Great sky river
From back cover Warner paperback August 2004:

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive.  Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child Toby of the Bishop Tribe are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling "mechs."  Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity -- neither organic, nor cybernetic nor living matter -- reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen.  But can the fallen descendant of starfarers understand this alien being in time -- and seize his only chance to save his family and mankind from final annihilation?
Artificial intelligence, Fiction, Black holes (Astronomy), Fiction, science fiction, general
Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford (Gregory Albert Benford) is an astrophysicist and science fiction author who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.  He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine.  Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, a series that postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient electromechanical life.

Greg was born in Mobile, Alabama.  He received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Oklahoma, followed by his Masters and then his Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.  Having published more than 200 scientific papers, his research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics.

Greg is a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the Australian Ditmar Award, the Lord Foundation Prize, and the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature.  

Source: Secular Policy Institute