More about this book (from the publisher):
FALL; OR, DODGE IN HELL by Neal Stephenson - SIGNED FIRST EDITION 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.