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Distress
In the year 2055, a disease called "Distress" affects millions, and when investigative reporter Andrew Worth travels to the virtual planet of Stateless to document a gathering of physicists, his focus, Violet Mosala, begins to receive death threats, and he discovers that "Distress" is linked to the conference and to the end of the world. Reprint.
456 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
Greg Egan
251 books2,485 followersGreg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 197 reviews
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...
August 13, 2013
I may just be saying this because I'm intoxicated by the warm afterglow of the ending, but I think this is one of the best science fiction novels I've ever read. At the very least, I'm now excited to read the rest of Egan's work.
Of this novel's virtues, the most important to me is that its plot is driven by scientific and philosophical concepts. Too much science fiction works the other way around -- the author begins by inventing whatever magical plot device they need, and then proceeds to "justify" it by sprinkling their prose with a ritual offering of Science Words ("tachyons," "nanomachines," "quantum effects"). Some authors perform this routine at a very high level of sophistication, and even take care to make their fairy-dustings scientifically accurate, as far as that is possible . . . but there's still an unavoidable and unpleasant residue left by the brute fact that science is being used as a post hoc justification rather than a domain of knowledge to be explored and played with. Egan, on the other hand, writes science fiction about real science -- not just in the sense that it's accurate enough to satisfy the rules lawyer types within SF fandom, but in the sense that scientific ideas are the seed from which the rest of his novel grows. Most of Distress takes place at a theoretical physics conference; several of the main characters are scientists or science journalists; all of the key plot twists are revelations of a scientific or philosophical nature. Science isn't a pretext for space battles or glorified wizardry here. It's what the story is about.
On top of all that, Distress is a good novel in many other senses. It's very readable, and the prose and characterization are better than you'd expect from a hard SF writer. The pace is fast but not frenzied. The plot is well-constructed, with various sub-plots that link together in a pleasing fashion (as Cozma Shalizi put it, "I don't think I've ever read a book which more perfectly obeyed Chekov's Pistol Principle"). It's a book with a whole lot of cool stuff in it, from a bioengineered anarchist utopia to the most abstract and mind-twisting apocalypse I've ever seen in fiction.
If there's something I don't like about Egan, it's that his extrapolations of science into the human sphere are very hit-and-miss. This is distinct from his actual grasp of science, and from his actual character writing, both of which are very good. But his predictions of how society would respond to new scientific and technological advances are sometimes wildly off the mark. For instance, it's mentioned at one point that a novel drug has been invented which is "rather like a moderate dose of alcohol or cannabis, but without most of the side effects." Sold in pill form, it has managed to displace alcohol as the social drug of choice within a few decades after its introduction. Yes -- people just stopped drinking and said goodbye to thousands of years of built-up culture surrounding the preparation and consumption of alcohol and the enjoyment of its flavor. Elsewhere we hear that a new surgical technique can treat gender dysphoria by changing the brain's gender rather than the body, and that 20% of patients choose this option rather than conventional sex reassignment surgery. Barring some sort of radical change in how people view their minds and bodies (and there is no evidence that such a change has happened in the Distress world), who would want to change their mind (their self!) to fit their body when the opposite change is equally feasible?
In both of these cases, Egan errs in the direction of assuming that people will happily adopt new technologies simply because they're there, or because they're impressive as engineering feats. More broadly, I'd say Egan is just a bit too excited about science and technology. It's not that that excitement is a bad thing -- it's infectious (as a grad student who recently started working on a new scientific project, I found this book actively inspiring), and it causes no problems so long as Egan is writing about characters who have a similar passion. When he erroneously generalizes this to the whole of society, though, it produces glaring glitches like the above.
When Egan actively chooses to address the existence of people who lack passion for science, he errs in a somewhat different way. In the world of Distress, public resentment towards science has coalesced into a set of organizations that oppose scientific progress, derisively referred to by their opponents as "the Ignorance Cults." Among the Cults are Mystical Renaissance, an amalgamation of new age and mystical beliefs, and Humble Science!, a radicalized outgrowth of academic science studies and humanistic arguments against scientism. Members of both groups are in the habit of saying things like (as one member of Mystical Renaissance says to a brilliant South African theoretical physicist) "It seems to me that your whole approach to these issues reflects a male, Western, reductionist, left-brained mode of thought. How can you possibly reconcile this with your struggle as an African woman against cultural imperialism?" My objection isn't that there aren't people in the real world who say things like this -- cf. Sandra "Newton's Principia is a rape manual" Harding and Luce "we have no good theory of turbulence because men can't understand things that flow" Irigaray -- it's that they're mostly confined to academia and are viewed with derision by the (small) subset of the general public that is aware of them. Public resentment of science is a real thing, but if it were to assume some explicitly codified form, it wouldn't look like this. The only time these pseudo-feminist criticisms of science only get heard outside of academia is when they're quoted by ideologues who want to use them as a brush with which to tar all "feminists" or "professors" or "intellectuals" -- and this propaganda works only because these views seems self-evidently absurd to the average person. It's hard not to feel like Egan has been taken in by someone's propaganda, and has greatly overestimated the size of these views' natural audience. (It's possible that this is an artifact of the fact that this book was published in 1995 -- a year before the Sokal Hoax -- when tensions between science and the humanities were high in a way I don't think they are now.) Egan's enthusiasm for science leaves him unable to imagine reasonable critics of science; his anti-science characters come off as absurd caricatures because to him the idea of criticizing science is pretty much absurd in itself. (Too strong? Probably. Egan does introduce a sociologist character who seems to serve as a token representative of reasonable criticisms of science. But then, she disappears from the story almost immediately . . . )
As usual, I've spent a lot more time writing about a book's flaws than its virtues. Flaws are concrete and easy to describe; virtues are nebulous and slippery. But it's a very good book, and I'm very curious what the rest of Egan's oeuvre is like.
