Books that caused me to re-think the universe.
Discover mind-expanding books that reshaped my view of the universe. Explore profound reads on cosmology, philosophy, and science that challenge everything you thought you knew.
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Permutation City
by Greg Egan
Transformed into an electronic code, a Copy must discover an alternate way out, back into its real body, because the original avenue of escape has been cut off by the human version from which its was originally copied. Original.
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Diaspora
by Greg Egan
In a new world of digital beings, where humans have chosen to be forever digitized, have selected renewable robotic bodies, or remain flesh on Earth, a devastating event puts the Fleshers in danger from beings that can reshape subatomic particles and transcend time.
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The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson
Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer’s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes—members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian—John Percival Hackworth—in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell’s will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer—a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity.
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Across Realtime
by Vernor Vinge
Encompassing time-travel, powerful mystery and the future history of humanity to its last handful of survivors, Across Realtime spans millions of years and is an utterly engrossing SF classic.
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Eternity
by Greg Bear
Opposing groups clash over control of the Corridor, an access point to alternative worlds in the past, present, and future
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The Forge of God
by Greg Bear
Earth is threatened by the invasion of an interstellar research probe gone mad, in a study of the complex interactions--and their ramifications--between human passions and the inflexible equations of science.
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Anvil of Stars
by Greg Bear
Follows the mission of a select group of human survivors as they search in the Ship of Law for the aliens who destroyed their planet
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Blood Music
by Greg Bear
The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Moving Mars presents the book that launched his career, featuring a scientist who conducts an experiment in cell restructuring that takes on a threatening life of its own. Reprint.
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Vast
by Linda Nagata
Dethroned cult leader Lot Apollinario and his companions have left the sky-city of Silk with a mission. They aim to find the Chenzeme--the mysterious race that annihilated most sentient life in the galaxy many thousands of millennia ago--whose automated weapons still destroy all they meet. Yet life beyond the known fringes of "civilized" space is a strange and wild thing, and the heroes are unprepared for the wonders--and horrors--that wait in the vastness.