Mammoth Books presents Anomalies

Book 195: Mammoth Books

by Gregory Benford

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Craftsman and amateur astronomer Geoffrey Carlisle from Ely discovers that the moon is fractionally ahead of its usual elliptical orbit. He becomes instantaneously well-known for his unique observation. Using Carlisle's findings, astronomy experts discover that each star circling the moon has been slightly warped. Yet after some time, as Professor Wright from Cambridge University had predicted, the warped stars return to their rightful places, suggesting that the world is an information-ordered one, like an analogue program acting out. What then, are the actual repercussions of a computational error in reality?

Release date: July 26, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

I could have filled this book entirely with stories by Greg Benford as he has written some of the best “extreme sf” of recent years. Just check out his collection Worlds Vast and Various (2000) for some of the latest examples. Benford (b. 1941) is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in plasma turbulence and astrophysics. He advises NASA on national space policy and has been heavily involved in the Mars exploration programme. His novels, The Martian Race (1999) and The Sunborn (2005), are generally regarded as amongst the most authentic considerations of the race to and exploration of Mars. In 1995 he received the prestigious Lord Foundation award for scientific achievement.

In the world of science fiction, Benford has received many awards including the Nebula for Timescape (1980), still one of the most realistic time-travel novels. His most sustained sequence of books is the Galactic Centre series, tracing the continuing conflict between organic life forms and AI machines. The series began with Across the Sea of Suns (1983). Amongst his more recent novels perhaps the most extreme is Cosm (1998) involving an artificially created micro-universe. You might also want to check out the ant. . .