This is a newly re-edited 2012 version of the original novel. A Nepenthean Solution is the first book in a series called "The Prides of Sol". The conflict for universal hegemony began long ago, before the Earth was formed, long before Sol coalesced to ignite fusion in her heart. Before the Milky Way existed, and before matter and energy erupted into this new domain we call the universe, conflict raged on a scale never witnessed by humankind. An unending mordant contest eventually eliminated every preeminent civilization and effectively rendered all known ancient domains incapable of ever sustaining life again. That time has passed, but the root of contention still exists in the vast and shadowed depths of our universe. Humankind has lived in ignorance and cloaked in anonymity on a small water world circling an unremarkable yellow dwarf star lying within a lesser spur of the minor Cygnus arm of the Milky Way. Invisible and undetected, the teeming billions gained mastery over their little world, unaware that they had sent a message out into the void that said: Here I am, and I am a menace. An electromagnetic message traveling at the speed of light and driven by the force of five hundred and sixty-five million tons of TNT. The result of twenty-four hundred nuclear tests in sixty years—a consistent and threatening drumbeat of war. Someone took notice. A Nepenthean Solution is the beginning of the end of innocence. The Flight of the Solar Archangel continues the story of mankind's call to arms and of the end of the Grim War five hundred years later. A third novel in the series, also called The Prides of Sol, takes man into space, there to face an implacable foe and there to end a thousand years of earthbound strife - the end of the beginning. In Prides of Sol, we learn of the Danua who had seeded Earth, and of the long-dormant city of Mu'rias on Danu in the Tir Na n'Og system. The circle is now complete, for humankind has reseeded Danu. The Children of Danu, Part One, tells of the origins of the circle and hints at the future.