Of this novel's virtues, the most important to me is that its plot is driven by scientific and philosophical concepts. Too much science fiction works the other way around -- the author begins by inventing whatever magical plot device they need, and then proceeds to "justify" it by sprinkling their prose with a ritual offering of Science Words ("tachyons," "nanomachines," "quantum effects"). Some authors perform this routine at a very high level of sophistication, and even take care to make their fairy-dustings scientifically accurate, as far as that is possible . . . but there's still an unavoidable and unpleasant residue left by the brute fact that science is being used as a post hoc justification rather than a domain of knowledge to be explored and played with. Egan, on the other hand, writes science fiction about real science -- not just in the sense that it's accurate enough to satisfy the rules lawyer types within SF fandom, but in the sense that scientific ideas are the seed from which the rest of his novel grows. Most of Distress takes place at a theoretical physics conference; several of the main characters are scientists or science journalists; all of the key plot twists are revelations of a scientific or philosophical nature. Science isn't a pretext for space battles or glorified wizardry here. It's what the story is about.
On top of all that, Distress is a good novel in many other senses. It's very readable, and the prose and characterization are better than you'd expect from a hard SF writer. The pace is fast but not frenzied. The plot is well-constructed, with various sub-plots that link together in a pleasing fashion (as Cozma Shalizi put it, "I don't think I've ever read a book which more perfectly obeyed Chekov's Pistol Principle"). It's a book with a whole lot of cool stuff in it, from a bioengineered anarchist utopia to the most abstract and mind-twisting apocalypse I've ever seen in fiction.
If there's something I don't like about Egan, it's that his extrapolations of science into the human sphere are very hit-and-miss. This is distinct from his actual grasp of science, and from his actual character writing, both of which are very good. But his predictions of how society would respond to new scientific and technological advances are sometimes wildly off the mark. For instance, it's mentioned at one point that a novel drug has been invented which is "rather like a moderate dose of alcohol or cannabis, but without most of the side effects." Sold in pill form, it has managed to displace alcohol as the social drug of choice within a few decades after its introduction. Yes -- people just stopped drinking and said goodbye to thousands of years of built-up culture surrounding the preparation and consumption of alcohol and the enjoyment of its flavor. Elsewhere we hear that a new surgical technique can treat gender dysphoria by changing the brain's gender rather than the body, and that 20% of patients choose this option rather than conventional sex reassignment surgery. Barring some sort of radical change in how people view their minds and bodies (and there is no evidence that such a change has happened in the Distress world), who would want to change their mind (their self!) to fit their body when the opposite change is equally feasible?
In both of these cases, Egan errs in the direction of assuming that people will happily adopt new technologies simply because they're there, or because they're impressive as engineering feats. More broadly, I'd say Egan is just a bit too excited about science and technology. It's not that that excitement is a bad thing -- it's infectious (as a grad student who recently started working on a new scientific project, I found this book actively inspiring), and it causes no problems so long as Egan is writing about characters who have a similar passion. When he erroneously generalizes this to the whole of society, though, it produces glaring glitches like the above.
