History Literature / Orthogonal

* ConvenientlyClosePlanet: Mostly averted, but played straight with a [[ConvenientlyClosePlanet Conveniently Close Asteroid]]. A large part of ''The Eternal Flame'''s plot revolves around a BigDumbObject known as [[ShapedLikeItself the Object]], a large chunk of [[TitleDrop orthogonal]] matter that drifts close enough to the ''Peerless'' for the protagonists to travel to it. The characters invoke the trope by realizing that the Object is one of the greatest opportunities they've had since the launch, because if they lose it, they will probably never come this close to another. [-(Partially justified in that it ''does'' take the crew of the ''Gnat'' several days to reach it.)-]

* ForScience: Defied in ''The Eternal Flame'' by the Council mainly due to not having InfiniteSupplies, and further defied by a few extremists due to ScienceIsBad, but otherwise played straight and thoroughly justified by the fact that the characters initially have no idea what they need to study in order to SaveTheWorld, so they pretty much just research anything and everything that comes to mind. The hope is that if they study enough subjects, something will lead to a revelatory breakthrough. This includes light, agriculture, biology, the fundamental building blocks of matter, and more. Granted, some of these studies are geared more toward ensuring that they don't [[ShootTheShaggyDog all starve to death due to overpopulation before accomplishing anything meaningful]], but the trope holds.)

* ConvenientlyClosePlanet: Mostly averted, but played straight with a [[ConvenientlyClosePlanet Conveniently Close Asteroid]]. A large part of ''The Eternal Flame'''s plot revolves around a BigDumbObject known as [[ShapedLikeItself the Object]], a meteor of [[TitleDrop orthogonal]] matter that drifts close enough to the ''Peerless'' for the protagonists to travel to it. The characters invoke the trope by realizing that the Object is one of the greatest opportunities they've had since the launch, because if they lose it, they will probably never come this close to another. [-(Partially justified in that it ''does'' take the crew of the ''Gnat'' several days to reach it.)-]

* [[ConvenientlyClosePlanet Conveniently Close Asteroid]]: Mostly averted, with one exception. A large part of ''The Eternal Flame'''s plot revolves around a BigDumbObject known as [[ShapedLikeItself the Object]], a meteor of [[TitleDrop orthogonal]] matter that drifts close enough to the ''Peerless'' for the protagonists to travel to it. The characters invoke the trope by realizing that the Object is one of the greatest opportunities they've had since the launch, because if they lose it, they will probably never come this close to another. [-(Partially justified in that it ''does'' take the crew of the ''Gnat'' several days to reach it.)-]

* BizarreSexualDimorphism: Mostly averted. Males and females don't look too different from each other, with a few exceptions.
** Even when they are not solos, women are generally somewhat larger than men, justified in that the extra mass is needed to successfully split into four healthy children. As a result, women are generally stronger than men and thus do most of the manual labor. [[note]]Because of this, for most of ''The Clockwork Rocket'', before the launch of the ''Peerless'' and the subsequent retooling of societal norms, men tend to take center stage on intellectual pursuits. Educating women is widely considered a waste of time, since they have much shorter lifespans and their knowledge is not passed on when they fission. It's mentioned in passing that these gender roles were reversed at some point in the past, when it was believed that a woman's knowledge ''did'' get passed on to her children, while mens' knowledge died with them.[[/note]]

* CollisionDamage: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling [[TitleDrop orthogonally]] to each other comes into contact, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and an otherwise insignificant meteorite of orthogonal matter can [[spoiler: —and, in a combination MassOhCrap and PortentOfDoom moment, does—]]literally [[SetTheWorldOnFire Set A Planet On Fire]]. Overlaps with MadeOfExplodium, below.

* [[DoomedHometown Doomed Home Planet]]: The entire trilogy revolves around an attempt to preemptively defy this trope.

* ForScience: Defied in ''The Eternal Flame'' by the Council mainly due to not having InfiniteSupplies, and further defied by a few extremists due to ScienceIsBad, but otherwise played straight and thoroughly justified by the fact that the characters initially have no idea what they need to study in order to SaveTheWorld, so they pretty much just research anything and everything that comes to mind. The hope is that is they study enough subjects, something will lead to a revelatory breakthrough. This includes light, agriculture, biology, the fundamental building blocks of matter, and more. Granted, some of these studies are geared more toward ensuring that they don't [[ShootTheShaggyDog all starve to death due to overpopulation before accomplishing anything meaningful]], but the trope holds.)

