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What's New
Review Features
S - Science Fiction
F - Fantasy
H - Horror
Complete Listing
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Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
Brin, David (S)
Bury, Stephen (S)
Card, Orson Scott (S)
Cherryh, CJ (S/F)
Clute, John (S)
Cockayne, Steve (F)
Cook, Glen (F)
Danielewski, Mark (H)
Dick, Philip K (S)
Egan, Greg (S)
Feist, Raymond (F)
Gaiman, Neil (F)
Gibson, William (S)
Goodkind, Terry (F)
Grimwood, Jon C (S)
Hamilton, Peter (S)
Jeter, K.W. (S)
Jordan, Robert (F)
Lethem, Jonathan (S)
McAuley, Paul (S)
MacLeod, Ken (S)
Martin, George RR (F)
McMullen, Sean (S)
Miéville, China (S)
Moran, Daniel K (S)
Morgan, Richard K (S)
Nagata, Linda (S)
Niven, Larry (S)
Noon, Jeff (S)
Robinson, Kim S. (S)
Rucker, Rudy (S)
Simmons, Dan (S)
Smith, Michael Marshall (S)
Stephenson, Neal (S)
Sterling, Bruce (S)
Vinge, Vernor (S)
Westerfeld, Scott (S)
Williams, Sean (S)
Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
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| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
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| Greg Egan |
| Author Information |
Reviewed Books |
Other Books |
| Notes: (S) - Short Story Collections |
Luminous
(S)
Diaspora
Distress
Permutation City |
An Unusual Angle
Quarantine
Axiomatic(S)
Our Lady of Chernobyl (S)
Teranesia
Schild's Ladder |
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 Our
Ranking Luminous is actually a collection of 10
short stories, most of which were published in the British Sci-Fi magazine Interzone.
If you've ever read Interzone, you'll know this alone is a pretty good testament
to the quality of these stories. As with all of Egan's novels, the short stories
in the book are more of the hard sci-fi variety, and each one manages to push
the boundaries of what you consider science. I've read a lot of Egan now, and
even though sometimes I feel the stories themselves may not be the best, his ideas
never cease to nothing short of amazing. Luminous put that level of respect up
a couple of notches. Each story all on its own, from the sheer "idea" perspective
are outstanding. Egan is either a flat out genius or he is damned good at bluffing
his way through hard sci-fi. Basically as you are reading these stories he is
explaining these amazing, mind blowing concepts. And he's not just explaining
the results to these, but even the how of them. Now, anyone that has read
my reviews knows that my biggest complaint with Egan is that sometimes the plot,
characters and story seem to just be second fiddle to his incredible ideas, and
this has a tendency to drag down the book a bit. Well, after reading Luminous,
I truly believe the short story medium is for him. It's basically as if, being
able to compact the tale and characters into a shorter format, really allows the
ideas to take center stage without losing anything. Right from the opening story
this was very obvious. The story is about a genetically modified jungle in the
Amazon that was created to hide the drug cartels. However, the jungle has since
adapted and now modifies itself, making it almost invincible to any form of attack.
The story centers around an agent trying to penetrate into this stronghold to
locate a scientist. Now, in all honesty, the character isn't too strong and the
plot itself really almost doesn't become resolved, but it doesn't matter here.
For the mere 20 pages this story stretches, the wonder of the idea itself carries
the story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of the ten stories, I'd say about 7 were
incredible, and the other 3 were by no means shabby. My favorites were probably
the opening story and the title story itself Luminous (which even in its shortness,
hurt my head trying to bend it around the mathematic theories Egan throws at you).
This is a great collection of short stories, but I would suggest not reading it
straight through. Due to the complexity and wide range of ideas here, this is
a perfect book to read story by story and take the time to digest them. |
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 Our
Ranking Egan's Diaspora simply has to be the
hardest of hard science fiction I've come across. After watching Egan progress
his stories from simple science, to an actual literary work with Permutation City
and than Distress, I was looking forward to Diaspora and picked it up as soon
as it was out on paperback. Right from the get go, it was obvious Egan was going
to be pushing the scientific envelope on this one. This story is truly driven
off the technology. The basic (and this is scary that this is the basic
idea) premise starts off with Earth in the year 3000. The world and mankind with
it has progressed to mind boggling proportions. There are now three main classes
of life. The first are known as the fleshers. A series of breeds that evolved
from mankind, live on Earth and still inhabit something close to a human body.
(most of mankind has been genegineered beyond recognition). The second breed has
decided to become immortals. They have more or less uploaded themselves into a
network and now occupy a computer system spread throughout the space around Earth.
(read Permutation City to see where this came from). Finally, there's a third
group that after leaving their bodies to upload to the cyber worlds, decided to
return to physical form and downloaded themselves back into host robot bodies.
