In the year 2210, humanity has undergone extensive genetic modification. Sealmen have been designed to live and work in the oceans but are tied to the service. Gillmen, who can breathe underwater, are rapidly replacing them. Stephanie Maran, a fifteen year old gillman, has vanished from her comfortable San Francisco home. James Tyler, a senior agent for Southwest Securities, is charged with finding Stephanie Maran and bringing her home, but what he finds under the sea will challenge all his preconceptions of what it means to be human in the modern world.
Robert I. Katz attended Columbia College and Northwestern University Medical School, and is on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His first novel, Edward Maret was published by Willowgate in 2001 and won the ASA Literary Prize that year.