* KillEmAll: Discussed. It's outright stated that everyone on the ship starving to death due to overpopulation and insufficient crop yields (and therefore [[ShootTheShaggyDog rendering the majority of the trilogy, if not the whole thing, pointless]]) is possible ending to the second book, which provides the motivation for the biologists and horticulturists in their attempts to defy it.

* MadeOfExplodium: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling [[TitleDrop orthogonally]] to each other comes into contact, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and an otherwise insignificant meteorite of orthogonal matter can [[spoiler: —and, in a combination MassOhCrap and PortentOfDoom moment, does—]]literally [[SetTheWorldOnFire Set A Planet On Fire]]. Overlaps with CollisionDamage, above.

* ParentalAbandonment: Utterly justified by the fact that DeathByChildbirth is universal for women. Discussed a few times, and [[spoiler: ultimately defied by the development of a procedure that allows women to survive childbirth]].)

* PuppeteerParasite: Briefly invoked by Carlo, at least internally, when he loses control of his hand.

* TranslationConvention: Presumably in constant effect, given the setting. Most noticeable in the lack of an apparent AlternativeNumberSystem despite virtually everything being based on exponents of twelve.

* WrapAround: The universe is a four-dimensional torus. This is the explanation for why orthogonal matter can be expected to occasionally collide. [[note]]If the universe didn't WrapAround, orthogonal matter would just perpetually travel farther from the center, and never interact naturally.[[/note]]

* ForScience: Defied by the Council mainly due to not having InfiniteSupplies, and further defied by a few extremists due to ScienceIsBad, but otherwise played straight and thoroughly justified by the fact that the characters initially have no idea what they need to study in order to SaveTheWorld, so they pretty much just research anything and everything that comes to mind. The hope is that is they study enough subjects, something will lead to a revelatory breakthrough. This includes light, agriculture, biology, the fundamental building blocks of matter, and more. Granted, some of these studies are geared more toward ensuring that they don't [[ShootTheShaggyDog all starve to death due to overpopulation before accomplishing anything meaningful]], but the trope holds.)

* FasterThanLightTravel: Thanks to the way spacetime works, there is no universal speed limit, and achieving FTL speeds is a surprisingly simple matter. Of course, you [[TimeDilation stop traveling through space]] and end up in AnotherDimension, but that has its own useful applications.

* ExpositionDiagram: Even for Egan, Orthogonal has an unusual amount of these. On average, at least two or three appear in almost every chapter, especially in the second book. More or less justified in RealLife, because the near-constant TechnoBabble would be even more difficult to follow without them.

* ExposedExtraterrestrials: Not usually significant to the plot, but the instance of anything like clothing being mentioned is the "cooling bags" that must be worn during EVAs to avoid [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion hyperthermia]].

* TimeDilation: Justifiably inverted by the laws of physics as they apply in this universe. Traveling fast enough will cause you to be traveling through time instead of space, which causes time to stop for wherever you came from. Drives the plot: By taking advantage of this phenomenon to [[TimeStandsStill stop time]], the characters have all the time they need to figure out how to SaveTheWorld.

-->'''Giorgio:''' So according to your theory, an object could have a trajectory entirely [[TitleDrop orthogonal]] to our own?.\\

* AlienGeometries: Time is fundamentally the same as space, meaning that there are technically four spatial dimensions and [[MindScrew no such thing as time]]. The trope is even discussed in-universe when a character hypothesizes "four-space" and another character [[LampshadeHanging points out how batshit insane it sounds]].

''Orthogonal'' is set in a universe where a single minus sign deep in an equation governing the rules of spacetime [[Mohs/OneBigLie has been changed to a plus sign]]. Through the story, Egan explores the higher-order ramifications that change has on the laws of physics (and, by extension, on nearly every other discipline of science).

* AlienGeometries: Time is fundamentally the same as space, meaning that there are technically four spatial dimensions and [[MindScrew no such thing as time]].

* AllThereInTheManual: Given that nearly half the trilogy consists of TechnoBabble ExpoSpeak, it's hard to believe that Egan has posted multiple essays on his website that delve even further into the workings of ''Orthogonal'''s universe - and yet, [[http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html here they are]].

