Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment was supposed to prove that lightning was electricity.
Instead, it brought down an alien ship.
When a hidden scout vessel watching Earth is shattered in the storm, the Weyr Authority-a vast interstellar empire-mistakes Franklin for a planetary weapon master. To them, his lightning rods are atmospheric defenses, his postal routes are military networks, his libraries are knowledge cells, and his glass armonica is a forbidden resonance device.
To Franklin, they are simply useful ideas.
But usefulness may be humanity's greatest defense.
From colonial America to revolutionary France, Franklin wages a secret war the world never sees, using science, satire, diplomacy, invention, and civic improvement to keep Earth free from an empire that fears what ordinary people can build when they work together.
History remembers Benjamin Franklin as a printer, inventor, diplomat, and founder.
The stars remember him as the Storm-Lord of Earth.