Acknowledgements
Given that this is a) only a novella,[1] and b) set so very far in the future that pretty much everything’s handwavium anyway, you don’t get one of those citation-laden background essays I’ve been known to tack on to my longer works. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention a few people who helped enormously in grounding ’Sporan tech in something a bit this side of outright fantasy. Dr. Peter Lorraine, of the GE Global Research Center—in between filing all those laser patents bearing his name, and completely independent of his professional activities—generously gave me the benefit of his insights into laser tech and high-energy physics, especially when it came to extrapolating from Crane and Westmoreland’s 2009 arXiv paper “Are Black Hole Starships Possible?” (Okay, fine: there’s a technical reference for you.)
I’ve lost track of the hours I’ve spent talking with Ray Neilson about computer networks; Ray was somewhat less generous than Dr. Lorraine insofar as I bribed him with many beers, but it was still a really good deal. The latency hack emerged from one such semi-soused evening—and apparently something very much like it actually happened at the dawn of ARPANET—so beers or no, the insights were good. Hopefully, by the time you read this, Ray will have got around to recovering my Linux partition.
Finally, Caitlin Sweet—AKA The BUG—has little insight into physics or computer science. She does, however, know way more than I do about character development; her hooves are all over whatever parts of this story involve the torture of souls rather than technology.
I am profoundly indebted to all of you. Even if I could only marry one.
From the Author
Peter Watts (www.rifters.com) is a former marine biologist who clings to some shred of scientific rigor by appending technical bibliographies onto his novels. His debut novel, Starfish, was a New York Times Notable Book, while his fourth, Blindsight—a rumination on the utility of consciousness that has become a required text in undergraduate courses ranging from philosophy to neuroscience—was a finalist for numerous North American genre awards, winning exactly none of them. (It did, however, win a shitload of awards overseas, which suggests that his translators may be better writers than he is.) His shorter work has also picked up trophies in a variety of jurisdictions, notably a Shirley Jackson Award (possibly due to fan sympathy over nearly dying of flesh-eating disease in 2011) and a Hugo Award (possibly due to fan outrage over an altercation with US border guards in 2009). The latter incident resulted in Watts being barred from entering the US—not getting on the ground fast enough after being punched in the face by border guards is a “felony” under Michigan statutes—but he can’t honestly say he misses the place all that much. Especially now.
Watts’s work is available in twenty languages—he seems to be especially popular in countries with a history of Soviet occupation—and has been cited as inspirational to several popular video games. He and his cat, Banana (since deceased), have both appeared in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. A few years ago he briefly returned to science with a postdoc in molecular genetics, but he really sucked at it.
Praise for The Freeze-Frame Revolution
“Peter Watts is a brilliant bastard of a science fiction writer, whose grim scenarios are matched by their scientific speculation; in his latest, a novella called The Freeze-Frame Revolution, Watts imagines a mutiny that stretches out across aeons, fought against a seemingly omnipotent AI. This is definitely vintage Watts, from the Elder Gods the Eri discovers as it traverses the wormholes it creates, to the imaginative tortures the mutineers use to punish those who betray the rebellion.”
“A gripping story of a deep human future—the dependent relationship between human and AI tangles and grows with the delicious creep of suspense to the very last page. Watts is a poet when it comes to science.”
“If you ever doubted that the core of all good science fiction is still the human heart, here comes Peter Watts to ram the point home. The Freeze Frame Revolution is the purest driven high concept SF, told across scales of time and space to daunt all but the very finest Space Opera practitioners, and yet it remains as vivid and carnal and profane as the headiest of high-end literature.”
“Darkness and awesome technology lurk in The Freeze-Frame Revolution.”
“Watts takes familiar-seeming SF tropes and accelerates them towards lightspeed, until they become something chillingly other. A gripping tale where galactic timescales collide with biology and age-old human dilemmas.”
“Fast, rich, and cool—The Freeze-Frame Revolution fascinates!”
“In The Freeze-Frame Revolution, Peter Watts takes us millions of years into the future and hundreds of light-years away, where an isolated fragment of humanity must confront exotic physics, unfathomable entities, and the unforeseen consequences of their own technologies… A brilliant, thoughtful story bursting with radical ideas.”
“The Freeze-Frame Revolution is a slow-motion rebellion as heart-stopping as any roller coaster ride and will delight readers across the science fiction spectrum. It was a joy to read and I found myself unable to put it down once I got started.”
“Entertaining and provocative, brilliant and ambitious, The Freeze-Frame Revolution is compelling science fiction with heart.”
“Peter Watts is a triple threat: exacting hard science extrapolation, an imagination that runs hot enough to give you contact burns, and a gift for thrusting his characters in situations that will expand the mind while shattering even the most guarded of reader hearts.”
Praise for Peter Watts
“A new book from crazy genius Watts is always cause for celebration… Watts is one of those writers who gets into your brain and remains lodged there like an angry, sentient tumor.”
“[Watts] asks the questions that the best science fiction writers ask, but that the rest of us may be afraid to answer.”
1
Despite the fact that my publisher, not to mention community standards, insist that the last thousand words cross the line into full-fledged novelhood, I will go to my grave insisting that this is merely a novella.