Ventus

Best hard scifi book I have read in years. Schroeder's amazing writing draws the reader into a world where NOTHING is as it seems. Incredibly dynamic plotting moves the book quickly out of what seems more like a fantasy setting (medieval) into the realm of high science. Schroeder takes concepts that are usually just window dressing for a scifi soap opera or war story and uses them to make the reader stretch his/her imagination in more directions than that goofy signpost in MASH. In Ventus, nanotech is just the most basic building block of a whole new social/intellectual/cultural/linguistic order that challenges everything humanity has ever created or thought. The BIG concepts Schroeder touches on range from the physically huge (artificial moons that touch down on a planet's surface) to the intellectually gigantic (how would an AI communicate and act if it were truly free of its human creators?) to the emotionally earthshattering (what if a god learned how to feel like a human?) to the tiniest detail (what would a grain of sand sound like if it could talk?). You will never read another book like this. Hard to find but worth the search.