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The Omega Expedition

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Overview

The sixth volume of Brian Stableford's future history concludes the series and also refers back to its beginnings. Through five earlier volumes, Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex, and Dark Ararat, Stableford has mapped out for us in engaging stories the wonderful and sometimes disturbing world of the next thousand years, on Earth, throughout the solar system, and to worlds beyond, with emphasis on huge sociological changes and extraordinary alterations in the biological life of humans. It is one of the most detailed and plausible and fascinating projections in all of science fiction. Now, in The Omega Expedition, it takes us into another millennium, and is complete. The Omega Expedition is a philosophical novel, a sequel to The Fountains of Youth. It is the extraordinary life history of Adam Zimmerman, developer of the technology of emortality. The main part of the narrative describes his long-delayed awakening into the 35th century, a time of true immortals.

Editorial Reviews

In this cerebral novel, the capstone to British author Stableford's (Inherit the Earth, etc.) much praised six-volume future history concerning the search for "emortality" (technologically assisted near-immortality), Madoc Tamlin, a 22nd-century shyster with a heart of gold, is defrosted after more than 1,000 years in suspended animation, only to discover that his awakening has been nothing more than a trial run for a more important revival. The posthuman emortals of the 35th century are preparing to bring back Adam Zimmerman, aka the Man Who Stole the World. Zimmerman, whose takeover of Earth actually saved the planet from environmental collapse in the 21st century, is the near-mythic founder of the movement that led to the emortal, posthuman culture that now inhabits our solar system. As Tamlin learns more about the society into which he has newly awakened, he discovers that it contains a number of rival factions, each of which espouses a different sort of emortality. Stableford does a fine job of pulling together an enormous number of loose threads. If his characters are sometimes flat, his presentation of the possible marvels of posthumanity is quite compelling, as is his thoughtful examination of the potential involved in near immortality. Readers who stick with this complex, intellectually challenging series to the end will find their tenacity well rewarded. (Dec. 19) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Brian Stableford

Brian Stableford's recent novels include Streaking (PS Publishing, 2006) and The New Faust at the Tragicomique (Black Coat Press, 2007). His recent non-fiction includes a mammoth reference book, Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia (Routledge 2006) and a collection of critical essays, Heterocosms (Borgo Press, 2007). His recent translations from the French include the second volume of the classic series of Paul F�val novels after which his favourite publisher is named, The Invisible Weapon (Black Coat Press, 2006) and the anthology News from the Moon and Other French Scientific Romances (Black Coat Press, 2007).

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Additional Info

Imprint

Tor Books

Filesize

1.81 MB

Number of Pages

544

eBook ISBN

9781429981088

Excerpt from: The Omega Expedition by Brian Stableford

Introduction

This novel is the final volume in a loosely knit series of six. The other five are all more or less independent, each one carefully constructed as a literary island entire in itself, but this one is different. In order to bring the project to a satisfactory conclusion the major narrative threads running through the series had to be gathered together and integrated into some kind of whole. For that reason, this volume is readable as a direct sequel to any one of four earlier volumes (because it carries forward the stories of characters featured in each of them) and forms a parenthetical pair in association with the other. The purpose of this introduction is to make adequate provision for readers who have not read all -- or any -- of the earlier volumes in the series, and to enable those who have to refresh their memories.

* * *
Volume one of the series, The Cassandra Complex, is set in the year 2041. It tells the story of the belated public revelation of an accidental discovery made by a biologist named Morgan Miller while conducting experiments in the genetic engineering of mice. Miller's discovery had allowed him to produce a number of mice whose life spans were much greater than those of mice produced by natural selection. Although he had some reason to suppose that a similar genetic transformation might have a similar effect in humans, the process had certain awkward limitations which discouraged him from reporting his findings, even to his closest friends, while he searched for a means to overcome them.

Having grown old without ever solving the problems associated with his life-extending process, Miller had begun to investigate the possibility of handing his results over to an institution capable of carrying on his work. Unfortunately, an imperfect rumor of his long-kept secret had already leaked out, and this move provoked precipitate action by people intent on claiming the rewards of the research for themselves. (I am being deliberately vague here because the novel is framed as a mystery, and I do not want to spoil it for any reader who may want to go on to read it.)

One of the institutions contacted by Miller was the Ahasuerus Foundation, which had been set up some years earlier by a man named Adam Zimmerman to conduct research in technologies of longevity and suspended animation. Zimmerman had been one of the first people to place himself in cryonic suspension before suffering a natural death in the hope that he might one day be revived into a world which had the technological means to keep him alive indefinitely. The continuing work of the Ahasuerus Foundation is a recurrent element in the subsequent books in the series, whose underlying theme is the gradual evolution of a whole series of longevity technologies, each one of which brings humankind a further step closer to "authentic emortality." Emortality -- a term coined by Alvin Silverstein -- signifies a state of being in which an organism does not age, and is thus potentially capable of living forever, although it remains permanently vulnerable to death by mortal injury (it is preferable to "immortality" as a specification of the plausible ultimate goal of biotechnology and medical science, because immortality implies an absolute invulnerability to death).