Zendegi

SF's top ideas man brings us a thrilling tale of loss and human endeavour

Nasim is a young computer scientist, hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project: a plan to map every neural connection in the human brain. But funding for the project is cancelled, and Nasim ends up devoting her career to Zendegi, a computerised virtual world used by millions of people. Fifteen years later, a revived Connectome Project has published a map of the brain.

Zendegi is facing fierce competition from its rivals, and Nasim decides to exploit the map to fill the virtual world with better Proxies: the bit-players that bring its crowd scenes to life. As controversy rages over the nature and rights of the Proxies, a friend with terminal cancer begs Nasim to make a Proxy of him, so some part of him will survive to help raise his orphaned son. But Zendegi is about to become a battlefield ...

About the Author

Greg Egan's highly acclaimed science fiction has won him many major awards in the UK, the US and Japan. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Prizes

Greg Egan is a world leader in hard SF, with a critical reputation second to none. A riveting story underpinned by cutting-edge scientific extrapolation 'One of the genre's great ideas men' THE TIMES 'The universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan' NEW SCIENTIST 'Egan is perhaps the most exciting SF writer at work today' THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 'It is one of Egan's great skills that he makes the passion of science appear understandable, even inevitable, to non-scientists' FOUNDATION 'Greg Egan has no equal in the field of hard SF novels' STARBURST His fiction has won him the John W. Campbell Award, the Japanese Seiun Award (five times), the Locus Award (three times), the Interzone readers' poll (three times), and the Asimov's SF Readers' Award (four times), and he has been shortlisted many times for the Arthur C. Clarke and Nebula Awards.