Beyond infinity / Gregory Benford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benford, Gregory, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Life on other planets--Fiction.

Life on other planets.

Human-animal relationships--Fiction.

Human-animal relationships.

Interplanetary voyages--Fiction.

Interplanetary voyages.

Women--Fiction.

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

ix, 338 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Aspect/Warner Books, [2004]

Summary:

Eminent physicist and science fiction master Gregory Benford has won numerous honors including two Nebula Awards and the United Nations Medal for Literature. Now continuing the transcendental adventure of his novella, Beyond the Fall of Night, Benford presents a visionary work of stunning imaginative power that spans dimensions and galactic space in the far future... Cley is an Original, a genetically pure member of the most ancient Ur-Human beings. Like others of her forest-dwelling tribe, she expects to spend her few centuries working in the great subterranean Library of Life. Then catastrophe strikes when strange, transdimensional life-forms obliterate the Library and kill all of Earth's Originals -- except Cley. These uncanny beings also attack the planet's most advanced human species, the highly evolved Supras, who cannot reconstruct the knowledge and DNA lost in the Library's ruins. Nor can they protect Cley... Forced to flee, Cley must begin a desperate quest for survival, answers, and hope. Joined by a raccoonlike companion called Seeker, she will journey across the myriad environments of her wildly transformed world...and then far, far beyond. For somewhere -- past planets that have been reengineered, past sentient ship-worlds evolving deep between stars, past creatures the size of solar systems -- waits the Malign. A being so powerful that it can escape a black hole, the Malign is destroying the galaxy as it hunts down the one thing it fears...

Contents:

I. Growing up Original 1

1. Cley 3

2. Being Natural 13

3. First Love, of Sorts 16

4. The Semi-Infinite Library 21

5. Growing Up Fast 25

II. A Universe in Ruins 29

1. Allies and Evil 31

2. Lessons of Pain 38

3. Aftermath 45

4. The Library of Life 51

5. A Larger Topology 67

6. To Dance on Time 73

III. Around the Curve of the Cosmos 83

1. Morphs 85

2. The Obscurantists 91

3. Tubeworld 95

4. The Fleshy Birds 107

5. Taking Flight 111

6. Quagma 115

7. The Black Brane 120

IV. The Malign 129

1. The Multifold 131

2. The Saintly 136

3. Damage 143

4. The Discovery of Forever 147

5. Flight 158

6. Biologic 166

V. The System Solar 175

1. Prey 177

2. Pinwheel 184

3. Jonah 196

4. Leviathan 204

5. Editing the Sun 217

VI. A Mad God 227

1. The Captain of Clouds 229

2. Skysharks 239

3. The Living Bridge 250

4. Continents Alive 262

5. Homo Technologicus 270

6. Blue Barnacles 277

VII. Malign Attentions 291

1. The Prison of Time 293

2. Closed Curves of the Timescape 303

3. The Meta-Universe 309

4. The Heresy of Humanism 322.

ISBN:

044653059X

OCLC:

52948880