- Darwinia (novel)
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For other uses, see Darwinia (disambiguation).
Darwinia Author(s) Robert Charles Wilson Country United States Language English Genre(s) Science fiction, alternate history novel Publisher Tor Books Publication date 1998 Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback) Pages 320 pp ISBN 0-312-86038-2 OCLC Number 38495316 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 21 LC Classification PR9199.3.W4987 D37 1998 Darwinia is a 1998 science fiction, alternate history novel written by Robert Charles Wilson. It won an Aurora Award (Canadian science fiction and fantasy) for Best Long Form in 1999, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel that same year.[1]
Darwinia was written in segments, in Vancouver, Whitehorse (Yukon), and Toronto.[2]
Contents
Plot summary
In March 1912, in the event some people called the "Miracle", Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, including its inhabitants, disappear suddenly overnight, and are replaced with a slice of an alien Earth, a land mass of roughly equal outlines and terrain features, but with a strange new flora and fauna which seems to have followed a different path in evolution.
Seen by some as an act of divine retribution, the "Miracle" affects the lives of people all around and transforms world history.
The book describes the life and the adventures of Guilford Law, a young American photographer. As a 14-year-old boy, Guilford Law witnessed the "Miracle" as shimmering lights moving eerily across the ocean sky. As a grown man, he is determined to travel to the strange continent of Darwinia and explore its mysteries. To that end he enlists as a photographer in the Finch expedition, which plans to travel up the river that used to be known as the Rhine and penetrate the bizarre new continent's hidden depths as far as possible. He lands in the middle of the jungle in the midst of nationalistic skirmishes, in which partisans attack and wipe out most of the party of the Finch expedition on the continent which they believe belongs to them.
The plot becomes increasingly stranger. Law has brought an unwanted companion with him, a mysterious twin who seems to have lived—and died—on an alternate Earth unchanged by the Miracle. The twin first appears to Guilford in dreams, and he brings a message that Darwinia is not what it seems to be—and Guilford is not who he seems to be.
A startling revelation soon arrives. By the end of the story, it is revealed to all the characters that it is really now the End of Time, and that the Universe, Earth and all the consciousness that ever existed are really being preserved in a computer-like simulation known as the Archive. The Archive was built by a coalition of all the sentient beings in the Universe in an effort to save consciousness from death. However, "viruses" (parasitic artificial life-forms) known as Psions have arisen in the system of the Archive. Guilford Law eventually learns that he and those like him serve as instruments in a cosmic struggle against the Psions for the survival of consciousness itself.
See also
References
- ^ "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1999. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
- ^ "Wilson at a Glance". Geocities. Archived from the original on 2009-10-21. http://web.archive.org/web/20091021140620/http://geocities.com/canadian_sf/wilson/wilson_glance.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
External links
Categories:- 1998 novels
- American science fiction novels
- Virtual reality in fiction
- American steampunk novels
- Novels by Robert Charles Wilson
- Novels set in Canada
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