Counterdance of the Cybergods issues from the encompassing GALACTIC EXODUS: Cronicles of After-Earth, futurist semi-documentary commencing with Earth's demise.
Unprecedented catastrophes (particularly a close asteroid encounter) doom Earth. To avoid extermination, humanity reaches temporarily into the Solar System, colonizing Mars and several moons. But now Earthians must seek beyond the Sun. Stellar-systems are examined, one is selected, and twelve immense, barrel-like world-ships (eikodromes) are launched, expecting to find a planet supportive of terrestrial life-or terraformable over several centuries.
In Counterdance, fifteen millennia later, these Gaean 'eggs, ' thriving cities in transit, are nearing the first 'landfall': double-star 'Azores.' Unknown to the humans, continued self-improvement of their super-computers ('regulators' guiding and stabilizing the eikodromes and maintaining their complex biospheres) has engendered glimmering artificial awareness. Without the necessary buffer of 'real-life' experience, clashes of logic and philosophy, and resulting emotional confusion, are destabilizing the Ultra-Intelligent Mind-Simulators. Their self-absorbtion threatens to scuttle the 'Sacred Mission' before even the first oasis in the infinite void. The human leaders are in denial of this development, despite suggestive evidence that their machines have reached beyond the mere simulation of consciousness. Attracted by music, one of the UIMS reveals the affliction (through a computer-invented sociology experiment), but only to 'her' favored watch-officer/violinist, thus exposing a mutinous cabal of psychotic 'cybergods.' Can a mere fiddler-even the Paganini of hisera-convince the AI experts of mounting artificial insanity? He's stymied-until his latest mate, a gorgeous and brilliant but unassuming and somewhat introverted geneticist, becomes shockingly involved.
An adjunct volume: the unabridged version of 'Polylogue with Mythokrates, ' which is presented synoptically in Chapter Nine of 'Counterdance of the Cybergods, ' is also available through Trafford Publishing.