Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. 'Science fiction with an emphasis on science.'- New York Times Book Review '-Science Fiction Weekly 'One of the very best '- Locus. 'Greg Egan is perhaps the most important SF writer in the world.

Greg Egan's audacious voice and literary scope create a fragmented futuristic world where technology and bio-engineering threaten humanity's very existence.Ī quantum Brave New World from the boldest and most wildly speculative writer of his generation. The world's only hope for survival lies in Violet Mosasa's development of a final Theory of Everything, but whether it will lead to the total destruction of Life As We Know It or the complete re-making of the Universe may be a risk too dangerous to take.

Unfortunately Academia's facade of civility is dangerously cracked with a seething maelstrom of plotting, assassination attempts, and rebellion and Worth is dragged down into the nightmare. There, a young South African physicist, Violet Mosala, is expected to unveil her candidate for a Theory of Everything.īut the assignment is not the tropical respite Worth was expecting. Burnt out after completing a documentary on controversial developments in biotechnology, he turns down a chance to report on a baffling new mental disorder known as Distress and instead takes an assignment covering the Einstein Centenary Conference on the artificial island of Stateless. 'The illusion of empathy' has been dispensed with, and a few idealistic souls try to create a Utopia with pirated technology.īut a wired journalist, Andrew Worth, doesn't want any part of the pop-'Frankenscience' regularly dished out to the masses. It is the year 2055 and the battle of the sexes has seven combatants rather than two.

Diaspora by greg egan