Omega Point - Science Fiction Literature

Science Fiction Literature

• In the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, what later came to be called the Omega Point by Teilhard de Chardin was reached when the Cosmic Mind encountered the Star Maker (the Creator of the Cosmos).
• In the Isaac Asimov short-story The Last Question, Humanity merges its collective consciousness with its own creation: an all-powerful cosmic computer. The resulting intelligence contemplates the cyclic nature of the universe, ending with a twist.
• In Childhood's End, a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, the destiny of humanity - as well as most of the other intelligent species in the universe - seems to merge with an overall cosmic intelligence.
• In Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos, the Omega Point is used extensively. The catholic priest character Father Hoyt/Duré who is introduced to the story frame as one of the pilgrims in the first two volumes of the tetralogy (Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion) eventually becomes Pope Teilhard I.
• In Darwinia, a novel by Robert Charles Wilson, a mysterious event in 1912 transforms Europe into an immeasurably strange place, full of hitherto unknown flora and fauna, and it is revealed at the very end that the entire story is a tiny part of a virtual war inside what is effectively an Omega Point metacomputer at the end of time.
• In the first part of Poul Anderson's novel Harvest of Stars, North America is ruled by the Avantists, an oppressive pseudo-religious regime that draws its justification from a commitment to take humanity to what they call the Omega Point. It uses the Greek infinity symbol as a logo, and it is deemed politically correct to greet each other with "alpha", to which the reply is "omega". However, since the Avantist Advisory Synod believes in social engineering and technical progress as the means to advance humanity, its teachings are in fact transhumanist.
• In Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a novel by Charles Sheffield, the main character Drake Merlin is on a quest to cure his dying wife. He has her frozen and then freezes himself in the hope that the future holds the cure. Eventually, he finds that the only hope to having her back is to wait out the aeons until the Omega Point, at which time she will again be accessible.
• George Zebrowski wrote a trilogy of space opera novellas, collectively called The Omega Point Trilogy and published as a single volume in 1983. The name appears to be a coincidence; it predates Tipler by many years and does not involve any of the Omega Point ideas listed above.
• In Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, the Omega Point is a repository for the souls of the dead of all sentient species in the Universe. It is implied that this is also the point to which the universe will eventually collapse.
• Humayun Ahmed's novel Omega Point (2000) concerns multiverses, a developing theory of time and a manifestation of the Omega Point that interferes with history to allow the theory to reach fruition.
• Stephen Baxter writes about the Omega Point in many books including Manifold: Time and Timelike Infinity.
• Julian May's Galactic Milieu Series draws heavily for both plot and background on the concepts of Teilhard de Chardin's Omega point theories.
• Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts, refers to the philosophical theory that the universe "tends towards complexity."
• Frederik Pohl's The Other End of Time tells of a war between two alien civilizations for control of the Omega point.