5 ms·

Interesting 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

Interesting 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 ago
I found myself lightly horrified throughout Permutation City, and found myself thinking about it spontaneously for months afterwards.
izzydata 3y ago
Good 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 ago
  Agreed. 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 ago
    He'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 ago
  Indeed. 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 ago
  If 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.
- danbmil99 3y ago
  If 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 prose 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.
  - jerf 3y ago
    I think it was Larry Niven who pointed out that if you think of conventional writing as consisting of something like some combination of plot, prose, and characters, that the science fiction author labors under the additional constraint of also having to establish setting. (IIRC he broke it into five categories, but the total number and exactly what they are isn't important.) And given how few authors ever reach the level of firing on all cylinders in a non-science-fiction setting on those metrics, a science fiction fan must extend the science fiction authors some grace on the other fronts of good writing if they're going to enjoy it at all. I don't think I've ever seen a science fiction story that establishes a truly different setting that also gets a 5 out of 5 across the board on all the other metrics, and it's debatable whether such a thing is even possible. If such a story hypothetically existed it would probably be too verbose to count as good writing. You can get all sorts of combinations of various attributes, but you just can't get them all. Certainly Egan is in the Silver Age Asimov/Clarke tradition of sacrificing characters to fit the rest in, but what he does is so good I can't complain. For all the crazy science fiction I've read, Egan has, just to name one example, the only story set in a serious attempt at an alternative space-time geometry in which there are two space and two time dimensions, and not in some vague what-if "parallel dimension" sense, but by actually working out the consequences of what two spatial and two temporal dimensions looks like when you feed that into the equations of general relativity: https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/00/DPDM.html https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/00/DPDM.html (I find this one particularly interesting because many of us have imagined "what if there were two time dimensions"; Egan shows that what came to most of our imaginations was so laughably wrong as to not even be in the ballpark, and that in fact you can perfectly sensible discuss the topic grounded in real physics.) Even in the field of science fiction writers there's only a certain percentage of writers who could even properly follow that page, let alone generate it themselves.
- cauch 3y ago
  While I agree with that and still enjoy some of Egan's writing, his text would definitively be better and more interesting if the characters were not so artificial, without losing anything about the science. It is amusing to think that a lot of people who are defending Egan on this point would probably be uncompromising on their very low opinion on a book containing badly put together science. They will probably not say "it's not for me, but why not, the author was interested in the characters, the science is just an excuse", but rather "no, they use science, so they need to do the science correctly". But they will ignore this argument ("they use characters, so they need to do characters correctly") is the case of Egan.
  - lmm 3y ago
    Are his characters really artificial? Boring and single-minded, sure, but there are plenty of boring and single-minded people in the world - too many literary critics lose track of how unusual (indeed unrealistic) most of the characters in literature are.
bossyTeacher 3y ago
The literary form is just the Deliveroo package for the actual contents: the ideas. And that's what hard sci-fi is in its purest form: the literature of ideas
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  Stories* for Morlocks, not literature for Eloi... (I had thought Wells' relationship between Morlocks and Eloi might've been a reply to Kipling's Sons of Martha https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_martha.htm https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_martha.htm , but the former is from 1895 and the latter was not until 1907) * although hard sci-fi has its own interwoven network of influences and references, so like capital-L literature and hip-hop, it really does count as a literature.
gmuslera 3y ago
You should try reading Zendegi. Maybe is not one of his best books, at least regarding science extrapolation, but of the few I've read from him it had its human side.
genmon 3y ago
Some of Egan's shorts are the most haunting explorations of what it means to be human that I've read -- maybe try those. But yes, Egan's philosophy is that sci-fi can be about the human story OR about the science. Both are valid. From this long interview: > I’m interested in science as a subject in its own right, just as much as I’m interested in the effects of technology on the human condition. In many things I write the two will be combined, but even then it’s important to try to describe the science accurately. In a novel such as Incandescence, though, the entire point is understanding the science, and it really doesn’t bother me in the least that it’s not an exploration of the human condition. > There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is. From http://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/ http://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  Could you list some of your favorite shorts?
  - sohkamyung 3y ago
    "Luminous" was what got me hooked on Greg Egan. Of his recent fiction, I enjoyed "Zeitgeber" [1] and "The Nearest" [2]. I found the latter to be an interesting exploration of what happens when you suddenly discover that you don't recognize your loved ones as human. [1] https://www.tor.com/2019/09/25/zeitgeber-greg-egan/ https://www.tor.com/2019/09/25/zeitgeber-greg-egan/ [2] https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/ https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
His short stories are far better than the novels.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  You’re the second to suggest this in this thread. Could you list some of your favorites?
  - me_again 3y ago
    Luminous, Chaff, Axiomatic, Learning to be Me, The Cutie, The Moat. The Best of Greg Egan is a perfectly respectable place to start.
codeulike 3y ago
I don't know if plodding storylines and two-dimensional characters is fair, some of his novels spend a lot of time watching characters do science (like the orthogonal triology) so it can get slow but he's still banged out plenty of great plots and action setpieces and characters that develop. The second book of Orthoganol has some amazing action set pieces (solidly based on the weird rules of an imaginary universe) and plot developments. General consensus is that his short stories are the best.

