Mycora: technogenic life. Fast-reproducing, fast-mutating, and endlessly voracious. In the year 2106, these microscopic machine/creatures have escaped their creators to populate the inner solar system with a wild, deadly ecology all their own, pushing the tattered remnants of humanity out into the cold and dark of the outer planets. Even huddled beneath the ice of Jupiter's moons, protected by a defensive system known as the Immunity, survivors face the constant risk of mycospores finding their way to the warmth and brightness inside the habitats, resulting in a calamitous "bloom." But the human race still has a trick or two up its sleeves; in a ship specially designed to penetrate the deadly Mycosystem, seven astronauts are about to embark on mankind's boldest venture yet--the perilous journey home to infected Earth!
Yet it is in these remote conditions, against a virtually omnipotent foe, that we discover how human nature plays the greatest role in humanity's future.
From the Paperback edition.
About the Author :
In eleven years as an aerospace engineer, Wil McCarthy has worked with rockets, satellites, lasers, computers, interplanetary probes, and, most recently, robots. He lives outside Denver with his family, and in his copious free time he writes science fiction, including stories published in Aboriginal SF, Analog, Interzone, Asimov's, Science Fiction Age, and a veritable plethora of short fiction anthologies. Bloom is his fifth novel. From the Paperback edition.
Review :
"[A] rousing yet thoughtful adventure story."
--The New York Times Book Review "[A] VIEW OF MANKIND'S FUTURE AND THE UNIVERSE REMINISCENT OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE."
--The Denver Post
"BLOOM is one of the most fast-paced and powerfully dark visions of nanotechnology gone awry since Greg Bear's Blood Music. McCarthy succeeds on many levels, combining a unique literary style with complex scientific speculation and political intrigue."
--Locus
"What clever and compelling science fiction! The Bloom future is all too believable."
--JAMES GLEICK
Author of Chaos: Making a New Science
"Wil McCarthy makes ideas jump. Bloom grabs you from the very first scene and doesn't let go till the last page. It's irresistible."
--WALTER JON WILLIAMS
Author of City on Fire
"Swiftly paced, consistently inventive and tightly written."
--The Washington Post Book World
"McCarthy is an entertaining, intelligent, amusing writer, with Heinlein's knack for breakneck plotting and, at the same time, Clarke's thoughtfulness."
--Booklist (starred review)
"Bloom is tense, dynamic, intelligent, offering a terrifyingly vivid view of how technology can rocket out of our control."
--DAVID BRIN
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Startide Rising
From the Paperback edition.
