They are only mentioned twice before, never shown to have any specific agenda, and their actions have no lasting consequences beyond isolating the two main characters to continue exploration on their own. Diabolus ex Machina: The anachronauts, who show up in the novel's climax to blow up the research ship.And when Tchicaya wakes up, he muses that the process of constructing a brain must create unrememberable experiences this was explored in the short story 'Transition Dreams'. Continuity Nod: Everyone, even embodied people, runs on Qusps rather than brains this is never explained, and you have to read the short story ' Singleton ' to get why this matters.In fact, one species is specifically called 'rabbits,' despite being weird tube things a billion times smaller than an electron and made out of quantum graph pieces. Call a Smeerp a 'Rabbit': Many of the xennobes are named after various terrestrial creatures on account of some vague resemblance, either in shape or ecological role.Apocalypse How: Class X-4: the runaway reaction itself.In fact, there is no light, matter, or energy at all in there, everything is millions of times smaller than atoms, and the only reason Tchicaya and Mariama are able to enter at all is because they have encoded themselves as some sort of quantum graph software vehicle analogized as a submarine. A Form You Are Comfortable With: When Tchicaya and Mariama venture into the novo-vacuum, the interface they use presents it as a weird-looking but still comprehensible realm, and the objects within are rendered in false-color.As the threat grows (at half the speed of light), various factions disagree on how to deal with it. Physics researchers at a lab in remote space accidentally unleash a runaway reaction that threatens to eat the universe. Possibly his hardest ever, filled with non-trivial mathematics and physics.

Schild's Ladder is a (very) hard Science Fiction novel by Greg Egan.

Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan