From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 28 13:42:46 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: QUARANTINE by Greg Egan Message-ID: <9504241305.ZM8103@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 23:36:33 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 61 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:757 rec.arts.books.reviews:500 QUARANTINE by Greg Egan Harper, ISBN 0-06-105423-2, 1995 (1992c), 280pp, US$4.50 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper Greg Egan is the major rising star of Australian science fiction. His short fiction has appeared in the United States before, but only now is this, his first novel, being published here. On November 15, 2034, a giant "bubble" with a radius of 12 billion kilometers appeared around the solar system. (This is described as being twice the size of Pluto's orbit, so these are American billions rather than British billions, but it's still more like three times the radius.) Private investigator Nick Stavrianos was eight years old at the time and remembers what the night sky looked like when it had stars. Now it's 2067, and Laura Andrews has disappeared from Hilgemann Institute in a sort of reverse "locked room" mystery. These two events seem unrelated, but of course they are not. If nothing else, QUARANTINE is unique for its excessive product placements of non-existent products. For example, the narrator writes, "The mod I use, CypherClerk (Neurocomm, $5,999), also provides a virtual larynx option, for complete two-way security." This is cute at first, but does wear after a while. Luckily this doesn't get too much in the way of the story. In trying to solve the mysterious disappearance, Stavrianos discovers he is also digging for deeper answers. Though the story seems to veer off into fantasy, or possibly surrealism, I think Egan wrote it as straight hard science fiction, and an argument can certainly be made that it is. Egan's depiction of New Hong Kong on the Australian continent is well-done (except maybe for the product placements, though I can understand why he included them). Stavrianos is an interesting character, perhaps a bit cleverer than seems likely, but not so prone to wildly lucky deductions as to be unconvincing. And unlike a lot of books of this sort, whose endings appear to move much faster than the pace of the rest of the book, QUARANTINE maintains a measured (albeit not necessarily sedate) pace throughout. I suppose that the idea of the bubble reminds people of David Brin's "Crystal Spheres." They may have been the inspiration, but Egan goes in a different direction entirely, and does it very well. %T Quarantine %A Greg Egan %C New York %D Jnauary 1995 %I Harper %O paperback, US$4.50 [1992] %G ISBN 0-06-105423-2 %P 280pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "I don't think adversity necessarily builds character, but it certainly gives you an opportunity to display it." --Gary Bean (Open Systems Today, 1/9/95) -- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group finger(1) for PGP key Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 wex@media.mit.edu http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/ "Are we fugitives from the law?" "Yes." "Idiocy is our only option." From ../rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Nov 14 14:27:34 1995 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Jul 30 13:47:57 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!umdac!fizban.solace.mh.se!paladin.american.edu!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: beckers@bga.com (Roberta and Craig Becker) Subject: _Axiomatic_ by Greg Egan Message-ID: <3v3iui$3tp@giga.bga.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Summary: Good, hard SF Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Real/Time Communications - Bob Gustwick and Associates Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 21:22:50 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 82 _Axiomatic_ by Greg Egan Millennium, ISBN 1-85798-416-1, 1995, 289pp A book review by Craig Becker Copyright 1995 Craig Becker I have a friend who tells me that much of what is sold as SF these days isn't really Science Fiction. Too much SF, she says, is simply a basic story (Boy Meets Girl, or Coming Of Age, or etc) dressed up with robots, spaceships, aliens, and so forth so that it _looks_ like Science Fiction. But it's not: change the robots into serfs, the spaceships into sailing ships, the aliens into Indians, and viola! It's a "historical epic". Or make the robots into PCs and the spaceships into airplanes, and it's "contemporary drama". _Real_ SF, she maintains, is where the story _depends_ on "what-if"--without it, there's simply no story. Thus, my friend is extraordinarily fond of Clarke's _Tales From The White Hart_, but _Star Wars_ left her cold. That said, my friend is going to love Egan's _Axiomatic_, a collection of hard SF stories that harken back to those halcyon days of yore when Real Men wrote Real SF with Real Science...indeed, fifty pages into this book, I could feel myself regressing back into a maladjusted high-school kid, sitting snug in my room next to a tall pile of _Orbits_ and _Analogs_ and assorted Groff Conklin anthologies in their dirty, crackling plastic library wrappings. Except that Science has marched on quite a ways since then, often to the beat of a decidedly peculiar drummer. The stories in _Axiomatic_ span the cutting edge from Artificial