When Egan actively chooses to address the existence of people who lack passion for science, he errs in a somewhat different way. In the world of Distress, public resentment towards science has coalesced into a set of organizations that oppose scientific progress, derisively referred to by their opponents as "the Ignorance Cults." Among the Cults are Mystical Renaissance, an amalgamation of new age and mystical beliefs, and Humble Science!, a radicalized outgrowth of academic science studies and humanistic arguments against scientism. Members of both groups are in the habit of saying things like (as one member of Mystical Renaissance says to a brilliant South African theoretical physicist) "It seems to me that your whole approach to these issues reflects a male, Western, reductionist, left-brained mode of thought. How can you possibly reconcile this with your struggle as an African woman against cultural imperialism?" My objection isn't that there aren't people in the real world who say things like this -- cf. Sandra "Newton's Principia is a rape manual" Harding and Luce "we have no good theory of turbulence because men can't understand things that flow" Irigaray -- it's that they're mostly confined to academia and are viewed with derision by the (small) subset of the general public that is aware of them. Public resentment of science is a real thing, but if it were to assume some explicitly codified form, it wouldn't look like this. The only time these pseudo-feminist criticisms of science only get heard outside of academia is when they're quoted by ideologues who want to use them as a brush with which to tar all "feminists" or "professors" or "intellectuals" -- and this propaganda works only because these views seems self-evidently absurd to the average person. It's hard not to feel like Egan has been taken in by someone's propaganda, and has greatly overestimated the size of these views' natural audience. (It's possible that this is an artifact of the fact that this book was published in 1995 -- a year before the Sokal Hoax -- when tensions between science and the humanities were high in a way I don't think they are now.) Egan's enthusiasm for science leaves him unable to imagine reasonable critics of science; his anti-science characters come off as absurd caricatures because to him the idea of criticizing science is pretty much absurd in itself. (Too strong? Probably. Egan does introduce a sociologist character who seems to serve as a token representative of reasonable criticisms of science. But then, she disappears from the story almost immediately . . . )
As usual, I've spent a lot more time writing about a book's flaws than its virtues. Flaws are concrete and easy to describe; virtues are nebulous and slippery. But it's a very good book, and I'm very curious what the rest of Egan's oeuvre is like.
August 23, 2023
I think I'll dispense with the plot summary this time - if you like Egan, you've read a review or two by now. If not, look nearby. And if you missed this one: boy, are you in for a ride!
What I'll try to convey instead - since the reviews I saw didn't - is a sense of the richness and density of invention here. Egan is one of our very best, and he's playing the hard-sf game with a taut net and a wicked backhand...
"Distress" is a look at Vinge's Singularity from a very different perspective. Egan's imagination never flags: a constant flow of ideas, rich and strange, layered in baroque complexity. Half a dozen places where the hair rose up on the back of my neck... I don't know about you folks, but this is why I keep reading this stuff.
This is a much more accessible work than many of his later ones.
* * *
"A spasm passed thru the victim's body. A temporary pacemaker was forcing his damaged heart to beat - operating at power levels that would poison every cardiac muscle fiber with electrochemical by-products, in 15 or 20 minutes at the most. Pre-oxygenated ersatz blood was being fed to his heart's left atrium, in lieu of a supply from the lungs, pumped thru the body once only, then removed via the pulmonary arteries and discarded. An open system was less trouble than recirculation, in the short term. The half-repaired knife wounds in his abdomen and torso made a mess, leaking thin scarlet fluid into the drainage channels of the operating table..."
It's 2055. Reporter Andrew Worth is covering the temporary revival of a murder victim.
"His expression shifted rapidly; thru the pain there was a sudden flashof pure astonishment, then almost amused comprehension of the full strangeness - and maybe even the perverse virtuosity - of feat to which he'd been subjected. For an instant, he really did look like someone admiring a brilliant, vicious, bloody practical joke... Then Daniel Cavolini... began to scream. I watched as they pumped him full of morphine, and waited for the revival drugs to finish him off."
* * *
" My pharm programmed a small skin patch on my shoulder to release carefully-timed and calibrated doses of melatonin, or a melatonin-blocker - adding to, or subtracting from, the usual biochemical signal produced by my pineal gland... I woke up every morning from 5 hours
of enriched REM sleep, as wide-eyed and energetic as a hyperactive child... I wouldn't so much as yawn until 11:45, but 15 minutes later, I'd go out like a light... I'd tried caffeine a few times; it made me believe I was focused and energetic, but it turned my judgement to shit. Widespread use of caffeine explained a lot about the 20th century..."
* * *
"...when we undressed and fell into bed together, and my vision lurched, I thought it was just a side-effect of passion. When my arms went numb, I realized what was happening... Stricken, I said, "I don't believe this. I'm sorry." ... I forced myself to concentrate; I reached over and hit a button on the pharm. "Give me half an hour."
"No. Safety limits - "
"Fifteen minutes," I pleaded. This is an emergency..."
"There is no emergency. You're safe in bed..."
--and we're only up to page 43! What more can I say? An astonishingly good book, absolutely not to be missed.
2023 reread notes: still first-rate, but confusing ending. Hasn't aged particularly well.
What I'll try to convey instead - since the reviews I saw didn't - is a sense of the richness and density of invention here. Egan is one of our very best, and he's playing the hard-sf game with a taut net and a wicked backhand...
"Distress" is a look at Vinge's Singularity from a very different perspective. Egan's imagination never flags: a constant flow of ideas, rich and strange, layered in baroque complexity. Half a dozen places where the hair rose up on the back of my neck... I don't know about you folks, but this is why I keep reading this stuff.
This is a much more accessible work than many of his later ones.
* * *
"A spasm passed thru the victim's body. A temporary pacemaker was forcing his damaged heart to beat - operating at power levels that would poison every cardiac muscle fiber with electrochemical by-products, in 15 or 20 minutes at the most. Pre-oxygenated ersatz blood was being fed to his heart's left atrium, in lieu of a supply from the lungs, pumped thru the body once only, then removed via the pulmonary arteries and discarded. An open system was less trouble than recirculation, in the short term. The half-repaired knife wounds in his abdomen and torso made a mess, leaking thin scarlet fluid into the drainage channels of the operating table..."
