Neal Stephenson Rides Again Heaven Is in the Cloud in the Prolific Science-Fiction Writer’S New Tome

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Digital lives could allow us to construct our own reality.

FICTION A digital god: Neal Stephenson rides again Heaven is in the Cloud in the prolific science-fiction writer’s new tome. Paul McEuen watches in wonder.

eal Stephenson likes to blow things Fall starts with awry, and he dies. Almost. His body is up. In Seveneves (2015), for instance, Dodge preparing for medically kept alive, because his will stipu- the prolific science-fiction writer an unnamed routine lates that his brain be preserved until technol- Ndetonated the Moon, then played out how medical procedure. ogy is capable of regenerating it. This might humanity tried to save itself from extinc- As the morning not lead anywhere beyond a disembodied NEAL/GETTY LEON tion. In his new tome, Fall, the metaphori- unspools, he notices head on ice, joining the likes of psychologist cal explosion kills just one man. But this is a pair of books on James Bedford — were it not for the billions an individual sitting on a few billion dollars, Greek and Norse in Dodge’s bank account, managed by his and longing to escape the shackles of mortal- myths left behind executor and former employee Corvallis ity. The aftermath of the blast is thus just as by his grandniece, Fall; or, Dodge in Kawasaki. (Corvallis, from the Latin for powerful, and changes the fate of humanity Sophia. At his favour- Hell crow, denotes intelligence and inscrutability. just as profoundly. ite bakery, the owner NEAL STEPHENSON Names map characters in Fall; Stephenson The book’s billionaire protagonist is presents him with a William Morrow has a lot of balls in the air, so he gives you Richard ‘Dodge’ Forthrast, a tech-head in near-perfect apple. (2019) many digital tags to keep track of them.) Seattle, Washington, who made his wealth He collects a brilliant Fast forward 20 years, and Dodge’s bil- creating an online multiplayer universe red maple leaf on his walk to the hospital. lions have funded the technology to reboot called T’Rain. T’Rain is played by mil- (These newly formed memories later take him, although not in the way he envisioned: lions — and in gamer geekdom, Dodge on greater significance.) At the hospital, he he is rebuilt, virtually. His brain is scanned is a rock star. But he is a thoughtful guy signs an autograph for a kid, who records it atom by atom to create a ‘connectome’ — a with a complex past, much of it detailed and posts it on the web. wiring diagram for all his neurons — giving in Stephenson’s 2011 novel REAMDE (see That becomes the last record of the living Stephenson the chance to geek out on J. Gilbey Nature 478, 317; 2011). Dodge. The procedure goes spectacularly neuroscience, focused ion beams and

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distributed quantum-computing technology. Sophia, now an intern at a foundation created after Dodge’s death, launches the brain simulation. That, in turn, gives birth to a new digital universe that expands in ways no one could have predicted. As its god, Dodge recreates himself out of the nothingness of the digital void before building a virtual cosmos (as a video-game designer, he knows the ropes). Others join him as they die and are scanned, leaving “Meatspace” (the world of the living) behind. There are twists and turns, and many mythic tales and conflicts are re-enacted. Much of the focus remains on Meat- space and the challenges faced by those left behind to maintain and understand the workings of the digital heaven they’ve Kelp, a type of brown alga, growing off the coast of California. created. This is one of the most interesting aspects of Fall. Their tools for seeing into it PHYCOLOGY are imperfect, monitoring the communi- cation between the various sub-processes distributed across a network of computing platforms (yes, Heaven is in the Cloud). A brief history of slime Ultimately, they become obsessed with Dodge’s constructed reality and it becomes Christopher Howe delights in a new book on the a kind of Truman Show, where you can planet’s most powerful organisms — algae. join the cast if you’re rich enough to be scanned and are willing to die. Fall is a doorstop. At almost 900 pages, t rankles when plants), and distantly related groups such as Stephenson takes his time in laying out I hear a distin- diatoms, coccolithophores (responsible for the story. It’s a mash-up of fantasy and guished molecular chalk deposits such as the White Cliffs of sci‑fi, with some flavour of J. R. R. Tolkien Ibiologist declare that Dover), dinoflagellates and kelp. Kassinger and William Gibson, and the author is this gene or that ‘is rightly describes algae as “the most powerful not afraid to go off on tangents that don’t conserved throughout organisms on the planet” — not least for the DOUGLAS KLUG/GETTY advance his tale. eukaryotes, from yeast amount of carbon dioxide they ‘fix’, or turn Yet I got the impression that to humans’. Yeast and into organic matter. She sets out to educate us Stephenson, who has moonlighted for humans (plus nema- on their importance and compelling interest. tech start-ups such as Blue Origin in todes, zebrafish and Slime has four parts. One concerns evo- Kent, Washington, and the Florida-based many other organisms) Slime: How Algae lution, including how algae determined the Created Us, Magic Leap, doesn’t really care what we are not representa- Plague Us, and growth of Earth’s atmosphere. The second is think. Writing is an act of exploration tive of all eukaryotes, Just Might Save Us on algae as food. The third covers cultivation and creation, a journey to a new world. which have nuclei RUTH KASSINGER for uses from sports shoes to fuel. And the last That someone will later read what was and membrane- Houghton Mifflin looks at human impacts, from coral bleach- written is arguably irrelevant; the dead bound organelles Harcourt (2019) ing to eutrophication, and how algae might in Fall, after all, live out their second lives in their cells. They redress the effects. There is also a fascinating in the digital realm unconcerned about belong to one rather restricted evolutionary appendix of recipes using algae. (I’m eagerly observers, having left that inferior world group, the Opisthokonta (see S. M. Adl et al. awaiting delivery of ‘Irish moss’, the red alga behind. J. Eukaryot. Microbiol. 66, 4–119; 2019), and Chondrus crispus, to make blancmange.) Like Dodge, Stephenson is creating account for a tiny fraction of global biomass The smallest algae are single-celled a new universe from scratch, fighting (see Y. M. Bar-On et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. prokaryotes less than a micrometre across, battles and wrestling with big ideas. Those USA 115, 6506–6511; 2018). such as the oceanic Prochlorococcus, a major of us in Meatspace can only sit mutely by So it is a real pleasure to see Slime (sold as player in CO2 fixation. Others range from and watch the spectacle in wonder. ■ Bloom in some territories), a book devoted unicellular eukaryotes to multicellular sea- to algae: the often-neglected eukaryotes weeds many metres long. They grow in Paul McEuen is a physicist at Cornell and prokaryotes (organisms without nuclei environments from polar snow to hot springs. University in Ithaca, New York, or discrete organelles) that are of immense Some have lost the ability to photo and director of the Kavli Institute at biological importance, yet only distantly synthesize and now live as parasites. The most Cornell for Nanoscale Science. His related to yeast and humans. notorious is Plasmodium, arguably the most novel Spiral won debut of the year Science writer Ruth Kassinger, who special- dangerous alga in the world, which retains a from the International Thriller Writers izes in botany, covers the entire range of algae. remnant, non-photosynthetic chloroplast and Association. He’s hard at work on his next They include blue-green algae (the oxygen- is the cause of malaria. novel, The Long Echo. producing, photosynthetic cyanobacteria), In spite of having studied algae for more e-mail: [email protected] red and green algae (close relatives of land than 30 years, I learnt much from Slime. I