New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book The #1 New York Times bestselling
author of Seveneves Anathem Reamde and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and
entertaining science fiction thriller-Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick-that unfolds in
the near future in parallel worlds. In his youth Richard Dodge Forthrast founded Corporation
9592 a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years Dodge
appreciates his comfortable unencumbered life managing his myriad business interests and
spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter Sophia. One beautiful autumn
day while he undergoes a routine medical procedure something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is
pronounced brain dead and put on life support leaving his stunned family and close friends
with difficult decisions. Long ago when a much younger Dodge drew up his will he directed
that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo
Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings Dodge's family has
his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud until it can
eventually be revived. In the coming years technology allows Dodge's brain to be turned back
on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal
afterlife-the Bitworld-is created in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this
brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . . Fall or Dodge in Hell is
pure unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital man and machine angels and
demons gods and followers the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic Neal
Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs
that are transforming our future. Combining the technological philosophical and spiritual in
one grand myth he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.