It's 2055. Reporter Andrew Worth is covering the temporary revival of a murder victim.
"His expression shifted rapidly; thru the pain there was a sudden flashof pure astonishment, then almost amused comprehension of the full strangeness - and maybe even the perverse virtuosity - of feat to which he'd been subjected. For an instant, he really did look like someone admiring a brilliant, vicious, bloody practical joke... Then Daniel Cavolini... began to scream. I watched as they pumped him full of morphine, and waited for the revival drugs to finish him off."
* * *
" My pharm programmed a small skin patch on my shoulder to release carefully-timed and calibrated doses of melatonin, or a melatonin-blocker - adding to, or subtracting from, the usual biochemical signal produced by my pineal gland... I woke up every morning from 5 hours
of enriched REM sleep, as wide-eyed and energetic as a hyperactive child... I wouldn't so much as yawn until 11:45, but 15 minutes later, I'd go out like a light... I'd tried caffeine a few times; it made me believe I was focused and energetic, but it turned my judgement to shit. Widespread use of caffeine explained a lot about the 20th century..."
* * *
"...when we undressed and fell into bed together, and my vision lurched, I thought it was just a side-effect of passion. When my arms went numb, I realized what was happening... Stricken, I said, "I don't believe this. I'm sorry." ... I forced myself to concentrate; I reached over and hit a button on the pharm. "Give me half an hour."
"No. Safety limits - "
"Fifteen minutes," I pleaded. This is an emergency..."
"There is no emergency. You're safe in bed..."
--and we're only up to page 43! What more can I say? An astonishingly good book, absolutely not to be missed.
2023 reread notes: still first-rate, but confusing ending. Hasn't aged particularly well.
November 29, 2021
This is my third Egan, and I can say categorically that he’s good at triggering strong reactions. I loved Quarantine (review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) and hated Permutation City (review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). He starts rigorously with cutting-edge science and theory and then projects ramifications and future state advances in highly speculative fashion.
Each of his books deals with a different primary pillar of science. Quarantine dealt with quantum physics and the Copenhagan Interpretation while Permutation City was heavily focused on cyberspace and artificial intelligence. Distress is primarily about genetics and bio engineering with a dose of quantum physics to boot. In focusing on genetics, it’s also significantly about gender and the future fluidity thereof.
Science fiction faces one big challenge these days, and that is that if you look closely you can see society regressing not progressing. In that regard, dystopian apocalyptic books, even the abstract fantastical kind, are more aligned with where civilization seems to be going rather than a future of technological advancement and technological dependence. Given global warming and the easy rise of fascist right wing power in the largest pseudo-Democracy on the planet, it’s not hard to envision the world falling into Medieval collapse and bare subsistence living for the few stragglers that can survive extreme temperatures and environments. Perhaps homo sapiens will reemerge centuries later. That is, unless we all get wiped out by nukes which is always still a possibility. For me any book that projects forward high end technology over the next century has to somehow explain how the resources can be mined and built into this system without collapsing the world into environmental disaster. Cold fusion? Aliens give us free energy source? Whatever arbitrary solution is provided…well, it risks seeming arbitrary and in that regard fails to allow us to see a reflection forward from where we are right now.
That’s the biggest challenge to my mind, and applying a similar analogy, Distress gets off to a bad start by focusing on the science of far-future bio-engineering. Here we sit barely able to fend off a single virus from collapsing society and Egan has entire island nations built up through bio-engineered microorganisms. And humans bio-engineering their bodies across infinite styles of appearance and gender. While back in reality, we have vaccine denial and general science denial having an overwhelming affect on the trajectory of our society despite it being a relative minority opinion. It’s a loud violent opinion and has a disproportionate affect for multiple reasons. In other words, Distress gets off on the wrong foot for me by being seemly irrelevant.
On the other hand, the social future Egan envisions was not completely offbase. He imagines the world broken up into hundreds perhaps thousands of cultural tribes, each living within still existent nations, but driven by their tribes ideology. Think Proud Boys and the MAGA cult but more diverse. And much as we see now, each tribe lives in their own cultural bubble with their own news and way and looking at the world. While the background he creates to get there, felt off, this cultural critique does have quite a lot of validity. Egan also spends a lot of content exploring gender theory as well, in a future where it’s much easier than now to change your physical body. These topics were interesting, but I wish it was actually more of the focus of the story than the other elements of bio-engineering.
Lastly, the entire bio-engineering science ends up leading into a “theory of everything” on the quantum side, which circles back to Quarantine, by projecting a different radical interpretation of the Copenhagan Interpretation. It’s an interesting conclusion and shows the malleability of interpreting science. It provides drama and “big thinking” in the finale, but in some ways I found it a distraction from the evaluation of the effects of bio-engineering. Perhaps trying too hard…if a clever, epic ending.
