The Immortality Option - Softcover

Hogan, James P

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604504579 ISBN 13: 9781604504576

Publisher: Phoenix Pick, 2010

Synopsis

"[Hogan] once again demonstrates his mastery"-Publisher's Weekly **** "...on the cutting edge of technology...Hogan's talent carries the reader from peak to peak in the story"-Booklist **** "In the grand tradition of the classic super-science stories, but with more exciting science and with better writing too. What more can anyone want?"-Isaac Asimov **** In this spectacular sequel to the acclaimed Code of the Lifemaker, James Hogan returns to the strange world of Titan, inhabited by bizarre self-conscious robots. **** Little is known about the civilization that gave birth to these machine intelligences until scientists discover blocks of embedded computer code that appear to be strangely out of place. **** Reactivating the computer codes results in the re-awakening of ancient alien beings, creators of the strange robot culture, totally alien and immensely powerful. And they are unhappy at being restrained within the narrow confines of the machines they find themselves in. They would much rather be the masters of all. **** But while the scientists are helpless against these mighty beings, Karl Zambendord, the media-star 'Psychic' and his support team prepares to meet the challenge. **** The alien intelligences might be intellectually superior and super rational, but this also makes them hyper-materialistic and mechanistic in their outlook and hence, totally unprepared for such "higher" concepts as the spiritual, the mystical, and the transcendental. And selling such notions is precisely Zambendorf's stock in trade

About this title

From the Publisher

I had fun editing this book because Jim Hogan knows so much more science and engineering than I do that his ideas always astonish me. And mixed in with the hard-SF thought experiments are likeable characters--if you like Larry Niven's books, you'll like James P. Hogan's as well, for the same reasons.

                                        --Ellen Key Harris, Editor, Del Rey Books

From the Inside Flap

n's largest moon, was frozen and lifeless...but only by some definitions!
Organic life had never evolved on its barren surface, but somehow Titan had become home to the Taloids, a race of self-aware robots who lived in competing city-states, grew houses and tools, tended their robotic herds, and worshipped a god called the Lifemaker.
When humans discovered the Taloids on Titan, they suspected that the robots' sentience had evolved by accident--artificial intelligence gone wrong. But where was the ancient civilization that had spawned them? With no help from the Taloids--who seemed to know nothing of their own origins--Earth's finest scientists were stumped.
Then strange blocks of code were discovered in Titan's ancient computer banks. Neither Taloid digital DNA nor the operating system for Titan's robotic "ecology," the code had clearly lain undisturbed for eons. But now, with human help, it was beginning to activate at last...

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix Pick
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1604504579
• ISBN 13: 9781604504576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288