Farthest Reef — Karl Kofoed

Alex Rose thought he was through with space exploration. He had explored the unknown depths of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and made the greatest discovery of his time, a reef of life full of strange inhabitants. Now he and his wife, the lovely Sensor clone Mary Seventeen, lived a quiet and happy life on Ganymede. But their contentment was shattered by a summons to participate in an even greater challenge: the first faster-than-light mission to another star.

Fleeing an Earth divided by war, the first starship Goddard, a gigantic self-contained biosystem with a crew of over a thousand, was to travel to the red dwarf Lalande on its maiden voyage. Alex and Mary, with their shuttle Diver, would call on their experiences in Jupiter's reef to explore an ancient gas giant orbiting the star. Since a reef of complex and possibly intelligent life had naturally evolved on Jupiter, what alien life - or even civilizations - might have developed on a much older planet? The answer they find proves to be a stranger and more perilous adventure than even Alex and Mary could have imagined.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Karl Kofoed is a graphic artist with over 40 years of commercial advertising and promotional graphic design experience. He started his career after graduation in 1966 from the Philadelphia College of Art (majoring in illustration/minoring in photography) as a technical illustrator for the aerospace industry, then as an art director and scenic designer for two television stations WHYY TV12 & WKBSTV.

He has worked for NW Ayer Direct in New York designing DM material for AT&T, Citicorp, and other major clients. In Philadelphia he was a product designer for Studio One Posters, where he designed what was to become the best selling poster of all time, the treed kitten of “Hang in There Baby, Friday's Coming.” He worked for North American Publishing as a promotional art director for 13 trade magazines and has done recruitment advertising for two Philadelphia agencies. Today, as owner of Kofoed Design, he specializes in photo retouching and restoration.

Karl's other career is that of a science fiction illustrator and writer. He is well known to the East Coast SF community and has done scores of book covers and interior illustrations for magazines like Analog and Asimov's SF magazine.

Karl is perhaps best known for his lavishly illustrated Galactic Geographic feature which has appeared in Heavy Metal magazine in two incarnations. It began in 1978 and ran for two years, then resumed in 1998 and continued until 2008. His pieces feature diverse and imaginative views of living alien worlds and a distinctive documentary style, which have set Karl's work apart from others in his field. Karl has always regarded the Galactic Geographic material as a single work of art, and using his computer he single-handedly designed, wrote, illustrated, and produced the Galactic Geographic Annual 3003, which he describes as a nature magazine from the future. Published by Chrysalis/Paper Tiger Books in 2003, it is still available.

Three of his novels have been published by BeWrite Books in the UK: DEEP ICE, JOKO, and JUPITER'S REEF which is the first part of a trilogy. FARTHEST REEF is part two of that trilogy.

Karl and his wife Janet, a popular jewelry designer, live in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania; a suburb of Philadelphia. They each have a daughter named Lisa, from previous marriages.