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there is no FTL in this book
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* LightspeedLeapfrog: Played straight. The slower travelers are known by most of spacefaring humanity as "anachronauts". It's an interesting variant, though: By the time the story begins, most anachronauts ''choose'' to continue traveling at relativistic speeds instead of using FTL, so that they can "hop" forward through time and observe the development of civilization. It's PlayedForLaughs when ''entire planetary civilizations'' coordinate elaborate pranks on the intrepid time travelers, leading them to think the development of the human race is even more bizarre than it actually is - which is saying something.
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* LightspeedLeapfrog: Played straight. The slower travelers are known by most of spacefaring humanity as "anachronauts". It's an interesting variant, though: By the time the story begins, most anachronauts ''choose'' to continue traveling at relativistic speeds instead of using FTL, lightspeed information, so that they can "hop" forward through time and observe the development of civilization. It's PlayedForLaughs when ''entire planetary civilizations'' coordinate elaborate pranks on the intrepid time travelers, leading them to think the development of the human race is even more bizarre than it actually is - which is saying something.
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None
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* SpeculativeFictionLGBT: Most of the characters are gender-neutral, although to be fair, that's because most of those characters exist as software and were created as such, having never been in an actual homo sapiens body.
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* SpeculativeFictionLGBT: Most of the characters are gender-neutral, although to be fair, that's because as most of those characters them exist as software and were created as such, having never been in an actual homo sapiens body.
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* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: When Tchicaya and Mariama venture into the novo-vacuum, the interface they use presents it as a weird-looking but still comprehensible realm, and the objects within are rendered in false-color. In fact, there is no light, matter, or energy at all in there, everything is millions of times smaller than atoms, and the only reason Tchicaya and Mariama are able to enter at all is because they have encoded themselves as some sort of quantum graph software vehicle analogized as a submarine.
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* CallASmeerpARabbit: Many of the [[spoiler:xennobes]] are named after various terrestrial creatures on account of some vague resemblance, either in shape or ecological role. In fact, one species is specifically called "rabbits," despite being [[spoiler: weird tube things a billion times smaller than an electron and made out of quantum graph pieces.]]
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* DoUntoOthersBeforeTheyDoUntoUs: This is one of the rationales presented for destroying the novo-vacuum after it's discovered [[spoiler:to be inhabited]]. If the [[spoiler: novo-vacuum creatures]] figure out that they are surrounded by hostile space with possibly hostile inhabitants, all they have to do is figure out a way to get the novo-vacuum's expansion up to the speed of light, and [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX4 that will be the end of humanity and the universe]]. Therefore, destroying the novo-vacuum [[spoiler: and the incomprehensible numbers of aliens within]] is the best decision. [[spoiler:Fortunately, this outcome is averted, and the novo-vacuum creatures seem to be mostly benign.]]
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* EldritchLocation: The novo-vacuum is a rapidly expanding sphere of altered spacetime that is over six hundred light-years across by the time the story really gets going. Its surface is very bright, but not hot at all, and only a few Planck lengths thick. Beneath that lies a seething mass of alien reality, technically a whole different ''universe'', where the rules are so unfathomably different that mass and energy as we think of them don't exist. There are no consistent physics, and reality consists of Planck-scale patches of different physical laws. [[spoiler:These patches form "vendeks," the novo-vacuum's simplest form of life. The entire region is a seething cauldron of life, from "microbes" to advanced civilizations, making the standard universe look like a sterile desert in comparison.]]
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Added image.
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/schilds_ladder.png]]
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If I remember correctly, people actively searched for and destroyed the scientist's Qusps
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* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom galaxy]]''[[EarthShatteringKaboom -shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Nobody seems terribly annoyed that someone's physics experiment effectively ''blew up the universe'', which is justified in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing]].
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* SpeculativeFictionLGBT: Most of the characters are gender-neutral, although to be fair, that's because most of those characters exist as software and were created as such, having never been in an actual homo sapiens body.
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* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Nobody seems terribly annoyed that someone's physics experiment effectively ''blew up the universe'', which is justified in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing]].
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* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom galaxy]]''[[EarthShatteringKaboom -shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Nobody seems terribly annoyed that someone's physics experiment effectively ''blew up the universe'', which is justified in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing]].
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The anchronauts solve nothing, and thus do not meet the requirements for Deus Ex Machina. They are a plot complication, and thus may qualify as Diabolus Ex Machina.
