In
Transcension, Damien Broderick extrapolates a powerful science fiction novel from aspects of his speculative-science nonfiction book,
The Spike, and creates a fascinating world at the edge of profound transformation.
In the near future, the brilliant lawyer/cybernetician Mohammed Kasim Abdel-Malik is killed by street thugs, but his body is rushed into cryonic suspension. His mind becomes the source for the Aleph, an artificial intelligence that will rule the world.
In the Aleph-ruled technotopia, Amanda Kolby-McAllister is a math and music genius who's almost 30, but she's trapped in adolescence by law and nanotech. Rebellious and bored, she attempts to catch an illegal and highly dangerous ride on the back of a subterranean Maglev freighter. Arrested, Amanda swears before the revived Abdel-Malik, now a Magistrate, that she will never again sneak into a Maglev hangar. But she conceives of another way to ride the supersonic train by entering the tunnel through a ventilation shaft in the Valley of the God of One's Choice--where outsiders are forbidden.
Mathewmark, who is a genuine adolescent, lives in the Valley of the God of One's Choice. Devout Luddites, the Valley inhabitants are outraged because the Maglev has opened a blasphemous vent into their Valley, but Mathewmark is more intrigued than disturbed, and his curiosity opens a way for Amanda to lead him into temptation. He helps her enter the Valley and the vent, with consequences that will bring them together with Abdel-Malik and the Aleph, and may completely change existence on Earth. --Cynthia Ward
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