* BigDamnHeroes: ''The Eternal Flame'''s climax is a textbook BigDamnHeroes moment. One of the two halves of the EnsembleCast [[spoiler: is kidnapped and held under the threat of death by extremists who believe [[ScienceIsBad their reproductive experiments are an affront to nature]]. They are subsequently rescued in a classic BigDamnHeroes scene by the other half]].

** Sex consists of two of the {{Shapeshifting}} aliens melding the flesh of their chests, through which the male transmits a light-based signal into the female's body to induce the reproductive process. No actual matter or bodily substance is exchanged; genetic diversity is ensured through the infrared transmission of "influences" by ''every'' individual to ''everyone around them'' - which, incidentally, is also how diseases spread.

* CallASmeerpARabbit: ''Orthogonal'' takes place in a universe with entirely different laws of physics from our own, and thus predictably BizarreAlienBiology. It still uses common words like "plant" and "vole" to describe things that are roughly analogous (never mind that plants gain energy by emitting light rather than absorbing it, and voles are just a smaller and less evolved species of {{Shapeshifting}} [[StarfishAliens Starfish Alien]] than the protagonists).

* CollisionDamage: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling [[TitleDrop orthogonally]] to each other comes into contact, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and an otherwise insignificant meteorite of orthogonal matter can [[spoiler: - and, in a combination MassOhCrap and PortentOfDoom moment, does - ]]literally [[SetTheWorldOnFire Set A Planet On Fire]]. Overlaps with MadeOfExplodium, below.

* CrapsackWorld: Invoked near the end of the first book by an opponent of the project, who predicts that within a few generations of isolation in space, the ship's crew will be "eating the dirt and begging for death".

* MadeOfExplodium: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling [[TitleDrop orthogonally]] to each other comes into contact, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and an otherwise insignificant meteorite of orthogonal matter can [[spoiler: - and, in a combination MassOhCrap and PortentOfDoom moment, does - ]]literally [[SetTheWorldOnFire Set A Planet On Fire]]. Overlaps with CollisionDamage, above.
* MaternalDeathBlameTheChild: Surprisingly averted. Surprising, because [[spoiler: for most of the first two books]] it is universally accepted that a mother is utterly incapable of surviving childbirth - so DeathByChildbirth ''always'' applies. This is almost universally accepted as a fact of life.

* PerpetualMotionMachine: The titular [[TitleDrop Eternal Flame]] of the second book is a hypothetical chemical reaction that never exhausts itself, or at least one that continues for an absurdly long period of time, AND can be controlled and put to practical use (such as powering the ship).

** Despite extensive preparations and tons of redundant precautions, the construction and launch of the ''Peerless'' was still rushed. Yalda (and the rest of the original crew) had every reason to fear that the launch of the GenerationShip might be an utter disaster and kill everyone on board before they even got off the ground.

* {{Shapeshifting}}: One of the more notbale traits of the protagonist StarfishAliens.

* StoryboardingTheApocalypse: In ''The Clockwork Rocket'', once Yalda predicts that a Hurtler will destroy the planet, her student explicitly asks her to do this. What he really wants is a timeframe, so that he can judge whether the idea of the GenerationShip is worth pursuing, or if [[KillEmAll they're all going to die]] [[ShootTheShaggyDog too soon for it to matter]].

** The trilogy's title is dropped far more frequently than any of the individual book titles; "Orthogonal", which is basically a fancy word for "perpendicular", is constantly used to refer to situations where something is traveling orthogonally through spacetime with respect to something else - "something else" usually being the [[DoomedHometown Doomed Home Planet]]. [[note]]In other words, if two space rocks have arrows of time that are perpendicular to each other (each one's movement through space is perceived as movement through time by the other, and vice versa), they are said to be orthogonal to each other.[[/note]] The phrase "orthogonal matter" is by far the most frequent occurrence.

* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: The opinion of most of the ''Peerless''' crew towards Yalda's treatment of [[spoiler: the would-be saboteur]] after the launch.
* WrapAround: The universe is a four-dimensional torus. This is the explanation for why orthogonal matter can be expected to occasionally collide. (If the universe didn't WrapAround, orthogonal matter would just perpetually travel farther from the center, and never interact naturally.)

A characteristically [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness Hard Science Fiction]] {{Trilogy}} by Australian author Creator/GregEgan. Consists of:

The plot follows a group of {{Shapeshifting}} StarfishAliens who build a GenerationShip to fly into an [[AnotherDimension alternate dimension]] where they will have [[TimeStandsStill all the time they need]] to advance their technology to the point where they will be able to return and SaveTheWorld from an impending ApocalypseHow/ClassX3.

