Diaspora
From back cover HarperPrism paperback November 1999: It is the thirtieth century. The "world" has evolved into a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the solar system into one scape from the outer planets to the sun. Humanity, too, has reconfigured itself. Most people have chosen immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others have opted for disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world. A few holdouts stubbornly remain fleshers struggling to shape an antiquated existence in the muck and jungle of Earth. And then there is the Orphan, a genderless digital being grown from a mind seed. WHen an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, it awakens the polises to the possibility of their own extinction from bizarre astrophysical processes that seemingly violate fundamental laws of nature. It is up to the Orphan and a group of refugees to find the knowledge that will save them all -- a search that will lead them on a quantum adventure to a higher dimension beyond the macrocosmos....
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131recommend
265mentions
184people
2008–2026years
69% recommend30% neutral1% critical
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What Hacker News says
- 100%, also: Diaspora. <3 Greg Egan.
- The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction doesn't have to be self-consistent. Who knows how real teleportation or mind uploading will work, even hypothetically supposing that it is possible? Maybe high fidelity brain scanning or teleportation would be destructive.
If we're talking fictional uploading, I personally prefer Accelerando (Stross) or Diaspora (Egan). I have no evidence that one is more realistic than the other (far future tech is impossible to predict) but I find them more compelling and interesting than the old "don't play god or bad things happen" narratives.
- Greg Egan's Diaspora is one of the best explorations I know for the fates of various humanity factions in the age following a technological singularity.
- Diaspora by Greg Egan is a good book related to some of the themes I see in the comments, such as the whether an advanced civilization would even want to expand.
- Accelerando is not Egan, though, but Stross. Egan's book Diaspora shares similar themes, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
- If you like this, also worth checking out Greg Egan’s books. He wrote Diaspora. Great read.
