Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge |  | Creator: Damien Broderick
Publisher: Atlas & Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 141627
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0977743349
Dewey Decimal Number: 003.2
EAN: 9780977743346
ASIN: 0977743349
Publication Date: May 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| • | ISBN13: 9780977743346 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Highly Recommend! August 2, 2008
V. Aronsky (New York, NY)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
What an awesome awesome book! I haven't enjoyed a new book that can plausibly be construed as sci-fi for a while. The book is basically a collection of essays by a number of experts in their respective fields. The subjects range from the significance of prime numbers vs. humor, extending human life span, and very very very far off future. The overall claim is that we will basically become aliens with god like abilities (that is unless we do ourselves in first). There are a number of references at the end of the book that are worth looking up.
Fascinating Exercises for Your Mind August 4, 2008
Shannon Vyff (Calverley, Pudsey, Leeds, UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book stretches anyone's mind. No matter how much science fiction one has read, or futurist literature --there are new ideas contained within the pages of Year Million. Not all the writers are equal, some are better than others--but a few shine brilliantly. You can read and disagree, formulate your own ideas--or nod your head with the 'hmmm' moments when you agree. It is a fun book, I highly enjoyed it.
Read IT July 23, 2009
Invictus (Brisbane)
Read It
INVICTUS
The difficulty about this sort of essay collection is to get people with the necessary expertise to contribute, and to take the necessary time and trouble over their work. Looking at the CV 's, one has to some extent to take this on trust. But Broderick appears to be a responsible person and I am inclined to think he has carefully excluded phonies. With that minor reservation, I am impressed. Some folk with no or little knowledge of, for example, human evolution will if they read this (unlikely) be shaken by it. It is a short course in where we may be heading by reason of our collective scientific expertise. Those who have no notion of this topic may find much of it it hard to believe. But most of those inclined to get Broderick's book will find useful instruction in it.
A must September 26, 2008
Stefano Sutti (Milan, Italy)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is simply the best existing summary of current, cutting-edge hypotheses, projections and estrapolations concerning our distant future, having regard both to posthuman changes and to a more cosmological scale.
The subject is attacked from very different angles by a diverse set of contributors who mix vision, technicalities, and - why not? - a poetic sense of what our presence and possible long-term survival in this universe may imply.
A fascinating scenario indeed, and a transhumanist challenge to old biases...
Words fail me November 10, 2008
Roman Tsukerman (NYC)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Utterly mind-blowing look into what the human race might become. Read this book, then meditate on it, and you will find yourself wrestling with questions like "How is a sufficiently advanced civilization different from God?" and "If we can all connect to each other using some future version of the internet to the point where we can experience each other's thoughts and feelings instantaneously and expand our intellect to the point of processing all of those experiences and understandings simultaneously, what need is there for a self?" The first chapter is a bit math heavy, but don't let that discourage you - follow it as best you can, because the reward of reading this book is as incalculable as some of the stuff our descendants will be doing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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