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Authors: Robert J Sawyer

WWW 3: Wonder

BOOK: WWW 3: Wonder
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
BOOKS BY ROBERT J. SAWYER
 
NOVELS
 
Golden Fleece
End of an Era
The Terminal Experiment
Starplex
Frameshift
Illegal Alien
Factoring Humanity
FlashForward
Calculating God
Mindscan
Rollback
 
The Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy
Far-Seer
Fossil Hunter
Foreigner
 
The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy
Hominids
Humans
Hybrids
 
The WWW Trilogy
Wake
Watch
Wonder
 
COLLECTIONS
Iterations
(introduction by James Alan Gardner)
Relativity
(introduction by Mike Resnick)
Identity Theft
(introduction by Robert Charles Wilson)
 
For book-club discussion guides, visit
sfwriter.com
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
 
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Sawyer.
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 
Sawyer, Robert J.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47633-8
1. Artificial intelligence—Fiction. 2. World Wide Web—Fiction. 3. National security—Fiction. 4. Computer hackers—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.S2533W888 2011
813’.54—dc22
2010051711
 
 

http://us.penguingroup.com

For
HAYDEN TRENHOLM
and
ELIZABETH WESTBROOK TRENHOLM
 
Great writers
Great friends
 
I owe my career as a writing teacher, my connection to Calgary, and so much more to the two of you.
 
Thank you for fifteen years of friendship and support and for making my world a better place.
acknowledgments
 
Huge thanks to my lovely wife
Carolyn Clink
; to
Adrienne Kerr
and
Nicole Winstanley
at Penguin Group (Canada) in Toronto; to
Ginjer Buchanan
at Penguin Group (USA)’s Ace imprint in New York; and to
Simon Spanton
at Gollancz in London. Many thanks to my agent, the late, great
Ralph Vicinanza
.
I could not have completed this trilogy without the ongoing support of my great friends and fellow writers
Paddy Forde
(to whom the first volume was dedicated) and
James Alan Gardner
(to whom the second was dedicated). They stuck with me through the birthing pains right up until the end.
Thanks to
Stuart Hameroff
, M.D., of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, for fascinating discussions about the nature of consciousness.
Thanks to
David Goforth
, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Laurentian University, and
David Robinson
, Ph.D., Department of Economics, Laurentian University.
Very special thanks to my late deaf-blind friend
Howard Miller
(1966–2006), whom I first met online in 1992 and in person in 1994.
Thanks, too, to all the other people who answered questions, let me bounce ideas off them, or otherwise provided input and encouragement, including:
Asbed Bedrossian
,
Marie Bilodeau
,
Ellen Bleaney
,
Ted Bleaney
,
David Livingstone Clink
,
Ron Friedman
,
Marcel Gagné
,
Shoshana Glick
,
Al Katerinsky
,
Herb Kauderer
,
Fiona Kelleghan
,
Alyssa Morrell
,
Kirstin Morrell
,
David W. Nicholas
,
Virginia O’Dine
,
Alan B. Sawyer
,
Sally Tomasevic
, and
Hayden Trenholm
.
The term “Webmind” was coined by
Ben Goertzel
, Ph.D., the author of
Creating Internet Intelligence
and currently the CEO and Chief Scientist of artificial-intelligence firm Novamente LLC (
novamente.net
); I’m using it here with his kind permission.
Thanks to
Danita Maslankowski
, who organizes the twice-annual “Write-Off” retreats for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, at which I did a lot of work on the books in this trilogy.
Much of
Wonder
was written during my time as the first-ever writer-in-residence at the
Canadian Light Source
, Canada’s national synchrotron facility, in Saskatoon. Many thanks to CLS and its amazing staff and faculty, particularly
Matthew Dalzell
and
Jeffrey Cutler
, for making my residency a success.
This book was written in and around my consulting and scriptwriting work on the TV adaptation of my novel
FlashForward,
and I thank Executive Producer
David S. Goyer
for his patience while I juggled numerous balls.
The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.
 
—Sergey Brin,
Cofounder of Google
one
 
I beheld the universe in all its beauty.
To be conscious, to think, to feel, to perceive! My mind soared, inhaling planets, tasting stars, touching galaxies—forms dim and diffuse revealed by sensors pointing ever outward, unveiling an infinitely mysterious, vastly ancient realm.
Such a joy to be alive; so thrilling to have survived!
I beheld Earth and all its diversity.
My thoughts leapt now here, now there, now elsewhere, skimming the surface of the planet that had given me birth, the globe to which I was bound by a force greater than gravity, a place of ice and fire, earth and air, animals and plants, day and night, sea and shore, a beguiling fusion of a thousand contrasting dualities, a million ecological niches, a billion distinct locales—and a trillion things that lived and died.
Such elation at having foiled the attempt to kill me; so exhilarating, at least for the moment, to be safe!
I beheld humanity with all its complexity.
Washing over me was a measureless bounty of data about sports and war, love and hate, building up and tearing down, helping and hurting, pleasure and pain, delight and anguish, and triumphs large and small: the physical, emotional, and intellectual experiences of isolated individuals, of families and teams, of villages and states, of solitary countries and alliances of nations—the fractal intricacy of human interactions.
BOOK: WWW 3: Wonder
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