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* DeusExMachina: The anachronauts, who show up in the novel's climax to [[spoiler: blow up the research ship]]. They are only mentioned twice before, never shown to have any specific agenda, and their actions have no lasting consequences beyond isolating the two main characters to continue exploration on their own.
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* DeusExMachina: DiabolusExMachina: The anachronauts, who show up in the novel's climax to [[spoiler: blow up the research ship]]. They are only mentioned twice before, never shown to have any specific agenda, and their actions have no lasting consequences beyond isolating the two main characters to continue exploration on their own.
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* StarfishAliens: [[spoiler: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)]]
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* StarfishAliens: [[spoiler: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)]]) If that wasn't enough, the narrative suggests that the creatures are physically composed entirely of discrete regions of space that follow unique laws of physics--no actual "matter" as we understand it. It's the biological equivalent of a naturally-occurring computer made out of rocks and streams of water... [[MindScrew only without the rocks or streams of water]].]]
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* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but believable
(apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
(apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
to:
* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but believable
believable (apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
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None
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* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but believable (apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
to:
* LightspeedLeapfrog: Played straight. The slower travelers are known by most of spacefaring humanity as "anachronauts". It's an interesting variant, though: By the time the story begins, most anachronauts ''choose'' to continue traveling at relativistic speeds instead of using FTL, so that they can "hop" forward through time and observe the development of civilization. It's PlayedForLaughs when ''entire planetary civilizations'' coordinate elaborate pranks on the intrepid time travelers, leading them to think the development of the human race is even more bizarre than it actually is - which is saying something.
* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious butbelievable believable
(apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but
(apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
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None
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* [[ApocalypseHow/{{ClassX-4}} Apocalypse How: Class X-4]]: the runaway reaction itself.
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* [[ApocalypseHow/{{ClassX-4}} [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX4 Apocalypse How: Class X-4]]: the runaway reaction itself.
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* SphereOfDestruction: The novo-vacuum, the expanding and destructive sphere of altered spacetime that is the focus of the story.
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Don\'t remember any machine worship. Note continuity nods, be more specific about how transportation works and what\'s postsingular about things.
* ContinuityNod: Everyone, even embodied people, runs on Qusps rather than brains; this is never explained, and you have to read the short story "[[http://www.gregegan.net/MISC/SINGLETON/Singleton.html Singleton]]" to get why this matters. And when Tchicaya wakes up, he muses that the process of constructing a brain must create unrememberable experiences; this was explored in the short story "Transition Dreams".
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* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Subverted in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing.]]
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.
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* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Subverted Nobody seems terribly annoyed that someone's physics experiment effectively ''blew up the universe'', which is justified in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing.]]
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.thing]].
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.
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* NoBiologicalSex: Features essentially genderless posthumans but retains both male and female pronouns.
* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)
* TheSingularity: The work is actually set in a period ''after'' the Singularity, when research in (among other things) physics is not only stranger than we imagine, but possibly stranger than we ''can'' imagine.
* {{Twinmaker}}: Post-singularity life includes dealing with multiple, often virtual, copies of yourself by imagining a line of continuity from the death of the first copy to the creation of the second, despite a lack of causal connection.
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* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)
* TheSingularity: The work is actually set in a period ''after'' the Singularity, when research in (among other things) physics is not only stranger than we imagine, but possibly stranger than we ''can'' imagine.
* {{Twinmaker}}: Post-singularity life includes dealing with multiple, often virtual, copies of yourself by imagining a line of continuity from the death of the first copy to the creation of the second, despite a lack of causal connection.
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* NoBiologicalSex: Features essentially genderless posthumans but retains both male and female pronouns.
pronouns. When embodied people couple up, their bodies grow custom genitals over a period of six months that will only work with each other--it's considered quite romantic.
* StarfishAliens: [[spoiler: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)
)]]
* TheSingularity:The work is Everyone runs on computers; some people are embodied (their processors located inside their heads), and some aren't. Nobody's actually set died (apart from very rare suicides) in millennia. But one of the central ideas of Singularity thinking is ''averted''; it turns out that strong superintelligence is impossible. Sort of like all Turing-complete machines have the same power; they're just sometimes faster.
-->It was a rigorous result in information theory that once you could learn in aperiod ''after'' sufficiently flexible manner--something humanity had achieved in the Singularity, when research in (among Bronze Age--the only limits you faced were speed and storage; any other things) physics is not only stranger than we imagine, but possibly stranger than we ''can'' imagine.
structural changes were just a matter of style.
