generations. The solution is the frontier: small, isolated colonies on harsh worlds where drift can operate and selection can bite. The stars are not merely humanity's destiny — they are its salvation. Expansion is no longer optional. It is survival.
Space Fleet Academy: Year One
When genetic engineering nearly doomed the species, humanity made a desperate bargain: let the frontier do what nature intended. Harsh colony worlds. Brutal selection. Children dying on planets designed to test them. Two centuries later, the Mandate has kept humanity alive, but at a price no one is allowed to question.
Cadet Constantine Lafayette-Ramsey questions it anyway.
As a frontier colonist at Earth's Space Fleet Academy, Constantine keeps flinching at the hard calls — and keeps outperforming the cadets who don't. Then colonies start going dark. Whole worlds, no survivors, no explanation. With senior classes rushed to the frontier, Constantine is thrust onto an unprecedented first-year team at the Inter-Colonial Games, the highest-stakes competition in human space.
When catastrophe threatens all four colonies at once, he faces the choice the Academy trained him to make — and makes the one they never expected.
Some officers are built to follow orders. Real leaders are built to change them.
The Biostellar Universe
Semi-hard science fiction built on real population genetics. A universe where the science drives the story — and the story asks questions the science can't answer.
The Mandate
The Human Genome Dispersion Mandate requires continuous colonization — not for resources or ideology, but to keep the species genetically alive. 700 billion humans across 14,000 worlds, from post-scarcity core planets to pioneer outposts where survival is the only test that matters.
The Cascade Drive
FTL travel exists, but it's rationed. Cascade substrate is synthesized near neutron stars, centrally allocated, and never enough. The further from Earth, the slower the ships and the longer the silence. Isolation isn't a bug — it's the point.
The Academy
Space Fleet Academy trains humanity's next generation of officers — cadets drawn from core worlds and frontier colonies alike. Among them are the brightest minds in explored space. Some of them aren't entirely what they seem.
The Forbidden Science
After the catastrophic Cascade Failure of 2156, germline enhancement was outlawed under penalty of death. But prohibition never eliminates demand — and some believe engineering, not frontier hardship, is humanity's only real future.
The Inter-Colonial Games
The highest-stakes competition in human space. Cadets from across the colonies compete in trials that test everything the Academy teaches — and some things it doesn't. When the frontier darkens, the Games become something far more dangerous than a competition.
Beyond Humanity
Three alien civilizations, each shaped by different answers to the same biological question. One never had the problem. One solved it — three thousand years ago. One doesn't think in terms humans can parse. Each challenges the Mandate in a different way.
For fans of Ender's Game, Old Man's War, and Star Trek.
Read Space Fleet Academy