Lord of all things

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Lord of all things is a novel by Andreas Eschbach that was published by Bastei Lübbe in September 2011 . The main theme is the creation of machines that can reproduce themselves. Just like Eschbach's thriller A Trillion Dollar , the fictional plot of the novel is based in part on real technology. The story is told linearly, it accompanies Hiroshi and Charlotte through their lives, which are never really far apart - even if they do not appear as a couple here, they remain connected.

action

The two main characters Hiroshi Kato and Charlotte Malroux get to know each other as children in Japan , where Charlotte's father is an ambassador and Hiroshi's mother works in the embassy laundry. Despite their different origins and their parents' displeasure, they both become friends and spend a lot of time together. Inspired by the injustice of life, Hiroshi develops "the idea" that could make all people equally rich. In addition, the special gift of Charlotte is introduced - she can feel what the owners of objects have once experienced with these things. When she illegally touched an ancient knife in a museum, she “saw” so many ancient memories that she passed out. Neither Hiroshi's idea nor Charlotte's experience is described in detail. However, it becomes clear that it is a mystery that is older than our civilization .

The central idea of ​​the book, Hiroshi's idea, continues to grow. He is willing to put his idea into practice, becomes a model student and manages to get to MIT . Here he happens to meet Charlotte again at a fraternity party , whom he had lost sight of for years and who is now studying anthropology at Harvard University . Hiroshi falls in love with her and breaks off his previous relationship because he thinks it is his fate to be with Charlotte. Before Charlotte also breaks off their relationship, she explains to Hiroshi that she cannot have a relationship with him. Hiroshi then leaves the city to implement his idea with the help of an investor. Again they lose sight of each other for years.

Charlotte also breaks off her studies, lets herself go with her life, later lives with her new boyfriend Gary in Scotland and suddenly receives a call from Hiroshi inviting her to visit him on an island in the Philippines and finally to show her his idea . Once there, Hiroshi welcomes them with a group of technicians who have built a large number of small robots together. According to Hiroshi's idea, these robots should connect with each other and communicate with each other and, as a complex, be able to build all desired objects from available raw materials (especially garbage, which is in abundance on the island) and perform all tasks. Each individual robot should only perform one single task. It becomes clear that the childishly naive idea of ​​making all people rich consisted in the fact that no one would have to carry out tasks that they would not want to take on. Hiroshi explains his further approach and his vision quite logically and conclusively. As a first task, the robots should automatically build further robot complexes. At first everything seems to be working fine, but it turns out that the robots are not working precisely enough that in the third generation of robots they no longer work as intended. Hiroshi sees this as an insoluble problem and is back at the very beginning of his idea. A few years later, on a visit to Charlotte, Hiroshi tells her that he is still sitting in front of the problem and sees nanorobots made up of precisely arranged individual atoms as the solution , but it seems impossible for him to build them.

Charlotte has resumed her studies and, inspired by her childhood experience, is looking for scientific evidence that civilization must have existed tens of thousands of years ago. Through contacts she can take part in an expedition to a Siberian island, the "Devil's Island". On a joint excursion, an expedition member is impaled by a strange metal lance and is literally sucked up by it. The remaining members of the expedition can flee from the island by boat and see that the whole island is being transformed into a metal fortress by itself, destroying everything human and all life. After being rescued by a Russian warship, Charlotte realizes that the surface movement on the lance reminds her of Hiroshi's simulation of the nanorobots and her experience in the Philippines. This "being" can rule everything, and even a battleship is completely dismantled by it. When Russian and American attacks do no harm to the island and more people die while trying to set foot on the island, she suggests that Hiroshi be brought in to help. In the strange occurrences he recognizes a kind of self-replicating, particle-based organism, very similar to the one he is trying to construct. Kind of a perfect mechanism on an atomic basis. Without anyone doing anything, the machine suddenly stops. Hiroshi detects a repetitive request being sent from the island. He goes there alone and believes that he is starting a kind of self-destruction , so that this strange creature disappears again and the island below appears again. Previously, Hiroshi put a small number of nanorobots into a kind of idle state and took them with them. However, he is plagued by the question of how he could have known exactly what to do.

With his self-reproducible and programmable nanorobots, Hiroshi is the master of all things. He learns to command them and to build the things that he needs right now. However, this requires a lot of programming work. He also realizes that the world's problems are not that easy to solve, and when he tries to solve a problem with the help of his robots, he creates a bigger one. He has the robots connected to his brain and can now command and move them completely freely like a part of himself. He realizes that these robots are the last remnants of the ancient civilization Charlotte is looking for, and it was they who led to the end of that previous humanity. Hiroshi realizes that the nanorobots must have turned against their creators. By analyzing the signal that emanated from "Devil's Island", it becomes clear that the robots from Earth have gradually conquered the entire universe, destroying every inhabited world. However, after the robots noticed that they had reached their "home planet", they stopped converting resources, unlike on the other planets. Charlotte and Hiroshi experienced this moment in Siberia. Hiroshi realizes that the nanobots are a danger, that he himself is a danger. He meets Charlotte again, who by this point has already had a terminal brain tumor and has actually concluded her life. He saves their lives with his nanobots and then sets off to destroy them. At this point in time, he is already being sought and pursued by various factions who sense the power his nanorobots represent. During his escape, Hiroshi uses the full potential of his nanobots to escape. But since he has recognized that man is still not wise and peaceful enough to deal with such a power, he finally chooses seppuku , the ritual suicide. But unlike in tradition, he doesn't stab himself with a knife, but orders the nanobots to collect iron from his blood and use it to create a knife on the palm of his hand. Due to the lack of iron atoms in the hemoglobin of his erythrocytes, he eventually suffocates. The knife is his legacy to Charlotte. And with her gift she can feel everything that Hiroshi felt for her throughout his life: love .

background

In an interview, the author says that he had the basic idea of ​​the novel a long time ago, but did not pursue it for the time being because of the announcement that Michael Crichton was writing a novel about nanotechnology ( Prey ).

In 2012, the book was awarded the Kurd-Laßwitz Prize for Best Novel .

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