Diaspora by Greg Egan is one of the most amazing books I've ever read, in terms of the ideas it explores. A serious treatment of the future where humans' minds are scanned into machines: what senses do you have in a virtual world? How do you spend your time when you want for nothing? What do love and reproduction mean? Space exploration when you slow your subject day to a solar year. Wonderful, beautiful, and mind-bending.
It used to be hard to find, but these days it seems to be available [edit: at least digitally] (ebook, audio) from the retailers you'd expect.
It's not a "change your outlook on life" kind of book, but as a science fiction exploration of humanity's distant "singularity" future, set in 2975, it was the best I've read. (I would appreciate references to any other books on those topics - I haven't found many.)
I have to second this. It took me years to thoroughly grasp some of its parts (and I have a math background) but Diaspora is without a doubt my favorite book of fiction.
The first chapter of the novel is particularly approachable & worthwhile. It's titled Orphanogenesis and is a beautiful, detailed (~30 page) account of the digital birth of a new AI consciousness, from embryo to newborn to gaining self-awareness.
Next year several Greg Egan's books will be reprinted. Diaspora comes out January 6, 2015!
If you want a softer approach to Egan's fiction, check out his short stories. Reasons to be Cheerful is my favorite one as well as Egan's. It's part of the Luminous collection, available as a $3 kindle ebook:
Same here. It profoundly widened my ideas on the universe and how to deal conceptually with its immensity in time and space. It's a beautiful story.
His other books have been so-so, but his short stories are the hardest science fiction around. Nobody else has explored ideas of quantum mechanics intersecting with biology and humanity like he has. I think "Axiomatic" is a good set of them.
> how to deal conceptually with its immensity in time and space
Yes! Dimensions (not even the most objective, physical ones) are not absolutes but subject to changing, creative interpretation through the abilities of our tech.
Compare the meaning of a meter when squirming vs walking vs cycling vs driving vs flying... Modern computing makes a mockery of our past capabilities for information processing / storage / transmission.
Put another way, "there is no bad or good weather, only different gear requirements."
Same goes for everything, not only distance & information, but also scale, temperature, calories, food, output, wealth, energy, users, complexity, manufacturing effort, ... and time! Both time as speed (how much happens in a certain period) and time as something to traverse (need to wait for a result for decades or centuries). With Diaspora & Permutation City I first learned to imagine a future where we could treat centuries with the same amused detachment with which we now treat intercontinental distances as we jet over the oceans.
http://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html
It used to be hard to find, but these days it seems to be available [edit: at least digitally] (ebook, audio) from the retailers you'd expect.
It's not a "change your outlook on life" kind of book, but as a science fiction exploration of humanity's distant "singularity" future, set in 2975, it was the best I've read. (I would appreciate references to any other books on those topics - I haven't found many.)