Science Fiction - a novel

Michael Ferres

A geologist, working under several layers of isolation in a remote equatorial forest on the distant planet of Einsteinia, digs up something very unpleasant. Then he prepares to tell everyone about it at a scientific conference. Consular officials from Earth are appalled. Leaders of the Einsteinian religion are determined that he won’t tell his story.
Is the revelation really a threat to their religion? And are the geologist’s reasons for wanting to present it those of disinterested scientific inquiry, or does something else move him?