Gli ricordai: - Hai sempre detto che non ti saresti mai sposato. La monogamia era per i deboli. Il sesso con le conoscenze occasionali era più onesto e migliore per tutte le persone coinvolte.
Angelo rise, ma strinse i denti. — Avevo diciannove anni, quando parlavo cosi.
(...)
Angelo fissò il tappeto; tutt’a un tratto si era fatto molto pensieroso. — A quell’epoca. L'intera idea di una famiglia... — rabbrividì —   mi sembrava come essere seppelliti vivi. Non riuscivo a immaginare niente di peggio.
— Cosi sei diventato adulto. Congratulazioni.
Mi fissò con ira. — Non essere cosi maledettamente saccente.
— Scusa — risposi. Non l'aveva detto in tono scherzoso. Evidentemente avevo toccato qualche nervo scoperto.
Disse: — Nessuno diventa adulto. È una delle peggiori bugie che ti dicono. La gente cambia. La gente adotta dei compromessi. La gente finisce per trovarsi in situazioni in cui non vorrebbe essere... e cerca di fare il meglio che può. Ma non cercare di dirmi che è una sorta di... grandiosa e preordinata salita alla maturita emotiva. Non lo è.
Dissi, imbarazzato: — È successo qualcosa? Fra te e Lisa?
Scosse la testa in segno di scusa. — No, tutto è a posto. La vita e meravigliosa. Io li amo tutti. Ma...— Guardò dall'altra parte, era visibilmente teso. — Solo perché impazzirei se non fosse così. Solo perché devo far funzionare la cosa. —
— Perciò ci riesci. A farla funzionare.
— Si! — Aggrottò la fronte, frustrato per il fatto che non capissi. — E a dire il vero non è tanto difficile, almeno non più. È semplice abitudine. Ma... pensavo che ci fosse altro. Pensavo che se fossi cambiato nel dare valore a una cosa piuttosto che a un'altra, sarebbe stato perché avevo imparato qualcosa di nuovo, perché avevo capito meglio qualcosa. E non e affatto così. Do importanza a quello che ho. Ecco tutto. La gente fa di necessita virtù. Benedice quello che non puo lasciare.
Continuò: — Io amo Lisa e amo le bambine... ma non c’è una ragione piu profonda, tranne il fatto che questo è quanto di meglio posso fare della mia vita adesso. Non sono in grado di discutere un singolo pensiero da me espresso quando avevo diciannove anni. Perché non è che mi trovi meglio, ora. Non sono più saggio. È questo che mi dispiace: tutte le bugie pretenziose che ci hanno detto sulla crescita e la maturità. Nessuno ne è mai uscito pulito e ha ammesso che amore e sacrificio sono solo ciò che fai per rimanere sano quando ti trovi costretto in una diversa prospettiva.

by Greg Egan

When I first started reading this, the first new book by Egan after some time, I was full of expectations, but soon became a little disappointed. Egan has some blind spots, for example his meta-culture, the amalgam, is an excellent high concept, but when it comes to make it believable as a culture, it comes short of what you expect. Other writers can make such a high concept come to live by creature texture in the form of many details, be it future entertainment or other elements of everyday life, but this doesn't seem to be Egan's focus. And his characters.

There's seems some contention among reviewers that his characterization is weak, which is both true and completely wrong. When it comes to characters, Egan perfectly manages to depict the deep, rational thinker who hardly lets his emotion comes in the way of thinking through things, yet one who is guided by morality to the extent that he anguishes over details other people wouldn't even catch. The problem is, that seems to be the only type of character that Egan can believable write, other characters by him, who don't exactly fall into that subset, often look like cardboard. This may be a weakness, but when you'll realize that Egan's one of the few writers who actually use that type of character with such depth and insight, it makes his lack and limit in characterization pale.

Still, after I reached the mark of page 150, I stopped reading and let the book lie fallow. The spark just wasn't there. And then, nearly a month later, I tried again and read the rest of the book in one night. Somehow everything seemed to work now, the story went smoothly and was compelling and enthralling, the two different storylines complemented each other perfectly and the whole book made me realize again why I think Egan is the best thing SF has to offer. The unique mix of hard SF, philosophical musings, attempts to look at something from every angle is hard to come by in this quality.

