This is earth-bound science fiction. The novel begins an epic story that spans eight books. Its series, The Lodging for the Rose, presents a science fantasy where universal love slowly blossoms into a force for universal good in the shadow of a nuclear armed world. This opening novel unfolds a fantasy that appears as bright and as distant from our present world as the Morning Star. The fantasy is a science romance with dreams about freedom powered by universal love, the largely 'unexplored country.' Few people have dared to crossed its borders and traverse its landscapes. In the novel, we are touched by challenges of universal love in the form of a love story with a romance that offers more than just an escape from tragedy, but cuts deep into marriage, sex and the erotic, and lays bare their paradoxes in a kaleidoscope of bewildering experiences. Underneath unfolds a layer of science that is still totally new. In the process, romance becomes uplifted with a brighter joy, and the erotic becomes enriched as well, even as we enrich the world and one another to avoid the ever-present danger of a nuclear war.