The intelligent microbe

This scientific thriller puts forth a revolutionary idea: microbes are intelligent. They live in highly-developed communities, and are capable of innovation, anticipation and learning. Together, they created the planet's original World Wide Web - cooperating altruistically at times, vying fiercely at others, and even reacting with emotion on occasion. Invisible yet powerful in numbers, they paint the clouds in our skies, and are responsible for inventing the wheel, solar batteries, sex, genes and heredity. Microbes provide most of the oxygen we breathe, and ail of the energy we consume. Without them, our planet would be bleak and lifeless. Microbes are also beautiful, as can be seen in the lavish colour illustrations found throughout the book. Readers may also find, through an uncanny mirror effect, that learning about the world of microbes renews and enhances their own view of humanity. All living things - from the simple to the complex, from the primordial soup to modern technological societies - are part of a continuous chain of life held together by a common ethos from which humans often try to escape, often at the risk of losing themselves. In the end, we are all microbial beings on a microbial planet.