Dichronauts by Greg Egan

Dichronauts

Greg Egan

Night Shade Books · Print & ebook · July 11, 2017

A Science Fiction pick for readers exploring Dichronauts.

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Who it’s for
A strange physical universe turns survival into a puzzle of perception, movement, and mutual dependence.
Themes
Symbiotic dependence, Perpetual migration, Survival of a threatened community
Genres
Hard Sci-Fi

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For younger readers: Exo, Alone Out Here, Living Hell

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About this book

Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. Theo, in turn, relies on Seth for mobility, and for ordinary vision looking forwards and backwards. Like everyone else in their world, they are symbionts, depending on each other to survive. In the universe containing Seth's world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dark cone” to the north and south.

Continue reading

Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate as far as north-north-east is every bit as impossible as accelerating to the speed of light. Every living thing in Seth’s world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun’s shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates. Cities are being constantly disassembled at one edge and rebuilt at the other, with surveyors mapping safe routes ahead. But when Seth and Theo join an expedition to the edge of the habitable zone, they discover a terrifying threat: a fissure in the surface of the world, so deep and wide that no one can perceive its limits. As the habitable zone continues to move, the migration will soon be blocked by this unbridgeable void, and the expedition has only one option to save its city from annihilation: descend into the unknown.

A World Askew

A strange physical universe turns survival into a puzzle of perception, movement, and mutual dependence.

Come here for

  • Speculative physics made tangible in the limits of everyday life
  • A symbiotic pair navigating a world that never stops moving

Expect

  • An immersive, idea-driven journey into an unfamiliar cosmos
  • Survival stakes shaped by geography as much as danger

Where it sits

Hard Sci-Fi100%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Sci-Fi
  • Hard Sci-Fi
  • Time Travel Fiction
Authors
Greg Egan
Publisher
Night Shade Books
Published
July 11, 2017
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Symbiotic dependence · Perpetual migration · Survival of a threatened community
Reading lane
Sci-Fi