The hefty volume finishes with a mind-bogglingly bravura piece of far future, galactic-spanning adventure. Here’s the description of one of the two lovers (lovers who are on a planetary scale) :

So: here was Ulysses Recursive Hierarch Four, Linear Step-Down Kenosis, Base Neurform (with Secondary Template for Isolation Psychology (Cold Duke) in Potential), housed in a Human-Modified Phenotype.

With the original Earth a thing of almost legend, but re-created over the thousands of following millenia, the two lovers come together, and with more detail and creativity in a single paragraph than a lot of stories have in total, Wright follows a love affair that reveals more about the lovers than even they expected. To be read slowly, and savoured.