Distress
Greg Egan
 It describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property. The novel contains a great deal of satirical commentary on gender identities, multinational capitalism, and postmodern thought. It also features Egan's usual playful exploration of physical, metaphysical, and epistemological theories.