Azar Almasi is one of the characters you meet in my new release Dante’s Heart: The Full Saga. Azar grows for herself a spacefaring vessel made entirely of vegetation and travels the galaxies, seeding new life on the planets she finds.
“Vast and nearly complete was her ship behind the lab, grown entirely from plants: wings of green vine, months of stored oxygen, a living hull covered in great blossoms that drank in the sun, converting its energy to power and propulsion. Legless, the hijabi botanist climbed hand over hand under the yellow petals and slid into a hammock of interwoven tendrils. She finished her last gene splicing; green buds slithered into her nose to help her breathe, gentler than the doctors’ tubes. She let the tethering vines slip, and the helium sacs under the wings lifted her like a summer soap bubble into the sky. Toward the stars. At ninety-eight she was still young; she would see them all.”
This illustration of Azar is by Chaz Kemp and appears in the book.
You can get your copy of Dante’s Heart (in paperback or kindle edition) here.