Intelligence ("Learning To Be Me") to genetic engineering ("The Moat") to medical ethics ("Blood Sisters") to "weird physics" ("The Hundred-Light Year Diary"), but what sets Egan apart from most other hard SF writers is the deft manner in which he balances the Science in his stories with the People in his stories. Indeed, much of Egan's talent is that he can pile on the technical details, yet still make you care about his characters. He strictly follows the Campbellian mandate to speculate "what-if", and then write about how it affects _people_. Although it's interesting to speculate about whether or not Campbell would actually _buy_ any of these stories, I'd guess not. Notwithstanding the fact that Egan's excellent novel _Permutation City_ won the 1994 John W. Campbell award, his short stories definitely lack the "Homo Sapiens Uber Alles" kind of feel-good that Campbell liked so much. In fact, the majority of the stories in _Axiomatic_ are quite unsettling, and several are macabre enough that they could be classified as out-and-out horror (new mothers should steer clear of "The Cutie", and "Learning To Be Me" has to be the creepiest treatment of the mind-body problem ever written). I wish all hard SF could be like this: wildly imaginative, yet well- written. _Axiomatic_ isn't for everyone: fans of Tolkien and Brooks won't even want to touch this book, much less read it. But if you like hard SF-- and especially, if you've been missing that "Sense Of Wonder" that SF used to give you--_Axiomatic_ is a Must Read. %T Axiomatic %A Greg Egan %S The Infinite Assassin %S The Hundred-Light-Year Diary %S Eugene %S The Caress %S Blood Sisters %S Axiomatic %S The Safe-Deposit Box %S Seeing %S A Kidnapping %S Learning To Be Me %S The Moat %S The Walk %S The Cutie %S Into Darkness %S Appropriate Love %S The Moral Virologist %S Closer %S Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies %C London %D 1995 %I Millennium %G ISBN 1-85798-416-1 %P 289pp -- Craig Becker, Object Technology Products (512) 838-8068 Austin, TX USA -- -- Internet: jlpicard@austin.ibm.com IBM VNET: JLPICARD at AUSVM1 -- -- 'Literal immortality? Outliving the universe?' 'That's what the word -- -- means. Not: dying after a very long time. Just: not dying, period.' -- From ../rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Nov 14 14:32:53 1995 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 2 16:20:24 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news.sprintlink.net!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!chi-news.cic.net!simtel!lll-winken.llnl.gov!enews.sgi.com!sgigate.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "David M. Chess" Subject: Review of Greg Egan's "Permutation City" Message-ID: <199510301709.JAA01993@presto.ig.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 19:59:09 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 138 Executive Summary: A solid, non-dark, hard-SF exploration of some of the things that may happen when we get computers powerful enough to accurately simulate intelligent systems. Raises some fascinating philosophical questions, and explores the edges of them, but introduces some untenable magic near the end for the sake of the action. Recommended to the general SF reader, and especially to cellular-automaton and artificial life fans. Background: Western civilization, circa 2050. Not much has changed in fifty-odd years; not really enough to be convincing. Egan had to set his story far enough in the future to get really really powerful computers, but he has no particular interest in the politics, sociology, or otherwise of this future world. That's OK. Computers are ubiquitous and highly networked, and computer time is available in massive quantities on the QIPS ("quadrillion instructions per second") market. A programmer will casually add a few billion computing elements to a computation on the chance it'll be useful, quasi-intelligent programs are available to filter your incoming mail by how you'd feel after reading it, automatic program-verification finally seems to be working. That sort of thing. It's possible to create a Copy of yourself in the global computing net, if you can afford it. These Copies have no legal status at the moment, although since some of them are Copies of very powerful individuals whose originals are no longer around, they are beginning to have considerable influence. Controversy and upheaval are expected, but they form no part of the plot, and we never find out whether or not they actually happen. Story and Storytelling: Good unobtrusive prose (except for the constant misspelling of "bail out" as "bale out"), plausible background tech, non-flat characters. A few subplots that never get tied up (Maria's mother, the missing four weeks of Peer, and even the long Riemann thread) suggest some hasty editing, or perhaps just some subtlty of resolution that went beyond me. The first 230 pages or so are the best. We are introduced to the world and the idea of Copies, Egan plays with some of the implications of having ghosts in the machine, some of what it might feel like to find yourself a Copy, some of the things Copies can and can't do. There are some very nice touches here; the wonderfully oxymoronic "Solipsist Nation", for instance, is a meme to watch, as is the idea of people who can directly manipulate their own states of mind, and even their basic personality traits; we can only wish that Egan had gone even more deeply into this. We meet