"On Earth, they depicted justice as blindfolded and impartial, but out here on the frontier, she was red in tooth and claw."
Jupiter and Saturn are gone, and a mysterious force has built a huge habitable sphere from their ashes. When criminals try to lose themselves on this new frontier, bounty hunters like Copernicus Brown and the crew of his sentient ship Jitterbug get paid to hunt them down. But when Brown rescues Amber Roth, sole survivor of a pirate attack, the Jitterbug and her crew find themselves the target of powerful political factions who want control of the data chip hidden in Roth's stomach.
And all the while, something vast and ancient creeps towards them from the depths of space…
A Trans-Siberian odyssey through political, criminal, scientific, philosophical and amorous intrigues, and into an endless winter to confront something utterly alien.
14th July 1924: In a Warsaw buried under feet of snow and Russian rule, Benedykt Gieroslawski, a dissolute young Polish mathematician, is roused from his bed by two officials from the Ministry of Winter and dispatched to Siberia, on the Trans-Siberian Express, to track down his long-exiled father.
The catalyst for this frosty metamorphosis of 20th century history is the impact of the Tunguska asteroid, deep in Siberia, in 1908. From this Ground Zero, emerge the Gleissen, silent harbingers of an eternal winter that follows in their ponderous wake. As they spread across the continent, agriculture collapses and people flock to cities as they seek protection from the deadly cold. As the land freezes, so does the Tsar still rules Russia; the Belle Époque endures; and the First World War never happened.
But out there, on the ice, a new world is being forged. The extreme, alien cold has transmuted elements into strange new forms, a 'black physics' that is the catalyst for a new industrial and scientific revolution. At the heart of it lies Siberia – a 'Wild East', a magnet for all the political, religious and scientific fevers shaking the world at the dawn of the 20th century, the crucible where black physics, shamanic lore and the cold logic of winter combine. And Benedykt's final destination.
4FDZ/Otherland und SCRIPTS: KI und die Zukunft liberaler Gesellschaften
Das 4FDZ-Treffen mit Theresa Hannig, Jens Lubbadeh und Nils Westerboer (Aiki Mira kann diesmal leider nicht mit dabei sein) findet diesmal in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Exczellenzcluster "Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS)" unter dem Motto "KI und die Zukunft liberaler Gesellschaften" statt.
Am Vortag erarbeiten die 4FDZ zusammen mit verschiedenen Teilnehmer*Innen bei einem Szenario-Workshop drei Beschreibungen über eine zukünftige Gesellschaft mit KI in den nächsten zehn Jahren.
Diese drei Szenarien werden dann am Samstag im Otherland vorgestellt und mit Prof. Dr. Genia Kostka von SCRIPTS sowie den Workshopteilnehmer*Innen und den Gästen diskutiert.