One of the driving mysteries of the book is the true nature of the Aloof, the entities that dwell at the center of the galaxy. While there's no clear cut answer in the end, there is a possible solution given that makes sense, even more so in the context of the nature of the beings that inhabit the splinter and who are the driving force behind one of the storylines. There are traces of Sterling's short story Swarm here, but unlike him, Egan's fiction is more prone to take a stand, which is something I've always admired. Instead of just painting an interesting setting with characters whose best course of action is mere survival, they push for positive change. And Egan makes you believe it's possible, against all odds.

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan

If I can find any fault with this collection, it's that while the quality of the fiction is as high as in Egan's other collections, the quantity isn't. There are only five stories and one of them has already been collected before, even if it makes sense to bundle it here. It's just that there are still so many stories by Egan who haven't been collected before, that I feel like this is a chance missed to really shine by putting together more stuff.

Three of the stories have been published after Egan's hiatus from writing had ended, and if these stories are any indication of things to come, I'm happy to report Egan is back and hasn't lost his touch. Luminous, the one story that had already been collected before, gets a sequel with Dark Integers. Luminous has always been one of my favorites of the early Egan stories (and since they where all great, that's not an easy feat), but Dark Integers even surpasses it. There's an unusual edge to the story, a touch of realpolitik very uncommon to Egan's early work. His characters are still similar to earlier characters, wanting for a better world, but this time, unlike in an earlier Egan story, they don't strife for the best solution, but for the more realistic one that may isolate both universes from each other while saving them. There's no further chance of mutual learning or sharing of knowledge, survival trumps everything. Similarly, Glory doesn't end with the characters spreading the truth they've learned with no concern for the consequences and neither does Riding the Crocodile ends with the characters having overcome their death wish and accepting to live forevermore. These changes in direction a very subtle, but to me they are noticeable, if you compare Glory to a story like the Planck Dive or Riding the Crocodile to Border Guards. I'm not even sure whom I like better, the early Egan or this more seasoned one. But it's good that, despite these changes, the quality of Egan's fiction hasn't suffered.

Luminous (5/5)
Riding the Crocodile (4/5)
Dark Integers (5/5)
Glory (5/5)
Oceanic (4/5)

Rating: 4/5

JUNE 28, 2008
I grabbed this book because it was on the shelf next to the DIASPORA book and because someone swore to me online that Greg Egan was the Best. Writer. Ever. I am reading DIASPORA mostly to test my memory and to see if it actually is the book I've been trying to recollect. I didn't even read the book jacket for this one. It's kinda interesting to be in the position of knowing almost nothing about a story before starting it.

JULY 6
This book is so already much better than DIASPORA, but I've really only read the preface. Still, there's an actual character who is reacting to events in a reasonable amount of time, and who actually feels emotions and regrets. The science hasn't taken over the story yet. Plus it's funny to think of what it would be like to shrink your body to two millimeters in order to make traveling easier!

JULY 8
There's a real story. It's so much more interesting to read than DIASPORA because of it. Now, it's a shallow story and it still only serves to feature the vacuum problem (which I don't fully understand), but the characters are talking about how real life is affected by these theoretical scientific advances. For example: Are you a bad parent if you abandon your children before they turn one hundred, if the average life span is, well, infinite? Is a culture still a culture if all the people move all the buildings and set up the same town on another planet? What should the ethics of settling on a planet with native life be?

Whether or not those kinds of physics and biological questions fascinate you is a matter of taste. If you don't care about them, you may not like the book because the characters aren't that three-dimensional and the story isn't that compelling. But at least I've learned that the author is capable of writing science fiction according to the generally accepted rules of what fiction is. Up to page 100, anyway.

JULY 9
Yeah, the book was OK. We did stay with the characters until the very end, and there was some redemption of a character, but it did turn into a travelogue of a place that isn't possible for a brain that functions in three spatial dimensions to visualize. So these two characters were floating around in it talking to each other about it and mostly doing nothing. I still am happy that the conventions of "story" were followed, but I'm not really happy with this author. Sure he brings up interesting ideas, but in passing. He's not interested in the things I am interested in. He likes to write and write and write about what X-theory IS, but I like to read about what X-theory does to people and how I would react if I were faced with this scenario.

