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EXISTENCE
Here you'll find teasers and links to a few story-samples from David Brin's tense, exciting novel about our near future! (Appearing in June 2012 from Tor Books.)
Billions of planets may be ripe for life, even intelligence. So where is Everybody? Do civilizations make the same fatal mistakes, over and over? Might we be the first to cross the mine-field, evading every trap to learn the secret of Existence?
Astronaut Gerald Livingstone grabs a crystal lump of floating space debris. Little does he suspect it's an alien artifact, sent across the vast, interstellar gulf, bearing a message.
"Join us!" -- it proclaims. What does the enticing invitation mean? To enroll in a great federation of free races?
Only then, what of rumors that this starry messenger may not be the first? Have other crystals fallen from the sky, across 9,000 years? Some have offered welcome. Others... a warning!
This masterwork of science fiction combines hard-science speculation and fast-paced action with the deeply thoughtful ideas and haunting imagery that David Brin (best-selling author of Earth and The Postman) is known for in more than twenty languages.
Extended Teaser:
Is it HARD to survive as an intelligent species in the galaxy?
Billions of planets may be ripe for life, even intelligence.
So where is everybody?
Why aren't the star-lanes choked with traffic? Or vibrant with voices, commerce and wisdom?
Do civilizations make the same fatal mistakes, over and over? From nuclear war... to ecological devastation... to mistakes with artificial intelligence... to fatal errors we haven't yet imagined?
Might we be the first to cross the mine-field, and make it into space, evading every trap to learn the secret of Existence?
The era is the 2050s... not so far into tomorrow.
The rich hurl themselves skyward in space-yachts ...
...while poor families homestead beach-front mansions, abandoned to rising tides...
...while cargo zeppelins cruise above an America fractured into bickering pieces...
...while everybody seems to have an idea about how to save the world!
Some pursue solutions in science, hoping to transform and improve on human nature.
Others seek salvation in a nostalgic past.
At both extremes, sincere folks foretell a looming Time of change! Perhaps an ending.
Amid the storm of existing crises - from energy to the environment to the fight for individual rights -- suddenly change arrives -- in a surprising form.
Aliens appear among us. Many kinds of aliens, diverse, often bickering. A veritable zoo of intelligence from beyond the solar system!
It is First Contact.
Only... not in a way that anyone expected.
While on a routine mission -- using his space lariat to lasso garbage out of orbit -- astronaut Gerald Livingstone snatches a lump of floating space debris.
A glittering crystal, no more than a meter long.
Soon he suspects... it's an alien artifact, sent across the vast, interstellar gulf, bearing a emissaries within.
Virtual beings who press against the inner surface, eager to learn our languages... our ways...
...in order to deliver their message.
"Join us!" -- proclaim the envoys -- inhabitants of a tiny crystal starship.
What does the enticing invitation mean?
To enroll in a great federation of free races?
Only then, what of the rumors going around?
That this starry messenger may not be the first?
Have other crystals fallen from the sky, across 9,000 years... or even longer?
It is said that some of them offered welcome. Others... a warning!
Well, at least there's no fear of the old cliche -- of invasion. No hordes of slathering robots or space-vampires or conquering overlords, right?
Isn't it reassuring that these interstellar beings -- restricted to their capsule -- can't do anything physical?
Except... that is... use the power of words.
Welcome to 2055, when some try to transform humanity into gods... while others fear the consequences.
When citizen smart-mobs are more agile than any government or corporation.
When elites of every kind struggle over the tiller of Planet Earth, bickering over who gets to steer our destiny.
An era when rocks and reefs and storms appear to block every path ahead, yet humanity must somehow chart a path -- a solution to the riddle of Existence.
Sample Chapter -- Stories Available
Want to try out some sample chapters? These all work well as stand-alone stories too.
A complete novella "The Smartest Mob" offers a full adventure-excerpt from Existence. A news reporter finds herself aboard a passenger Zeppelin that might -- perhaps -- have been turned into a weapon of terror. No one will listen -- not the government or the Zep company. No one, that is, except a random band of amateurs, scattered around the globe.
Another novella-excerpt from Existence tells the story of a brave Chinese man trying to make a life in the flooded boundaries of Shanghai, who makes a great and terrible discovery. Part 1 of "Shoresteading"!
(The rest of "Shoresteading" may be posted soon.)
And yet another novella-except is available online: "Aficionado" takes you on a wild rocket ride -- the new sport of the super-rich in 2050. Only then a crash landing introduces our hero to a tribe of mysterious dolphins.
A Video Pitch about Existence!
... stay tuned for the video interview with the author...
David Brin is a scientist and best-selling author whose future-oriented novels include Earth, The Postman, and Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. (The Postman inspired a major film in 1998.) Brin is also known as a leading commentator on modern technological trends. His nonfiction book -- The Transparent Society -- won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Brin's newest novel Kiln People explores a fictional near future when people use cheap copies of themselves to be in two places at once. The Life Eaters -- a graphic novel -- explores a chilling alternative outcome of World War II. His newest science fiction novel, EXISTENCE, will be published June 2012.
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