ycombinete 3y ago

I found myself lightly horrified throughout Permutation City, and found myself thinking about it spontaneously for months afterwards.

izzydata 3y ago

Good 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 ago
Agreed. 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 ago
  He'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 ago
Indeed. 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 ago
If 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.
danbmil99 3y ago
If 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 prose 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.
- jerf 3y ago
  I think it was Larry Niven who pointed out that if you think of conventional writing as consisting of something like some combination of plot, prose, and characters, that the science fiction author labors under the additional constraint of also having to establish setting. (IIRC he broke it into five categories, but the total number and exactly what they are isn't important.) And given how few authors ever reach the level of firing on all cylinders in a non-science-fiction setting on those metrics, a science fiction fan must extend the science fiction authors some grace on the other fronts of good writing if they're going to enjoy it at all. I don't think I've ever seen a science fiction story that establishes a truly different setting that also gets a 5 out of 5 across the board on all the other metrics, and it's debatable whether such a thing is even possible. If such a story hypothetically existed it would probably be too verbose to count as good writing. You can get all sorts of combinations of various attributes, but you just can't get them all. Certainly Egan is in the Silver Age Asimov/Clarke tradition of sacrificing characters to fit the rest in, but what he does is so good I can't complain. For all the crazy science fiction I've read, Egan has, just to name one example, the only story set in a serious attempt at an alternative space-time geometry in which there are two space and two time dimensions, and not in some vague what-if "parallel dimension" sense, but by actually working out the consequences of what two spatial and two temporal dimensions looks like when you feed that into the equations of general relativity: https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/00/DPDM.html https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/00/DPDM.html (I find this one particularly interesting because many of us have imagined "what if there were two time dimensions"; Egan shows that what came to most of our imaginations was so laughably wrong as to not even be in the ballpark, and that in fact you can perfectly sensible discuss the topic grounded in real physics.) Even in the field of science fiction writers there's only a certain percentage of writers who could even properly follow that page, let alone generate it themselves.
cauch 3y ago
While I agree with that and still enjoy some of Egan's writing, his text would definitively be better and more interesting if the characters were not so artificial, without losing anything about the science. It is amusing to think that a lot of people who are defending Egan on this point would probably be uncompromising on their very low opinion on a book containing badly put together science. They will probably not say "it's not for me, but why not, the author was interested in the characters, the science is just an excuse", but rather "no, they use science, so they need to do the science correctly". But they will ignore this argument ("they use characters, so they need to do characters correctly") is the case of Egan.
- lmm 3y ago
  Are his characters really artificial? Boring and single-minded, sure, but there are plenty of boring and single-minded people in the world - too many literary critics lose track of how unusual (indeed unrealistic) most of the characters in literature are.

bossyTeacher 3y ago

The literary form is just the Deliveroo package for the actual contents: the ideas. And that's what hard sci-fi is in its purest form: the literature of ideas

082349872349872 3y ago
Stories* for Morlocks, not literature for Eloi... (I had thought Wells' relationship between Morlocks and Eloi might've been a reply to Kipling's Sons of Martha https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_martha.htm https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_martha.htm , but the former is from 1895 and the latter was not until 1907) * although hard sci-fi has its own interwoven network of influences and references, so like capital-L literature and hip-hop, it really does count as a literature.

gmuslera 3y ago

You should try reading Zendegi. Maybe is not one of his best books, at least regarding science extrapolation, but of the few I've read from him it had its human side.

genmon 3y ago

Some of Egan's shorts are the most haunting explorations of what it means to be human that I've read -- maybe try those. But yes, Egan's philosophy is that sci-fi can be about the human story OR about the science. Both are valid. From this long interview: > I’m interested in science as a subject in its own right, just as much as I’m interested in the effects of technology on the human condition. In many things I write the two will be combined, but even then it’s important to try to describe the science accurately. In a novel such as Incandescence, though, the entire point is understanding the science, and it really doesn’t bother me in the least that it’s not an exploration of the human condition. > There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is. From http://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/ http://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/

tambourine_man 3y ago
Could you list some of your favorite shorts?
- sohkamyung 3y ago
  "Luminous" was what got me hooked on Greg Egan. Of his recent fiction, I enjoyed "Zeitgeber" [1] and "The Nearest" [2]. I found the latter to be an interesting exploration of what happens when you suddenly discover that you don't recognize your loved ones as human. [1] https://www.tor.com/2019/09/25/zeitgeber-greg-egan/ https://www.tor.com/2019/09/25/zeitgeber-greg-egan/ [2] https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/ https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/

zeroonetwothree 3y ago

His short stories are far better than the novels.

tambourine_man 3y ago
You’re the second to suggest this in this thread. Could you list some of your favorites?
- me_again 3y ago
  Luminous, Chaff, Axiomatic, Learning to be Me, The Cutie, The Moat. The Best of Greg Egan is a perfectly respectable place to start.

codeulike 3y ago

I don't know if plodding storylines and two-dimensional characters is fair, some of his novels spend a lot of time watching characters do science (like the orthogonal triology) so it can get slow but he's still banged out plenty of great plots and action setpieces and characters that develop. The second book of Orthoganol has some amazing action set pieces (solidly based on the weird rules of an imaginary universe) and plot developments. General consensus is that his short stories are the best.