Damien Broderick Books In Order

Godplayers

August Seebeck is in his twenties, a man of average looks and intellect. Then comes the claim of his great aunt Tansy that she has been finding corpses each Saturday night in her bath they vanish by morning. August dismisses this tale as elderly fantasy until he stumbles upon a corpse being shoved into the second floor bathroom window of his aunt’s house. Even that wouldn’t faze him, but then someone steps out of the mirror…
. August suddenly discovers he is a Player in the multi universe Contest of Worlds and that his true family is quarrelsome on a mythic scale. His search for understanding follows a classic quest pattern of the Parsifal kind, except that August is nobody’s fool. An epic quest that is funny and engrossing, Godplayers is in the best tradition of Zelazny, Van Vogt, and the Knights of the Round Table, from one of science fiction’s hottest up and coming writers.

K-Machines

August Seebeck is a 20 something student from a world not quite the same as ours. In GODPLAYERS, August tumbled into a vastly larger universe, and learned that he wasn’t, after all, an orphaned only child. He and his turbulent siblings, and the breathtaking Lune and others still stranger, are Players in the Contest of Worlds. They are mysteriously transformed humans whose ancient task is enigmatic battle with the dread, passionate K Machines. Now crisis deepens. Empowered with a potent killing device of his own, an eerie gift from legend, August finds himself flung from world to world in a brutal and baffling game, with entire universes at stake and very little idea of the rules. Only two things are clear: his beloved Lune is not who she seems, and August’s pivotal role is no chance accident. In this cosmos, survival of the gods themselves depends upon human victory over the K Machines.

The White Abacus

THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW THE HUMAN ANIMAL IS STILL A BEASTNow there are two sentient races inhabiting the known universe: one as human as Adam…
the other of robotic mind. They share the Earth in harmonious coexistence. But elsewhere, only those who age and war and die are permitted. On earth, a young human prince has befriended a being far different from himself. But usurpation and fratricide are calling them both to the royal youths embattled home planet drawing them into a nest of treacherous family conspiracy and cruel, naked ambition where the enemy owns the armies, the power, and the very soul of the world. But the prince will have his revenge, though only ally stands at his side: a peace loving creature of augmented intelligence in a place where he is am unwelcome stranger a barbarous world where he is forbidden…
and feared.

Transcension

Damien Broderick has been a leading Australian SF writer since the 70s. His novel The Dreaming Dragons was listed in SF: the 100 best novels. His recent nonfiction book, The Spike, is a mind stretching look at the wonders of the high tech future. Now in Transcension he brings to life one of the futures he imagined in The Spike, a world pervaded by nanotechnology and governed by artificial intelligence. Transcension may be Broderick’s best book yet. Amanda is a brilliant violinist, a mathematical genius, and a rebel. Impatient for the adult status her society only grants at age thirty, but determined to have a real adventure first, she has repeatedly gotten into trouble and found herself in the courtroom of Magistrate Mohammed Abdel Malik, the sole resurrectee from among those who were frozen in the early twenty first century, the man whose mind was the seed for Aleph, the AI that rules this utopia. Mathewmark is a real adolescent, living in the last place where they still exist, the reservation known as the Valley of the God of One’s Choice, where those who have chosen faith over technology are allowed to live out their simpler lives. When Amanda determines that access to the valley is the key to the daring stunt she plans, it is Mathewmark she will have to lead into temptation. But just as Amanda, Mathewmark, and Abdel Malik are struggling to find themselves and achieve their potentials, so is Aleph, and the AI’s success will be a challenge to them and all of humanity.

The Hunger Of Time

Technology has started to accelerate at a terrifying rate. By mid 21st century, we might see a Singularity: a convergence of artificial intelligence, advanced nanotechnologies for building things at the atomic scale, precise genomics, other wonders. What happens after that? Will the descendents of today’s humanity become gods or demons, or simply destroy themselves? And will we be among their number, carried along by rejuvenation and immortality treatments? For Natalie and her irritatingly beautiful young sister Suzanna, these are no longer abstract questions. The familiar world is on the brink of crisis. Dumped by her live in boyfriend and stuck back at home with her parents, Nat is not a happy person. And her father Hugh is acting like a mad scientist. What the hell is he building out there in the garage? When Hugh frog marches his family into the garage, it looks as if he’s really gone mad, and they’re due to perish even before the plague wipes out all life on earth. But the machine Hugh has been working on hurls them all not forgetting their dog Ferdy ever farther into the future, and the escapade doesn’t stop until the very end of time and space.

I’m Dying Here

‘This is a comic, crazy, original crime novel. You won’t find another one like it this year, or, more likely, ever.’ Bill Crider R. Doubting Thomas Perdue, tough Aussie former P.I. and jailbird, is in trouble, and it can only get worse. Tom’s Feng shui consultancy implodes when some bast*ard drives a Mack truck through his heritage office. Fatal things keep happening to his phones. And who’s been blabbing about his racehorse doping past? The love of his life has made a ten year vow of celibacy to the Virgin Mary. Tom’s Goth daughter’s girlfriend’s obese sister has vanished, extremely foul play suspected. Meanwhile, an unusual racing camel named Nile Fever has become an animal of interest to the Australian Federal Police, and Tom is up to his neck in the middle of the mess. I’m Dying Here is a darkly comic crime caper that leaves no taboo, or cell phone, unviolated.

