New Releases by Greg Egan

In an alien universe where space and time play by different rules, interstellar voyages last longer for the travellers than for those they left behind. After six generations in flight, the inhabitants of the mountain-sized spacecraft the Peerless have used their borrowed time to develop advanced technology that could save their home world from annihilation. But not every traveller feels allegiance to a world they have never seen, and as tensions mount over the risks of turning the ship around and starting the long voyage home, a new complication arises: the prospect of constructing a messaging system that will give the Peerless news of its own future. While some of the crew welcome the opportunity to be warned of impending dangers - and perhaps even hear reports of the ship''s triumphant return - others are convinced that knowing what lies ahead will be oppressive, and that the system will be abused. Agata longs for a chance to hear a message from the ancestors back on the home world, proving that the sacrifices of the travellers have not been in vain, but her most outspoken rival, Ramiro, fears that the system will undermine every decision the travellers make. When a vote fails to settle the matter and dissent erupts into violence, Ramiro, Agata and their allies must seek a new way to bring peace to the Peerless - by traveling to a world where time runs in reverse. The Arrows of Time is the final volume of the Orthogonal trilogy, bringing a powerful and surprising conclusion to the epic story of the Peerless that began with The Clockwork Rocket and The Eternal Flame.

Humanity Among The Stars What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us fourteen new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The fourteen startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds and Peter Watts.

Michael Underwood, consultant en musique créative pour l’Usine à Inspiration, ne put s’empêcher de jeter un œil discret à sa montre. Il lui restait encore du travail pour la campagne Hypersoft, laquelle se devait d’être terminée le jour même, et l’après-midi filait déjà. Underwood écoutait John Halbright depuis vingt...

«J’avais six ans lorsque mes parents m’ont dit que j’avais dans le crâne un petit cristal sombre qui apprenait à être moi.»La matière organique est faible et périssable. Rien ne vaut le cristal Ndoli, cette invention révolutionnaire qui stocke la personnalité d’un individu dans sa nano-structure de carbone,...

Dix-huit récits vertigineux...Un monument de la SF moderne...Des drogues qui brouillent la réalité et provoquent la conjonction des possibles. Des perroquets génétiquement améliorés qui jouent En attendant Godot. Des milliardaires élaborant des chimères, mi-hommes mi-animaux, pour assouvir leurs passions esthétiques. Des femmes qui accueillent dans leur ventre le cerveau de leur mari le temps de reconstruire son corps. Des enlèvements pratiqués sur des répliques mémorielles de personnalités humaines. Des fous de Dieu inventant un virus sélectif reléguant le SIDA au rang de simple grippe. Des implants cérébraux altérant suffisamment la personnalité pour permettre à quiconque de se transformer en tueur...Greg Egan bâtit son futur en disséquant le présent avec une virtuosité aussi fascinante qu''implacable : nous voici prévenus...Australien né à Perth en 1961, Greg Egan publie sa première nouvelle en 1983. Vingt années, six romans et une soixantaine de nouvelles plus tard, il est unanimement considéré comme l''auteur de science-fiction le plus novateur de sa génération. Une notoriété qui n''infléchit pas le caractère discret de l''auteur, dont on sait peu de choses. II confie toutefois avoir pris, suite à la sortie de son roman Schild''s Ladder en 2002, quelque distance avec l''écriture et ses fonctions de programmeur afin de se consacrer à l''aide aux réfugiés. Période de mise en retrait désormais révolue, puisqu''il travaille à l''heure actuelle sur son septième roman, Incandescence.Axiomatique est sans conteste le recueil de SF le plus incontournable de la décennie 90. Annoncé en France depuis près de dix ans, sa présente publication en intégralité est un événement majeur. Axiomatique sera suivi par deux autres volumes, l''ensemble de ces trois tomes constituant à terme une intégrale raisonnée des nouvelles de l''auteur unique au monde.Traductions revues et harmonisées par QUARANTE-DEUX

Un match de football quantique. Et des joueurs vieux de plusieurs millénaires. Des mathématiques armes de destruction massive dans une guerre entre univers. Le premier voyage de l''homme vers les étoiles, en pleine ère transhumaine. L''amour négocié par le biais de nanomachines. La foi mise en équation chimique. La transplantation cérébrale comme moyen d''immortalité... Océanique, troisième volet de l''intégrale des nouvelles de Greg Egan, réunit treize longs récits et consacre son auteur comme le chef de file d''une science-fiction déterminée à décrypter notre monde et ses enjeux. Un talent unique salué par le prix Hugo et le John W. Campbell Memorial Award. L''écrivain le plus fascinant de sa génération.

