Damien Broderick

"For quite a few years now, readers have been asking me, Who is the new Phil Dick? Who'll be the Zelazny of this generation? Where are the next Frederik Pohl, the replacement for Robert Sheckley, the Damon Knight of the new millennium? Who's writing stuff like they did in the Golden Age—stuff that surprises and delights me with new, unexpected ways of looking at the universe, new ways of telling a story, new ways of thinking? It is nice to have at least one answer: they're in Australia, and their name is Damien Broderick."—Spider Robinson, author of Very Hard Choices and Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.In a career spanning five decades, Damien Broderick has shown a tendency to think and then re-think his ideas, often going back and re-writing, revising and updating what some readers would call classics. His first-published novel Sorcerer's World appeared in 1970 and was revised and expanded as The Black Grail in 1986. The Dreaming Dragons (1980), Ditmar Award winner and runner-up for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, was re-published in 2001 as The Dreaming. In 1984, in Australia, he published a mainstream novel, Transmitters, which was given a special award by the Ditmar Award committee. The book saw extremely limited circulation outside of Australia. Quipu, appearing for the first time as an E-Reads publication, is a complete re-imagining and re-execution of the earlier work, retaining some elements of the communal living set-up of the original but completely re-casting the characters, the creative milieu and the physical setting and creating a unique and wonderfully original look at a set of characters striving for their own independence, both socially and spiritually, while wrestling with the practicalities of making their way in the world, pursuing their personal ideals and finding an emotional stability as a "family" of genius-level one-of-a-kind individuals.

Synopsis -Thousands of years from now the human animal is still a beast...Now 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 youth’s 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 one ally stands at his side: a peace loving creature of augmented intelligence in a place where he is an unwelcome stranger – a barbarous world where he is forbidden...and feared.

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 Fiona, 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.Damien Broderick and Rory Barnes have collaborated on several novels in their native Australia, and Broderick's controversial writing about the Singularity (which he also dubs the Spike) has aroused keen interest around the world. Broderick's work is displayed at www.thespike.us, and Barnes at

"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 21st century, the man whose mind was the seed for Aleph, the Al that rules this utopia."--Jacket.

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.