Now I will relieve you of the need to read the book by giving you some main themes to think about. All the author does is identify them; his characters and plot don't develop them, so if I'm still thinking about them later it's all because I am wondering about what I would do and not if I agree with what his characters did, because they really did nothing:

• Can we ever really know science for sure?
• Are all sentient species equal or does technological advancement matter?
• Does the human experience require mortality? Does it require a physical body?
• Are humans evolving away from sexual dimorphism?
• Is culture a place or a people?
• Is a family with twenty generations living at once still a family?
• Should scientists be punished for their dangerous mistakes?

Years ago I read a book that had so much hard science in it that I had trouble following the story. I remembered only three things from it.

1. A universe-sized natural disaster forced people out of the usual three dimension into multi-dimensional space.
2. You needed a pair of extra limbs for every extra dimension.
3. Some guy decided to keep the need to urinate because he liked the feeling of having a really good pee even though he'd uploaded himself into some kind of virtual/cyberlife.

Off and on I've tried to track down this book. A review from some random blog makes me think that I'm on the right track here. And yes, the first chapter was impenetrable higher dimensional cyber-creating of a consciousness from a collection of data points. I quite enjoyed the presentation of an awareness arising from a database and the feelings and frustrations it developed, but after worrying for a while about what exactly a four-dimensional waveform with a billion latitude lines would look like, I just rode it. It's nice to learn, however, that we finally do develop the technology to avert asteroids from collision paths with Earth and that--even if our math is wrong--we've all got backup copies on other planets and in other solar systems.

I think this is the same book. I'll post a full report of the urination scene when I get there. I predict it's in the last third of the book.

JULY 6
Yeah, it was the right book. The confirming passage was on page 188:

He had gladly rid himself of the tedious business of defecation, but he was no more willing to give up the pleasure of emptying his bladder than he was willing give up the possibility of sex. Both acts were entirely arbitrary, now that they were divorced from any biological imperative, but that only brought them closer to other meaningless pleasures, like music. If Beethoven deserved to endure, so did urination.

When I read this book before, I blamed myself for not liking it because the science was so opaque and strange. Now I realize that, although the science is too opaque and strange for my feeble powers of comprehension, the book fails as a work of fiction. The first part was interesting, in which sentient software programs were interacting with each other, and one sentient software program--Yatima, the Orphan--is spontaneously created from the database and becomes aware of itself. Yatima is fascinating. Even more fascinating are the friendships that form and the interest one software character takes in the "Flesher" world of humans still living on the surface of the earth. There are some assumptions you have to make about backstory which didn't bother me--I don't mind mystery and not everything needs to be answered in a book--but the explicit and implied conflicts about relationships and the nature of existence are very interesting.

And then the sci takes over the fi and the book tanks. The second half of the book is a drag. The characters all split themselves up into clones and then the clones all split up to travel long, long distances, and character development ends. The setting takes over. It is seriously boring to read pages and pages about how this field of multidimensional algae is really the three-dimensional shadow of some complex multi-dimensional ecosystem with hermit crabs as the highest-order organism. Hermit crabs that don't talk to each other and don't move around. One character explores this world and then shows up and gives a little book report to the other characters, and then they all wonder how their clones in galaxies far, far away are doing. At one point two guys do some stuff, and then a millennium passes, and then they do some other stuff, in a single paragraph. How can you have a story in that? Plus if this is supposed to be a promotional piece for how cool it will be to finally rid ourselves of our mortal coils, it fails. I guess you could interpret this novel as an anti-utopia, because if you have to endure for an actual infinity you do run out of stuff to do. I think the characters are as boring as their non-biological lives are. By the end, things are taking so long they basically alter their consciousness so they are only awake like one second out of every one hundred.

For all of the promises that the book makes about the three states of being--software, robot, biological--and the intense conflicts and problems and mistrust between them, and the benefits of terrestrial living versus life in some kind of giant orbiting hard-drive, and how they pool their resources to escape the greatest natural disaster ever known, the actual plot is forgotten about. I can handle that there is tricksie theoretical physics worth musing about and extrapolating from, but don't put it in a novel if that's all you want to talk about. Hell, there's already a scientific gee-whiz and what-if non-fiction genre. Why weren't these ideas written in that form instead? Egan could have really given us some great details about the universe without cluttering it up with a failed adventure tale. Six-page lectures are very palatable when they come straight from an author instead of being routed through a character who has nothing to do but repeat information the author possesses.