All in all, Egan is an intriguing writer of ideas. Don’t read him for characters. Even his plots can feel somewhat abstract. Read him to make you think and to be inspired by big concepts.
Each of his books deals with a different primary pillar of science. Quarantine dealt with quantum physics and the Copenhagan Interpretation while Permutation City was heavily focused on cyberspace and artificial intelligence. Distress is primarily about genetics and bio engineering with a dose of quantum physics to boot. In focusing on genetics, it’s also significantly about gender and the future fluidity thereof.
Science fiction faces one big challenge these days, and that is that if you look closely you can see society regressing not progressing. In that regard, dystopian apocalyptic books, even the abstract fantastical kind, are more aligned with where civilization seems to be going rather than a future of technological advancement and technological dependence. Given global warming and the easy rise of fascist right wing power in the largest pseudo-Democracy on the planet, it’s not hard to envision the world falling into Medieval collapse and bare subsistence living for the few stragglers that can survive extreme temperatures and environments. Perhaps homo sapiens will reemerge centuries later. That is, unless we all get wiped out by nukes which is always still a possibility. For me any book that projects forward high end technology over the next century has to somehow explain how the resources can be mined and built into this system without collapsing the world into environmental disaster. Cold fusion? Aliens give us free energy source? Whatever arbitrary solution is provided…well, it risks seeming arbitrary and in that regard fails to allow us to see a reflection forward from where we are right now.
That’s the biggest challenge to my mind, and applying a similar analogy, Distress gets off to a bad start by focusing on the science of far-future bio-engineering. Here we sit barely able to fend off a single virus from collapsing society and Egan has entire island nations built up through bio-engineered microorganisms. And humans bio-engineering their bodies across infinite styles of appearance and gender. While back in reality, we have vaccine denial and general science denial having an overwhelming affect on the trajectory of our society despite it being a relative minority opinion. It’s a loud violent opinion and has a disproportionate affect for multiple reasons. In other words, Distress gets off on the wrong foot for me by being seemly irrelevant.
On the other hand, the social future Egan envisions was not completely offbase. He imagines the world broken up into hundreds perhaps thousands of cultural tribes, each living within still existent nations, but driven by their tribes ideology. Think Proud Boys and the MAGA cult but more diverse. And much as we see now, each tribe lives in their own cultural bubble with their own news and way and looking at the world. While the background he creates to get there, felt off, this cultural critique does have quite a lot of validity. Egan also spends a lot of content exploring gender theory as well, in a future where it’s much easier than now to change your physical body. These topics were interesting, but I wish it was actually more of the focus of the story than the other elements of bio-engineering.
Lastly, the entire bio-engineering science ends up leading into a “theory of everything” on the quantum side, which circles back to Quarantine, by projecting a different radical interpretation of the Copenhagan Interpretation. It’s an interesting conclusion and shows the malleability of interpreting science. It provides drama and “big thinking” in the finale, but in some ways I found it a distraction from the evaluation of the effects of bio-engineering. Perhaps trying too hard…if a clever, epic ending.
All in all, Egan is an intriguing writer of ideas. Don’t read him for characters. Even his plots can feel somewhat abstract. Read him to make you think and to be inspired by big concepts.
August 20, 2018
In a lot of ways, this is exactly what I hunt for in SF in general. Give me hard science, slather me in a hundred beautiful hard-science ideas, blow me away with high-tech biotech, computer science... and especially the hardcore physics geekery.
Mind you, this isn't any kind of soft cookie full of throwaway made-up terms. Egan goes for the jugular and explores as much science and possible science and fully-realized future societies changed by total control. Or somewhat total control. Lots of magic bullets for diseases and gene-editing and living by photosynthesis and hardware augments of all kinds including built-in video recording... such as that our MC uses as a reporter.
And all this is just a sweet setup for the beginning of the novel before he switches tracks from biotech to pure physics.
But wait, isn't that a bit too much for readers to digest? Concept after concept?
Oh, sure, probably, but I'm one of those readers who LOVE to be slathered in concepts and be blown away by smarts. :)
Once the novel switches from bio to physics and the hunt for the Theory Of Everything, things get wacky. The part of the world he's sent to is all kinds of Anarcho-syndicalism and what seems to be cults springing up around these leading scientists who are hot on the trail for not just the Grand Unified Theory, but the math model that encompasses everything. They're treating these theoreticians like gods. Or prophets. Or saints.
...And for a rather interesting reason.
This is a novel of Consensual Reality. :) They believe that whoever reaches the most popular model of reality will thereby CREATE that reality. It's a cool-as-hell idea supported by none other than REAL QUANTUM THEORIES. :)
And so we're thrown into a thriller that leads to chaos and warfare, political intrigue, religious nuttery, and no little exploration of sex in the rest of the pot.
I had a great time! I think this was my favorite of Greg Egan's Subjective Cosmology trilogy. Now, I should mention that the trilogy isn't a true trilogy in normal terms. They're a trilogy in theme only. They are very much standalone novels that don't intersect except in the Grand Idea and how much can be delved.
