Sounds like an answer to the Fermi Paradox if I ever heard one.
It's not an answer I like. But then, that's probably true for most potential answers to that particular question.
It's not an answer I like. But then, that's probably true for most potential answers to that particular question.
If you assume that intelligence inevitably separates from its physical substrate into some form of persistent data, this is the logical way to get around the light-speed limit: you go dormant and simply wait the thousand years it takes to get a reply, or the hundred-thousand years it takes to arrive at a new solar system.
Such intelligences would only interested in speaking to other "Space Ents" (anything else must seem like a fruit fly in comparison), and it's prohibitively expensive to saturate the galaxy with signal, so maybe you send targeted pings at promising worlds every few thousand years. Maybe that's the Wow! signal [1]. Or maybe we just haven't been around long enough to get our first hello.
Of course, for a long time we were simply unaware of radio signals. Maybe we're currently unaware of foo signals.
Diaspora by Greg Egan also has a first-hand depiction of a gamma-ray burst hitting the Earth.
I just find his style a bit dry. But it's worth it for the mind-bending ideas.
I got on a Baxter kick after powering through his Long Earth books (ostensibly coauthored with Terry Pratchett, though Pratchett's fingerprints are rather non-existent after first book). As long as you're ok with Baxter's strong dislike of organized religion, he seems to be one of the better modern science fiction writers.