"Luminous" begins in Shanghai, when Bruno wakes up to find himself handcuffed to his bed while a knife-wielding spy hacking at his arm. Lucky for him, he has some convenient technology in his blood that gets rid of her. I found it hard to take seriously, and it didn't help that I kept thinking about those stories where some guy wakes up in a hotel in Shanghai in a bathtub full of ice.

As for Industrial Algebra, all we learn is they're a UK-based firm whose motivations are never firmly established. Bruno surmises that IA could exploit the mathematical defects to make billions in the financial markets. You know, maybe they did and they're running hedge funds right now. Maybe that's what a CDO really is.

The premise of the story is laid out in a conversation between Bruno and his confederate, Alison, in four pages of nearly all dialogue with barely a flash of introspection or emotion to help the reader process what the characters are saying. Which is a pity, because their speculations about how there might be places where mathematics doesn't match up with itself are pretty cool.

The very coolest part of the story is the supercomputer Luminous. In two paragraphs of mind-blowing description, you almost believe that you really could make a computer out of light. With Luminous, they find the other math, but they can only map it, not talk to it. Evidently that happens between the two stories.

What really annoyed me was all the time they spent worrying that IA might find it, too. Lucky for them, it turns out to be too robust for even IA to exploit. Maybe that's why Industrial Algebra never shows up. If you ask me, they shouldn't have been in the story in the first place.

The story ends with the sense that huge possibilities have been opened up. Lucky for all of us, "Dark Integers" does a decent job of elaborating on the possibilities.

It's been a couple years since SFWA demoted Interzone to semi-pro status.  While I generally prefer to solicit rejection slips from SFWA-accredited venues, a magazine that can put out a story as sharp as Greg Egan's "Crystal Nights" (IZ 215, April 2008) isn't going to fall off my Rolodex any time soon.

"Crystal Nights" by Greg Egan
Daniel is determined to develop artificial intelligence before anyone else. With his dotcom money he's acquired a super-processor (a "three-dimensional photonic crystal") that has the speed to give him first-mover advantage.

His great insight is that if natural intelligence developed through evolution, AI could also develop through evolution.  Julie, whom he tries to recruit for the project, is horrified: "Evolution is about failure and death."  Daniel promises to minimize the suffering of his fledgling crab-like creatures, but he's not omnipotent and progress comes only through pain.

To evolve the creatures pursue a strategy of active adaptation, dissecting rival species to steal innovations - an intriguing alternative to the genetic mutation we're familiar with.  I love the dynamic between the creatures and their imperfect creator.  Egan opens the door here for classic theological dilemmas like the problem of pain.

Playing out such thoughtful questions on a hard SF stage, "Crystal Nights" is one of my favorite stories of the year.

"Street Hero" by Will McIntosh
My second favorite story of the issue was this number from McIntosh's "Soft Apocalypse" world.  Kilo, Dice and Slinky have nothing to do but cruise the streets of decrepit Savannah, looking for trouble, watching one of the "mayors" conduct executions, and keeping clear of biohazards.

Surrounded by a crumbled civilization, Kilo feels a need to do something meaningful.  He likes to show off his mad martial arts skills, but the tribe of topless hunter-gatherers passing through aren't impressed.  Maybe the Batman comics he finds will steer him in a more productive direction.

I like that McIntosh doesn't push the language too far (as near-future urban dystopias are wont to do).  I really like Kilo as a naive young man seeking purpose.  I'll be keeping an eye out for more Soft Apocalypse stories.

"Holding Pattern" by Joy Marchand
Franklin, an alien, confides with Nanette, a stewardess, that their plane, which has been circling LA while trying to lower its landing gear, is destined to crash.  He's seen it before.  They're stuck in a temporal loop.

The stories Franklin tells about the other passengers are humorous and interesting, as are Nanette's attempts to resolve their loose ends. It's a sweetly romantic story, in a nicely weird way.

"Dragonfly Summer" by Patrick Samphire
I also like this low-key story of four former friends who return to their old haunting grounds to find that the windmill where they played, fought and loved has disappeared.  What's more, it never existed to begin with.

The writing is quite smooth and the characters are well-drawn.  I enjoy the nostalgic tone of paradise lost, or at least of lost potential.  And I get a kick (in a pause-for-introspection kind of way) out of the protagonist's realization when he says "I work in finance" that that's not a job, it's an abstract.

