![]() The Supras intelligence supposedly outstrips ours, their lifespans are measured in centuries, and their physiologies are substantially different - they’ve dispensed, for instance, with external genitalia. It worked least well for me when Cley is among the “Supra” humans. But it’s also a rumination on how intelligence might differ, on the breadth and voracity of life, and on the value of the human spirit - and humanity itself - in a vast and indifferent-seeming cosmos. ![]() On one level it’s the story of Cley, a young woman in the far distant future who may be the last “original” human (or at least the closest to homo sapiens) and her struggles to escape a powerful (but helpfully imprecise) entity bent on her destruction. But it’s also firmly in the post-Singularity sub-genre of science fiction, and informed by recent thoughts about space-time geometries, among other things. In several specific chapters it struck me as not only reminiscent of several Arthur C Clarke works - and it's actually an expansion and reworking of a sequel to a Clarke book, which I didn't learn until I read Benford's afterword - but also evocative of older and less cerebral earthlings-struggling-to-comprehend-and-survive-a-strange-environment tales (Farmer’s “World of Tiers” Burroughs homages, in particular). ![]() Beyond Infinity is a curious mix of old and new. ![]()
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