Humans
spread over their world. They spread in
waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and
evolving. There were wars, there was
love, there was life and death. Minds
flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling
droplets. There was immortality to be
had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through copying and confluence across
billions upon billions of years.
Everywhere humans found life: crude replicators, of carbon or silicon or
metal, churning meaninglessly in the dark.
Nowhere did they find mind – save what they brought with them or created
– no other against which human
advancement could be tested.
They came to understand that they would forever be alone.
(from Manifold:
Origin by Stephen Baxter)
9½*/10.
The complete review is here.
.
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