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More copies of this ISBNYear Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledgeby Damien Broderick
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Leading and up-and-coming scientists and science writers cast their minds one million years into the future to imagine the fate of the human and/or extraterrestrial galaxy.
This volume of fifteen new, specially commissioned essays by notable journalists and scholars such as Rudy Rucker, Jim Holt, and Gregory Benford presents a series of speculations on the most radical but well-grounded ideas they can conceive, projecting the universe as it might be in the year 1,000,000 C.E. Their collective effort—first attempted by H. G. Wells in his 1893 essay "The Man of the Year Million"—is an exploration into a barely conceivable distant future, where the authors confront far-flung possibilities, at times bordering on philosophy of science. How would the galaxy look if it were redesigned for optimal energy use and maximized intelligence? What is a universe bereft of stars? Contributors include Amara D. Angelica, Catherine Asaro, Gregory Benford, Robert Bradbury, Sean M. Carroll, Anne Corwin, Dougal Dixon, Robin Hanson, Steven B. Harris, Jim Holt, Lisa Kaltenegger, Wil McCarthy, Rudy Rucker, Pamela Sargent, and George Zebrowski. Review:"The human race has come a long way in the 1.5 million years since Homo erectus rose up and walked on two feet. What will humans look like in another million years (if we're still around)? Where will we live and what will we be doing? In this collection, Broderick, an Australian writer and science fiction editor, and a dozen-plus contributors let their imaginations run wild. At times they sound like a bunch of dudes tossing around what if's, but they've come up with truly funky ideas. The concept of a 'Matrioshka brain' crops up more than once — a gigantic system of solar-orbiting structures to trap the sun's energy. Other authors stay more down to earth. Dougal Dixon speculates on continental drift and changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Steven Harris discusses why deuterium may take the place of oil and gas as our primary energy source in a few millennia. Several chapters read more like science fiction than sound scientific speculation, and a few wander off topic, but it's all great fun." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Synopsis:In this volume, leading and up-and-coming scientists and science writers cast their minds one million years into the future to imagine the fate of the human and/or extraterrestrial galaxy.
About the AuthorDamien Broderick, Ph.D., is a freelance writer, senior fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, and science fiction editor at the Australian popular science monthly Cosmos. He received the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts in 2005. He lives in Melbourne, Australia and San Antonio, Texas.
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