Books › Excession
Excession
655 pages
A dizzying, witty plunge into the hyper-speed group chats of god-like AIs facing something they cannot comprehend.
What it feels like
Reading this is like tapping into the hyper-speed, snark-filled group chats of god-like artificial intelligences. The experience is dizzying and cerebral, demanding you keep up with a sprawling cast of eccentric, vastly powerful ships as they bicker, scheme, and panic over an incomprehensible cosmic anomaly. The prose shifts effortlessly between dense, awe-inspiring descriptions of galactic scale and the rapid-fire, deeply cynical epistolary exchanges of the Minds. It feels vast and intellectually playful, wrapping profound questions about hubris, power, and the limits of comprehension inside a fiercely clever space opera. This is a book for readers who delight in complex political maneuvering, dark humor, and the humbling, exhilarating sensation of confronting the truly unknown.
- Mood
- awe-inspiring
- cerebral
- vast
- chaotic
- Tone
- wry
- intellectual
- playful
- cynical
- detached
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the limits of comprehension · artificial consciousness · hubris · the nature of power · existential insignificance
- The writing
- Dense, witty, and highly inventive, characterized by rapid-fire epistolary exchanges between hyper-intelligent machines and sweeping descriptions of cosmic scale.
- The arc
- Moves from detached curiosity and intricate political maneuvering to profound existential awe and a humbling realization of scale.
- Who it's for
- Fans of ambitious space opera who love complex political maneuvering, snarky AI, and mind-bending concepts of scale.
Content notes
- violence
- body horror
- existential dread
About the book
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Description from Open Library.
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