Greg Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket introduced readers to an exotic universe where the laws of physics are very different from our own, where the speed of light varies in ways Einstein would never allow, and where intelligent life has evolved in unique and fascinating ways. Now Egan continues his epic tale of alien beings embarked on a desperate voyage to save their world . . . . The generation ship Peerless is in search of advanced technology capable of sparing their home planet from imminent destruction. In theory, the ship is traveling fast enough that it can traverse the cosmos for generations–and still return home only a few years after they departed. But a critical fuel shortage threatens to cut their urgent voyage short, even as a population explosion stretches the ship’s life-support capacity to its limits. When the astronomer Tamara discovers the Object, a meteor whose trajectory will bring it within range of the Peerless, she sees a risky solution to the fuel crisis. Meanwhile, the biologist Carlo searches for a better way to control fertility, despite the traditions and prejudices of their society. As the scientists clash with the ship’s leaders, they find themselves caught up in two equally dangerous revolutions: one in the sexual roles of their species, the other in their very understanding of the nature of matter and energy. The Eternal Flame lights up the mind with dazzling new frontiers of physics and biology, as only Greg Egan could imagine them.

Far in the distant, post-human future, the Cater-Zimmermann community set out to refute the theory that the universe is created exclusively for mankind by cloning themselves a thousand times over and sending each copy to a different star within the galaxy. One of the copies of Cater-Zimmermann, Paolo Venetti, arrives at Orpheus; a water-world inhabited by floating mats that perform as a Turing machine.

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 the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilization 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 travelers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster.

Set in a near future Iran (where the theocracy has been overthrown, but where Muslim religion still dominates the culture), an Arab/Muslim focused MMORG gaming companies cutting edge AI software might hold the key achieving "uploaded consciousness." Martin is an Australian journalist who covered uprising and overthrow of the Iranian theocracy, and has since “gone native” with a Iranian wife and child. As tragedy strikes his multi-cultural family, Martin struggles to maintain his place in his adapted culture, and to provide for his child. Zendigi explores what it means to be human, and the lengths one will go to in order to provide for ones children. This emotional roller coaster explores a non-Western-European near future that both challenges ideas of global mono-culture and emphasizes the humanity we all share.

Collected together here for the first time are twelve stories by the incomparable Greg Egan, one of the most exciting writers of science fiction working today. In these dozen glimpses into the future Egan continues to explore the essence of what it is to be human, and the nature of what - and who - we are, in stories that range from parables of contemporary human conflict and ambition to far-future tales of our immortal descendants. Return to the universe of the meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, which Egan explored in his critically acclaimed novel Incandescence: ''Riding the Crocodile'', which recounts an epic endeavour a million years from now to bridge the divide between the Amalgam and the reclusive Aloof; ''Glory'', set in the same future, in which two archaeologists strive to decipher the artefacts of an ancient civilisation, and ''Hot Rock'', where an obscure, sunless world conceals mind-spinning technological marvels, bitter factional struggles, and a many-layered secret history. This superb collection also includes the title story, the Hugo Award-winning ''Oceanic'': a boy is inducted into a religion that becomes the centre of his life, but as an adult he must face evidence that casts a new light on his faith.

A representative sampling of Hugo winner Egan''s distinctive hard science fiction drawing from previously uncollected stories.

The long-awaited new novel from Greg Egan! Hugo Award-winning author Egan returns to the field with Incandescence, a new novel of hard SF. The Amalgam spans nearly the 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. 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.

Features five science fiction stories dealing with the abuse of mathematical or physical concepts and the dire consequences on humanity''s future.

Une jungle génétiquement capable de se protéger de toute agression extérieure, y compris humaine, afin de servir les intérêts des barons de la drogue. Un voyage sans retour au cœur d''un trou noir. Un logiciel à même de remonter tout arbre généalogique sur des milliers de générations en traçant l''ADN. Un premier contact extraterrestre grâce à de nouvelles mathématiques et un ordinateur de lumière. La numérisation totale de la mémoire humaine. Un virus mortel en passe de devenir une nouvelle religion, à moins que la religion elle-même ne soit le virus... Greg Egan bâtit son futur en disséquant le présent avec une virtuosité implacable : nous voici prévenus...

"Le jeune Prabir, neuf ans, enfant surdoué, vit avec ses parents, biologistes indiens, sur une île vierge et paradisiaque du Pacifique. Ces chercheurs étudient une espèce nouvelle de papillons, splendides et mystérieux, qui ne devrait pas exister selon les lois de l''évolution darwinienne. Mais lorsque la guerre s''abat sur l''île et que ses parents sont tués, Prabir doit fuir avec sa petite sœur, Madhusree. Depuis l''autre bout du monde, le destin le ramènera vingt ans plus tard sur cette île où des espèces entières semblent surgir du néant pour, peut-être, menacer l''humanité. Greg Egan, l''un des meilleurs écrivains actuels de science-fiction, raconte ici la vie tourmentée d''un homme qui devient le porteur d''une prodigieuse énigme scientifique." [Source : 4e de couv.]

