Existence

Best-selling futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning high concept fiction with Existence. Telepresence. Global security. Everyone watching everyone, all the time. Anything interesting draws a flash crowd of ten million eyes. One man in Afghanistan live-tweets a special forces attack, and the world tunes in. Revolutions coordinate online. And that's today! Tomorrow, you'll wear the Web, immersed in augmented overlays. Your aiware glasses will ID, name-tag, and tattle on each person you walk by, in a global village of ten billion souls.But instant access to all of human knowledge only widens the gulf between those eager for tomorrow...and those fearing an end to human existence.Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector, clearing a hundred-year mess, when he spots something unexpected -- a glinting crystal, unmapped and strange. An hour after he captures it, rumors fill Earth's info mesh about an "alien artifact."Peng Xiang Bin is a shoresteader off the Chinese coast, salvaging homes abandoned to the rising tides. Under one mansion, Bin finds a secret treasure cache. One box bears a warning. Inhabited by Demons.Tor Povlov is a new-era reporter, a genius at trolling Web and street for exciting and heart-breaking "you are there" reports. On a cross-country zeppelin tour she documents an America an world fracturing apart, torn between a future promising godlike powers for all ... and a beguiling past that might offer the only sanctuary. She does not expect to find herself -- and her million-member smart posse -- snagged by the biggest story ever. From a tribe of beleaguered dolphins to the highest mountain observatory, Existence asks the question: Are we alone in the universe? Does every bright new race stumble over the same pitfalls? The same, entrapping seven hundred ways to fail? Thrown into this maelstrom of worldwide shared experience and tension over human destiny, the Artifact is a game changer. A message in a bottle, an alien capsule that wants to communicate ... but for good or ill? The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.