| Sumario: | This paper examines a strand of contemporary sf that draws significantly on complexity theory, in particular on new ideas about computation and information processing that bear on questions about the origins of life and intelligence, and evolution in complex adaptive systems. After a theoretical overview, it considers early examples of this influence in Bruce Sterling's first stories and novel "Schismatrix." Most of the paper is then devoted to extended readings of Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" and Linda Nagata's trilogy, "The Bohr Maker," "Deception Well," and "Vast." Assuming but extending beyond 1980s cyberpunk fiction, both authors project future worlds profoundly transformed by nanotechnology, in which the boundary between mechanical machines and biological organisms begins to break down. Specifically, Stephenson envisions a shift from algorithmic computation (i.e. Turing machines) to a new form of biological computation in which sex provides the means of information exchange and processing. Nagata, on the other hand, deploys Artificial Life scientist Christopher Langton's theme of "life at the edge of chaos" to re-imagine the encounter with alien modes of being and to depict new spaces of adaptation and communication.
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