Dark matter, dark energy . . . dark integers. They’re all around us, but we don’t usually see them, because they don’t quite play by the rules.

How cool is that? I really like the parts where it plays with the idea the mathematics and physics may not perfectly mesh. And yet...

The story made my head hurt. Not the ideas--weird as they were--the story. First off, it bugged me that the "defect" allows contact with another universe. Of course, without that One Impossible Thing, there wouldn't be a story. Secondly, how exactly that could happen was really vague; presumably there was more detail about this in the previous story, "Luminous." Finally, since it is a sequel, half the dialogue in the opening gets a lardoon of background threaded in. And the other half still baffled me.

Once the story explained things, I liked getting a little dose of quantum physics. Then it shifts into secret cabal saves the universe mode. I'm not so sure I really cared for that part. Considering how much happens, the text is remarkably short. Which means there's a lot of summary. Some sequences that would just be too tedious, like watching the characters lay their plans, are referred to only in retrospect. In the end, I'm left suspecting I would enjoy "Luminous" more.

Definitely Mathematical Fiction.

Tomorrow: Soften me up for the economic kill

An ingot of metallic hydrogen...

Whoa, wait a second. An ingot. Of metallic hydrogen. Okay, I see what kind of story "Glory," by Greg Egan is going to be. Old school, hard core, science fiction. That hydrogen gets put through some outrageous changes, which are mind-bending beyond the point of disbelief all the way back out to the fantastic. And it's all prologue to the tale of two travelers.

Like "Last Contact," this is a small story driven by big ideas. Joan and Anne visit the Noudah, in search of the ancient mathematics of their precessors, the Niah. Unlike "Last Contact," the characters seem less human--and it's not just because the have six arms; they don't have their own agendas beside pursuing ideas. The persuasions necessary to move the story forward meet only token resistance, and the characters chat awfully casually about topics as grand as the passing of civilizations.

As a reader, the story left me cold. But as an erstwhile math geek, I liked the ideas. I loved the commuting hypercubes and enjoyed pondering whether it's really such a good thing to find the Theorem of Everything.

Adds up to an Idea story.

Tomorrow: Bigger and badder Ideas

Read this if you like Bruce Coville's anthologies, or R Is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury.

---

I'm not managing to post book recs every day, but that's still my goal. Even if I only post 6 days out of 7, it will still keep the blog more active than it has been.

The main use for this technology, called Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES), will be in the automotive industry where it will reduce or eliminate the need for bulky lithium ion batteries. Whether used for traditional hybrids, electric cars, or hydrogen combustion engines, SMES will capture and use energy from the vehicle braking system to reduce or eliminate the use of large, expensive batteries. By combining fuel storage and the battery into a single unit, the range and efficiency of alternative fuel vehicles will be increased, and fuel can be stored in a much smaller space.

Greg Egan, Chief Technology Officer at the Hythane Company and inventor of the SMES system said:

This technology addresses many of the barriers to popular use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen. By increasing the range and efficiency of hybrid, electric, and hydrogen powered vehicles, SMES has immediate uses today. It also brings us a big step closer to the practical use of pure hydrogen.

The innovation of SMES is that the vehicle fuel tank becomes a storage device to capture electrical energy from a regenerative braking system or other engine generation system, reducing or eliminating the need for on-board batteries. Integrating the SMES system with a liquid cryogenic fuel tank enables superconductivity, providing frictionless energy storage.

Source: Eden Energy

www.gregegan.net

 Perth is home to one of the world's most acclaimed science-fiction writers - Greg Egan. His mind twisting novels and short stories combine intriguing scientific thought experiments and engaging writing.

My favourite is his collection of short stories Axiomatic. The pick of the collection starts with this memorable sentence:

I was six years old when my parents told me there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.

The jewel or 'dual' is a second, identical self, non-organic and thus immortal. But the narrator starts to get anxious when it's time to remove his physical brain and switch to the jewel.

 Egan's website has information about his novels, links to free online editions of his stories and a bibliography.

What it doesn't have is a photograph of the author. Indeed, I'm told the only photograph on the public record is of Egan as a child when he won an award and was in The West Australian.

