Distress (novel)

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Distress is a 1995 science fiction novel by Greg Egan.

It describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property. The novel contains a great deal of satirical commentary on gender identities, multinational capitalism, and postmodern thought. It also features Egan's usual playful exploration of physical, metaphysical, and epistemological theories.

The novel is prefaced by a poem, Technolibération, by the fictional character Muteba Kazadi.

It is not true that the map of freedom will be complete

with the erasure of the last invidious border when it remains for us to chart the attractors of thunder

and delineate the arrhythmias of drought to reveal the molecular dialects of forest and savanna

as rich as a thousand human tongues and to comprehend the deepest history of our passions

ancient beyond mythology's reach

So I declare that no corporation holds a monopoly on numbers

no patent can encompass zero and one

no nation has sovereignty over adenine and guanine

no empire rules the quantum waves

And there must be room for all at the celebration of understanding

for there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold imposed by force, resisted or escaped