Part of what drove me crazy about Zendegi is that the guy funding the mind-uploading project is constantly portrayed as crazy and selfish for his goals of livin

Part of what drove me crazy about Zendegi is that the guy funding the mind-uploading project is constantly portrayed as crazy and selfish for his goals of living longer through uploading, though as soon as one of the protagonists gets sick, suddenly the goal is an exciting possibility for that protagonist in particular (he's had a hard life, so it's noble for him I guess) ... and when the plan falls short because the tech isn't developed enough, the entire idea is back to being regarded as ridiculous and one of the other protagonists campaigns to stop more research from being done in the area. It felt like picking up a sci-fi book from someone known for writing space sci-fi, and then being expected to sympathize with the protagonist who wants NASA shut down after Apollo 1 burns. Maybe it just bugs me a little extra because it's the apex of a weird pattern also in Permutation City and the short story Crystal Nights (which is a fun read!): the story's cool tech, the thing you came to the story for, is pushed by an unlikable character, and everyone else despises the character and everything they stand for including the tech. There's a lack of likable characters that sympathize with the reader in how cool the technology could be; it's harder to sympathize with the protagonists who seem too unimaginative to see how cool the tech could be. I get that the author is probably trying to make a point that technology can be abused by bad people and that most people aren't going to see the possibilities of new tech ... but I think he's getting worse at making that point, or the point is just getting grating being re-executed in the same way several times over. And the other thing that drives me crazy about Zendegi is the time it spends with the lazy caricatures[0] of real people. It's a little personal given that Eliezer Yudkowsky is one of my favorite authors, but that's only part of it. The caricatures are lazy. Egan might as well have made each of the characters boast of having a small dick. And the bad caricatures aren't just a few unflattering introductions, but form a whole subplot that mostly doesn't affect the main plot or the protagonists at all; it exists just to take shots. And then the caricatures are mainly ridiculed for dreaming big (in ways the story cheaply makes out to be dumb or selfish), especially about AI. I come to Egan books to dream big. Egan's previous books were likely part of what taught many people to dream big in this! I'm sure some of the things I call problems could be done well and aren't automatic disqualifiers, but the sum of all of them in one book with the execution they had just left a surprisingly terrible taste in my mouth. [0] https://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/03/egans-zendegi.html https://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/03/egans-zendegi.html