For twenty thousand years, every observable phenomenon in the universe has been successfully explained by the Sarumpaet Rules: the laws governing the dynamics of the quantum graphs that underlie all the constituents of matter and the geometric structure of spacetime. Now Cass has stumbled on a set of quantum graphs that might comprise the fundamental particles of an entirely different kind of physics, and she has travelled three hundred and seventy light years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, in the hope of bringing this tantalising alternative to life. The “novo-vacuum” is predicted to begin decaying the instant it’s created, but even a short-lived, microscopic speck could shed light on the origins of the universe, and test the Sarumpaet Rules more rigorously than ever before. Cass’s experiment turns out to be more successful than anticipated: the novo-vacuum is more stable than the ordinary vacuum around it, and a region in which the new physics holds sway proceeds to expand out from Mimosa at half the speed of light. Six hundred years later, more than two thousand inhabited systems have been lost to the novo-vacuum. On the Rindler, a ship that has matched velocities with the encroaching border, people have come from throughout inhabited space to study the phenomenon. Most are Preservationists, hunting for a way to turn back the tide, but a few belong to another faction: Yielders, who believe that the challenge of adapting to survive on the far side of the border would reinvigorate a civilisation that has grown stale and insular. Tchicaya has come to the Rindler to join the Yielders, but when Mariama — a childhood friend whose example inspired him to abandon his own home world and traditions for a life of travel — arrives soon after, he is shocked to discover that she plans to help the Preservationists find a way to destroy the novo-vacuum. As a theoretical breakthrough leads to a sequence of experiments that begins to reveal the true richness of the world behind the border, tensions between the opposing factions grow. When a splinter group responds to these revelations with violent, unilateral action, Tchicaya and Mariama are forced into an uneasy alliance, and travel together through the border, balancing old and new loyalties against the fate of two incomparably different universes.

In the deep future mankind is barely distinguishable from machine intelligences, rarely embodied outside of virtual environments. It is time, using the very building blocks of time and space, to engineer the universe itself. Time to enter a new quantum realm of marvels and terrors. The new novel from one of the worlds most respected and acclaimed writers marks a dramatic move into a new arena ¿ that of the wide screen SF epic ala Baxter, Banks, Hamilton and Macleod. Novels such as this have proved to be the engine house for both the major sales and the best ideas of modern SF. That the genre¿s primary ideas man and one of its finest prose stylists should direct his energies to this sort of canvas promises much. This will be Greg Egan¿s breakout book.

"Sur l''île artificielle d''Anarchia, Andrew Worth, journaliste scientifique, enquête sur l''énigme de l''Univers. Un colloque y réunit les plus grands physiciens de la planète qui doivent révéler l''équation ultime, celle qui complétera, ou encore achèvera, la physique. Mais ce secret défie les Cultes de l''ignorance qui prolifèrent en ce milieu du XXIe siècle et qui tiennent pour impie toute révélation sur les mystères de la Création. La plus secrète des sectes prend pour cible Violet Mosala, la plus jeune prix Nobel de l''Histoire. Et voilà Worth devenu involontairement son protecteur, alors que l''Enfer se déchaîne. Greg Egan, l''écrivain le plus intelligent de la science-fiction contemporaine, dresse ici un tableau spectaculaire de la science, de la société, des superstitions et des contradictions du milieu du nouveau siècle." [Source : 4e de couv., tirage 2012]

Etre une copie de soi-même, est-ce continuer à être soi-même ? C''est la question que se pose Paul Durham tandis qu''il multiplie ses doubles informatiques. Et il fait une découverte bouleversante : c''est qu''un univers virtuel conçu d''une certaine façon n''a plus besoin d''un support matériel pour exister. L''univers réel peut disparaître, le virtuel poursuivra son expansion. Eternellement. Paul Durham se demande avec quels êtres peupler sa Création. La Cité des permutants est probablement le livre le plus novateur de ces dix dernières années. Greg Egan, Australien, est l''étoile qui monte au firmament de la science-fiction mondiale.

Luminous is a collection of ten stories: “Chaff” “Mitochondrial Eve” “Luminous” “Mister Volition” “Cocoon” “Transition Dreams” “Silver Fire” “Reasons to Be Cheerful” “Our Lady of Chernobyl” “The Planck Dive”

En un futuro no muy lejano la inmortalidad parece un hecho factible. La mente de los seres humanos puede cargarse en un sistema informatico para producir copias, personas virtuales con todos los recuerdos y la identidad intactos.

Andrew Worth is a science journalist with optic nerve taps and a gut full of memory chips. 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. There, a young South African physicist, Violet Mosala, is expected to unveil her candidate for a Theory of Everything. But the assignment is not the tropical respite Worth was expecting. While the politics surrounding the creation of Stateless grows more turbulent, and ignorance cults stage protests against the gathering scientists, a secretive group known as the Anthrocosmologists, with some very strange ideas about the Theory of Everything, begin to enact their own agenda.

Axiomatic is a collection of eighteen short stories: “The Infinite Assassin” “The Hundred Light-Year Diary” “Eugene” “The Caress” “Blood Sisters” “Axiomatic” “The Safe-Deposit Box” “Seeing” “A Kidnapping” “Learning to Be Me” “The Moat” “The Walk” “The Cutie” “Into Darkness” “Appropriate Love” “The Moral Virologist” “Closer” “Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies”