After two decades in space, a man returns to Earth as something new and not completely human, in this “enormously inventive” novel by a Nebula Award winner (Galaxy Science Fiction). Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton vanished somewhere in the star system 61 Cygni, an inaccessible corner of the universe that humankind has thus far been unable to explore. Now Asher has returned to Earth, having impossibly survived catastrophic damage to his spacecraft. But the star-traveler is not the same man he was when he began his journey two decades earlier. He is, in fact, no longer completely human. And he is not alone. But he has a message to convey that could have reality-altering consequences for the human galaxy-conquerors who consider themselves almost gods, and for the nearly human androids they create, enslave, and oppress. It is Asher’s destiny to change everything. His mission has made him a hero to some, a pariah to others—and a target for determined time-traveling assassins from the future