In true Greg Egan fashion, the trilogy mostly alternates between chapters that advance the plot and chapters that explore the scientific implications of the Mohs/OneBigLie that governs the rules of the universe. The latter is mostly accomplished (again, in Egan's signature style) by having a few scientifically-inclined {{Mr Exposition}}s bounce TechnoBabble off each other.

** One experiment by the biologists involves recording the light signals used by the brain to induce muscle movement, and playing it back into the body to try and trigger the movements artificially. [[GoneHorriblyWrong It doesn't quite work as planned]], and the resulting uncontrollable hand spasms terrify the subject so badly that he tells his associates to ''[[AnArmAndALeg cut off the hand]]''. The effect is slightly lessened by remembering that he is a {{Shapeshifting}} {{Starfish Alien|s}} who can reabsorb the damaged flesh to heal the wound, but his brief InnerMonologue during the muscle spasms makes it clear that this is his reaction.

* CallASmeerpARabbit: ''Orthogonal'' takes place in a universe with entirely different laws of physics from our own, and thus predictably BizarreAlienBiology. It still uses common words like "plant" and "vole" to describe things that are roughly analogous (never mind that plants gain energy by emitting light rather than absorbing it, and voles are just a smaller and less evolved {{Shapeshifting}} {{Starfish Alien|s}} than the protagonists).

* {{Infodump}}: Every other chapter, complete with ExpoSpeak, TechnoBabble, and {{Exposition Diagram}}s.

* LadyLand: Invoked by opponents of the [[spoiler: reproduction-inducing experiments, who hypothesize that survivable single childbirth, which always results in female children, will lead to the eradication of the male gender. See also DepopulationBomb and {{Genercide}} above, and NoWomansLand below]].

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** In a desperate gambit to keep research on reproductive biology from being banned, Tamara [[spoiler: volunteers to have the arborine reproductive signal used on her. It goes surprisingly well]].

* LectureAsExposition: Many of the {{InfoDump}}s take this form.

* TitleDrop: All over the place, with the exception of ''The Clockwork Rocket''.

* AlienGeometries: Time is fundamentally the same as space, meaning that there are four spatial dimensions and [[MindScrew no such thing as time]].

* BigDamnHeroes: In ''The Eternal Flame'''s climax, one of the two halves of the EnsembleCast [[spoiler: is kidnapped and held under the threat of death by extremists who believe [[ScienceIsBad their reproductive experiments are an affront to nature]]. They are subsequently rescued in a classic BigDamnHeroes scene by the other half]].

A characteristically [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness Hard Science Fiction]] {{Trilogy}} by Australian author Creator/GregEgan. Consists of:

** Sex is a very complicated and touchy subject. It's a biological imperative for obvious reasons, but for women, it equates to suicide, and for men, it equates to murdering your soul mate. Despite this, most men have [[UnfortunateImplications no qualms about their duty to reproduce]].

** Females reproduce by splitting into four children; two sets of male-female twins respectively referred to as cos, who are then expected to eventually mature and mate with each other. The children who are not cos to each other are referred to as brothers and sisters, but those terms are generally not used to refer to cos, probably because of the [[UnfortunateImplications Unfortunate]] [[BrotherSisterIncest Incestual]] [[UnfortunateImplications Implications]] that would arise.

** The "Physicist" Ensemble: Carla, Tamara, and Ada, whose arc focuses mostly on the study of light and matter. They end up being [[spoiler: BigDamnHeroes in the climax by rescuing the "Biologist" Ensemble from their kidnappers]], and are generally more focused on the ''Peerless''' [[LongGame ultimate, overall mission]] to SaveTheWorld.
** The "Biologist" Ensemble: Carlo and Amanda make up the other ensemble, whose arc focuses more on biology, especially reproductive functions. They are generally more focused on solving the immediate problems faced by the crew of the ''Peerless'', namely the overpopulation and resultant famine.

* {{Infodump}}: Every other chapter, complete with ExpoSpeak, TechnoBabble, and {{ExpositionDiagram}}s.

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* AlienGeometries: (Almost) entirely averted; for most everyday purposes, physics works pretty similarly to ours, even the dimension of time, despite the fact that it is ''fundamentally different'' from time in RealLife. Technically played straight, however, in that time is fundamentally the same as space, meaning that there are four spatial dimensions and [[MindScrew no such thing as time]].
* [[AliensNeverInventedTheWheel Aliens Never Invented Electronics]]: Justified; because of this universe's physics, basic electronics are not completely impossible to construct, but it is highly unlikely that sentient beings would ever discover the principles that would make it work without a lot of luck or help.

