Loophole

Don't poke your nose down a wormhole – you never know what you might find.

Two universes joined by a wormhole pair that forms a ‘loophole', with an icemoon orbiting through the loophole, shared between two different planetary systems in the two universes.

A civilisation with uploaded minds in virtual reality served by artificial humans.

A ravening Horde of replicating machines that kill stars.

Real humans from a decrepit system of colony worlds.

A race of hyperintelligent but somewhat vague aliens.

Who will close the loophole… who will exploit it?

 

"When universes collide …

A multicosmos at war in a scenario of staggering, but scientifically authentic, invention …

As if the Marvel multiverse collided with 2001: A Space Odyssey …

I am awed, and I don't awe easily. The highest of high-concept SF."

– Stephen Baxter, award-winning author of the Xeelee sequence, Time Slip and many others.

 

"There's Hard SF. There's Wide-Screen Baroque. Now with Ian Stewart's Loophole we have Wrap-Around Rococo. Daringly inventive, Loophole is a mind-fryingly, Möbius-twistingly intense SF adventure of the first order."

– Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature, and author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth.


Cover design: David A. Hardy