Egan goes into incredible detail on this, especially around the immortal breed
which most of the story centers around. The first 10 pages or so is nothing but
an extremely detailed process of how a new "citizen" is born in this world. Sound
complicated? Well, this is the easy stuff. After the cyber world witnesses a massive
tragedy that hits the fleshers, (I won't get into detail of it, but it involves
two binary suns falling into each other and gamma rays and stuff smashing down
on Earth.) the cyber world realizes that a similar fate might take them out as
well. They launch on a quest, searching for intelligent life, seeking answers
on how to prevent a tragedy of this proportion again. The storyline stretches
out past the year 5000 and once again Egan goes nuts with the physics, spending
an incredible amount of time describing things like how to create, open and travel
through a wormhole, to how to live in a 16 dimensional world. To be honest, the
detail was mind numbing. There were literally stretches of 10 or so pages where
I had no idea what Egan was talking about. It was just too much. For instance,
there is one point where he is trying to describe the difference between a 3d
world and a 5d world. I don't know about you, but I couldn't get my mind around
this concept. Unfortunately, behind all of this detail and science there was very
little plot. The storyline itself was pretty weak. The characters were average,
but to complicate them more they mostly just spoke science back and forth. You
got to know very little of them from a personal point of view. Everything was
from their knowledge and scientific side. And, considering I couldn't follow half
of the dialogue, it really hurt the character development. All in all, this is
a fascinating book from the science side. The stuff he expanded on was mind blowing.
However, this is really all this book is. The story line was buried beneath a
pile of physics. If you want to read a book by Egan where he balances these two
much better, take a look at Distress. It is a much better story, and the science
is just as incredible. |
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Our Ranking Egan's Distress certainly belongs
near or maybe even in the category of hard science fiction. The only reason I
question whether it belongs there or not is that some of the concepts are so involved
that to be completely honest, I have no idea if they are feasible. It all sounded
good to me though. Egan tackles several highly technical issues in this novel,
most of which revolve around and seem to be grounded in very complex physics.
Egan seems to have a very amazing and complete grasp of what could be scientifically
possible in the coming future and also does an incredible job of describing these.
The main character, Andrew Worth, is a reporter who in order to try and get some
relaxation takes on an assignment to cover a major physics convention. (Egan's
vision of the press is also very nice, Worth is wired with both cameras and software
within his body) The convention is centered around several physicists explaining
their Theories of Everything (TOE's) to try and determine whose theory is the
correct one. The convention is located on an island known as Stateless, a completely
science generated and support island that has no other affiliations. The plot
thickens as several anti-science lobbies have also arrived at Stateless to protest
and maybe even prevent these TOE's from being expressed. Along with this, there
may be some philosophical issues with the true TOE being discovered. And finally,
looming over all of this is a bio generated super virus that is rapidly spreading
throughout the world. Intimidating enough? Add the fact in that Egan actually
goes into extensive scientific detail with the TOEs, the generation of Stateless
with nanotechnology, as well as the super virus, and you have a slight headache
after reading this one. However it is certainly worth it. Just the level of detail
Egan provides is fascinating and you will pull you straight in. And unlike most
hard fiction novels, the plot to this one is actually very well written as well
as the characters. This book would have been a good read without all of the scientific
detail, add that and you have a must read. This is the second novel of Egan's
that I've read, Permutation City being the first, and while both were very solid
from the scientific aspect, in Distress Egan takes long strides with the character
and plot development. Any fan of science fiction should give this a read, but
be warned this is not something you can read casually. Prepare to think. |
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 Our
Ranking Only in print in the UK Permutation
City was the first Greg Egan book I'd read. Before reading this, I thought hard
science was pretty much Larry Niven or authors like him. Egan pretty much put
that idea on the shelf. He is hard science fiction today. If you've read
my reviews of Distress and Diaspora, it'll be no surprise to you that the scientific
concepts in this one are mind boggling. The scary thing is, this is one of his
less ambitious works when it comes to the science. He pretty much focuses on one
aspect. The general concept is that mankind has developed the technology to actually
transgress to a computer network and live within the network. In other words,
having your mind and soul leave your body and become a completely digital being.
While authors like Gibson touched on this potential, with his Flatline in Neuromancer,
Egan shatters the definition of it. Will this make man immortal? What's the price
of this immortality? Can the human mind cope with the fact that it is only a copy
of the true bodily mind, and even worse knows that it is a copy? Finally, the
real catch, once separated from your bodies mind, does your body even want you
back? From the science and philosophy angles of this, the book is truly a five
starrer. You'll find yourself just saying "wow" over and over again each time
you realize that Egan was only warming up with the last supposed mind blowing
idea. The problem is, and it really is a shame, the story line and the characters
are terribly flat. The book really is just driven by the science, the characters
are just there for the ride. But, it really is one heck of a ride and to tell
you the truth, I still really enjoyed reading this one. The science aspects were
so strong, I didn't mind looking past the lack of plot and characters. If you
really don't mind this, and are just looking to get blown away by some amazing
ideas, than this is absolutely worth the read. However, if you want a story with
a better balance and still want some great hard science, check out Egan's Distress.
In my mind, this is the one book that Egan really gets right with a perfect balance
of an interesting plotline and characters with his trademark hard science. |
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