Quipu

Caroline is about to go psychotic and with her family, no surprise. Joseph can’t talk to women even if he is a certified high IQ clever dick trying to take snapshots of the end of the universe. Ray and Marj have their own hassles with in laws, but student terrorists get in the way. Meanwhile Brian, misogynist and wit, appalls everyone in the Quipu world. Quipus? They’re the scandalous fanzines that hikes traded before blogs were invented. Hikes? High IQ clever dicks, of course. ‘The portrait of a generation is incisive. Far and away Broderick’s best novel.’ George Turner, winner of the Miles Franklin and the Arthur C. Clark Awards ‘A painfully sarcastic celebration of technological Jansenism. In a notable achievement, Broderick has created the profound out of the trivial.’ John Baxter, author of We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light In Quipu appearing for the first time as an E Reads publication, Australian writer Damien Broderick reimagines his prize winning 1984 novel Transmitters as the surprising saga of a ‘family’ of genius level one of a kind individuals.

Uncle Bones

Four long adventures by a master story teller. Uncle Bones Medical research brings you back from death, but only just. Nanotech turns you into a Stinky, shunned by the world. And you’re only 15 years old. The Magi The Jesuit starship St. Ignatius Loyola, in exile from post religion High Earth, finds a deserted city on a distant world. Have its people gone in search of their Redeemer? The Ballad of Bowsprit Bearstead What did cause the fall of the galactic empire? And why was it ruled by psychic Neanderthals? A time traveling scientist is shocked by the answer. The Game of Stars and Souls Son is pitted against father for the love of a beautiful gifted woman in this classic space opera of galactic conquest and self awakening. Will their conflict end by destroying the universe? ‘Our own trailblazing man of ideas.’ Terry Dowling, editor, The Essential Ellison

The Qualia Engine

Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist, 2010

A. Bertram Chandler Award for Outstanding Achievement in SF, 2010

***

‘The Qualia Engine‘ is a worthy addition to the long line of superman-in-hiding stories that stretches all the way back to Olaf Stapledon, with notable stops along the way… A dense story with a rich nougat vein of well-observed human emotion. -Gardner Dozois, Locus

***

Sharply told, very funny at times, and ultimately very powerful. -Rich Horton, Locus

***

From the infinite universes of quantum theory to the mysteries of mind and heart, from mythic depths to the end of humanity, Damien Broderick speaks all the voices of SF in a bravura display of storytelling. In this first US collection of his best short stories, the multi-award winning Dean of Australian Science Fiction takes us to a dozen worlds at the limits of imagination.

***

Tactile details are integral to Broderick’s work. They offer a window into the minds of his characters. But he won’t spoon-feed you. This is fiction that is smart and takes an engaged reader to get all the layers.

As you read this book, you’ll find that every story is an exploration of a different facet of that most important element of being human. Not just emotions, or pain or even love, but consciousness.

Together, this collection creates its own Qualia Engine. -Mary Robinette Kowal, winner of the 2008 John W. Campbell Award

***

‘This Wind Blowing, and This Tide’ is a beautiful story. The speculation is fascinating, but the heart of the story is a single father mourning his dead son as signaled by the perfect title, taken from Rudyard Kipling. -Rich Horton, Locus

***

Making a welcome splash with some fine new stories. -Jonathan Strahan, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

Not the Only Planet

Like a cyborg and a spaceship, like an explorer and a time machine, travel and science fiction have always gone together. Not the Only Planet is a unique collection of stories about travelling both ends of the space time continuum by internationally celebrated sf writers. A family takes a package tour to the Crucifixion; astronauts on Mars confront the difficulty of reporting on the unimaginable; and a phrasebook for tourists offers a hilariously skewed vision of travel to come. Hi tech galaxies, tattered futures, the shiveringly strange and the uncomfortably familiar: when every corner of our current world is thoroughly described in guidebook after guidebook, Not the Only Planet offers a set of exotic post cards from worlds that don’t exist. Yet. Compiled by Damien Broderick, Not the Only Planet contains stories by: Brian W. Aldiss, Stephen Dedman, Greg Egan, Lisa Goldstein, Garry Kilworth, Paul J. McAuley, Joanna Russ, Robert Silverberg, John Varley and Gene Wolfe.

Centaurus

Hartwell and acclaimed Australian anthologist Damien Broderick are bringing a higher profile to Australian SF with Centaurus, a showcase of some of the most original voices in SF. Included are stories from Peter Carey, Greg Egan, Terry Dowling, A. Bertram Chandler, Phillippa C. Maddern, Rosaleen Love, Sean McMullen, Lucy Sussex, and George Turner.