an artificial life / artificial universe devotee who spends computer time she can't really afford playing with a toy universe modelled as a complex 3-D cellular automaton. Anyone (like me) who has spent guilty hours building and being mesmerized by CAs and artificial worlds on today's puny computers will strongly identify with, and strongly envy, her. The last section of the book is somewhat less satisfying; some of the characters have managed to get themselves into a pocket universe with virtually unlimited computational power, and after seven thousand subjective years or so, a Terrible Problem suddenly develops. Even if we're willing to believe in this universe, the use Egan makes of it is narrow and unfulfilling. Some thousands of people have had some thousands of years of living essentially as dieties in an environment that they can control down to the level of physical law, if they so choose; any author introducing such a thing is obliged to either show us some of the wild transhuman things that will have happened, or at least to convince us that they exist, but we wouldn't be able to understand them if he were to show them to us. Egan does neither; he is heading so determinedly towards the action in the last few pages that he doesn't seem to have noticed the magnitude of the engine he has created to get us there. Which is a pity. Philosophy: Egan uses the novel to address by example some of the questions that philosophers like Dennett and Hofstadter like to play with: the relationship between brain and mind, and between brain and consciousness, the location of mind, and so on. If we are conscious because of the information flows in our brains, and if a sufficiently-detailed model of a brain running in a computer would also be conscious (which is a background assumption here), what happens to that consciousness if the brain-model is run at strange time-scales, or on two machines at once, or in finely-divided subcalculations on machines randomly scattered across the globe? That sort of thing. The questions are fascinating and classic, and Egan draws some straightforward hooks for us to hang our thinking on. The main problems of the book, as with all too many such books, occur when Egan feels obliged to have the philosophical questions lead to some action. In the end, the links he makes between the two are questionable and not terribly convincing: the "dust theory" that underlies the last part of the book is either an extreme panpsychism (in which not only does every object in the universe have consciousess associated with it, but so does every possible way of dividing up the universe into objects, across all of time), or the tautological observation that a fiction writer can choose to tell any story e wants, from any viewpoint. I have no large complaints about the theory itself, but it should have no power to motivate action; the things the characters do to try to ensure that some model of themselves continues to run on the universal computer are pointless, in that those models are already running, and have always been running, anyway, as have all possible variants of them. Egan may have noticed this at some point; one character mentions the fact in passing, but they all continue inexplicably working on the project regardless. And the literal immortality that some of the characters eventually achieve (or have the opportunity to achieve) is not in fact possible; in casually assuming that it's possible to map an infinitely long life onto the state-space of a finite universe, Egan is ignoring something that one of his characters points out: the difference between a very long time and forever is a difference of kind, not of degree. And finally, the Problem that the characters face at the end of the book seems to be motivated by a desire to have some Tom-Clancy-like action, and a climax. But the Problem stems from a category mistake; having incorporated the strong AI hypothesis (correctly-connected matter gives rise to, or just *is*, mind) as an axiom from the start, Egan slips at the end and gives consciousness some magic powers, as if the universe notices conscious systems as special, and allows them to, for instance, have effects one level up, in the universe containing the computer that is running the universe they are in. Egan certainly isn't alone in this; it's no doubt based on some muzzy (mis)understanding of the uncertainty principle and wave-function collapse, and others in his position have done the same sort of thing. But the book would have been better without it. Moaning about the philosophical imperfections aside, this is a strong, enjoyable book that offers some well-worked-out handles on some of the most interesting questions that hard SF can address. If you've ever stared at a cellular automaton chugging along, and dreamed what it'd be like to live in there, or wondered what sorts of religions the inhabitants might develop, or even if you never have but think it sounds neat, I recommend "Permutation City" to you. (I also recommend it for the almost-coherent 20-line poem in the frontispiece, consisting entirely of anagrams of the title; looks like Egan has discovered the Anagram Server!) %A Egan, Greg %T Permutation City %I HarperCollins / HarperPrism %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-06-105481-X %P 341 pp. %O paperback, US$4.99 (I don't reliably read r.a.sf.