This brilliant hard science fiction novel by Greg Egan is as much gripping as it is intelligent and thought-provoking. Egan combines transhumanism, consciousness, multiverses, extra-dimensional theory, wormholes, astrobiology, computational equivalence, and much more, into a rivetting tale of the human race's search for immortality. The book begins in the year 2975. The human race has split into three factions: fleshers- what is left of homo sapiens, Gleisner robots- simulated human brains running inside of humanoid robots, and polises- supercomputers hosting millions of consciousnesses, free from any physical restrictions within their own simulated worlds and free from death- or so they think. The book follows a group of polis inhabitants, particularly Yatima, an orphan born inside the Konishi polis. Roughly twenty years after Yatima's birth it is discovered that a local binary star is collapsing inexplicably faster than the known physics should dictate, the eventual collapse of which causes a gamma ray burst destroying much of Earth's surface life. The polises (and Gleisner robots) survive. One such surviving polis embark on a mission to understand what has happened and to prevent something as bad, or worse, happening again. The diaspora occurs when the polis make a thousand clones of itself and many of its citizens, sending them off into the universe to find answers. This book takes you on a vast journey leaving you feeling like you've travelled billions of light years in your own understanding to get where you are. The interactions between humans and the polis citizens is particularly interesting, as well as the clever use of extrapolated physics from the current theories and ideas of our time. Another interesting quirk of the book is that Egan uses gender-neutral pronouns for the polis members who have opted to have a neutral gender. Definitely worth a read!

Diaspora Greg Egan Image from Amazon.co.uk Find this book on: GreenMetropolis Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com

Just a quick update of what's going on for me at the moment. I moved to Cambridge last Thursday and have until the 6^th of October before I start in my department so I am just getting settled in, meeting new people, enjoying the city of Cambridge, and doing some occasional reading. I am at Jesus College but live just outside the college in a nice house with a *load* of other grad students. Its near the river, Jesus Green, and Midsummer Common, providing extra motivation to go for morning runs!
We have a really nice library at the college which is providing me with a wealth of maths and science books I want to look at. Maybe I will form some posts around some of the things I am reading if I get time to read and think more.

This week we see Bradford & Bingley's nationalisation confirmed after a spectacular share price descent:



Fortunately PHD comics have calmed any sense of panic for me with their informative and well constructed decision tree... hurray for being a grad student.

I have decided to post an essay I wrote last year that outlines three emerging technologies in the fields of nanohealing, solar energy and neuron control. I really enjoyed researching these topics - which were featured in the 2007 MIT Technology Review of 10 Emerging Technologies - and found each technology, and the underpinning science, very interesting. I decided to post the essay here if anyone is interested. Download the PDF or read it online courtesy of PdfMeNot.com:



In other news I have purchased http://dorchard.co.uk which points here (I have also switched from the riftor subdomain to dorchard subdomain on G615). Apologies to the select few of you who are subscribed to my RSS feed- I changed the addressess in the feed so now all posts will probably appear as unread. Sorry for the inconvenience!
My next post will probably be from Cambridge as I move in 2 days time!

Ahoy! Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day (shouldn't that be hyphenated?). For all those Facebook users, if ye want some midday mirth you can change your Facebook account language to "English (Pirate)".
Examples are: "Home" -> "Home Port", "Friends" -> "Me Hearties", "Messages" -> "Bottle o' Messages", "Search" -> "Scour", "Logout" -> "Abandon Ship", and my favourite "video" -> "possessed portrait"!

This is Cap'n Orchard Abandoning Ship to do something else productive....

p.s. In the spirit of all things Pirate - this is a hilarious Smorgtees t-shirt design of a Pirate Encyclopedia. Arrr!!!