Sci-fi feels small after reading Egan

[cosmicalstorm]

I just finished reading most of Greg Egan's works after a two month reading-mania. Now I'm left somewhat numb, most of the stuff that I've enjoyed reading in the past (Ian Banks, Alastair Reynolds, even Stephen Baxter to some degree) feels very petty in comparison. Is there any other author that can be measured with Greg Egan?

[Ahriman238]

who is Greg Egan?

[Starglider]

Egan is awesome; his concepts are really inventive and his imaginary physics are very well done, plus he does the mechanics and philosophy of AI much better than the vast majority of sci-fi. Another thing I particularly like is that his sci-fi has actual science in it, in that the protagonists actually go through the scientific process and make interesting hypotheses, deductions and discoveries. Most sci-fi is fantasy with a technology themed backdrop, you're lucky to see interesting engineering never mind science.

His characterisation isn't great, but so what, I don't demand stellar character writing from action movies either, because it isn't intended to be the main appeal.

[Ahriman238]

So, high concept stuff?

Perhaps the Foundation?

If you're into a lot of philosophy regarding space travel, alien races, and the nature of humanity I'd recommend "The Stars are Cold Toys" by Sergei Lukyanenko. Will probably be hard to find an English copy though.

[cosmicalstorm]

Starglider got it right. It's that he really explores the concepts he introduces so thoroughly, and the scale is often stunning. Right now, even the Xelee-wars of Baxter -- Where entire superclusters are tossed around as projectiles and neutron stars whiz by at 0.999 C -- seems a bit smallish. It's hard to explain, I guess there are few others who write books like that. I should have finished the Culture series before going into this stuff.

[Iroscato]

Hmm, sounds like it could be my cup of tea. I've always thought most scifi writers have little sense of scale, I might give this a try and see what I think.
Are there any particular books or stories by him you think are the best, cosmicalstorm?

[Ryan Thunder]

Where entire superclusters are tossed around as projectiles and neutron stars whiz by at 0.999 C -- seems a bit smallish.

Maybe its just me, but that sounds like something that would be unreadable as anything but a bone-dry timeline of events. Which would be kinda boring. How does he manage time in the setting?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Starglider got it right. It's that he really explores the concepts he introduces so thoroughly, and the scale is often stunning. Right now, even the Xelee-wars of Baxter -- Where entire superclusters are tossed around as projectiles and neutron stars whiz by at 0.999 C -- seems a bit smallish. It's hard to explain, I guess there are few others who write books like that. I should have finished the Culture series before going into this stuff.

Considering that scale or credible science were never the main attractions of the Culture stories, I don't really see what the problem is. Scale-wank is something I generally don't appreciate much, either. Egan is a fine scifi author for the reasons Starglider mentioned, but not primarily for the scale, albeit I do like good characterisation. After all, the best action movies in the end are those which have something interesting in the characters, whereas the Commandos of the world are just good for lols, and not always even for that (like most of recent Michael Bay movies).

[Starglider]

Are there any particular books or stories by him you think are the best, cosmicalstorm?

I recommend Schild's Ladder. The science/AI parts are comparable to Diaspora but the characters are better.

Right now, even the Xelee-wars of Baxter -- Where entire superclusters are tossed around as projectiles and neutron stars whiz by at 0.999 C -- seems a bit smallish.

I don't think Comicalstorm is talking about raw scale exactly, just inflating sizes doesn't really mean much. Egan likes to explore the nature of reality and postulate fantasy physics, such that his characters find new and surprising facets of the universe/multiverse. This isn't hard sci-fi in the usual sense, because it doesn't stick to known physics, although I consider it hard sci-fi because it captures the excitement of science itself so well.

[andrewgpaul]

Where entire superclusters are tossed around as projectiles and neutron stars whiz by at 0.999 C -- seems a bit smallish.

Maybe its just me, but that sounds like something that would be unreadable as anything but a bone-dry timeline of events. Which would be kinda boring. How does he manage time in the setting?

Because that's the back-story. The neutron star is actually the setting of Flux; it's about a small group of people who are engineered humans living in the body of the star itself. The more recent books do have a time-line lasting the entire age of the universe, and as you say, it's a bit dry.

I thought I'd read some Greg Egan, but looking him up on Amazon, it appears I was confusing him with Greg Bear.

What do you mean by "petty", cosmicalstorm? Is it the scale of the story and/or setting? I never found that to be particularly important, really; I could go from the Consider Phlebas to Neuromancer quite happily. Or is it something about his writing style?

[Stark]

As Starglider says, because Egan presents his core scientific themes in a scientific way, and they're uncovered by the protaganists in a logical way, they're narratively interesting while being intellectually high-concept. The first time I read Quarrantine back in the day I had to put it down and ruminate a few times, and that's by far one of the 'simpler' of the Egan books.

Egan is pretty much why I can't read nerd-chic scifi anymore; people using galaxies as cannonballs is amazingly lame next to a PhD telling me about AI without boring me. Being published almost exclusively in shitty paperbacks was a probelm for me until I bought my partner a Kindle, and I'm able to read his later work now.

He probably feels that other scifi is 'small' in the sense that it's WWI or Roman Republic or Victorian England with lasers, rather than scientificially fundamental. I think it's Permutation City where the cast is exchanged for uploads halfway through and run into virtual god, and its not handled in the amazingly lame LOL BLOW IT UP RELIGION IS BAD way.

[cosmicalstorm]

It's very hard for me to capture it in a few lines of text. It's not simple scale-wanking. It may just be that I have the stuff too fresh in memory right now. I'm gonna give it a few weeks until I try reading another book. I guess I was just wondering if there are any other authors quite like him out there. The Amazon reviews & recommendations where quite disappointing in that regard.

[NecronLord]

Is there scale-wank akin to the Xeelee books?

[Stark]

It's very hard for me to capture it in a few lines of text. It's not simple scale-wanking. It may just be that I have the stuff too fresh in memory right now. I'm gonna give it a few weeks until I try reading another book. I guess I was just wondering if there are any other authors quite like him out there. The Amazon reviews & recommendations where quite disappointing in that regard.

I haven't found anything with the same sense of universality that Egan captures in his work. If you find anything, be sure to share it; I've been basically unable to read 'serious' scif for nearly a decade because it's all childish and boring by comparison. I think Starglider could recommend something, however.

It's a giant lol to me that Egan is so relatively unknown.

[NecronLord]

This page may be helpful for those interested by all this talk:

Works Online from Greg Egan's homepage. Some complete stories it seems, lots of excerpts.

[Terralthra]

I liked Walter Jon Williams' Implied Spaces, for a lot of the same reasons you've described liking Greg Egan. No idea if it would suit your interest, but you can give it a shot.

[ThomasP]

Egan's unique because he can take complex material, explain it reasonably well, and then examine the philosophical fall-out in ways that are all interesting. Incandescence is the most recent book I've read from him, and while I had to put it down a few times to think through some of the physics lessons, it was still interesting. I like that he's unafraid of putting in material like that, even knowing it might scare off more casual readers.

I really don't think there's another contemporary writer that can handle the science so comprehensively while still writing a readable book. I wanted to name a few names who might be in the ballpark, but even writing them out I realized that the fine balance wasn't quite there.

[cosmicalstorm]

Is there scale-wank akin to the Xeelee books?

Well no, I think any decent writer can spell out "And they launched one gigamazillion warships and blabla..". But that's not it. That kind of sci-fi impressed me a couple of years ago but not now.