*, so any replies posted there should probably also be copied directly to me.) From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 30 17:02:04 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!fizban.solace.mh.se!paladin.american.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review: PERMUTATION CITY by Greg Egan Message-ID: <9511211251.ZM13711@mtgppc04> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Evelyn C Leeper Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 01:00:28 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 50 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:869 rec.arts.books.reviews:1046 PERMUTATION CITY by Greg Egan Millennium, ISBN 1-85798-218-5, 1995, 310pp, L4.99 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper When you start this, you may be tempted to compare it to Charles Platt's SILICON MAN. But wait, because what you think the book is about is not what the book is about at all. PERMUTATION CITY starts out with the idea of being able to download one's personality into a computer (the "Autoverse"). (And a friend of mine who works on projects dealing with virtual reality sorts of things says it's the best representation he's seen in science fiction of what it would be like.) But it goes beyond that, into further levels of remove from "reality"--which ironically may actually be their own reality. It reminded me of the philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly, but then awoke, only to try to decide if he was a philosopher who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a philosopher. There's also a variation of an idea that my husband Mark had suggested independently: an alternate history which hasn't *diverged* from ours into a different present, but *converged* into ours from a different past. The whole book reminds me of that set of mirrors from CITIZEN KANE, reflecting back and forth, stretching to infinity -- and when you think you're looking at reality, it turns out to be just another mirror. In the middle of all these ideas, it would be easy for the characters and characterization to be given some short-shift, and in fact that is one problem I had (not to mention the fact that the "same" character can be different characters, depending on which level of remove he's at). This in turn made following some of the convolutions difficult, as I wasn't always sure of who the characters were. Still, there are enough ideas in the book to compensate for this, particularly if ideas are what you are looking for. [This is also available in a United States edition, HarperPrism, US$4.99, ISBN 0-06-105481-X.] %T Permutation City %A Greg Egan %C London %D 1995 %I Millennium %O paperback, L4.99 [1994] %G ISBN 1-85798-218-5 %P 310pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "Why are women reading romances presumed to be any more idiotic than men watching football?" --Beth Kolko From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jan 2 13:18:29 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!news.josnet.se!oden.abc.se!news2.transpac.net!news1.transpac.net!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!news.funet.fi!news.eunet.fi!EU.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Danny Yee" Subject: Review of Permutation City by Greg Egan (possible spoilers) Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Danny Yee Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Reply-To: danny@cs.su.oz.au Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Sciece, Uni of Sydney, Australia Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 16:56:42 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 82 Permutation City by Greg Egan Review Copyright 1995 Danny Yee Warning: some may consider that there are spoilers in this review If one could simulate a human being completely, at the level of fundamental physics, would the simulation be human in some sense? It's hard to argue otherwise without resorting to some kind of essentialism, but one obtains some disconcerting results if one follows through on such a functionalist metaphysics. If all that "matters" are fundamentally mathematical relationships, then there ceases to be any important difference between the actual and the possible. (Even if you aren't a mathematical Platonist, you can always find some collection of particles of dust to fit any required pattern. In _Permutation City_ this is called the "logic of the dust" theory.) In the 2050 world of _Permutation City_, nothing as unrealistic as physical level simulation is possible, but there are "Copies" of people. These are ad hoc simulations employing knowledge from all levels of biology -- at the synapse and neurotransmitter level in the brain, but at much higher levels of abstraction for "less important" organs. These Copies are run in an environment simulated along similar lines (some of it in great detail, some of it just sketched in). Due to processing limitations they run at best at one-seventeenth of the rate of ordinary human beings and sometimes much more slowly, depending on the available processor power. There is also something called the Autoverse, an extremely complex cellular automata (a souped-up version of Conway's "Life") which produces a world broadly similar to ours but with different physics, chemistry, and biology. This is so computationally intensive that only simple micro-organisms have been discovered (created?), and they don't seem to evolve. As a result the Autoverse is considered more of a toy than a serious research proposition; it is just a hobby for freelance programmer Maria Deluca. Copies and the Autoverse are the technological innovations crucial to the plot, but Egan also has lots of other ideas about what the future might be like, socially as well as technologically. Paul Durham is convinced by the "logic of the dust" theory mentioned above, and plans to run, just for a few minutes, a complex cellular automaton (Permutation City) started in a "Garden of Eden" configuration -- one which isn't reachable from any other, and which therefore must have been the starting point of a simulation. This is set up to run Copies of Paul, Maria and sixteen rich Copies seeking immortality, and to expand in such a way as to provide them with effectively unlimited computing power. (And in order to provide something interesting to watch, this automaton is also set up to simulate an entire Autoverse world, which is why Maria is involved.) The idea is that the simulation need only run for a few minutes (at a slow-down of 250 to 1) and when stopped will continue ("running on the dust"), because it will be more plausible to its inhabitants that it have done so. I didn't fully understand the need for this elaborate set-up, but I guess it makes for a better story than "well, all possible worlds exist, and I'm going to tell you about one of them". Part two is set entirely within the simulated Permutation City. Eventually the logic of the Autoverse (which has evolved intelligent beings who, I think rather implausibly, manage to think up a simpler explanation for the Autoverse than the logic) starts to erode the logic of the automaton simulating it, and things fall apart. I found this part was less engaging -- if still interesting -- and the actual ending unsatisfying. I guess it was never going to be easy ending a novel that could, without inconsistency, have had absolutely *any* ending (including ones where causality just goes completely haywire). _Permutation City_ is as good as _Quarantine_, and won't disappoint Egan fans. While I really enjoy the way Egan plays with philosophical ideas, however, I would really like to see him write a more "ordinary" science fiction novel. This would give him a chance to explore the wealth of other, less profoundly metaphysical ideas he has produced. %T Permutation City %A Greg Egan %I Millenium %C London %D 1995 %O paperback %G ISBN 1-85798-218-5 %P 310pp %K science fiction 18 December 1995 http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 3 21:40:25 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!18.24.4.11!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "cranialjax" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: DIASPORA by Greg Egan Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 26 Feb 1998 14:40:10 -0500 Organization: ENTANET Lines: 37 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1799 "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. Published in the UK by: Millenium, 1997, isbn1-85798-438-2 Krit9801.txt - one of the Kritikal series. by cranialjax@cambs.net "Diaspora" is both an entertaining and wonder-inspiring flit across millenia of human development, starting from some time soon at a computer near you. In this story most humans migrate into computers, abandoning their physical bodies to live wholly in virtual reality (although a useful few hang back in robot bodies or even actual flesh). A disaster comes along and the VR humans have to deal with the outside world. In the course of this they chase through multiple universes populated with aliens in a fast paced techno romp. The most interesting thing about the book however is Egans's treatment of developing consciousness. This is cutting edge psychology that addresses the big question that all us shrinks wanna know the answer to (yeah, i'm a shrink) - anyway the big question being "WHAT THE HELL IS CONSCIOUSNESS ANYWAY!!?" or more specifically, define its mechanism, how it arises and works. Egan seems to have an instinctive grasp of the not-too-easy work that has been done in this field, and he presents it in a way that shouts, "Look! It's easy. Brains work like this!". Remarkable. Egan's tale is long on fine accurate science extrapolations, with some artistic licence of course. I don't know about physicists or astronomers, but this psychopunk recommends "Diaspora" as an inspirational and understandable account of mind, and a damn good space yarn. CJ "Kritikal" is an ocassional series of literary reviews by cranialjax. They MAY be carried by any information storage and retrieval system in any format whatsoever provided the textual content is not substantially altered, the author is credited, and it is not for monetary gain. "Kritkal" is copyright 1998. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sat Jul 31 15:07:06 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cde.net!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: pj@willowsoft.cix.co.uk (Paul S. Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Egan's _Quarantine_ Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 12 Jul 1999 12:17:21 -0400 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 53 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.cix.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2399 _Quarantine_ by Greg Egan Review Copyright (c) 1999 Paul S. Jenkins Greg Egan is one of those SF writers who takes an idea, builds a convincing world around it, and then, as if not content with producing a conventional speculative extrapolation, he develops the idea to the nth degree. So in _Quarantine_ we have neural modifications that can give the human brain enhanced capabilities. And we have the solar system having been mysteriously, miraculously and instantaneously enclosed. Cut off from the rest of the universe, humanity finds itself quarantined. Egan links these two SF ideas in an unexpected -- not to say startling -- manner. Yet he goes further still and speculates on the notion of quantum probability, and on what would happen if someone found a way of harnessing the uncertainty principle. It's mind-boggling stuff, and even if you don't understand every last logical step you can revel in the sense of wonder that Egan conjures with such assurance. It is fiction after all -- if it were possible, someone might have done it. The novel opens with Nick, a private investigator hired to find a brain-damaged young woman who has disappeared from an institution by somehow escaping -- or being abducted -- from a securely locked room. As you might expect, Nick's case proves to have far wider implications than simply tracing a missing person. Egan's style, a consistent first-person narrative, is straightforward and involving, enabling the reader to be immersed effortlessly in the story. It runs on apace, and experiencing the protagonist's inner life, and the influence of his various neural 'mods' is a fascinating journey. If I have one slight quibble, it's with the novel's rather open ending. But given the remarkable conclusions of the speculation -- having to do with possible alternative futures -- there are enough hints in the book that the ending you read isn't necessarily the ending that comes about. Egan's future is a strange world, and ultimately he makes it even stranger. %A Egan, Greg %T Quarantine %I HarperPrism %C New York %D 1995 (copyright 1992) %G ISBN 0 06 105423 2 %P 280 pp. %O paperback $5.99 Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at: Portsmouth UK | http://www.cix.co.uk/~willowsoft/revup/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Oct 20 12:30:52 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review, AN UNUSUAL ANGLE by Greg Egan Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 19 Oct 1999 10:53:00 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 56 Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2482 AN UNUSUAL ANGLE, Greg Egan Norstrilia Press, ISBN 0-909106-12-6, 1983, 200pp, A$14.95 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1999 Evelyn C. Leeper No, this is not a new Greg Egan novel; it is an old Greg Egan novel. Actually, it is a *very* old Greg Egan novel--his first novel. Someone discovered a case of them in a basement somewhere and they showed up at Aussiecon Three, where I immediately grabbed one. See last paragraph for availability information. The plot of this book is not like Egan's later work, but the wealth of ideas--and many of the same ideas--that characterizes his later work is. There is a section on how quantum mechanics restored the concept of free will. The protagonist sends out "viewpoints"--essentially non-material copies of himself--to perform various tasks. The protagonist is literally making films in his head, which conjures up a vision of universes within an individual mind, which in turn conjures up the image of layers of universes. Yes, I mean literally--the protagonist claims to have an actual little film lab in there! The protagonist--first-person narrator, in this case--is a student at what appears to be (in United States terms) a private preparatory school. Though it many ways it seems to be run by the same sort of people as the upper management in "Dilbert," the narrator actually finds some method in their madness. That is, their insane methods are actually logical to achieve their goals--it's just that their goals are insane also. I find it interesting that both Greg Egan and Neal Stephenson both have their first novel out of print, somewhat disowned by themselves, and set in an academic environment. I suppose this may be a function of "write what you know." The value of this suggestion can be judged by comparing the quality of these authors' later works--arguably about things they have no firsthand experience or knowledge of--to their first novels. How much did Shakespeare really know about early Scottish politics? This book is out of print and unlikely to come back into print, from what I've heard, but Slow Glass Books, GPO Box 2708X, Melbourne, Victoria 3001 AUSTRALIA may still have a few copies. They take credit cards, so a letter with your credit card information and a statement authorizing them to charge it for the price plus shipping and handling would probably be easiest for those not in Melbourne. %T An Unusual Angle %A Greg Egan %C Carlton, Victoria, Australia %D 1983 %I Norstrilia Press %O trade paperback, A$14.95 %G ISBN 0-909106-12-6 %P 200pp Evelyn C. Leeper | My other email address is eleeper@geocities.com +1 732 332 6218 | http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper "There are two types of people in this world: those who think giant steam powered robotic spiders are stupid, and those who don't." --Bryan F. Theiss From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Nov 17 12:48:40 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Teranesia by Greg Egan Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Nov 1999 16:06:50 -0500 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 64 Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2501 