April 2, 2021
Whenever I want my mind to be blown away by science fictional ideas, I pick up a novel by Greg Egan. Sometimes I don't even understand them completely, but that's not the point: his ideas about our surrounding universe are simply astounding. And what's even more perplexing, none of his novels feels outdated, mostly because they are based on maths and physics concepts, some of which have not been discovered/understood to this very day.
That's the case here: the plot is revolving around the Theory of Everything, in a very advanced future around year 2050. There are several types of humans, police can raise victims from the dead, for a brief period of time, to find out who murdered them, journalists have their equipment embedded inside them.
This is science fiction at its highest, with a strong accent on science and technology. And the way everything wraps up at the end? Pure poetry: physics, maths, information, and the phylosophy behind them, mixed up in an explanation so beautiful that left me in awe. Not that it would have been the first time, most of his novels have something that makes me stare in wonder.
But I must give a warning: three quarters of it I had a continuous feeling of distress, literaly and physically. The similitude of the potential virus contagion with SarsCovid is just too unsettling, altgough they couldn't be more different. And yet the feeling was there for me, raising my current distress level tenfold. And I never felt such relief as when I grasped the whole meaning of it at the end; it was like a boulder has been lifted of my chest. Written 26 years ago and it's still way ahead of our present times.
A note: even this appears as the third and last in this series, it is a stand alone and not related in any way to the other two, as the author states on his website: "Some third-party bibliographies have incorrectly described three of my novels as being part of “The Subjective Cosmology Cycle”. In fact, there is no such thing. The description of these three books as belonging to some kind of “series” is a misunderstanding; I've mentioned in interviews that they have some thematic similarities with each other that I noticed in retrospect, but they were certainly never conceived of, nor published as, a series."
Beside this note, at the following link you may find a lot of his works which can be read in full online, as well as various excerpts from his novels:
(https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY...)
Back to this series in question, all three books are incredibly fascinating and mind blowing. If you want SF of ideas, you woulnd't want to skip Greg Egan. His writing style may not be always accesible or smooth, and his books are not a light reading, but your brain will have multiple orgasms while reading his works.
Here is an excerpt from this novel, in fact, the first chapter. Don't get mislead, it's not a policier, it's just a glimpse of the world in which journalist Andrew Worth is making his living:
https://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/Exc...
That's the case here: the plot is revolving around the Theory of Everything, in a very advanced future around year 2050. There are several types of humans, police can raise victims from the dead, for a brief period of time, to find out who murdered them, journalists have their equipment embedded inside them.
This is science fiction at its highest, with a strong accent on science and technology. And the way everything wraps up at the end? Pure poetry: physics, maths, information, and the phylosophy behind them, mixed up in an explanation so beautiful that left me in awe. Not that it would have been the first time, most of his novels have something that makes me stare in wonder.
But I must give a warning: three quarters of it I had a continuous feeling of distress, literaly and physically. The similitude of the potential virus contagion with SarsCovid is just too unsettling, altgough they couldn't be more different. And yet the feeling was there for me, raising my current distress level tenfold. And I never felt such relief as when I grasped the whole meaning of it at the end; it was like a boulder has been lifted of my chest. Written 26 years ago and it's still way ahead of our present times.
A note: even this appears as the third and last in this series, it is a stand alone and not related in any way to the other two, as the author states on his website: "Some third-party bibliographies have incorrectly described three of my novels as being part of “The Subjective Cosmology Cycle”. In fact, there is no such thing. The description of these three books as belonging to some kind of “series” is a misunderstanding; I've mentioned in interviews that they have some thematic similarities with each other that I noticed in retrospect, but they were certainly never conceived of, nor published as, a series."
Beside this note, at the following link you may find a lot of his works which can be read in full online, as well as various excerpts from his novels:
(https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY...)
Back to this series in question, all three books are incredibly fascinating and mind blowing. If you want SF of ideas, you woulnd't want to skip Greg Egan. His writing style may not be always accesible or smooth, and his books are not a light reading, but your brain will have multiple orgasms while reading his works.
Here is an excerpt from this novel, in fact, the first chapter. Don't get mislead, it's not a policier, it's just a glimpse of the world in which journalist Andrew Worth is making his living:
https://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/Exc...