The last moments of a universe beseiged occupy Greg Bear's Judgment Engine. Can something human matter at the very end of creation, as contorted matter ceases to have meaning and time itself stutters to an eerie halt?
- - Judgment Engine is in the SF anthology Far Futures.
Gregory Benford, one the great SF writers of our day, has assumed the mantle of editor to produce an ambitous hard SF anthology: Far Futures. Many of the fields's greatest works concern vast perspectives, expanding our visions of ourselves by foreseeing the immense panorama of time. This anthology collects five orignal novellas that take the very long view, all set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.
I've read this one several times now from several anthologies but it's well worth the re-read.
Far-future intelligences, trying to live the grand proof at the end of time, try to rebel against the assumption that everything eats everything. The fact that all these huge intelligences are almost all gigantic libraries just tickles the hell out of me.
The experiment continues. The experiment ends. The experiment continues.