First issued under the title Slant in the UK, issued in America as "/" and /Slant/. Tight, clean, flat, square, sharp and flat book in lightly wrinkled DJ with chip missing from the back at the corner.
In the sixth decade of
the 21st century, the world has been transformed. Nanotechnology has
been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment
and themselves on the cellular level. And the study of the mind has
brought about a revolution in both human psychotherapy and artificial
intelligence.
It's a sane and perfect world. Almost.
A man
called Jack Giffey is planning to break into the Omphalos, the most
secure building in all of separatist Green Idaho. Rumor says that the
Omphalos houses the not-quite-dead, the very wealthy deceased who are
still alive, their brains connected directly into Thinkers, Artificial
Intelligences that provide a virtual reality. Data is the great treasure
of the new millennium, and Giffey plans to tap into the Omphalos
datastream, to steal the knowledge gathered by the inhabitants of the
Omphalos.
In the offices of Mind Design, Inc., the most advanced
Artificial Intelligence in the world has had a unique experience. She
has received a request for contact from a new AI, one she does not know
and did not help to design. Jill has never met a stranger of her own
kind before; is it an alien Thinker, or the offspring of some vast
conspiracy?
Slant is set in Bear's Queen of Angels universe, and is one of the great science fiction novels of the 1990s.