'Diaspora' by Greg Egan

Now that uni has slowed down before exams, I'm reading a book by
Greg Egan called
Diaspora. It's some really cool science fiction, and some might think it's just a little bit too trippy, but I reckon it's pretty spot on. Give us a thousand years and we will have to be somewhere near the reality described in this book. Here's what the book sleeve says:

"By the end of the 30th century humanity hsa the capability to travel the universe, to journey beyond earth and beyond the confines of the vulnerable human frame.

The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural and physical developments divide into three: fleshers: true Homo sapiens; Gleisner Robots - embodying human minds within machines that interact with the physical world; and polises - suprecomputers teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis.

Diaspora is the story of Yatima - a polis created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed - and of humankind. Of an astrophysical accident that spurs the thousandfold cloning of the polises. Of the discovery of an alien race and of a kink in time and space that means humanity - whatever form it takes - will never be threatened by acts of God again."

I'lllet you know how it ends.. Greg's homepage which is linked above contains some extra descriptions and pictures of some of the more complex maths that is described in the book.