Beyond Infinity

Publishers Weekly

Expanded from his 1990 novella, "Beyond the Fall of Night," this dense, lively, far-future SF novel from Benford (The Martian Race) sweeps readers away in a taut adventure that examines humanity's role in steering the fate of the universe. Young Cley is an Original, a genetically pure example of the oldest species of humans on Earth. Though the genetically reengineered Supras regard her as limited in intelligence, Cley's precocious nature lands her a job helping to recover scientific and historical data from the immense caches called the Library of Life. When a vicious attack by transdimensional life forms leaves Cley the last Original alive, the Supras blame an extradimensional race known as the Malign. Cley knows, though, the Supras aren't telling her the whole story. Aided by the raccoon-like alien Seeker-After-Patterns, which seems to have a parallel agenda all its own, Cley flees Supra captivity and Earth. Her journey quickly takes on an Alice-in-Wonderland quality, as she and Seeker traverse bewildering multidimensional spaces and encounter the immense Leviathan, a living ship that roams the solar system. Cley won't be safe until she solves the secret of the Malign-a secret whose truth lies far back in the past, when the human race first set out to explore the galaxy. With its thoughtful extrapolation and mind-bending physics, this book reinforces Benford's position as one of today's foremost writers of hard SF. (Mar. 18) FYI: Benford, a physicist, has won two Nebula Awards and a John W. Campbell Award. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a far-distant future, the destiny of human life depends on the actions of one young woman, an "Original" human named Cley. When a catastrophic attack from unknown life forms destroys the other "Originals" on Earth, Cley's work in the massive Library of Life, under the direction of Supras, or altered humans, comes to an abrupt end as she embarks on a voyage to confront the world-demolishing entity known as the Malign. Based on Benford's earlier novella, Beyond the Fall of Night, this wildly imaginative coming-of-age story has its grounding in hard science. Physicist and sf veteran Benford writes clearly about space and time without forgetting the human perceptions that give those concepts meaning. Highly recommended for most sf collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Novel-length rewrite of Benford's story "Beyond the Fall of Night" (1990), itself a sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's "Against the Fall of Night" (and later novel The City and the Stars). Billions of years from now, an utterly hostile being made of magnetic fields, the Malign, frees itself after being trapped for eons in the gravity well of the supergiant black hole at the center of the galaxy. Determined to destroy all other life-forms, especially organic ones, and particularly vengeful toward those it regards as responsible for its imprisonment, the Malign heads for Earth. Here, latter-day humanity consists of a handful of Originals (they carry the most ancient human DNA still extant) and some Supras, physically and mentally enhanced to an almost incomprehensible degree. Cley, an Original, works in the vast underground data repositories known as the Library of Life. Her lover, Kurani, and other Supras investigate a phenomenon resembling a sentient electrical discharge-which kills Kurani, all the Originals save Cley, and destroys much of the data in the library. Seeker, a raccoonlike intelligent creature that clearly knows much more than it's telling, saves Cley's life. The surviving Supras propose to clone Cley before the Original DNA is lost altogether. Cley refuses and, after a jaunt through a four-dimensional tube, flees into space with Seeker; they enjoy various adventures among creatures that inhabit the vacuum itself. But somehow, somewhere, the Malign must be confronted. Inexplicable except in terms of a deep-seated obsession: offers few orthodox novelistic virtues, goes nowhere in particular, and despite-or maybe because of-the copious ideas based on string theory and other exoticphysics, weighs a ton.