Diaspora by Greg Egan

By the end of the 30th century humanity has the capability to travel the universe, to journey beyond earth and beyond the confines of the vulnerable human frame.
The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural and physical development divide into three: fleshers - true Homo sapiens; Gleisner robots - embodying human minds within machines that interact with the physical world; and polises - supercomputers teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis.
Diaspora is the story of Yatima - a polis being created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed - and of humankind, Of an astrophysical accident that spurs the thousandfold cloning of the polises. Of the discovery of an alien race and of a kink in time that means humanity - whatever form it takes - will never again be threatened by acts of God.

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