* BizarreAlienBiology: The laws of physics do not apply. What did you expect?
** BizarreAlienPsychology: Mostly averted with some notable exceptions.
*** Since DeathBySex and DeathByChildbirth always applies (for the women), men typically raise their children alone or with the help of their own fathers. Thus, women are widely (but not universally) considered unfit for childrearing.
*** Sex is a very complicated and touchy subject. It's a biological imperative for obvious reasons, but for women, it equates to suicide, and for men, it equates to murdering your soul mate. Despite this, most men have [[UnfortunateImplications no qualms about their duty to reproduce]].
** BizarreAlienReproduction: Let me count the ways...
*** Sex immediately induces reproduction; there is no gestation period.
*** Sex consists of two of the {{Shapeshifting}} aliens melding the flesh of their chests, through which the male transmits a light-based signal into the female's body to induce the reproductive process. No actual matter or bodily substance is exchanged; genetic diversity is ensured through the infrared transmission of "influences" by ''every'' individual to ''everyone around them'' - which, incidentally, is also how diseases spread.
*** Females reproduce by splitting into four children; two sets of male-female twins respectively referred to as cos, who are then expected to eventually mature and mate with each other. The children who are not cos to each other are referred to as brothers and sisters, but those terms are generally not used to refer to cos, probably because of the [[UnfortunateImplications Unfortunate]] [[BrotherSisterIncest Incestual]] [[UnfortunateImplications Implications]] that would arise.
*** In the rare event that a woman is born without a co [[note]]known as a solo; [[AlwaysFemale all solos are female]], and solos are generally much larger than the average individual, leading to the scientifically discredited but pervasive idea that solos [[FetusTerrible eat/absorb their cos during childbirth]][[/note]] or is otherwise unable or unwilling to mate with her co, she can instead reproduce with another willing male, known as a co-stead. These relationships are treated more as a husband/wife relationship than the relationship between cos. It's considered a kind of reproductive UndesirablePrize, generally resorted to only when one co is dead or nonexistant, but there are occasional exceptions.
*** Under the right circumstances, primarily old age or spending too much time away from their co or co-stead, spontaneous reproduction is common enough to necessitate women taking a drug to prevent it.
*** In ''The Eternal Flame'', things get even WeirderThanUsual: A woman fasting to the point of near-starvation helps to both stave off spontaneous reproduction as well as to ensure that, when it happens, it [[spoiler: will result in only one pair of cos instead of two, for PopulationControl]].
*** And even weirder [[note]]or, depending on your perspective, completely and utterly normal[[/note]]: Near the end of ''The Eternal Flame'', the biologist half of the EnsembleCast develops a way to [[spoiler: induce childbirth that produces only one child, does not kill the mother, renders her sterile for the purposes of traditional (fission) childbirth, ''and'' is quite possibly repeatable. In other words, they can more or less reproduce [[NotSoDifferent just like us]]]].
** BizarreSexualDimorphism: Mostly averted. Males and females don't look too different from each other, with a few exceptions.
*** Even when they are not solos, women are generally somewhat larger than men, justified in that the extra mass is needed to successfully split into four healthy children. As a result, women are generally stronger than men and thus do most of the manual labor. [[note]]Because of this, for most of ''The Clockwork Rocket'', before the launch of the ''Peerless'' and the subsequent retooling of societal norms, men tend to take center stage on intellectual pursuits. Educating women is widely considered a waste of time, since they have much shorter lifespans and their knowledge is not passed on when they fission. It's mentioned in passing that these gender roles were reversed at some point in the past, when it was believed that a woman's knowledge ''did'' get passed on to her children, while mens' knowledge died with them.[[/note]]
*** Without exception, [[AlwaysFemale every solo is female]], [[spoiler: including the ones born as a result of the induced survivable births in the latter part of ''The Eternal Flame'']].

* EnsembleCast: ''The Eternal Flame'' actually features two sub-ensembles, each with their own separate story arcs, though they frequently interact.