Reading by Starlight

Reading by Starlight explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre. Damien Broderick explores the postmodern self referentiality of the sci fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive encyclopaedia’. He shows how, for perfect understanding, sci fi readers must learn the codes of these imaginary worlds and vocabularies, all the time picking up references to texts by other writers. Reading by Starlight includes close readings of paradigmatic cyberpunk texts and writings by SF novelists and theorists including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Patrick Parrinder, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Varley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Fredric Jameson and Samuel R. Delaney.

Transrealist Fiction

Transrealist writing treats immediate perceptions in a fantastic way, according to science fiction writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker, who originated the term. In the expanded sense argued in this book, it also intensifies imaginative fiction by writing the fantastic from the standpoint of richly personalized experience. Transrealism is also related to slipstream writing, another category introduced into studies of speculative fiction to account for texts that seem to follow trajectories mapped by the huge body of science fiction accumulated in the last century, while retaining a central interest in traditional literary strategies. This book examines a variety of work from the transrealist perspective, something that has not been done previously. It emphasizes the texts of Philip K. Dick and Rucker himself, while it additionally engages the texts of such slipstream writers as Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, and John Barth. It places its argument against the antihumanist trend in science fiction and builds comparisons with more traditional varieties of science fiction works.

The Spike

The rate at which technology is changing our world not just on a global level like space travel and instant worldwide communications but on the level of what we choose to wear, where we live, and what we eat is staggeringly fast and getting faster all the time. The rate of change has become so fast that a concept that started off sounding like science fiction has become a widely expected outcome in the near future a singularity referred to as The Spike. At that point of singularity, the cumulative changes on all fronts will affect the existence of humanity as a species and cause a leap of evolution into a new state of being. On the other side of that divide, intelligence will be freed from the constraints of the flesh; machines will achieve a level of intelligence in excess of our own and boundless in its ultimate potential; engineering will take place at the level of molecular reconstruction, which will allow everything from food to building materials to be assembled as needed from microscopic components rather than grown or manufactured; we’ll all become effectively immortal by either digitizing and uploading our minds into organic machines or by transforming our bodies into illness free, undecaying exemplars of permanent health and vitality. The results of all these changes will be unimaginable social dislocation, a complete restructuring of human society and a great leap forward into a dazzlingly transcendent future that even SF writers have been too timid to imagine.

The Last Mortal Generation

Inspired by the debate about cloning and recent discoveries about the causes of cancer and ageing, this book seeks to explain research into genetic engineering, neuroscience, quantum theory and cosmology. It proposes evidence for the claim that science seems to be on the verge of providing what religion once offered a genuine prospect of physical immortality and the option to understand the deepest mysteries of life, the universe and the human spirit.

X, Y, Z, T: Dimensions of Science Fiction

Damien Broderick has had a major impact as an Australian SF writer since 1964. He is undoubtedly the leading Australian theorist of the SF genre’ Russell Blackford, Van Ikin, Sean McMullen, Strange Constellations. Now, Broderick draws upon his skills as both critic and novelist to analyze science fiction of the last two decades, and its earlier roots. The book proposes sf as a distinctive form of writing, the extreme narrative of difference, then closely reads authors such as John Barnes, Jamil Nasir, Wil McCarthy, Robert Grossbach and Poul Anderson. While concentrating on exciting work published in the USA and Britain, Broderick does not neglect his own country’s contributions, discussing sf by George Turner and other Australians. His critical voice is wry, entertaining and occasionally scathing.

Outside the Gates of Science

The paranormal phenomena ‘beyond the normal,’ manifested by apparent experiences of telepathy, remote viewing, psycho kinesis, and precognition, or the prediction of future events has been comfortably dismissed as fiction by many reasonable folk. But as 21st century science explores the world of quantum mechanics where one particle can be in many places at the same time what has seemed impossible becomes just another part of our strange universe.

Award winning author Damien Broderick, PhD, investigates possible relationships between parapsychology, evolutionary biology, and quantum and other physics. Here is a serious but popular treatment of paranormal claims and current attempts to explain them. Broderick has been in direct contact with many of the major players in this curious realm, including the scientific director of the long classified US government supported study known under various codenames and, as Star Gate, closed in 1995 by the CIA. But the research continues, now privately funded.

Can we predict the future? Read other minds? Outside the Gates of Science suggests we just might be able to do so…

Unleashing the Strange

Novelist and scholar Damien Broderick, winner of awards for both, offers an exhilarating report on the state of science fiction at the start of this millennium. Broderick came of age during the psychedelic upheaval known as the New Wave. Forty years on, we’re in the era of the New Weird, the New Space Opera. Looking back and forward, Broderick reveals a new perspective on renewal, change, and the strange. Call the earliest epoch of modern science fiction the First Wave: from Verne and Wells to the rise of the war machines. Science fiction’s fabled ‘golden age,’ 1939 50, was the Second Wave. With the rise of fresh, rich themes and powerful literary writing, came the Third Wave the ‘new wave’ and its crusty opponents. Exhausted, science fiction was renewed again with the Fourth Wave, foaming up in the 1980s with cyberpunk, surging into the 1990s. Let Damien Broderick be your tour guide.