When Darwin set out to explain the origins of living things, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations since, scientists have struggled to make sense of this central conundrum. Huge advances in biology over the past decades have served only to deepen the mystery: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. But now an answer to the question is at hand, and it comes from a field of science so new and so fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology collide. The link that interweaves these diverse fields is information - not in the prosaic everyday sense, but as an abstract concept: information is a force as important, profound and physically impactful as energy. This book is our very first, breath-taking journey through this revolutionary research.