Existence

Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence. What is the secret of EXISTENCE? Billions of planets may be ripe for life, even intelligence. So where is Everybody? Do civilizations make the same fatal mistakes, over and over? Might we be the first to cross the mine-field, evading every trap to learn the secret of Existence?Astronaut Gerald Livingstone is an orbital garbage collector, clearing a hundred-year mess, when he spots something unexpected, a glinting crystal, unmapped and strange. An hour after he captures it, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an "alien artifact".Multiple characters grapple with the artifact's discovery, which acts as a catalyst for both hope and conflict, and delves into themes of technology, privacy, and the future of humanity. Peng Xiang Bin is a shoresteader off the Chinese Coast, salvaging homes abandoned to the rising tides. Under one mansion, Bin finds a secret treasure cache. One box bears a warning: Inhabited by Demons.Tor Povlov is a new-era reporter, a genius at trolling Web and street for exciting and heartbreaking "you are there" reports. On a cross-country zeppelin tour she documents an America and world fracturing apart, torn between a future promising godlike powers for all ... and a beguiling past that might offer the only sanctuary. She does not expect to find herself, and her million-member smart posse, snagged by the biggest story ever.From a tribe of beleaguered dolphins to the highest mountain observatory, Existence asks the question: Are we alone in the universe? Does every bright new race stumble over the same pitfalls? The same, entrapping seven hundred ways to fail?Thrown into this maelstrom of worldwide shared experience and tension over human destiny, Livingstone's Artifact is a game changer. A message in a bottle, an alien capsule that wants to communicate ... but for good or ill? The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity. Soon we will know the secret of existence.