Though shut to them, the Guardian Priesthood of Ipri-Axis thrived on the certainty that its enigmatic Temple and legendary occupant were ultimately theirs to control. Generations of plans were based on a belief that the Oracle inside could speak directly with God - and he who controlled the flow of information from God, controlled the planet. First a human unexpectedly arrives with the keys to opening the Temple, then Hy-Rapthean physicists turn up amidst rumours the fabric of space has been torn into another continuum. All evidence points to the Temple's mysterious resident as being the source of the crisis. As the Temple begins to open under guidance of the human, the Priesthood begins to question what actually lay inside - a concern exacerbated by the appearance of an apparition in the Temple Antechamber that warns of impending doom. All too late, the human and his physicist allies complete the opening sequence and the Temple is finally opened. Whilst the Priesthood had spent ten millennia trying to get inside their Temple, it never occurred to them that what lay inside had decided it was finally time to let the people of Ipri-Axis know its real purpose.
The book examines the evolution of one of the most important technologies that has emerged in the last fifty years: biotechnology - the use of living organisms, or parts thereof to create useful products and services. The most important application of biotechnology has been in medicine, in the development of new drugs. The central purpose of the book is to explain how firms based in the US took the lead in commercialising the technology, and why it has been so difficult for firms in other countries to match what the leading American companies have achieved. The book looks at the institutions and policies which have underpinned US success in biotechnology. This is the US innovation "ecosystem," and it is made up of several interlocking elements which constitute a powerful competitive advantage for US biotechnology firms. These include, a higher education system which has close links with industry, massive support from the Federal government for biomedical research, and a financial system which is well equipped to support young entrepreneurial firms in a science-based industry. In the light of US experience the book examines in detail the performance of UK biotechnology firms over the past forty years, starting with the creation of the UK's first dedicated biotech firm, Celltech, in 1980. The book shows how the UK made a promising start in the 1980s and 1990s but failed to build on it. Several leading firms failed, and after an initial burst of enthusiasm investors lost confidence in the British biotech sector. It is only the last few years that the sector has staged a revival, attracting fresh investment from the US as well from the UK. The story told in this book, based on extensive interviews with industry participants, investors, and policy makers in the UK, Continental Europe, and the US, sheds new light on one of the central issues facing governments in the advanced industrial countries - how to create and sustain new science-based industries.
Imagine you were handed the key to a shrine, one that is universally acknowledged to contain irrefutable evidence ( one way or the other ) of God's existence; would your curiosity prevail over caution? Professor Michael Henniker faces such a dilemma and succumbs to invitations made by the Guardian Priesthood of Ipri-Axis to reopen a shrine, long closed and inaccessible to them. A Temple said to contain a means of communicating directly with God. Believing that reactivating and such a relic would justify planet-wide war to annihilate rival sects, the Priesthood encourage their human captive to decrypt the clues using the first of three books he unearthed from the melting ice sheets of Greenland. Not understanding why his uncle disappeared years beforehand, Nicholas Hartwell rediscovers the conduit and inadvertently finds himself on Ipri-Axis. His unexpected appearance triggers political rivalries as the Priesthood realise that with two humans, they now have a courier they can persuade to return the missing volumes without risking the Professor's escape. In deep space, an experiment to alter the universal constants is sabotaged, with cataclysmic consequences. But when the physicists realise the culprit is most likely the Temple's mysterious resident, they too want access to it. Hostilities are declared as science clashes with religion in a battle to complete the opening sequence and gain control the ancient monument. But nobody has considered that perhaps what dwells within, is not as benign and benevolent as they hoped, and has an altogether different reason for wanting to escape its tomb.
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