Honestly, I'm kinda blown away here. I expected him to be a rather decent author, but not one who is this adept at so many different fields of study and doesn't mind going wild (or brave) with the Big Ideas.
I've just gone from fan to fanboy. It took a few novels, but once I discovered how much depth and breadth he's willing to go across these few books, I'm honestly amazed. :)
So yeah. I think I'm going to go wild reading everything he's got.
Mind you, this isn't any kind of soft cookie full of throwaway made-up terms. Egan goes for the jugular and explores as much science and possible science and fully-realized future societies changed by total control. Or somewhat total control. Lots of magic bullets for diseases and gene-editing and living by photosynthesis and hardware augments of all kinds including built-in video recording... such as that our MC uses as a reporter.
And all this is just a sweet setup for the beginning of the novel before he switches tracks from biotech to pure physics.
But wait, isn't that a bit too much for readers to digest? Concept after concept?
Oh, sure, probably, but I'm one of those readers who LOVE to be slathered in concepts and be blown away by smarts. :)
Once the novel switches from bio to physics and the hunt for the Theory Of Everything, things get wacky. The part of the world he's sent to is all kinds of Anarcho-syndicalism and what seems to be cults springing up around these leading scientists who are hot on the trail for not just the Grand Unified Theory, but the math model that encompasses everything. They're treating these theoreticians like gods. Or prophets. Or saints.
...And for a rather interesting reason.
This is a novel of Consensual Reality. :) They believe that whoever reaches the most popular model of reality will thereby CREATE that reality. It's a cool-as-hell idea supported by none other than REAL QUANTUM THEORIES. :)
And so we're thrown into a thriller that leads to chaos and warfare, political intrigue, religious nuttery, and no little exploration of sex in the rest of the pot.
I had a great time! I think this was my favorite of Greg Egan's Subjective Cosmology trilogy. Now, I should mention that the trilogy isn't a true trilogy in normal terms. They're a trilogy in theme only. They are very much standalone novels that don't intersect except in the Grand Idea and how much can be delved.
Honestly, I'm kinda blown away here. I expected him to be a rather decent author, but not one who is this adept at so many different fields of study and doesn't mind going wild (or brave) with the Big Ideas.
I've just gone from fan to fanboy. It took a few novels, but once I discovered how much depth and breadth he's willing to go across these few books, I'm honestly amazed. :)
So yeah. I think I'm going to go wild reading everything he's got.
July 23, 2011
This one was too much for my poor old brain. After a razzledazzle first chapter which jumped out of the page and danced me around the room yelling in my ears all the while, it settled dowm to a steady bombardment of heavy heavy scientific concepts which may or may not make sense to some folks but left me burbling and drooling slightly
This is what I mean:
The whole point of moving beyond the Standard Unified Field Theory is that, one, it's an ugly mess, and two, you have to feed ten completely arbitrary parameters into the equations to make them work. Melting total space into pre-space—moving to an All-Topologies Model—gets rid of the ugliness and the arbitrary nature of the SUFT. But following that step by tinkering with the way you integrate across all the topologies of pre-space—excluding certain topologies for no good reason, throwing out one measure and adopting a new one whenever you don't like the answers you're getting— seems like a retrograde step to me. And instead of 'setting the dials' of the SUFT machine to ten arbitrary numbers, you now have a sleek black box with no visible controls, apparently self-contained—but in reality,you're just opening it up and tearing out every internal component which offends you, to much the same effect."
"Okay. So how do you get around that?"
Mosala said.
"I believe we have to take a difficult stand and declare: the probabilities just don't matter. Forget the hypothetical ensemble of other universes. Forget the need to fine-tune the Big Bang. This universe does exist..."
This is SF for scientists. I prefer SF where all you have to do is say "wow" loudly every twenty minutes.
This is what I mean:
The whole point of moving beyond the Standard Unified Field Theory is that, one, it's an ugly mess, and two, you have to feed ten completely arbitrary parameters into the equations to make them work. Melting total space into pre-space—moving to an All-Topologies Model—gets rid of the ugliness and the arbitrary nature of the SUFT. But following that step by tinkering with the way you integrate across all the topologies of pre-space—excluding certain topologies for no good reason, throwing out one measure and adopting a new one whenever you don't like the answers you're getting— seems like a retrograde step to me. And instead of 'setting the dials' of the SUFT machine to ten arbitrary numbers, you now have a sleek black box with no visible controls, apparently self-contained—but in reality,you're just opening it up and tearing out every internal component which offends you, to much the same effect."
"Okay. So how do you get around that?"
Mosala said.
"I believe we have to take a difficult stand and declare: the probabilities just don't matter. Forget the hypothetical ensemble of other universes. Forget the need to fine-tune the Big Bang. This universe does exist..."
This is SF for scientists. I prefer SF where all you have to do is say "wow" loudly every twenty minutes.
