Harvest of Stars

Winner of seven Hugo and three Nebula Awards, Paul Anderson is one of science fiction's few acknowledged masters. Harvest of Stars is the most ambitious novel of his distinguished career, a compulsively readable saga blending thrilling adventure with a stunning vision of humanity's destiny.
Earth lies in the grip of the Avantists, a repressive regime that has crushed dissent and now threatens to extinguish the last bastion of liberty, the maverick interplanetary corporation known as Fireball.
His heroine, Kyra Davis, a beautiful and courageous young space pilot, is entrusted with a high-risk mission to rescue an electronic ghost - Fireball's founder, Anson Guthrie, whose mind was stored in a computer after his death - and rally the resistance to strike a blow against tyranny. Pursued by Avantist forces, she and Guthrie engage in a desperate battle of wits against a brilliant adversary: a copy of Guthrie's personality that has been reprogrammed to serve the enemy.
In a heart-stopping interstellar odyssey that takes her from Earth's rebel enclaves, to the decadent court of an exotic lunar colony, and the endangered frontier world of Demeter, Kyra Davis plays a crucial role in the struggle to preserve freedom. There under the distant light of Alpha Centauri, Kyra undergoes an awesome transformation to insure the survival of humanity's descendants among the far-flung stars.
Blending the cutting-edge themes of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology with classic science fiction storytelling, Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars is a towering achievement by one of science fiction's most honored writers.
With colorful characters as appealing as Robert Heinlein's Friday and Lazarus Long, a future history as compelling as Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, and a cosmic vision as astonishing as Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, Harvest of Stars confirms Poul Anderson's place in the SF pantheon beside the field's most beloved authors.