Tag: Deep Future

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How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches I) – James S.A. Corey

Ray Court is part of an experimental programme, in which his mind, and those of the other programme members, will be scanned and sent out to candidate planets in the galaxy. Machines will construct habitats and then copies of Ray and the others, scattering humanity amongst the stars.

The concept of this novelette is simple, but the execution is both clever and thought-provoking. Complicating things, Roy’s ex-wife is also one on the programme, and he believes he may be able to win her back in “another life”. Multiple copies of Roy and the others end up in different circumstances, with different biomes, and their choices are sublty or greatly different. The story rapidly grows from small personal themes to awe-inspiring and humbling ones involving the deep future.

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The Saints of Salvation (Salvation Sequence III) – Peter F. Hamilton

The concluding book of the Salvation Sequence tells two stories. One is of the “Saints”, who pass into the Olyix Enclave of slow time, and send their signal to humanity. Ten thousand years later, the Exodus Humans attack the enclave. Since times moves much more slowly inside, only a few weeks have passed for the Saints. And that’s just the beginning of the mind-mending time-warping. Yirella’s neutron star civilisation also manipulates time, allowing its inhabitants to live thousands of years whole only a few decades pass outside.

While the Exodus Humans are evolved, they are still quite recognizably like their forebears, the Corpus Humans of the neutron star are something else entirely, extending their consciousness in multiple bodies. This brings about uncomfortable questions around the similarity to Olyix minds. Could the humans be evolving into the very thing that they are fighting?

The entire third volume is a triumphant climax to a finely crafted story, with multiple, complex storylines scattered across thousands of years. The first two books introduced the effects of concepts of portals, wormholes and time manipulation on the story. The third book takes it all to the next level, challenging the reader to follow along on a wild ride through time and space. The temporal-spatial scale and scope of the story are stupendous, but it always comes down to individual characters making important and sometimes heartbreaking choices.