Remarkably for a writer who values his privacy so much, Egan spoke out publicly over the treatment of refugees earlier this decade.

The world the Noudah called home was the closest of the system's five planets to their sun. The average temperature was one hundred and twenty degrees Celsius, but the high atmospheric pressure allowed liquid water to exist across the entire surface. The chemistry and dynamics of the planet's crust had led to a relatively flat terrain, with a patchwork of dozens of disconnected seas but no globe-spanning ocean. From space, these seas appeared as silvery mirrors, bordered by a violet and brown tarnish of vegetation.

There is no poetry in this. With the possible exception of "tarnish", every word of the paragraph is chosen purely for its ability to explain, to set out the particulars of this planet with as little distraction as possible. Yet the image conjured is wondrous, in a strict sense -- it is remarkable; it is extraordinary. It is how the story's protagonist, a mathematician who's travelled across a reasonable chunk of interstellar distance, sees the universe. Later in the story, she supposes that an alien race's drawings and poetry "no doubt had their virtues", but they seem to her "bland and opaque"; it is a conspicuous refusal of that type of beauty, in favour of the symmetry and solidity of mathematical proof. Sure, you could dress up the facts, translate them into a different form, and sure that could be beautiful in its own way. But equally, in its own way, it's already beautiful.

OK, I'm exaggerating. That paragraph isn't what's great about "Glory", and neither, really, is what comes after, which is most of the story but which feels a little familiar. (The mathematician has the option of sending a final, wonderful proof, one that explains the significance of everything, to her people, and chooses not to, because seeking after knowledge is, in the end, what's satisfying.) No, what's great about "Glory" is the opening of the story, the four pages before that paragraph in which Egan's dispassionate camera tracks the meticulous unwinding of what is effectively a galactic-scale Rube-Goldberg device. We start with two ingots floating in space, one of hydrogen and one of anti-hydrogen. They are forced together in such a way as to produce a needle of compressed matter and antimatter one micron wide, sculpted such that one trajectory is favoured for the annihilation debris. The needle accelerates to 98% of the speed of light and travels, in the few trillionths of a second of its subjective existence, across light years and into the heart of a star. There, the few million excess neutrons included in the original ingots set up specific shock waves in the star's plasma, the initial pattern elaborating to create a molecular factory, the products of which are ejected from the star at a velocity just below that needed to escape from the star's gravity well, on arcs that intersect with the gravity well of the system's gas giant, which captures them and draws them down onto its third moon. Once landed the machines construct a receiver, just in time to collect a series of timed gamma ray pulses from the needle's original destination, that contain the information needed to recreate the story's protagonists in forms native to their new location. (Sympathetic viewpoint characters? Ha! Who needs 'em?)

Two mathematicians arrive, and go about their separate missions:

Anne's ship ascended so high on its chemical thrusters that it shrank to a speck before igniting its fusion engine and streaking away in a blaze of light. Joan felt a pang of loneliness; there was no predicting when they would be reunited.

Having read through four pages that depict a process that is precisely, spectacularly, absurdly, predictable -- more detailed and convincing than my synopsis above -- you can understand why Joan might be a little nervous. I almost wish those four pages could be carved off and anthologised in their own right; because their glory, I think, is that just for a minute they make you see the universe through Joan's eyes.

by Greg Egan

Egan's second collection has the same ratio of high quality stories as the first, but the quantity has decreased and the size of the stories increased. Thankfully there's no padding or any narrative fat. What could be said about the first collection, applies here as well, these stories are remorseless explorations of ideas. We have a story where a young boy has to relearn happiness, the catch is that he has to chose with a nearly rational and objective mind, what should be happy in the future to him. Another story deals with a group of explorers who know that they will never have a chance to pass on the knowledge they will gain, because they jump into a black hole. Egan's stories at best make you think about assumptions you have about yourself or the world around you, and not only does he makes you think, sometimes you may even change your mind or learn a new way to look at the world.

Chaff (5/5)
Mitochondrial Eve (5/5)
Luminous (5/5)
Mister Volition (5/5)
Cocoon (5/5)
Transition Dreams (5/5)
Silver Fire (3/5)
Reasons to Be Cheerful (5/5)
Our Lady of Chernobyl (3/5)
The Planck Dive (5/5)

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan

This is simply put the best single author collection I ever read, in terms of quality and quantity. There is not one story that is weak, every one of them has a highly original idea at their heart and always takes the exploration of this idea to its logical conclusion, without ever wavering from any possible consequences, however daring they might be.

