Implied Spaces
Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself. Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmessa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction. From Walter Jon Williams, the celebrated and influential author of Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, and Angel Station, comes Implied Spaces, a new novel of post-singularity action, pyrotechnics, and intrigue. Williams, whose name has long been synonymous with state-of-the-art science fiction, builds on the prophetic futurism of Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross, adding his own brand of poetic prose, masterful plotting, and engaging storytelling. "What happens when technology reaches the casements of reality? The answers to that question may dominate the rest of humankind's Experience. In Implied Spaces Walter Jon Williams wraps excellent adventure around this core question, and gives insights from a number of different perspectives." "Walter Jon Williams really knows how to play power chords in the key of 'sense of wonder': and in Implied Spaces he's gone to town on the guitar solo!" "Implied Spaces pioneers a new genre of SF—the 'Sword & Singularity' novel. Williams combines fantasy tropes believably with nanotech, bleeding-edge infotech speculation, classic smashing-planets space opera, and intriguingly human, or possibly post-human, characters along with a fast-moving plot and a quirky sense of humor in a mélange that's cosmological, theological, ontological, comic, and thoroughly entertaining." Cover Art by Dan dos Santos |
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First printing, November 2008 Distributed by Night Shade Books Printed in the United States of America |
ISBN-13: 978-1-59780-125-6
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With thanks, in no particular order, and for a host of particular reasons, to Kathy Hedges, Daniel Abraham, Sage Walker, Melinda Snodgrass, Emily Mah, Ty Franck, Ian Tregillis, Terry England, Steve Stirling, Steve Howe, and Geoff Landis. And also to Jason and Jeremy, who took a chance.
Other books by Walter Jon Williams Novels: Ambassador of Progress Collections: Facets |
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When mankind's every need is serviced by artificial intelligence, and death itself is only a minor inconvenience, what does it mean to be human? The answer lies hidden, deep within the Implied Spaces. 