47 ms·
Foundations (1997-2000)
- pushcx 3y agoI found this very hard to read with the staticy background and removed it with the following ublock origin filter: www.gregegan.net##body:style(background-image: none !important;)
- Karellen 3y agoOn the individual topic pages, the [B] buttons allow you to choose a background, one of which is plain white.
- alanbernstein 3y agoWow, I hate to make an off topic complaint, but that has to be the most unreadable page style I've ever seen.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- golol 3y agoI really idolize Greg Egan, I feel like he has staked such a unique position for himself in the cultural-academic landscape. I like to say that he writes science-fiction while many other authors really write engineering-fiction or sociology-fiction. He seems to be a good mathematical explorer in more obscure/specific areas. One of the craziest crossover moments in my life was when I watched the Numberphile video on superpermutations which involves the results by Greg Egan and Anonymous 4chan user.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- romanhn 3y agoInteresting to see this here right after finishing six of his novels. My takeaway is that Egan clearly is a talented scientist, a man of unique ideas, and not a very good writer. The books are an excuse to go into scientific minutiae, with plodding storylines and two-dimensional characters. Kept going mostly because the ideas/set-up were fascinating.
- ycombinete 3y agoI found myself lightly horrified throughout Permutation City, and found myself thinking about it spontaneously for months afterwards.
- izzydata 3y agoGood writing is highly subjective. The way his books focus more on the interesting concepts and not the characters is precisely why I enjoy them so much. There are enough books in the world about people and why they do what they do for books like Greg Egan's to do their own thing. I think he achieved exactly what he set out to do with his writing.
- 0xEF 3y agoAgreed. Been a fan of Egan for years and I've never met anyone who reads his books for the prose. Egan's stories are a delivery package for the ideas he wants to present, and nothing more. Interestingly, that is why I enjoy his work. Sometimes I want to have my mind a little blown by stuff that is just at the far edge of my intellectual understanding. Other times I want to be simply entertained, so I turn to other sci-fi authors for that.
- Filligree 3y agoHe's gotten better at it. You can compare Clockwork Rocket to (say) Schild's Ladder, both of which show off interesting concepts; there's no question that Clockwork Rocket has the more interesting characters. But the characters still aren't why anyone reads them. Nowadays they're serviceable; years back they were cardboard cutouts. Nobody who enjoys Egan is bothered by either.
- bossyTeacher 3y agoIndeed. The point of the story is the concepts presented. This is what hard sci-fi is all about. When I think sci fi, I think Egan rather than Star Wars
- danbmil99 3y agoIf I'm really being honest, I don't think any of the great SF writers are great writers if you take away the SF. The Only Exception I can think of where the pros and character development are roughly equivalent to well-known novelists is Walter J Williams. He could have been a non-sf writer but he chose SF probably because it allowed him to get published.
- anthk 3y agoI love his cyberpunk/transhumanist novel.
- askvictor 3y agoDistress?
- petre 3y agoIs this the novelist that wrote the novel with the tachyon messages to our past generations warning them about the impending climate change disaster? Edit: no, it's Timescape by Gragory Benford. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/778990.Timescape https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/778990.Timescape
- monkey_monkey 3y agoI think the novel you're referring to is 'Timescape', and it was written by Gregory Benford. From what I remember (and it's been 20 years at least since I read it), it's quite a bleak story.
- petre 3y agoYup, it was about the same size but maybe still better than Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Red from what I remember? At least I've finished reading it.
- KineticLensman 3y ago(spoilers) Timescape and Red Mars are very different in very different in nature and size. Timescape is a self-contained end-of-the-world story, but set in a multiverse, so some of the characters do get out alive. Red Mars is the first part of a lengthy trilogy, which is ultimately optimistic about humanity itself, even though the story contains environment collapse, devastation, and war. [Edit] To be clear, the overall story of which Red Mars is just the first part is much longer than Timescape.
- petre 3y agoThey're about the same thickness and number of pages and I've read them at about the same age. Timescape got the Nebula award, Red Mars got the BSFA and Nebula awards. They have about the same number of stars on Goodreads, so roughly the same reception? I haven't finished reading Red Mars, I think I grew tired with the endless descriptions. Maybe the other two Mars books are better? Dunno, never got around reading them, moved on. Both might be okay books to turn into movies, with Red Mars just use the lenghty descriptions as documentation for filming the scenes.
- Acumen321 3y agoAnyone who would be on this site is the kind of person who should do themselves a favor and read his short story collection Axiomatic. His other collections are excellent as well, I have read them all. For novels, Diaspora is my favorite so far, but I am still working through them.
- komon 3y agoI enjoyed Schild's Ladder and Permutation City immensely
- loudmax 3y agoI strongly second the recommendation for Diaspora. The story begins about 1000 years in the future, with characters that are trans-human, or post-human. Starting from that baseline of normalcy, then it gets weird. But it's not weird for the sake of weirdness. The story is grounded in logic and built around rational exploration of deeply philosophical ideas. The book can be challenging at times, but only because the concepts it explores are so deep. The writing, IMHO, is very lucid. Egan wants to bring you into these ideas, not drive you away through inscrutable prose.
- loudmax 3y agoGreg Egan is fairly active on Mastodon. You can follow along at https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF
- bossyTeacher 3y agoI wish he would show his face and do interviews. He's rather obsessed with Google linking him to wrong faces. I am curious to know what he looks like, his interests, background, etc
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoI think Lock-Pick Lawyer's views on this are germane (paraphrasing): >>> I would show my face or give my name as there are many thousands of normal people to whom that would make an interesting or grounding moment, but it only takes one crazy nut-job to ruin your whole year, and if there is one thing common in the internet, it's crazy nut-jobs
- bossyTeacher 3y agoI understand that viewpoint but I would think that someone as niche as him would go unnoticed in most places
- kortilla 3y agoThat’s not the point. The problem is the nut job who is dedicated to tracking you down.
- bossyTeacher 3y agoWhy do you/he think that some nutjob would try to track him down? It's not like that's the case with many writers is it? I don't think Arthur Clark, Asimov or even more contemporaries like Liu or Cixin had nutjobs after them
- dang 3y agoRelated: Foundations by Greg Egan (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8547249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8547249 - Nov 2014 (17 comments)
- codeulike 3y agoTime to post my favourite short story of his: you can read it online: Crystal Nights https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html “What created the only example of consciousness we know of?” Daniel asked. “Evolution.” “Exactly. But I don’t want to wait three billion years, so I need to make the selection process a great deal more refined, and the sources of variation more targeted.” Julie digested this. “You want to try to evolve true AI? Conscious, human-level AI?” “Yes.” Daniel saw her mouth tightening, saw her struggling to measure her words before speaking. “With respect,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve thought that through.”