Автор - Robert Sawyer

Avanti nel tempo

Un esperimento scientifico induce un temporaneo spostamento della percezione collettiva. Improvvisamente tutti gli abitanti della Terra vanno avanti nel tempo di ventun anni, e possono così vedere alcuni minuti del loro futuro mentre i loro corpi rimangono in stato d’incoscienza. Quando il mondo si risveglia c’è chi ha osservato eventi devastanti o deprimenti, chi ha visto realizzare i suoi sogni e desideri, chi non ha trovato assolutamente nulla… Un romanzo che affronta con sicurezza e profondità molte questioni di interesse scientifico e filosofico sulla responsabilità morale, sulla causalità degli eventi e sulla natura umana, rinnovando la tradizione della fantascienza classica di Isaac Asimov e Robert Heinlein.

Biding Time

Calculating God

When aliens land in Toronto, they present astounding evidence that their planet and Earth have experienced the same cataclysmic events — evidence that they claim proves the existence of God.

La genesi della specie

Durante un esperimento di calcolo quantistico Ponter Boddit, uno scienziato Neandertal, supera accidentalmente le barriere che separano il suo mondo da quello della specie umana e si ritrova in un universo parallelo, che gli appare carico di contraddizioni e di ambiguità. Messo in isolamento, l'alieno diviene un oggetto di studio per un gruppo di ricercatori ed esperti, e un'attrazione irresistibile per i media e per i politici delle varie nazioni, che ne reclamano l'ideale proprietà. Nello stesso tempo, nella dimensione dei Neandertal, il compagno di Ponter, Adikor Huld, viene accusato del suo omicidio. Riuscirà a provare la propria innocenza, pur non potendo neppure immaginare quanto gli è accaduto?

Illegal Alien

Aliens, Tosoks, have finally made contact with Earth, but there are only seven of them, and they’ve arrived in a disabled spaceship. The Tosoks are intelligent and surprisingly easy to communicate with, and are happy to tour Earth and see what humans have to offer. But during a stop in Los Angeles, one of the human scientists traveling with the Tosoks is gruesomely murdered, and all evidence points to the alien Hask. The Los Angeles Police Department is determined to indict Hask for the crime, even though the aliens have little concept of laws or crime as we understand them. The only thing the U.S. government can do is secretly procure the services of Dale Rice, a leading civil rights lawyer, and hope he can clear Hask of the charges. But as the trial progresses, evidence indicates a cover-up by one or more of the aliens. Humanity’s survival — not just Hask’s fate — might hinge on the jury’s verdict.

Cambio de esquemas

El cincuenta por ciento de posibilidades de haber desarrollado una enfermedad degenerativa incurable era ya bastante malo, pero Pierre Tradivel, investigador del Proyecto Genoma humano, descubrió que todo podía empeorar… Con la amenaza de ujn grupo de nazis, por ejemplo, o tratando de conseguir un seguro médico para descubrir que la seguradora está tomando muestras genéticas de sus clientes, o, cuando prosigue sus pesquisas, encontrando una cadena de asesinatos sin resolver cuyas víctimas son personas aseguradas por la compañía. La conclusión puede ser terrible. ¿Acaso los adelantos científicos que el mismo Pierre está haciendo son empleados para incrementar los beneficios de las compañías aseguradoras? Y todo puede empearar.

Mindscan

Jake Sullivan watched his father, suffering from a rare condition, collapse and linger in a vegetative state, and he's incredibly paranoid because he inherited that condition. When mindscanning technology becomes available, he has himself scanned, which involves dispatching his biological body to the moon and assuming an android body. In possession of everything the biological Jake Sullivan had on Earth, android Jake finds love with Karen, who has also been mindscanned. Meanwhile, biological Jake discovers there is finally another, brand-new cure for his condition. Moreover, Karen's son sues her, declaring that his mother is dead, and android Karen has no right to deprive him of his considerable inheritance. Biological Jake, unable to leave the moon because of the contract he signed, becomes steadily more unstable, until finally, in a fit of paranoia, he takes hostages. Sawyer's treatment of identity issues — of what copying consciousness may mean and how consciousness is defined — finds expression in a good story that is a new meditation on an old SF theme, the meaning of being human. (Amazon.com) Won John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2006

El cálculo de Dios

Una lanzadera espacial alienígena aterriza delante de un museo de la ciencia. Las compuertas de la nave se abren y de ésta desciende un ser con forma de araña gigantesca que, bajo la atónita mirada de los presentes solicita si puede ver a un paleontólogo. Así empieza una insólita investigación alienígena que pretende demostrar la existencia de Dios, pese a los recelos de Tom D. Jericho, un paleontólogo que, como tantos científicos racionalistas, parece no necesitar en absoluto la hipótesis de la existencia de un Dios creador. Pero tom no sólo se enfrentará a un dilema científico sino también a su propia e irremediable finitud, cuando le diagnostiquen un cáncer terminal. ¿Será entonces capaz de poner en cuestión sus teorías racionalistas acerca de la inexistencia del Creador?

El experimento terminal

El doctor Hobson ha creado un monstruo. O mejor dicho, tres. Para probar sus teorías sobre la inmortalidad y la posible existencia de vida tras la muerte, Hobson ha ideado tres simulaciones informáticas de su propia personalidad. Con la primera, de la que se ha eliminado toda referencia a la existencia física, intenta analizar como sería una posible vida tras la muerte. Con la segunda, de la que se elimina toda referencia al envejecimiento y a la muerte, Hobson pretende estudiar la inmortalidad. La tercera, sin alteraciones, es el control de referencia del experimento. Sin embargo, las tres simulaciones escapan del ordenador de Hobson, huyen a la red informática mundial y viven su propia vida. Una de ellas es un asesino y comete crímenes que tal vez Hobson ha imaginado… Finalista del Premio HUGO 1996.

End of an Era

Archaeologist Brandon Thackery and his rival Miles ‘Klicks’ Jordan fulfill a dinosaur lover’s dream with history’s first time-travel jaunt to the late Mesozoic. Hoping to solve the extinction mystery, they find Earth’s gravity is only half its 21st century value and dinosaurs that behave very strangely. Could the slimy blue creatures from Mars have something to do with both?

Factoring Humanity

It’s the personal implications of first contact that Sawyer (Illegal Alien) dramatizes in his disturbing and uneven new novel. Set in Canada, circa 2017, the story focuses on Heather and her computer-scientist husband, Kyle, who have separated following the suicide of their daughter Mary. When younger daughter Rebecca confronts her parents and accuses her father of molesting her, the family starts to shake apart. Redemption comes in the unlikely form of alien altruism: the messages from Alpha Centauri that psychologist Heather has studied for years prove to be blueprints for a "psychospace" device that enables her to see into the overmind of humanity, and to know anyones deepest thoughts. In a flash, Kyle is exonerated, Rebecca apologizesAand her nasty, manipulative therapist is blamed for the false accusation. Although the novel ends with Heather greeting the first starship from Alpha Centauri, the bulk of the plot centers around the family’s own mystery, and so the conclusion comes off as anti-climactic. Sawyer also includes too many digressions about the cultural significance of Seinfeld, Star Trek bloopers and quantum physics, delivering a tale that ultimately works more as a study of the human heart than as believable story of alien encounter. (Publishers Weekly)

Far-Seer

The Quintaglio Ascension trilogy depicts an Earth-like world on a moon which orbits a gas giant, inhabited by a species of highly evolved, sentient Tyrannosaurs called Quintaglios, among various other creatures from the late cretaceous period, imported to this moon by aliens 65 million years prior to the story.