The Andromeda Evolution (Andromeda #2)

by Daniel H. Wilson

IS A WELL-ESTABLISHED Achilles’ heel of human civilization that individuals are more motivated by immediate private reward than by long-term, collective future benefits. This effect is particularly evident when considering payoffs that will take longer than a generation to arrive—a phenomenon called intergenerational discounting.

The concept was formally introduced by the young French economist Florian Pavard during a poorly attended speech at the International Conference on Social Economics on October 23, 1982:

The average span of a human generation is twenty-five years. Any reward occurring beyond this generational horizon creates an imbalance that undermines long-term cooperation. In short, we as a species are motivated to betray our own descendants. In my view, the only possible solution is the institution of...

It has been subsequently theorized that our species’ seeming inability to focus on long-term existential threats will inexorably lead to the destruction of our environment, overpopulation, and resource exhaustion. It is therefore not an uncommon belief among economists that this inborn deficit repr...

Borel’s fallacy: “Phenomena with extremely low probabilities effectively never happen in real life.”

The divisions we have built between ourselves along the lines of race and geography are illusions. If our species is ultimately able to see past these biases, it will be our shared genetic stamp of humanness that will outlive the cultural contrivances that distract us in our day-to-day lives.

My hope is that this rigorous account of events will demonstrate both the capabilities and the limits of scientific progress—the

especially wish to thank the surviving members of the second-generation Project Wildfire, who were able to sit with me after their debriefings to verify even the most minute details. And for those members who did not survive,

Lastly and most importantly, this account would never have been possible without the groundbreaking work of the late Michael Crichton, MD—a visionary who shattered a code of silence and introduced a stunned world to the precursor events to this crisis.

The scientists, astronauts, and soldiers who lived through the events described in these chapters were human beings, with strengths and flaws. Some showed surprising heroism in the face of annihilation, while others failed at crucial moments. But none acted in vain—for at the very least, we all of us are still here, still alive to read and learn from this unlikely chronicle of human survival, a saga known now by its code name: the Andromeda Evolution. D.H.W.