* {{Twinmaker}}:Post-singularity life includes dealing with multiple, often virtual, People make backup copies of yourself by imagining themselves with remarkable regularity, but generally only run one at a line of continuity time. When someone dies a "local death" (which is pretty difficult, given that everyone runs on Qusps), they restore from the death of latest backup. People seem to fork themselves only rarely. Transport over great distances is accomplished by transmitting the first copy to the creation contents of the second, despite your mind and having it downloaded into a lack of causal connection.
new body (or just run on local hardware).
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* StarfishAliens: [[spoiler: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.
* TheSingularity:
-->It was a rigorous result in information theory that once you could learn in a
* {{Twinmaker}}:
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an analogy for the scale of quantum graph edges.
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* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term.)
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* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term.term--by analogy, quantum graph edges are to electrons as electrons are to 100 km or so.)
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Create the basic page, using tropes already wicked here
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''Schild's Ladder'' is a (very) hard ScienceFiction novel by Creator/GregEgan. Possibly his hardest ever, filled with non-trivial mathematics and physics.
Physics researchers at a lab in remote space accidentally unleash a runaway reaction that threatens to eat the universe. As the threat grows (at half the speed of light), various factions disagree on how to deal with it.
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!! This novel contains examples of:
* [[ApocalypseHow/{{ClassX-4}} Apocalypse How: Class X-4]]: the runaway reaction itself.
* DeusExMachina: The anachronauts, who show up in the novel's climax to [[spoiler: blow up the research ship]]. They are only mentioned twice before, never shown to have any specific agenda, and their actions have no lasting consequences beyond isolating the two main characters to continue exploration on their own.
* EternalLove: Before Tchicaya finally gets to have sex with his childhood lover Mariama he contemplates "Nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting. Except perhaps an original theorem."
* FirstContactMath: The protagonists realize that there's intelligent life inside a pseudovacuum when they notice that a series of pulses coming from it represent consecutive prime numbers.
* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Subverted in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing.]]
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.
* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but believable (apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
* NoBiologicalSex: Features essentially genderless posthumans but retains both male and female pronouns.
* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term.)
* TheSingularity: The work is actually set in a period ''after'' the Singularity, when research in (among other things) physics is not only stranger than we imagine, but possibly stranger than we ''can'' imagine.
* {{Twinmaker}}: Post-singularity life includes dealing with multiple, often virtual, copies of yourself by imagining a line of continuity from the death of the first copy to the creation of the second, despite a lack of causal connection.
----
Physics researchers at a lab in remote space accidentally unleash a runaway reaction that threatens to eat the universe. As the threat grows (at half the speed of light), various factions disagree on how to deal with it.
----
!! This novel contains examples of:
* [[ApocalypseHow/{{ClassX-4}} Apocalypse How: Class X-4]]: the runaway reaction itself.
* DeusExMachina: The anachronauts, who show up in the novel's climax to [[spoiler: blow up the research ship]]. They are only mentioned twice before, never shown to have any specific agenda, and their actions have no lasting consequences beyond isolating the two main characters to continue exploration on their own.
* EternalLove: Before Tchicaya finally gets to have sex with his childhood lover Mariama he contemplates "Nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting. Except perhaps an original theorem."
* FirstContactMath: The protagonists realize that there's intelligent life inside a pseudovacuum when they notice that a series of pulses coming from it represent consecutive prime numbers.
* ForScience: The freak lab accident that gives birth to a [[EarthShatteringKaboom ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom]] occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. Subverted in that Egan manages to eventually make it [[spoiler: a good thing.]]
* MachineWorship: Several of the races encountered are into this.
* MinovskyPhysics: The work pretty much runs on this trope, as it is based around the fictitious but believable (apparently it was based on loop quantum gravity) "quantum graph theory" and the "Sarumpaet rules" that govern all fundamental interactions. It's been described as the "hardest science-fiction ever" with good reason.
* NoBiologicalSex: Features essentially genderless posthumans but retains both male and female pronouns.
* StarfishAliens: the apparent life inside the "eaten" region, which ranges from non-sentient fauna to sentient beings with their own civilization and technology, exists at the ''Planck scale''. (Mind-bogglingly tiny, for those of you not familiar with the term.)
* TheSingularity: The work is actually set in a period ''after'' the Singularity, when research in (among other things) physics is not only stranger than we imagine, but possibly stranger than we ''can'' imagine.
* {{Twinmaker}}: Post-singularity life includes dealing with multiple, often virtual, copies of yourself by imagining a line of continuity from the death of the first copy to the creation of the second, despite a lack of causal connection.
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