A Plague of Change

by L. Warren Douglas

Beyond the antimatter barrier known as the Reef, the far-flung human colonies were dying out. Trade was decreasing, plagues ran rampant, societies had degenerated into mobs, and few ships were safe from raiders.
Studying the decline of the transReef colonies and their chances for survival, computer prodigy Bass Cannon found that hope lay in only one toward an alien world called Phastillan. The planet was home to a colony of psatla -- beings who communicated with pheromones, recalled their ancestors' memories, and could manipulate the genes of any species. Humans despised psatla, and few would work for them -- but Bass was curious. When the psatla offered him a job as their computer expert, he accepted.
Bass set out to learn Phastillan's importance to humanity -- but he was not prepared for the psatla's violent effects on human biochemistry. Nor did he realize that his experience would make him a radical, a visionary . . . and the savior of his species.

Genres: Science Fiction

30 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Born November 3, 1943, Douglas's earliest memories are of a military air show on V-E Day in 1946 or 1947. He attended Sigsbee School in Grand Rapids, MI, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner and a Cub Scout. His favorite hobby was a collection of Devonian and Silurian fossils. Douglas attended Ottawa Junior High in Grand Rapids for 2 years, then the prestigious Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI (often called "the Phillips Academy of the Midwest"). He is reticent about his expulsion from Cranbrook, but it may have had something to do with a black eye sported by the scion of a Major Corporate Family, or with an unseemly incident in a nearby college's womens' dormitory. He graduated in 1962 from the Leelanau School (often called the Cranbrook of the North Woods) a few miles from the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Glen Arbor, MI, winning honors in History, Poetry, English, and Art. At Leelanau he became an inveterate backwoods skier, and his love of woods and wilderness is reflected in his fiction.
from: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/l-...

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A "Del Rey Discovery" book (their series aimed at promoting new authors).
Bass Cannon is a computer prodigy - and a bit of a rebel. In trouble
at his military school for breaking the rules one too many times, he
also has no desire to follow in his fathers' footsteps with the
bureaucratic work of running a successful planetary colony. Home for a
visit, he gets into even worse trouble than at school. A fight with
some local boys gets out of hand, and to cover up their wrongdoings,
they stow Bass away on a space freighter. Once he's enroute, there's
nothing that can be done - his old life is effectively over. But Bass
is a resourceful kind of guy; and soon enough takes a job with the
Phastillians - crustacean-like, wormy aliens who communicate by scent
(and therefore, stink, and aren't too popular with most humans.) But
where others see something to avoid, Bass sees opportunity knocking...
Fun (but unremarkable) space opera aimed at teens.