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

"I would guess that you all dream of leaving this place."


"Yes, we do what we can to make our lives here good. But most of us are looking forward to that day when we, changed as we are  we know- can go back to the surface, escape from our stone confinement. We are also concerned about our limited gene pool and what may be happening to our evolution."


"We desperately need a person or two, who could develop the ability to go out the river exit, and survive and report to us how it went and how we could follow."


"In every generation, several try it, but none has survived. Or at least if they did we haven't heard; so I really believe they did not. Also, we need to examine your blood and some other things to see what is different and how we could be made to tolerate sunlight, which we can't, that wonderful, and for us, lethal force."


Chapter 47: Settling In, Part 2