A man who is seemingly always the same, over an infinite array of alternate worlds, a man who has grown up in the bodies of many other people, questions of morality and philosopical musings crash into reality through the help of modern technology. Reading this collection can be a mind expanding experience, and there's a reason why I personally think that Egan's fiction was some of the best published in the 90ths, and Egan's the most important new writer. He asked and sometimes tried to answer questions with his fiction that nobody else had asked before, he opened areas of thought not many were comfortable with, and he had a spin on things that was completely unique and original. And this collection is a showcase for that.

The Infinite Assassin (5/5)
The Hundred-Light-Year Diary (5/5)
Eugene (4/5)
The Caress (3/5)
Blood Sisters (5/5)
Axiomatic (5/5)
The Safe-Deposit Box (5/5)
Seeing (5/5)
A Kidnapping (5/5)
Learning to Be Me (5/5)
The Moat (5/5)
The Walk (4/5)
The Cutie (5/5)
Into Darkness (5/5)
Appropriate Love (5/5)
The Moral Virologist (5/5)
Closer (5/5)
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (5/5)

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan

Synopsis: Prabir Suresh parents once researched a strange species of butterfly, a rare mutation, on an island in the South Pacific that Prabir named Teranesia. When conflicts break out in Indonesia, Prabir's parents get killed, and he and his sister have to flee. Years later rumors of strange new species arrive, and their origin is near the island Teranesia. His sister goes there trying to find out what is going on. Not wanting her to be alone in that part of the world, Prabir follows her.

The first part of the book is mostly not about ideas but character development time. Which isn't a bad idea, but Egan has a slight tendency to get preachy about some subjects and in this book it feels as if you hear sock puppets talking, not real humans. Then the plot moves to Prabir's search for his sister and his return to Teranesia. They find out the mystery behind the strange new species and the book just stops, which is very anticlimactic and unsatisfying.

In Egan's first three novels we have massive paradigm shifts that redefine mankind's place in the universe. If there is a unifying theme to his later three novels, the one that comes to my mind is that of a search or quest for knowledge, a voyage to far away places. They have much quieter endings, where the voyage is as important as the finish. That worked very well for Diaspora and Schild's Ladder, but sadly not in Teranesia, where the whole voyage of the main character wasn't really that interesting and the mystery behind Teranesia seemed strangely detached from the rest of the novel.

Rating: 3/5

by Greg Egan

Backcover Synopsis: It is the end of the thirtieth century. While 'fleshers', what is left of the Homo sapiens, remain in the muck and jungle of earth, much of human kind has achieved apparent immortality - as 'Gleisner robots': embodying human minds within machines, and as 'polises': supercomputers teeming with intelligent software containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities. A random mutation of the Konishi polis base mind seed creates an orphan, Yatima. When an astrophysical disaster threatens to destroy earth, Yatima sets out to discover a home where random acts of God will never threaten their existence again.

Together with Permutation City the very best Egan has ever written (apart from some of his short stories). It gets old when I say that his books are full of neat ideas, but it's also true. Egan is always stretching the boundary of our imagination, and he does that with an interesting mix of speculative physics and visionary ideas for the future of mankind. Diaspora begins near the end of the third millenium, and stretches into a future far away from every place we call home now, our world, our universe, even as far away as possible from our place in time. It is a voyage that spans all potentialities that mankind can aspire to realize, and when it ends, the only way forward is completion and end, or change into something new and different. Unlike his three earlier novels (Quarantine, Permutation City and Distress), there's no twist with a big wow-effect in the end, the novel closes with a quiet contemplation of what to do next, but the implications of the road that has been traveled before and what comes after, is big enough in itself.

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan
3rd Subjective Cosmology novel (conceptually linked trilogy)

Backcover Synopsis: Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness - 'Distress' or acute clinical anxiety syndrome, for another assignment. He's on his way to the artificial island of Stateless, where the world's top physicists are gathering to decide on a new TOE, or Theory of Everything, to replace Einstein's outmoded legacy. Chief among the scientists is the brilliant African Nobel laureate, Violet Mosala, the focus of Worth's story, who is the subject of mysterious death threats. Worth begins his own investigation, but it takes on even more urgency when he finds that Distress, the mental plague now affecting millions, is linked somehow to the approaching 'Aleph Moment' when the TOE is finalized. The countdown has begun for a disaster that will reach all the way back to the Big Bang. And beyond...

