David Selby was born and grew up in Berkeley, California. He taught elementary school in California, Mexico, and New Mexico for thirty-six years. He and his wife live in Northwest New Mexico.  He has written many short stories including the Joe the Man with Gills series. Mica is his first novel.

Mica, an expert navigator, uses the currents of the Darkstream to pilot his ship across the galaxy to join his love, Olivine. On the way, he befriends Ronnie, a stowaway who can look like a coat or a first aid kit, the mysterious Vuud, and the translucent “Slight People”. They experience the savage planet of Carnage and the whirling destruction of the Moon of 10,000 Drones before they even reach Olivine in the brand-new city of Garner in the midst of an unknown world.


Mica

This environment was as strange to Olivine as to me; she had been extremely curious about The Fallows just by her nature, but also from a professional standpoint. But she had only made little skips and brief forays as she was a bit nervous about being there alone. She could find almost no information about this wild land.So far, it had not been seen as a source of ready wealth and was only very generally surveyed with little detail.


We swooped over a series of hills and dropped into a beautiful soft valley, our Brushskimmer settled silently between two beautifully flowing rivers (which did not even show on the chart).


"Olive, this is just magical, what a wonderful place."


"I know. I can't believe that the Garners don't come out here or even bother to map this huge wilderness."


"I believe I know why," I said with a grin. 


Olive peered at me, "There's no money in it.''


Chapter 26: Into the Fallows, Part 2