|
Story : The Betatkin Ruins near Kayenta,
AZ
Anaba Gonzales has few interests
and fewer friends. A gifted fifteen-year-old, Anaba
is at home only in virtual reality where she uses the
power of the quantum computer to attack the last great
problem facing science: developing a definitive
Theory of Everything that will explain the universe
and everything in it. At a meeting of scientists at
the new Navajo Monument Laboratory, where her father
is the director, Anaba decides to announce her breakthrough.
When her hoped-for unveiling turns into crushing humiliation,
she decides to prove her theory to herself and to the
world.
Using the advanced technologies
in her father’s laboratory, she runs an experiment
that changes her world. Now her survival hinges on her
ability to change herself. Anaba must learn to function
without technology in a hostile environment where the
greatest dangers are hidden, and where her very presence
threatens her only potential source of help.
Absolute Values stretches
the frontiers of physics to explore an alternate world
as well as the evolving relationship between humans
and the artificial minds they will create. Menard vividly
illustrates the challenges of communication and the
inevitability of change for individuals, species and
technologies. Absolute Values delivers originality,
suspense and surprise showing that change, once begun,
defies prediction or control.
Read the Forward
Absolute
Values Chapter 1
Testimonials
"Menard's Soh deserve a place among the more fascinating
aliens in science fiction. His alternate world is alluring
and detailed."
David Brin:
David Brin, award winning author of dozens of books
including the best-selling books
The Postman, Kiln People and Earth.
“Absolute
Values, by Andrew R. Menard, is a first novel, surprisingly
competent. It is hard-science alien contact, featuring
a very smart but socially awkward fifteen year old girl
who plays with an advanced computer she doesn't understand
as well as she thinks, and accidentally transports herself
to an alternate Earth where human beings don't exist,
but another kind of sapient creature does. The girl,
Anaba, is well drawn, and the aliens (to us; it is actually
their realm) and their culture are very well realized.
… If you think original notions aren't being written
any more, try this one and be satisfied that they exist...
I think this one deserves recognition as one of the
best first novels of the genre. I would fault it only
for an inconclusive ending, but I suspect there is more
to come.”
Piers Anthony:
Piers Anthony, award winning author of over 100 novels
including the
best selling Xanth series and Incarnations of Immortality
series.
|