June 30, 2021
Siamo nel futuro non troppo lontano, il mondo è ipertecnologico, le biotecniche sono da tutte le parti in ogni attimo della vita umana. Un giornalista, viene inviato in un luogo della Terra misterioso, per documentare la più sorprendente delle scoperte, anzi la...
Distress è un romanzo fantascientifico con forti connotazioni scientifiche quali: matematica, astrofisica, biologia, chimica, intrecciate per dar vita a quel mistero che dovrebbe essere la teoria del tutto, cioè quella teoria, in fase di studio e di analisi, che riunificherebbe tutti fenomeni fisici in un unico quadro.
La lettura non è semplice, come con tutti i libri di Egan, l'autore non è quello scrittore che prende per mano il lettore e l'accompagna nell'avventura che è appena uscita dalla sua penna. Al contrario, Egan, letteralmente, mette su carta un'esplosione di nozioni e riflessioni su di esse, di "strabilianti" mondi futuri ipertecnologici e interrogativi sull'esistenza, sulla vita ed il lettore deve barcamenarsi come può, il risultato, per me, è stupefacente, straordinario!
Ci sono spunti di riflessione sociale e filosofica ad ogni pagina, ci sarebbero una miriade di citazioni da fare, ma non basterebbe un libro di 200 pagine...
Distress è un romanzo fantascientifico con forti connotazioni scientifiche quali: matematica, astrofisica, biologia, chimica, intrecciate per dar vita a quel mistero che dovrebbe essere la teoria del tutto, cioè quella teoria, in fase di studio e di analisi, che riunificherebbe tutti fenomeni fisici in un unico quadro.
La lettura non è semplice, come con tutti i libri di Egan, l'autore non è quello scrittore che prende per mano il lettore e l'accompagna nell'avventura che è appena uscita dalla sua penna. Al contrario, Egan, letteralmente, mette su carta un'esplosione di nozioni e riflessioni su di esse, di "strabilianti" mondi futuri ipertecnologici e interrogativi sull'esistenza, sulla vita ed il lettore deve barcamenarsi come può, il risultato, per me, è stupefacente, straordinario!
Ci sono spunti di riflessione sociale e filosofica ad ogni pagina, ci sarebbero una miriade di citazioni da fare, ma non basterebbe un libro di 200 pagine...
March 4, 2022
Greg Egan knows how to WOW! Not only does he introduce and explain some interesting and challenging ideas in Distress but then he writes the book in a way that has the characters and different scenes model these concepts, it’s staggering in its awesomeness. Distress has a positive and uplifting ending which is refreshing because I usually read cynical dark stuff.
April 13, 2007
Holy cow. There have been only a few books that have caused my brain to start shorting out and cause me to go into a weird spiritual state where I actual feel some connection to some university unity.
They are:
Zero: understanding how our understanding of math helped us understand our place in the universe
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: Trying to keep up with the word games around quality and duality in this book was astounding.
Why God Won't go away: a book that explains the four states of over/understimulation that causes spiritual experiences.
And this book.
Believe it or not, after hitting the point where Egan reveals his big idea, that not only is there a special role in the universe for the observer, but that a special Observer actually instantiates the universe, creating a history and future from that moment in time was... Wow. That's a big idea.
Later that night, I woke up convinced that the puppy my then girlfriend/now wife just got was The One, and that she instantiated the universe. I swear that I actually thought the puppy was glowing, and my wife tells me that I was babbling nonsense about how our puppy Ginger was "the One" and that "she sees and knows all."
Although I know Ginger in unlikely to be really The One, it doesn't detract from the fact that I had a genuine spiritual experience. All from reading a novel and getting my brain overstimulated.
How cool is that?
They are:
Zero: understanding how our understanding of math helped us understand our place in the universe
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: Trying to keep up with the word games around quality and duality in this book was astounding.
Why God Won't go away: a book that explains the four states of over/understimulation that causes spiritual experiences.
And this book.
Believe it or not, after hitting the point where Egan reveals his big idea, that not only is there a special role in the universe for the observer, but that a special Observer actually instantiates the universe, creating a history and future from that moment in time was... Wow. That's a big idea.
Later that night, I woke up convinced that the puppy my then girlfriend/now wife just got was The One, and that she instantiated the universe. I swear that I actually thought the puppy was glowing, and my wife tells me that I was babbling nonsense about how our puppy Ginger was "the One" and that "she sees and knows all."
Although I know Ginger in unlikely to be really The One, it doesn't detract from the fact that I had a genuine spiritual experience. All from reading a novel and getting my brain overstimulated.
How cool is that?
February 14, 2021
очередная книга Игана — и снова блестящая. на сей раз повествование затрагивает три пласта:
а) личный: что такое интимность, близость и взаимопонимание. тема классическая, но красиво подвязана в финале.
