Miho, an orphan who lives with her uncle, is befriended by an old man who becomes her Sensei and teaches her Sho-do, The Way of the Brush, and meets Gaia, the living embodiment of the Earth, who grants her the power to read "the minds in the water."

Astrobiology, the study of life in space, is one of today's fastest growing fields of science. In this accessible and elegantly reasoned book, scholar and researcher Impey explores the foundations of this rapidly developing discipline, where it's going, and what it's likely to find. If Earth is not the only planet, it is so far the only living one that we know of. Impey reveals the incredible proliferation and variety of life on Earth, paying special...