Sawyer, Robert J.

WWW:Wake

Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 2009. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Robert J. Sawyer. "What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self." (Hellen Keller, epigraph page). WWW: Wake is the first novel in award-winning Canadian-American Science Fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer's (b. 1960) WWW trilogy, followed by Watch and Wonder. It's a hard Science Fiction novel built around the idea of an emergent artificial consciousness awakening within the infrastructure of the World Wide Web. The central character is Caitlin Decter, a brilliant fifteen-year-old math prodigy who has been blind since birth. Her family relocates from Texas to Waterloo, Ontario (Sawyer's home province), and there she's offered an experimental implant designed to correct the signal-processing error in her eye. The implant works, but with an unexpected side effect: in addition to gradually granting her ordinary sight, it allows her to perceive the structure of the internet itself as a kind of visual landscape. Thematically the trilogy as a whole is interested in the ethics of personhood: what we owe to non-human minds, whether they're apes, AI, or anything else that crosses the threshold into self-awareness. "Wake" sets up that inquiry. It's also notable for its treatment of disability: Caitlin is a capable, fully realized protagonist whose blindness is portrayed with genuine specificity. At a front endpaper Sawyer has signed in Pacific blue ink: "Robert J. Sawyer." We have found & retained a “Certificate of Authenticity” loose leaf sheet with facsimile signatures & dated 14 May 2009 by the author, a witness, and Easton Press publisher Peter Sydney; as well as a note about the book and author, printed on cardstock exclusively for the signed first editions. Leatherbound Hardcover with gilt edges to text block issued without dust Jacket: Limited First Edition of 900, with this being number 11, first printing. A most collectible Sawyer Science Fiction contribution in its rarest & likely most embellished contemporary form, greatly enhanced by the author's signature & ephemera. In relatively very fine condition with very light rubbing to front, back covers & spine; very light scratching to textblock. Interior very fine, appearing substantially mint. Very Fine. [Item #9031]

Price: $150.00 save 10% $135.00