* [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture Fling a Light Into the Near Future]]: A very unusual example. The GenerationShip's mission is to accelerate into AnotherDimension, so that, from their perspective, time will stop for the homeworld. This will allow the crew all the time they need to develop technology and science to the point where they'll be able to return and SaveTheWorld. Thus, the ship may drift through space for an indefinite amount of time, but no matter how long they have, when they return, only four years will have passed on the homeworld.

* [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Hyperspace]]: Not referred to by name, but orthogonal space functions like hyperspace in many ways.

* [[MirrorChemistry Mirror Physics]]: Played extremely straight with orthogonal matter. Take two pieces of matter with identical composition - say, an inert rock. They each came from clusters that are orthogonal to each other.[[note]]In other words, their "orientation" in the dimension of time is perpendicular to each other.[[/note]] They are otherwise literally identical right down to their fundamental chemical properties. But put them in physical contact with each other... and they will [[StuffBlowingUp violently explode]]. See CollisionDamage and MadeOfExplodium above.

* ThePlague/SyntheticPlague: Invoked by opponents of the experiments on [[spoiler: survivable reproduction]], when rumors begin spreading that the procedure has created an "[[TheVirus influence]]" that can spread like any other disease, inducing the same phenomenon in anyone exposed to it.

* [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion Spontaneous Alien Combustion]]: Life in this universe relies on chemical reactions that can and do occasionally get out of control, resulting in dangerous and spectacular instances of this trope. In fact, [[spoiler: the trilogy opens with one]].

* ThemeNaming
** ThemeTwinNaming: Universally played straight, the only exceptions being solos. Cos are named with masculine and feminine forms of the same name, always ending in 'o' for males and 'a' for females. Examples include Carlo/Carla, Addo/Ada, Tamaro/Tamara, and so on.

* TheXOfY: ''The Arrows of Time''.

* ViewersAreGeniuses: Par for Creator/GregEgan's course, though he does make truly heroic efforts to avert it by explaining ''everything'' from the ground up. {{YMMV}} on whether he succeeds.

** One experiment by the biologists involves recording the light signals used by the brain to induce muscle movement, and playing it back into the body to try and trigger the movements artificially. [[GoneHorriblyWrong It doesn't quite work as planned]], and the resulting uncontrollable hand spasms terrify the subject so badly that he tells his associates to ''[[AnArmAndALeg cut off the hand]]''. The effect is slightly lessened by remembering that he is a {{Shapeshifting}} {{StarfishAlien|s}} who can reabsorb the damaged flesh to heal the wound, but his brief InnerMonologue during the muscle spasms makes it clear that this is his reaction.

* CallASmeerpARabbit: ''Orthogonal'' takes place in a universe with entirely different laws of physics from our own, and thus predictably BizarreAlienBiology. It still uses common words like "plant" and "vole" to describe things that are roughly analogous (never mind that plants gain energy by emitting light rather than absorbing it, and voles are just a smaller and less evolved {{Shapeshifting}} {{StarfishAlien|s}} than the protagonists).

* ArtificialGravity: The first part of the ''Peerless''' journey involves accelerating at a rate of one-G for about a year, generating the predictable and familiar downward gravity. When they stop accelerating, the lack of gravity [[spoiler: unexpectedly causes their crops to fail]], so they spin the ship to compensate. Centrifugal gravity is partially deconstructed and reconstructed, as the characters are forced to reconfigure most of the ship's layout to accomodate the fact that the new gravity [[GravityScrew just put all their furniture on the walls]].

In true Greg Egan fashion, the trilogy mostly alternates between chapters that advance the plot and chapters that explore the scientific implications of the Mohs/OneBigLie that governs the rules of the universe. The latter is mostly accomplished (again, in Egan's signature style) by having a few scientifically-inclined {{MrExposition}}s bounce TechnoBabble off each other.

* ViewersAreGeniuses: Par for Creator/GregEgan's course, though he does make truly heroic efforts to avert it by explaining ''everything'' from the ground up. YMMV on whether he succeeds.

''Orthogonal'' is set in a universe where a single minus sign deep in an equation governing the rules of spacetime [[Mohs/OneBigLie has been changed to a plus sign]]. It explores the higher-order ramifications that change has on the laws of physics (and, by extension, on nearly every other discipline of science). It does this by following a group of {{Shapeshifting}} StarfishAliens who build a GenerationShip to fly into an [[AnotherDimension alternate dimension]] where they will have [[TimeStandsStill all the time they need]] to advance their technology to the point where they will be able to return and SaveTheWorld from an impending ApocalypseHow/ClassX3.