Distress

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by Greg Egan

In the year 2055, the battle of the sexes included seven rather than two fighters. The "illusion of empathy" has been abandoned, and a few of idealistic individuals attempt to build a paradise with pirated technology.

Andrew Worth, a wired journalist, doesn't want any part of the popular "Frankenscience" that is constantly dispensed to the public. He declines an opportunity to report on a perplexing new mental condition known as Distress after completing a documentary on controversial discoveries in biotechnology, opting instead to cover the Einstein Centenary Conference on the artificial island of Stateless. Violet Mosala, a young South African physicist, is slated to present her candidacy for a Theory of Everything there.

The job, however, is hardly the tropical getaway Worth had hoped for. Unfortunately, academia's veneer of respectability has been gravely shattered by a raging whirlwind of planning, assassination attempts, and revolt, and Worth has been pulled down into the nightmare. Violet Mosala's construction of a final Theory of Everything is the world's only hope for survival, but whether it leads to the entire extinction of life as we know it or the complete rebuilding of the cosmos may be a gamble too perilous to take.

Greg Egan's daring voice and literary sweep create a fractured futuristic universe where biotechnology and technology threaten humanity's fundamental survival.