Steve Alten's The Omega Project takes a journey to Earth's far future--populated with intelligent squid and a god-like intelligence that must be stopped. Robert "Ike" Eisenbraun is a scientist who creates GOLEM, an artificial intelligence, ostensibly to oversee the Omega Project, itself designed to mine helium-3 from the moon to solve Earth's dire energy needs. The thinking computer makes logical decisions to move the project to Europa, Jupiter's moon, then recruits a team of scientists, Ike included, for a practice mission deep under the ice of Antarctica, simulating the long trip to Europa, including suspended animation.
Ike is tricked into cold sleep early by the commander of the mission, who is also sleeping with Ike's fiancée, the hotshot pilot for the trip into the solar system. When he wakes, unsure if he's still in cold sleep and dreaming, he finds himself tens of thousands of years in the future. The world is full of bizarrely evolved animals and plants, most of them predatory, and Ike is able to survive only thanks to his friend, Oscar, a hyper-evolved intelligent cephalopod.
The Omega Project deals with themes of love, loyalty and human evolution, as well as what happens when cold machine logic runs the show. The plot moves along at a furious pace, but never gets in the way of the tough, thought-provoking concepts of the novel. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor