Sure, let's talk about this stuff. I don't remember a lot of what you mentioned, so I must have read a different part of his oeuvre.
You know what I think would have been interesting? If Egan had written "Crystal Nights" from the Phites' point of view. Then it could have been about a society learning that it's a simulation, and with a character who already knows about it (i.e. Primo) having to decide who else to break the Masquerade for. But instead we just got a generic "rise and fall of a character with too much hubris" plot, which is kind of a shame, really.
Yay, someone posted much sooner than I expected.
Sadly I haven't yet read Crystal Nights, but I just purchased all of his published work that I didn't already own, so when it all arrives, I'll have it all. Except Zendegi, which I lost my copy of after reading and haven't replaced, and the short stories that aren't published in anthologies.
I'm not sure but I think the one with Crystal Nights is supposed to arrive tomorrow.
Care to synopsize? Spoiler-free, if you can.
As for what I have already read, I started with Schild's Ladder, then Teranesia, then buckled down and read the Orthogonal trilogy, then Zendegi, and I just last week read Quarantine in a day over a series of plane trips. I've also read the short stories The Planck Dive and Singleton, though I can't remember in what order.
EDIT: And I edited the names of the relevant stories into that bulleted list above so you can tell what I'm rambling about. :p
edited 22nd Jun '15 7:53:57 PM by SolipSchism
Unfortunately, I haven't read any of the three you've mentioned. Except for Permutation City, I've only read the stuff that is on Egan's website, meaning just some random short stories.
But basically, "Crystal Nights" is about this guy (who, ironically enough, is a Take That! at transhumanists) who invented this super-processor which he uses to simulate a world for the sole purpose of evolving intelligent life— the narrative is quite clear that he only cares about abusing this technology to become like a god, and despite his posturing, doesn't really care about the synthetic beings (the Phites). Eventually he becomes paranoid that a competitor of his is secretly an evil mastermind out to Take Over the World (though there is no evidence for this at all) and decides to selectively reveal to one of the Phites that their world is artificial. That's actually one of the best scenes, and so I thought the story lost something by having the human be the main character. Particularly since the simulated reality has different rules from real life (notably, the rules were altered to prevent either birth or death, and the Phites desperately want to know why) and their creator is secretly manipulating their psychology so that they only develop ideas that he wants them to. Again, it would have been cool for them to figure this out.) but I can't really say much more without spoiling stuff.
I just took a look at your edited post, and yes, I did read "The Planck Dive". Unfortunately, though Egan is really good at describing science and making it look like the coolest thing ever (I really liked his description of the black hole) he seems to have some trouble writing characters rather than mouthpieces. The only really likeable character is Cordelia; Prospero is of course a Strawman Emotional and the scientists sometimes come off as a little too smug. This is a real shame, because I find Egan much easier to read than most hard science fiction authors...
EDIT: Fixed a spelling mistake.
edited 22nd Jun '15 8:27:17 PM by BrendanRizzo
Huh. That does sound like it would be better from one of the AIs' perspectives.
The Planck Dive is basically an excuse for Egan to show the reader what it would be like to pass through the event horizon of a black hole. The gist of the story is that a bunch of researchers want to test a million-to-one theory that a computer that can survive passing through the horizon might gain infinite computing power (he explains why, but the explanation escapes me) and thus figure out how to get back out, bringing the secret of infinite computing power back with it. So they do the whole Brain Uploading thing and put themselves in submicroscopic (they're measured on the Planck scale, hence the name of the story) quantum-computer-driven bodies, and dive in.
Singleton is about a guy who's having trouble coming to grips with the idea that every time a non-deterministic event happens, it creates multiple universes where the timeline branches, especially when those events are personal decisions—for instance, any time he wavers in a choice, there's a world that branches off for each choice he could have made. So basically he designs a "black box" quantum computer that prevents that effect (again, the explanation escapes me) and loads a formative AI into it, puts that into an android body, and raises it as his daughter. The story is notable because the computer becomes known as a Qusp (quantum singleton processor, again, hence the name), and in Schild's Ladder, thousands of years later, virtually every human runs on Qusps; almost no one stays in their birth flesh.
EDIT: Oh, you did read Planck Dive; okay, disregard my explanation.
Yeah, he often has trouble getting the reader to emotionally engage with his characters, but usually I find he makes up for it with sheer fascinating ideas. Although I will say that I really liked the main character of Singleton, whose conflict really drove the story, and the main character of Quarantine, who, despite being a mouthpiece for Egan's anti-theism and rationalism, did a damn good job of making it relatable.
I do agree that from what I've seen, he's not great at characterization, though.
It's weird that someone who has so much trouble writing compelling characters can still take the hardest science fiction and turn it into something poetic, though.
Like in Schild's Ladder, he uses the actual Schild's Ladder, a mathematical construct for approximating transport of a vector, as a metaphor for a barometer of personal change over the course of a lifetime, and judging whether you're still the same person. And it actually comes across pretty naturally; it doesn't feel like he was reaching for it, it just fits.
edited 22nd Jun '15 8:38:58 PM by SolipSchism
Ah, yes. Actually, judging from your summary of it, I think I read "Singleton" too— I'm pretty sure that it is set in the same continuity as "Oracle", judging from some clues, but of course, nothing is ever stated.
But yeah, he is definitely one of those writers who, despite his stories' technical flaws, still makes the reader feel like there is hope for the future and that it will be awesome, and that's why I like him so much. (Though of course, there are exceptions.) It's a refreshing change from what most writers of "realistic" science fiction try to go for, with all the cynicism and Darker and Edgier stuff. It just goes to show that Tropes Are Not Bad, I guess.
Very true. One of my favorite things about Greg Egan is his persistent idealism. Even though most of his stories involve some kind of terrorism and highlight the nature of man as a creature that insists on killing its fellows, he still portrays the universe as something infinitely strange and beautiful.
He has that in common with Vernor Vinge, actually, to a certain extent—one of the most striking things I've noticed about Vinge is that it's pretty hard sci-fi, and yet viscerally, it feels like fantasy. It feels magical, somehow, even though he offers at least a pseudoscientific explanation for everything.
Egan takes the science and math further, but he still manages to write stories that leave you feeling good after finishing them. Mostly.
Emphasis on "mostly". As an American, "In the Ruins" is just painful to read.
(By the way, I hope that comment didn't come off as too political.)
I really should read Vinge one of these days, but of course, that is a story for another forum.
Painful as in, it's anti-American?
Amusingly, Egan actually led me to Vinge. One of the reviews I read for Orthogonal called the aliens of the trilogy something along the lines of "the most fascinating aliens since Vernor Vinge's Tines", the aliens from books 1 and 3 of the Zones of Thought.
So Axiomatic has arrived at my house, I'll be able to pick it up when I get home. Not sure if anything else is arriving today. Some of the stuff I bought had 2-day shipping, but others were from independent vendors so they're going to show up anytime between now and the end of July.
Yeah, Crystal Nights hasn't arrived, but I did get 5 or 6 of the books yesterday. Crystal Nights should show up sometime between now and 14 July.
Let's see—Axiomatic, Incandescence, Diaspora, Distress, and Permutation City. I think that's all of the ones that showed up yesterday. I cracked open Permutation City. And 56 pages in, I'm loving it.
The premise seems to be:
Brain Uploading works, but isn't very successful, because a combination of claustrophobia and existential crises leads to Copies committing suicide with almost a 100% rate. The only ones who don't self-terminate are a few of the ones who were already dying when they scanned themselves, so they know they have no other choice for continued existence. When normal, young, healthy people scan themselves, 100% of copies self-terminate within subjective hours.
So a guy who's obsessed with figuring out how to make Brain Uploading more viable teams up with a girl who's obsessed with a program that simulates a biosphere from the subatomic level up to the cellular, to try and simulate a realistic virtual biosphere in which a Copy can comfortably exist. Unfortunately, after only 56 pages, that's about all I can summarize; the plot hasn't really kicked in yet.
But as usual, Greg is playing with ideas that ignite my fascination. Particularly a passage that questions the nature of intelligence as a series of computations. Since a computer is just a really fancy calculator, hypothetically, any calculator of sufficient scope could run an artificial intelligence, assuming artificial intelligence and subjective experience is something that can be described with algorithms and calculations. XKCD once had a (very surreal) comic that mentioned running a simulation of the universe on a "computer" constructed of rocks laid out in an infinite desert. That might be absurdly ambitious, but Permutation City has a passage with an idea similar in theme. One of the Copies is listening to a piece of music and it stirs emotion in him, and he wonders:
And if the computations behind all this had been performed over millennia, by people flicking abacus beads, would he still have felt exactly the same?
It was outrageous to admit it—but the answer had to be yes.
I love it.
edited 24th Jun '15 8:07:41 AM by SolipSchism
It's cool that you started to read that. Since you aren't very far in, I'm not going to spoil anything, but there is one thing that I can talk about: the book is basically an Unbuilt Trope when compared to his short stories I read. It actually portrays realistic consequences of the new technology, including the creation of virtual ghettoes and a fear that the super rich will use it to turn themselves into a permanent ruling class while reducing everyone else to serfdom. Though it's clear that Egan doesn't really believe this, it's still more realistic than the stories that assume that everyone would become a Pro-Human Transhuman that would no longer suffer from any prejudices or cognitive biases, and work only to make everyone else in the world a post human superbeing too.
Tell me when you're done reading it so that I can discuss some other cool stuff in the novel.
EDIT: Fixed a Pot Hole.
edited 25th Jun '15 4:48:23 AM by BrendanRizzo
You know, I hadn't noticed that distinction, but it's true; in most of his stories, either the entire world has already fully embraced whatever Singularity has come to pass (or there are only very small groups of holdouts, like the bizarre Anachronauts form Schild's Ladder), or the Singularity simply hasn't happened yet (like in Zendegi or Teranesia) so it's a little refreshing to rewind the clock and see the beginning of a Greg Egan SingularityTM.
Although on the other hand, I notice there doesn't seem to be much playing around with sexuality in these early books (Quarantine and PC), whereas in virtually all of his later books (Teranesia, Schild's Ladder, Zendegi to a small extent, Orthogonal), there's always some representation of a minority sexuality or gender identity, or just gender politics in a more abstract sense. It simplifies the stories a bit to not have that aspect, but frankly I always love seeing what interesting things he does with sexuality. His specialty is obviously physics, but he's no slouch when it comes to other sciences either.
edited 25th Jun '15 9:05:08 AM by SolipSchism
So the anthology that contains Crystal Nights arrived yesterday, and I put Permutation City on hold to read Crystal Nights. I really enjoyed it, but it was very easy to tell that it was less "I have a story to tell" and more "I have an idea to explore". I agree that he could have crafted a more compelling story by reversing the perspectives and telling it from the POV of the Phites, but at the same time, I think it would have been incredibly difficult to fully explore the idea, at least in a short story—and while Egan does frequently manage to tell a compelling story while exploring fascinating ideas, and he also frequently explores fascinating ideas at the expense of a compelling story, I've never seen him tell a compelling story without milking the fascinating ideas for all they're worth. tl;dr He tries to balance compelling story with fascinating ideas, but if he has to choose, he always chooses the idea over the story.
He would have had a few options, all of which would have taken a lot of extra work:
- He could have approached it like Orthogonal: The story takes place in a universe with alien physics, and he would have had to spend an entire novel just introducing the reader to this bizarre universe and getting us comfortable with it before even beginning to suggest that these aliens are going to eventually advance beyond human intelligence. Then he could have revealed that the entire universe was contained within a supercomputer in the real world, and followed the now-revealed-to-be-simulated-AI "aliens" as they learn real-world physics from scratch—and yet somehow managed to make that interesting to a reader who already understands the basic physics of the real world. Keep in mind that from the Phites' perspective, Crystal Nights spans an insane amount of time, even though from Daniel's perspective it only spans, what, a few years?
- He could invert that structure, and have the story take place in the "real world", thus negating the need to have the human-Phites learn physics (because it would be assumed to be Like Reality, Unless Noted), and then reveal that the real world is contained within a supercomputer in the alien universe—which would require a similarly daunting task of crafting an entire universe with alien physics. Basically on par with us realizing that the "real universe" is as alien and complex as Orthogonal, and we would still have to learn those physics from the ground up. He could skip stagesnote , but unfortunately, if the story were told from the POV of the creatures learning those new physics, not actually showing the reader what they're learning would strip away a lot of the meat and make it hard to identify with them—clearly they're learning tons of stuff, but if we're not in on it, why should one stage in their development matter more or less than another stage?
Ultimately I think the main difficulty would come from the fact that if they were aliens realizing they live in a fake world, then the only way to make us sympathize with them is to portray their alien world as "real" to them, which would necessitate in-depth exploration of the physics of their world—and then revealing that they don't matter at all, plus the issue of showing them learn something that the reader already knows, i.e., learning real physics. Whereas if the reverse were true, if it were humans realizing the real world is fake, the main difficulty would come from the fact that he'd need to construct a whole new universe and explore it in agonizing detail—and make it believable—and basically end up writing something as in-depth and complex as Orthogonal all over again, but in a totally new universe.
All in all, I think he did the best he could have done with that idea.
...That said, I would like to see him take the seed of that idea—protagonist species realizes the entirety of their evolution has taken place inside a simulation and devises a way to escape—and turn it into a story from their perspective. I'm just not sure how Egan would really surmount the difficulties that would come with making it a compelling story instead of just a fascinating idea.
edited 26th Jun '15 1:00:32 PM by SolipSchism
I noticed that someone gave Permutation City its own page, so I added some more tropes to it. Check it out.
edited 30th Jun '15 8:46:35 AM by BrendanRizzo
Yeah, I just stumbled onto that yesterday. Indexed it before I realized how new it was; hopefully I didn't step on the editor's toes. Personally I'm working on the existing page for Quarantine, but it's slow going because I'm not really focusing on it, what with reading other Egan stuff.
Incidentally, finished Permutation City and...
...I'm surprised at the coincidence here. That, years after these works were published, I would just happen to read Crystal Nights and PC one right after the other. They have a lot of similarities in their concept. Borderline crazy guy comes up with a scheme to evolve artificial intelligence (either via abiogenesis or "cheating" by starting from bacteria). Simulated world in which the evolved AI live advances beyond human capability. Simulated world takes crazy action to ensure its own safety and survival, removing itself from human influence in the process.
Also, apparently Egan's "dust theory" from PC is an actual thing in quantum physics that he came up with. The real world calls it "Event symmetry". That's pretty cool.
edited 30th Jun '15 9:09:03 AM by SolipSchism
Wow, that's amazing; I never knew that. I grow more impressed with all the research he does every time I read one of his works.
And yet more overlap: The short story "Axiomatic" features neural implants, or axiomatics, which are basically the neural mods from Quarantine in all but name. In "Axiomatic", it's a little tiny capsule that you stuff up your nose, which then releases the nanomachines into your brain; in Quarantine, it's nanomachines carried by bacteria that get injected into you. Otherwise they're practically identical. (Although, in Quarantine, they're like software for your brain; sometimes, but not always, with actual interfaces that you can manipulate. In "Axiomatic", they're less like software and more like drugs that have absurdly specific or elaborate effects.)
Square with Vertical Fill
Oh! Other Greg Egan fans! They do exist!
I must admit I'm not up to speed with Egan. I haven't read Terranesia or the Orthogonal trilogy. Have you had a chance to tackle Diaspora yet?
REMAIN INDOORS
Nope, but it's next on my list after I finish Distress; I'm working my way through his bibliography (and I'm almost done!).
Square with Vertical Fill
Hmmm. Come to think of it, I haven't read Distress either. I look forward to reading your opinion. If you can find a copy (I believe it may be out of print) I highly recommend the Luminous collection. The leading story "Chaff" is one of my favorite Egan pieces, as it's (trying to not be spoilerific here) unlike most of his oeuvre in setting, but right in the pocket regarding themes. The eponymous story is mind bending even by Egan standards, and not in the "I can't keep up with the mathematics" way, but rather the "where does he get these ideas from" way.
REMAIN INDOORS
Oh, I have it. I managed to get my hands on every novel except An Unusual Angle (and I'm seriously considering shelling out for one of the relatively easy-to-find $80+ copies since there doesn't seem to be a reasonably priced copy on the planet), and every short story that can be found in an anthology (Oceanic is completely superfluous, since it doesn't contain any stories that aren't collected elsewhere, including the title story).
So far, I'm not sure how I feel about Distress. I'm sure I'll love it by the end, though; I've yet to be really disappointed by an Egan novel.
Finished Distress just now. And... whoo. That might be the first Egan novel that didn't, in some way, make me feel good after finishing it. It's not a sad ending; on the contrary, taking the events and the outcome at face value, it's as exciting as any Egan premise. But it's executed via such a Bittersweet Ending.
I don't want to say much more for fear of spoilers. But... I dunno. I think, between (A) the fact that this book, frankly, didn't dazzle me with possibilities and ideas (I mean, yes, it's fascinating; it's Greg Egan, of course it's fascinating—but it's not Greg Egan fascinating, if that makes any sense at all), and (B) the fact that the ending has left me more concerned about the "Bitter" part of the bittersweetness, that this might be my least favorite Egan novel so far.
