Greg Egan crea narrative di fantascienza hard science fiction che approfondiscono l'ontologia matematica e quantistica, esplorando la natura stessa della coscienza. Le sue storie indagano temi come la genetica, la realtà simulata, il postumanesimo, il trasferimento della mente, la sessualità e l'intelligenza artificiale. Egan è celebrato per il suo approccio approfondito e intransigente a materiale complesso e altamente tecnico, introducendo spesso fisica ed epistemologia innovative. La sua visione distintiva spinge i confini dell'esistenza e della realtà umana.
This is a collection of short stories from the author of "Permutation City" and "Distress". The stories deal with such topics as time-travelling messages, crystalline brains, DIY bioengineering, and body and mind exchange.
Twenty of the very best stories and novellas from the award-winning master storyteller and rigorous, exploratory thinker, Greg Egan.
Now a dozen years old, the award-winning collection continues to provide dozens of the best stories of the year, including work by renowned veterans and exciting newcomers, including Stephen Baxter, Michael Bishop, Terry Bisson, Pat Cadigan, Greg Egan, Eliot Fintushel, Michael F. Flyn, Lisa Goldstein, Jose Haldemnan, Katherine Kerr, Nancy Kress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maureen F. McHugh, Robert Reed, Mike Resnick, Mary Rosenblum.
A modern masterpiece from 'One of the genre's great ideas men' (THE TIMES) nelwy packaged for a new audience
A quantum Brave New World from the boldest and most wildly speculative writer of his generation. Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive starships. And there are the holdouts: the fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth--some devolved into dream apes, others cavorting in the seas or the air--while the statics and bridgers try to shape out a roughly human destiny. But the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. The orphan Yatima, a digital being grown from a mind seed, joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety--a search that puts them on the trail of the ancient and elusive Transmuters, who have the power to reshape subatomic particles, and to cross into the macrocosmos, where the universe we know is nothing but a speck in the higher-dimensional vacuum
On a utopian, man-made Oceania atoll, Violet Mosala, Nobel Prize winner and quantum physicist prepares to see off her rivals in the quest for the ultimate Theory of Everything. Burned out by recording the abuses of biotech for his tv news syndicate, Andrew Worth grabs the chance to follow Violet`s story. One by one her competitors are disappearing from the scientific summit. Who or what is to blame? Is one of the many cults-pro-and anti-science-narrowing the chances of her defeat by mortal means, or is there some other more esoteric force at work undermining the Theory of Everything Conference?
A stunning collection of ground-breaking sf stories from a master of the genre
The story of a man with a vision - immortality : for those who can afford it is found in cyberspace. Permutation city is the tale of a man with a vision - how to create immortality - and how that vision becomes something way beyond his control. Encompassing the lives and struggles of an artificial life junkie desperate to save her dying mother, a billionaire banker scarred by a terrible crime, the lovers for whom, in their timeless virtual world, love is not enough - and much more - Permutation city is filled with the sense of wonder.
It's late in the 21st century and bioengineering is now so common that people are able to modify their minds in any way they wish. It is an era which has been shaped by information systems so vast that security, in any form, is easily breached. Now you can be whatever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. On Earth anyway. One night, thirty three years ago, the stars went out. 'The Bubble' - a perfect sphere centred on the sun - appeared in the sky, isolating the solar system from the rest of the universe. For thirty-three years, humanity has lived with the religious cults and terrorism which spawned in the wake of the darkness. We are now alone. Humanity has been cut off. Quarantined.
In Yalda's universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky. As a child Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger -- and that the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilisation has yet achieved. Only one solution seems tenable: if a spacecraft can be sent on a journey at sufficiently high speed, its trip will last many generations for those on board, but it will return after just a few years have passed at home. The travellers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster. Orthogonal is the story of Yalda and her descendants, trying to survive the perils of their long mission and carve out meaningful lives for themselves, while the threat of annihilation hangs over the world they left behind. It will comprise three volumes: * Book One: The Clockwork Rocket * Book Two: The Eternal Flame * Book Three: The Arrows of Time
Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. In the universe containing Seth's world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a "dark cone" to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate as far as north-north-east is impossible. Every living thing in Seth's world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun's shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates. Cities are being constantly disassembled at one edge and rebuilt at the other, with surveyors mapping safe routes ahead. But when Seth and Theo join an expedition to the edge of the habitable zone, they discover a terrifying threat: a fissure in the surface of the world, so deep and wide that no one can perceive its limits. As the habitable zone continues to move, the migration will soon be blocked by this unbridgeable void, and the expedition has only one option to save its city from annihilation: descend into the unknown.
SF's top ideas man brings us a thrilling tale of loss and human endeavour.
The Amalgam spans the nearly entire galaxy, and is composed of innumerable beings from a wild variety of races, some human or near it, some entirely other. The one place that they cannot go is the bulge, the bright, hot center of the galaxy. There dwell the Aloof, who for millions of years have deflected any and all attempts to communicate with or visit them. So when Rakesh is offered an opportunity to travel within their sphere, in search of a lost race, he cannot turn it down. Roi is a member of that lost race, which is not only lost to the Amalgam, but lost to itself. In their world, there is but toil, and history and science are luxuries that they can ill afford. When she meets Zak, the male who will become her teacher and mentor, everything starts to change. Their strange world is under threat, and it will take an unprecedented flowering of science to save it. Rakesh's journey will take him across millennia and light years. Roi's will take her across vistas of learning and discovery just as vast
Chlapec Prabir tráví své dětství s mladší sestrou Madhusrí na jinak neobydleném ostrově v Indickém oceánu, kde jeho rodiče, biologové, zkoumají neobvyklé mutace zdejších unikátních tropických motýlů. Dá mu jméno Teranesie a ve své představivosti zabydlí jeho džungle a vody fantastickými tvory. Ale i ráj se může rychle změnit v peklo, zejména v oblasti zmítané častými občanskými válkami. Když se o dvě desítky let později začnou vědeckým světem šířit zprávy o objevech bizarních nových druhů ve stejné oblasti, Maddy, která kráčí ve šlépějích rodičů, se proti vůli svého bratra rozhodne připojit k vědecké expedici. Prabirovi tak nezbývá, než se vydat na vlastní pěst za ní, aby ji ochránil... před čím vlastně? Nášlapnými minami, genovou epidemií ohrožující život jako takový nebo jen přízraky vlastní minulosti?
Der junge Prabir, neun Jahre alt und hochbegabt, lebt mit seinen Eltern, indischen Biologen, auf einer unberührten und paradiesischen Insel im Pazifik. Diese Forscher studieren eine neue Art von Schmetterlingen, die prächtig und geheimnisvoll sind und laut den Gesetzen der darwinistischen Evolution nicht existieren sollte. Doch als der Krieg die Insel erreicht und seine Eltern getötet werden, muss Prabir mit seiner kleinen Schwester Madhusree fliehen. Zwanzig Jahre später wird ihn das Schicksal aus der anderen Ecke der Welt zurück auf diese Insel führen, wo ganze Arten scheinbar aus dem Nichts auftauchen, um möglicherweise die Menschheit zu bedrohen. Greg Egan erzählt hier das bewegte Leben eines Mannes, der Träger eines außergewöhnlichen wissenschaftlichen Rätsels wird.