Teranesia by Greg Egan Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Worth Reading It's very interesting that this book should follow so closely after Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio (in the US at least). In both novels we see unexplained genetic alterations that turn out to be the manifestation of some sort of advanced computer-like processes taking place in nature. In this case, a butterfly that is far different than expected leads a husband and wife team of biologists from India to a remote island in the South Pacific seeking an answer to the mystery. The scientific premise was interesting, but does not dominate the novel, which is too bad because I didn't care all that much for the characters in the book. It wasn't that they were poorly drawn or unlikeable except where Egan plainly wanted them to be, only that they did not connect with me. I did find a few flaws in the execution of the protagonist Prabir. At times, he's vulnerable and tortured with self doubt. But other times he's extremely cool and rational. I just didn't think he was portrayed consistently throughout, even given the growth one would ordinarily expect someone to go through during the years we know him. As a youngster, he seemed particularly precocious, particularly in the way he dispassionately dissected the behavior and motivations of the adults around him. It just wasn't believeable. Since it's the characters rather than the science driving this one, that downgraded my opinion of the novel. But on the plus side, Egan avoided subjecting us to a barrage of biology lectures like Bear did, and he kept the book fairly short and sweet. However, like Robert Charles Wilson's Bios, which I also just finished reading, this one might have better been done as a novella than a novel. If forced to draw a picture of Egan from only this novel, I think it's fair to say one would be forced to conclude he's an arrogant, self- righteous arsehole. There are a number of gratuitous themes in this book that take an extremely simplistic, one-sided, and negative view of things the protagonist - and, one suspects, Egan in real life - hates. For example, we're treated to an offhand remark that NATO was an "imperialistic" force in Europe. Prabir ruminates often about how illogical and downright evil religion is. The one time we find people of different religions living together in harmony, Egan is quick to point out that this has nothing to do with the religions themselves, but rather shows how the people found a way to contain religion. His portrayal of post-modern, post-structuralist academic bullshit might have been funny if there hadn't been such an undercurrent of viciousness running through it. Since none of these elements were really crucial to the story, I'm not sure why Egan threw them in there. They were almost calculated to offend. But again, since they were done with such a simplified worldview there's no way this book would in itself convince anyone of the correctness of his claims. Are we perhaps seeing a bit of reverse psychology here? Somehow I suspect shallowness instead. %A Egan, Greg %T Teranesia %I HarperPrism %D 1999-11 %G ISBN 0-06-105092-X %P 293 pp. %O hardcover, US$24.00 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 7 16:56:33 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!erix.ericsson.se!uab.ericsson.se!newsfeed1.telenordia.se!news.algonet.se!algonet!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: arenn@urbanophile.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Subject: Review: Diaspora by Greg Egan Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Date: 06 Aug 2000 17:14:24 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 93 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965596466 9434 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2779 Diaspora by Greg Egan Review Copyright (c) 2000 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Incomprehensible but Worth Reading This is a science fiction novel that combines a number of elements that should satisfy many an SF fan: advanced AI, galactic exploration, a vast sweep of time and space, etc. Indeed, there was a lot that I liked about the novel. However, it suffers from way too much pseudo-scientific gobbledygook. There's a quote at the front from the San Francisco Examiner that says "One gets the feeling at times not of reading a novel, but of witnessing an extended conversation Egan is having with himself on topics ranging from biotechnology to particle physics to social theory." Somehow I don't think that was meant to be a compliment. The novel opens sometime near the end of the 21st century. Humanity has splintered into disembodied AI's living in cyberspace polises, some of whom are uploaded humans; people who live in robot bodies; and those who remain relatively human, termed fleshers. I say relatively because most of these humans have radically altered their genetic structure in some way. The theoretically impossible collapse of a nearby binary neutron star system sends massive doses of radiation to Earth, severely harming the biosphere. This brings home to the non-fleshers that they too might prove mortal. So they decide to try spreading across the galaxy in an attempt to improve survival chances, hence the title. Right off the bat we're treated to an example of what's wrong with this book, in the form on an extended description of how one of the polises goes about constructing a