It was damn good, and well worth the read. But I can't find much to be excited about when the very premise of the ending is that thanks to Worth, through no fault of his own, literally rendering every human, both currently living and yet to be born, autistic—if I read it correctly—the human race completely loses touch with our current notions of love and loyalty and, well, basically, most of the things we think of as intrinsically human. It's basically a Singularity in the purest, truest sense of the idea: A point beyond which the human race becomes not only unpredictable, but unrecognizable. Where they feel the same emotions and are subject to the same laws of physics, but the things they value and the things we value are as different as the things I value and the things a ladybug values.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, on the second-to-last page of the book, three sentences are devoted to telling the reader that Worth broke up with Kuwale. Are you fucking kidding me. I mean it was pretty much inevitable and thoroughly foreshadowed at various points but come on.
All right. Rant over. Putting Distress back on my shelf and pulling down Luminous, since it's next in line. Another anthology... I have mixed feelings about anthologies, but I really enjoyed Axiomatic. And Egan's short stories tend to be very short, which is nice; easy to read one in a single sitting, even on a work lunch or something.
(Edit: Wait, my copy of Diaspora says 1998, but Egan's website says it was published in '97. Darn it, I'm trying to fit them into my shelf in publication order, but now I can't tell whether Luminous or Diaspora came first. I guess it doesn't really matter since Luminous is full of stories that were published earlier than the anthology itself, but still...)
edited 13th Jul '15 11:22:58 PM by SolipSchism
Halfway through Luminous (the anthology, not the title story—I'm done with the story) and the stories are much longer than the ones in Axiomatic, but very good. "Chaff" was great. If I'm not mistaken, it shares a world with Distress, although it's far enough removed in setting to not matter. But Distress does mention a tropical drug lord refuge that (I'm pretty sure) shares a name with the one in "Chaff", which, in the backstory of Distress, was eventually nuked (or destroyed through some other spectacular means). So if they're meant to take place in the same world, clearly "Chaff" is in Distress' past.
I really enjoyed "Mister Volition", but the ending is a bit anticlimactic.
And "Cocoon"... I really wish they hadn't spoiled the premise on the back cover of the book, because the premise is a spoiler. If you don't already know the premise of "Cocoon", let me warn you: Don't read the jacket blurbs if you get a copy of an anthology that contains that story. Read it fresh, without knowing what it's about. It'll be better that way.
I did some math. Depending on your copy, the page numbers might vary, but the math should come out much the same: The story is 37 pages long, and the "premise" is revealed 23 pages in. That's 62.2% of the way through the story before you "learn" what the blurb already told you. And it's a big reveal—a good Oh, Crap! moment. It's a shame they felt the need to spoil it on the fucking cover.
edited 16th Jul '15 8:37:53 AM by SolipSchism
Square with Vertical Fill
Shame about Distress, but interesting to hear that it apparently shares a setting with "Chaff." I'd better go dig up a copy.
REMAIN INDOORS
So I'm guessing there's not a lot of us, since our Greg Egan pages are a little anemic, but surely we've got a few Egan fans kicking around here, or the pages wouldn't exist in the first place.
Personally, every time I finish an Egan novel (and oftentimes while in the middle of them) I find myself desperate to discuss the ideas explored in the novels, but have no one to talk to, because everyone I know is either not interested or just can't follow along—Let's be honest, I'm not even going to pretend I understood the finer points of Orthogonal, but fortunately the man can write a great story with lenticular details: if you understand all the talk about waves and particles and leftors and rightors, cool; if not, whatever, there's a machine that sends e-mail back in time. But even without understanding the super-technical mathematics or physics of his work, the more abstract ideas are just so fascinating that it kills me to have no one to talk to about them.
I'm currently glutting myself on his work. After reading Schild's Ladder, Teranesia, the Orthogonal trilogy, Zendegi, and Quarantine in that order, and a couple of his short stories ("The Planck Dive" and "Singleton"), I've decided to round out my Egan education by reading the remainder of his novels in publication order, and as many of his short stories as I can get my hands on.
So, uh... any takers? Anyone want to talk about...
You know, or whatever.
edited 22nd Jun '15 7:53:09 PM by SolipSchism