From the back cover: PINNACLE OF CREATION, OR...? It all began on Planet Earth, sometime in the Middle Pleistocene. A ground-running ape stood erect, gazed at the stars... and wondered. Since that distant time and place we humans have ranged far indeed, and changed much -- and the traveling and changing have left us sundered. But no matter how new planets reshape our bodies and new gods reshape our souls, we, and we alone, are the EARTH DESCENDED.