Henry Bell has more Neanderthal DNA than any other human for forty-five millennia. This begs two Big Questions: How? and Why?

He is not a time-traveller and he is not a genetic anomaly; he was made that way. Professor Georgi Zhukov, maverick genius molecular biologist, overcomes every obstacle and breaks every moral and ethical rule to create him. First, Zhukov masters re-engineering modern humans and cloning extinct humans. Then, he begins to usurp nature and evolution by generating new, superior humans to assure Humanity’s future: not just on Earth but as permanent colonists on Mars. Used the wrong way, however, his work could lead to global chaos and even human extinction.

Zhukov’s facility is the world’s most valuable strategic asset; worth risking everything to keep it secret and secure. Henry is unique among the world’s billions, and worth every risk to get and keep him. However uncertain Humanity’s future may be, two things now look certain: it will not be lived exclusively on Earth and it will not be exclusively human. Henry Bell, a deliberately designed human-Neanderthal hybrid, seems to be the master key to our future. The struggle to acquire Henry Bell, the genetic code that defines him and the material and techniques used to create him is a proxy war for the control of human destiny and survival. The outcome of that struggle hangs in the balance.

John Quentin’s debut novel, Fourth World Man is bursting with creative and destructive energy. Its complex, vibrant strands twist, turn and cross-link in a way reminiscent of DNA itself. Packed with hard science, brutal action, savage humour, sensitive introspection and original vision, it is thrilling, controversial, provocative, informative and deeply disturbing.

Fourth World Man proffers a vision of our future as prescient and plausible as anything offered by Michael Crichton, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, HG Wells, Aldous Huxley or George Orwell. It portrays the Neanderthals in a new light, free from the misunderstandings and misconceptions of the past.  For a twenty-first century view of the next twenty-one millennia and beyond, Fourth World Man is the definitive ‘must read’.