Disclaimer: Since I do not generally put a disclaimer at the beginning of each chapter, I will add one here: I do not own Avatar, nor do I even claim ownership over the characters, weapons platforms, clans, words, locations, or events that I develop. This story will be published only as long as the good grace of the owners of Avatar allow such fan-made fictions to continue.

I will do my best to update 'Upheaval' on a weekly basis, but I have a number of manuscripts and projects in the pipe, and so it may be sporadic, with updates occurring mostly on weekends. This story is going to take care of a number of scientific questions that the Movie left me feeling were un-addressed. One of which is the fact that the Na'vi don't fit in with the rest of the creatures on Pandora evolutionarily. Another has to do with the physics of satellites orbiting gas giants. Hopefully this story will be both scientifically accurate, and a compelling read! Apologies in advance for minor gramatical and spelling issues. Also, I hate that there are no scene breaks in the text parser! UGH! If you know how to add bar-style scene breaks that are not removed by the parser, PLEASE SEND ME A MESSAGE outlining how to do this!!! (NM - figured it out finally (9/26/10).

Teaching commitments begin this week (9/23/10), so updates will probably become bi-weekly after chapter 1 part 4. When the entire chapter is completed, I will remove individual parts and upload the completed chapter with some minor corrections. This will keep with my four or five chapter vision for this 'book'.

Comments, suggestions, and especially reviews are welcome! This thing is practically writing itself lately, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

A few general notes on text formatting in Upheval:

Regularly formatted text in dialog (within quotes) indicates normal conversational tone.

Dialog that is italicized indicates that a stress has been places on those words by their speaker.

Dialog that is in bold indicates that a speaker is excitedly using a raised voice.

DIALOG IN BOLD CAPS indicates a speaker is yelling loudly.

[Dialog enclosed in brackets] indicates original speech in Na'vi, but translated for the reader.