new AI citizen. This could be considered an interesting bit of speculation to some fans, but to me it was just superfluous. This fascination with scientific speculation, as opposed to the normal plot, character, setting etc of the mainstream novel, is one of the biggest weaknesses of the genre, IMO, both from a fan and writer perspective. Every SF novel needs what I call its "SF premise," some bit of speculation that informs the story or setting such that the book is SF instead of a vanilla novel. But taking this too far is, again IMO, a big mistake. Egan crosses this line into scientific speculation for its own sake. The description of AI replication is only the beginning. I'd estimate about 30% of the book is devoted to extremely dense, virtually incomprehensible cosmological theories. While I guess these are necessary to advance the plot -- much of which revolves around trying to explain things such as the neutron star system collapse that were theoretically impossible under existing theories of the universe -- it really makes the book difficult to follow. I'll admit, I took to skimming the pages when Egan went too deep into this stuff. A) It isn't real, so it's not like I'd really learn much B) the details aren't relevant to the story, and C) you practically need a master's degree in physics to understand it, or at least Egan perpetrated enough of a snow job to make you think you do. It sort of reminded me of a Dilbert cartoon: "You'd be a fool to ignore the boolean anti-binary least squared approach!" Yeah. Another problem with the book was the fact that it just did not feel like a unified narrative. It has an "episodic" feel to it. I was all prepared to use that term when I saw on the inside cover a quote from Science Fiction Weekly that likewise referred to it as "episodic," so I guess I'm not the only one that felt Egan really didn't completely knit all of these disjointed events into a smooth whole. There was some good stuff too. Egan threw in some descriptions of alien life that were, strictly speaking, gratuitous but that added flavor to the novel. I found them much more interesting than the pure physics rambling, perhaps because I could really understand it and because it didn't take up huge numbers of pages. While the description of how an AI was created in a polis was bland, the first few experiences of the fetal AI in question were interesting, and I thought the characters were generally well done. As usual, Egan was rather economical with space. Despite the scope of this novel, it only ran to 400 pages. I'm sure that once you grant Egan the necessity of including his scientific theories, he didn't use a lot of bloated prose to get them across. Obviously people who are fans of pure scientific speculation are going to love this book. I like "hard SF" as much as the next guy, but I'm obviously not into science for science's sake. A little less pseudo- science and a little more work on plot integration would have gone a long way towards making me like this novel more. BTW: I read a few other reviews that slammed the ending of this book. I disagree with them and rather liked the ending myself. %A Egan, Greg %T Diaspora %I HarperPrism %D 1999-11 (original publication 1998) %G ISBN 0-06-105698-3 %P 403 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$6.99 Reviewed on 2000-07-30 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 7 17:00:59 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!skynet.be!portc03.blue.aol.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: arenn@urbanophile.com Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Subject: Review: Quarantine by Greg Egan Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 06 Aug 2000 11:22:28 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 38 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965575350 9434 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2778 Quarantine by Greg Egan Review Copyright (c) 2000 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Recommended A nice, satisfying novel written against the backdrop of a 21st century Earth where nanotechnology exists, you can upload custom software mods to your brain, and the solar system is enclosed in a completely opaque "Bubble" of something that has completely closed it off from the rest of the universe. No problem, we've still got the sun so the Earth still works fine, except for a few religious cultists - it wouldn't be a Greg Egan novel without a few religious wackos around - believing that the Bubble is a sign from God or someone else. Nick Stavrianos is a private detective engaged to track down a woman who mysteriously disappeared from a hospital for the mentally ill. Thus it starts off as a high tech detective story, and an interesting one at that. Shortly after Nick discovers what happened to said girl, however, we take a detour into science lecture time. Fortumately, unlike with some other of Egan's work, this doesn't compromise the story. Perhaps because this lecture can be comprehended by the common man and is an interesting speculation on the nature of - what else - quantum reality. Regardless, the bell rings, science class is out, and the detective story continues to its solid conclusion. %A Egan, Greg %T Quarantine %I HarperPrism %D 1995-01 (original publication 1992) %G ISBN 0-06-015423-2 %P 280 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$5.99 Reviewed on 2000-07-30 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/