This is the last novel in Egan's so-called Subjective Cosmology trilogy (so called, because none of the novels have any connection to each other, apart from the theme of subjective cosmology, the other two being Quarantine and Permutation City), where the physics of the universe are deeply connected with the human consciousness. It's also the first novel where Egan's characterizations skills grew visible stronger. It still has all his other strengths, neat ideas that cover a wide range from speaking to braindead people to people who chose to have no gender at all. It's brilliant, inspiring and a gem of SFnal vision.

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan

Backcover Synopsis: Cass has stumbled on an entirely different kind of physics, and she has traveled to a remote experimental facility in the hope of bringing this tantalising alternative to life. Cass's experiment is wildly successful: the novo-vacuum is more stable than the ordinary vacuum around it, and a region in which the new physics holds sway proceeds to expand at half the speed of light. Six hundred years later, more than two thousand inhabited systems have been lost to the novo-vacuum. People have come from throughout inhabited space: most are Preservationists, hunting for a way to stop the novo-vacuum before all inhabited space is consumed, but a few believe that the challenge of adapting to survive on the far side of the border would reinvigorate a civilization that has grown stale and insular...

This book was Egan's proof that he was back to form after Teranesia. It shows all his strengths, inventive ideas, speculative physics, questions about philosophy and morality, and his will to go further than anybody else. Unlike others authors, Egan makes me at times think that what he envisions is really how the far future might look like, not the small details, but rather the overall feeling of his future. The way how his future people think about our time, how they interact with each other. Egan's novel is also one of the few SF books that has a STL civilization on a galactic scale. If there's a weakness, it's that the reader has to be interested in exploring strange places, the whole third part of the book until the end is about that, and if you read books mostly for characters, you'll find yourself lost.

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan
2nd Subjective Cosmology novel (conceptually linked trilogy)

Synopsis: It's about people who upload their minds into a special simulation that once started from it's initial state, the garden-of-eden configuration, will create an autonomous computer space, a computational universe disconnected from our own, where the human uploads live forever freed from intervention of the still embodied humans from Earth.

The thing about Egan is, he takes an idea and goes as far as anyone can think you could go with such an idea, and then he goes even farther, exploring all possible consequences, on the human level, the physics level, even the pure philosophical. At a time when you often hear people moan that there's nothing really new under the sun and everything is just a variation of old themes, Egan comes to conclusions and insights in his novels and stories where you're hard pressed to say it wasn't new. Point in case is PC, he explores the concept of uploaded human minds more exhaustingly than ever before. It's a breathtaking trip for people who value ideas and concepts, and an honest exploration of them that doesn't flinch away from any conclusions it might reach. Pure mind expanding stuff, that also has a brilliant twist near the ending.

Rating: 5/5

by Greg Egan
1st Subjective Cosmology novel (conceptually linked trilogy)

Backcover Synopsis: It causes riots and religions. It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscrapers. And it's all because of the impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15, 2034. Some see the Bubble as the revenge of an insane God. Some see it as justice. Some even see it as protection. But one thing is for certain - now there is the universe, and the earth. And never the twain shall meet. Or so it seems. Until a bio-enchanced PI named Nick Stavrianos takes on a job for an anonymous client: find a girl named Laura who disappeared from a mental institution by the most direct possible method - walking through the walls.

Quarantine was the first thing I've read by Egan years ago (I think it was 1996), and it blew me away. After that I read most of his other stuff in rapid succession, and each blew me away even more (well, Teranesia changed that). For me he was the most important SF author to emerge in the 90s, the most visionary and boldest of them all. But back to the book. Neat ideas, Egan's books are always full of them, overflowing your cerebral cortex until you think your mind is exanding with the speed of light. And then there's the ending. His first three books had the endings with the most wow-factor. His first book is the most mundane (apart from Teranesia), the main character is a PI searching for a missing person. But that's where all mundaness ends. The weirdness enters when you combine an interpretation of quantum theory with nanotechnological headware. And even if you now think you know what's going on, you don't.

Rating: 5/5