After the extinction of humans, how do you define humanity?Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive starships.And there are the holdou...

Immortality can be yours . . . at a pricePermutation city is the tale of a man with a vision - how to create immortality - and how that vision becomes grows beyond his control. Encompassing the lives and struggles of an artificial life junkie desperate to save her dying mother, a billionaire banker scarred by a terrible crime, the lovers for whom, in their timeless virtual world, love is not enough - and much more - Permutation city is filled with the sense of wond...

"Instantiation" is a collection of eleven science fiction stories by Hugo Award winning author Greg Egan:• "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine"• "Zero For Conduct"• "Uncanny Valley"• "Seventh Sight"• "The Nearest"• "Shadow Flock"• "Bit Players"• "Break My Fall"• "3-adica"• "The Slipway"• "Instantiation"

Greg Egan is arguably Australia's greatest living science fiction writer. In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has produced a steady stream of novels and stories that address a wide range of scientific and philosophical concerns: artificial intelligence, higher mathematics, science vs religion, the nature of consciousness, and the impact of technology on the human personality. All these ideas and more find their way into this generous and illuminating collection, the clear produ...

When electronics importer Cara Leon goes missing, private investigator Sam Mujrif is hired by her sister to investigate. Cara is eight times taller than Sam, but evidence soon points to players much smaller than either of them. As Sam and his cross-scale colleagues pursue the case, it becomes apparent that Cara's disappearance is linked to the development of technology with the potential to reshape their whole society, and radically alter the balance of power between the scales.

THE HUNDRED LIGHT YEAR DIARY - Scientists can bounce messages from the future back to the present, but there's no guarantee they'll tell the truth ...LEARNING TO BE ME - Crystalline minds may take the place of human brains, but where does the self really lie?CLOSER - Lovers exchange bodies and minds, but their experiments go just that little bit too far, proving that you can have too much of a good thing

Sleep and the Soul contains ten stories from Hugo Award-winning author Greg Egan.• "You and Whose Army?"• "This Is Not the Way Home"• "Zeitgeber"• "Crisis Actors"• "Sleep and the Soul"• "After Zero"• "Dream Factory"• "Light Up the Clouds"• "Night Running"• "Solidity"

Nasim is a young computer scientist, hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project: a plan to map every neural connection in the human brain. But funding for the project is cancelled, and Nasim ends up devoting her career to Zendegi, a computerised virtual world used by millions of people.Fifteen years later, a revived Connectome Project has published a map of the brain. Zendegi is facing fierce competition from its rivals, and Nasim decides to exploit the map to fill the virtual ...

Greg Egan's Perihelion Summer is a story of people struggling to adapt to a suddenly alien environment, and the friendships and alliances they forge as they try to find their way in a world where the old maps have lost their meaning.Taraxippus is coming: a black hole one tenth the mass of the sun is about to enter the solar system.Matt and his friends are taking no chances. They board a mobile aquaculture rig, the Mandjet, self-sustaining in food, power and fresh wat...

From the award-winning author Greg Egan comes a Tor.com Original sci-fi short story, "Zeitgeber"For millions of years, life on Earth has taken its cues from the rising and setting of the sun, and for most of human history we've followed the same rhythm. But if that shared connection was broken, and we each fell under the sway of our own private clock, could we still hold our lives together? One family is about to find out.At the Publisher's request, this ti...

In a world where the cells that make up our bodies are not committed to any one organism, Marla is confronted by the fickleness of her cytes, and resolves to understand them with help from Ada, a centuries-old Flourisher. Swappers like Ruth embrace fluidity, and meet with others to exchange cytes, seeking the perfect mix. But Ruth faces her own crisis, and as the technology to manipulate cytes advances, all three are drawn into a struggle to shape the future of life.

Welcome to the strangest world in science fictionSeth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. Theo, in turn, relies on Seth for mobility, and for ordinary vision looking forwards and backwards. Like everyone else in their world, they are symbionts, depending on each other to survive.In the universe containing Seth’s world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dar...