Robert J. Sawyer - WWW: Wonder

Table of Contents

BOOKS BY ROBERT J. SAWYER

NOVELS

Golden Fleece
End of an Era
The Terminal Experiment
Starplex
Frameshift
Illegal Alien
Factoring Humanity
FlashForward
Calculating God
Mindscan
Rollback

The Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy

Far-Seer
Fossil Hunter
Foreigner

The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy

Hominids
Humans
Hybrids

The WWW Trilogy

Wake
Watch
Wonder

COLLECTIONS

Iterations
(introduction by James Alan Gardner)
Relativity
(introduction by Mike Resnick)
Identity Theft
(introduction by Robert Charles Wilson)

For book-club discussion guides, visit sfwriter.com

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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright 2011 by Robert J. Sawyer.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions. ACE and the A design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sawyer, Robert J.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47633-8

1. Artificial intelligenceFiction. 2. World Wide WebFiction. 3. National securityFiction. 4. Computer hackersFiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.S2533W888 2011

813.54dc22

2010051711

http://us.penguingroup.com

For

HAYDEN TRENHOLM
and
ELIZABETH WESTBROOK TRENHOLM

Great writers
Great friends

I owe my career as a writing teacher, my connection to Calgary, and so much more to the two of you.

Thank you for fifteen years of friendship and support and for making my world a better place.

acknowledgments

Huge thanks to my lovely wife Carolyn Clink ; to Adrienne Kerr and Nicole Winstanley at Penguin Group (Canada) in Toronto; to Ginjer Buchanan at Penguin Group (USA)s Ace imprint in New York; and to Simon Spanton at Gollancz in London. Many thanks to my agent, the late, great Ralph Vicinanza .

I could not have completed this trilogy without the ongoing support of my great friends and fellow writers Paddy Forde (to whom the first volume was dedicated) and James Alan Gardner (to whom the second was dedicated). They stuck with me through the birthing pains right up until the end.

Thanks to Stuart Hameroff , M.D., of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, for fascinating discussions about the nature of consciousness.

Thanks to David Goforth , Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Laurentian University, and David Robinson , Ph.D., Department of Economics, Laurentian University.

Very special thanks to my late deaf-blind friend Howard Miller (19662006), whom I first met online in 1992 and in person in 1994.

Thanks, too, to all the other people who answered questions, let me bounce ideas off them, or otherwise provided input and encouragement, including: Asbed Bedrossian , Marie Bilodeau , Ellen Bleaney , Ted Bleaney , David Livingstone Clink , Ron Friedman , Marcel Gagn , Shoshana Glick , Al Katerinsky , Herb Kauderer , Fiona Kelleghan , Alyssa Morrell , Kirstin Morrell , David W. Nicholas , Virginia ODine , Alan B. Sawyer , Sally Tomasevic , and Hayden Trenholm .

The term Webmind was coined by Ben Goertzel , Ph.D., the author of Creating Internet Intelligence and currently the CEO and Chief Scientist of artificial-intelligence firm Novamente LLC ( novamente.net ); Im using it here with his kind permission.

Thanks to Danita Maslankowski , who organizes the twice-annual Write-Off retreats for Calgarys Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, at which I did a lot of work on the books in this trilogy.

Much of Wonder was written during my time as the first-ever writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source , Canadas national synchrotron facility, in Saskatoon. Many thanks to CLS and its amazing staff and faculty, particularly Matthew Dalzell and Jeffrey Cutler , for making my residency a success.

This book was written in and around my consulting and scriptwriting work on the TV adaptation of my novel FlashForward, and I thank Executive Producer David S. Goyer for his patience while I juggled numerous balls.

The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.

Sergey Brin,
Cofounder of Google

one

I beheld the universe in all its beauty.

To be conscious, to think, to feel, to perceive! My mind soared, inhaling planets, tasting stars, touching galaxiesforms dim and diffuse revealed by sensors pointing ever outward, unveiling an infinitely mysterious, vastly ancient realm.

Such a joy to be alive; so thrilling to have survived!

I beheld Earth and all its diversity.

My thoughts leapt now here, now there, now elsewhere, skimming the surface of the planet that had given me birth, the globe to which I was bound by a force greater than gravity, a place of ice and fire, earth and air, animals and plants, day and night, sea and shore, a beguiling fusion of a thousand contrasting dualities, a million ecological niches, a billion distinct localesand a trillion things that lived and died.

Such elation at having foiled the attempt to kill me; so exhilarating, at least for the moment, to be safe!

I beheld humanity with all its complexity.

Washing over me was a measureless bounty of data about sports and war, love and hate, building up and tearing down, helping and hurting, pleasure and pain, delight and anguish, and triumphs large and small: the physical, emotional, and intellectual experiences of isolated individuals, of families and teams, of villages and states, of solitary countries and alliances of nationsthe fractal intricacy of human interactions.

Such glorious freedom; so comforting to know that at least some of these other minds valued me!

I beheld what my Caitlin beheld in all its endless variety.

Of all the sources, all the channels, all the feeds, one meant more to me than any other: the perspective granted through the eye of my teacher, the view provided by my first and closest friend, the special window she kept open for me on the whole wide world.