num_pages: 351
description: Welcome to the fractured future at the dusk of the twenty-first century.Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part they are happy with their lot living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries cultures and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill there's Tech Jury Service: random humans selected arbitrarily charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw a technophobic misanthropic Welshman has been selected for the latest jury a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus the apathy of the proletariat and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.
language: English
title: The Rapture of the Nerds
publisher: Tor Books