б) социальный: основная часть действия происходит на пиратском анкап-острове, созданном учёными, сбежавшими из крупных корпораций. корпорации запатентовали всё на свете, включая геномы всей (или почти всей) еды в мире, а пираты, соответственно, борются за освобождение технологий от гнета корпоративного авторского права. вопрос о том, как будут работать суды, не рассматривается, и в целом автор немного соскальзывает с самых интересных вопросов (некоторые интересные аспекты анкапа обсуждаются, но в конечном итоге многое сводится к позиции главного героя «пока работает, но как-то хз, мне кажется, что долго это продержаться не может»). и всё равно сеттинг интересный и подан неглупо.
в) фундаментальный. сюжет книги строится вокруг конференции, где должны быть представлена теория всего — система уравнений, наконец-то описывающая *все* законы физики. но Иган задаётся вопросом: а что, если информация не вторична относительно физики (то есть учёные не пытаются описать непреложную данность), а он�� находятся в равновесии? допустим, Вселенная начинает существовать только в тот момент, когда её *полностью объяснили*, и с этого момента развивается и в будущее, и в прошлое. получается, все мы, живущие до этого часа икс, всё равно его следствие. в таком мире Вселенная — это и есть описывающие её уравнения, а вся громоздкая физическая реальность — лишь механизм их экспликации, огромный экспериментальный котёл, в котором физические законы на самом деле неконсистентны, а перебивают варианты, пока кто-нибудь не сочинит им стабильную конфигурацию.
мне ��равится, что здесь снова появляется (звучавшая в «Диаспоре») идея «математических шахт» — представление, что даже если некая формула (то есть, по сути, логическая конструкция) возможна, её ещё нужно построить, а этот процесс может быть настолько долгим и сложным, что потребует нарастить вокруг себя целый физический мир. (без скидки на пропускную способность человеческого мозга, ведь в этой истории Вселенная формулирует — а точнее, эксплицирует — сама себя.)
не нравится, что Иган сакрализует сознание без внятных пояснений, почему именно и чем же оно отличается от всего остального в мире. но книга всё равно, без сомнения, замечательная.
а) личный: что такое интимность, близость и взаимопонимание. тема классическая, но красиво подвязана в финале.
б) социальный: основная часть действия происходит на пиратском анкап-острове, созданном учёными, сбежавшими из крупных корпораций. корпорации запатентовали всё на свете, включая геномы всей (или почти всей) еды в мире, а пираты, соответственно, борются за освобождение технологий от гнета корпоративного авторского права. вопрос о том, как будут работать суды, не рассматривается, и в целом автор немного соскальзывает с самых интересных вопросов (некоторые интересные аспекты анкапа обсуждаются, но в конечном итоге многое сводится к позиции главного героя «пока работает, но как-то хз, мне кажется, что долго это продержаться не может»). и всё равно сеттинг интересный и подан неглупо.
в) фундаментальный. сюжет книги строится вокруг конференции, где должны быть представлена теория всего — система уравнений, наконец-то описывающая *все* законы физики. но Иган задаётся вопросом: а что, если информация не вторична относительно физики (то есть учёные не пытаются описать непреложную данность), а он�� находятся в равновесии? допустим, Вселенная начинает существовать только в тот момент, когда её *полностью объяснили*, и с этого момента развивается и в будущее, и в прошлое. получается, все мы, живущие до этого часа икс, всё равно его следствие. в таком мире Вселенная — это и есть описывающие её уравнения, а вся громоздкая физическая реальность — лишь механизм их экспликации, огромный экспериментальный котёл, в котором физические законы на самом деле неконсистентны, а перебивают варианты, пока кто-нибудь не сочинит им стабильную конфигурацию.
мне ��равится, что здесь снова появляется (звучавшая в «Диаспоре») идея «математических шахт» — представление, что даже если некая формула (то есть, по сути, логическая конструкция) возможна, её ещё нужно построить, а этот процесс может быть настолько долгим и сложным, что потребует нарастить вокруг себя целый физический мир. (без скидки на пропускную способность человеческого мозга, ведь в этой истории Вселенная формулирует — а точнее, эксплицирует — сама себя.)
не нравится, что Иган сакрализует сознание без внятных пояснений, почему именно и чем же оно отличается от всего остального в мире. но книга всё равно, без сомнения, замечательная.
February 23, 2016
I really don’t know how to approach “Distress”. The novel is just so completely full of everything utterly brilliant that writing a reader review on it seems a task tragically overwhelming. Greg Egan is perhaps the best sci-fi author out there, and this is a wonderful tour de force even from him.
The novel is basically a cosmological thriller(!) about a summit where the accurate ultimate Theory of Everything aka TOE is expected to emerge. The protagonist is Andrew Worth, a science journalist who journeys to the summit in order to write a spotlight feature on Violet Mosala, one of the three competing cosmologists about to present their soon perfected TOE. At the same time, an odd mental disease is emerging randomly all across the world, the symptom being a total loss of subjective reality.
Egan writes in his usual, beautifully literal and rich manner, building his characters complex and fascinating. His psychological insight is unparalleled but even more so is his ability of making high level scientific speculation read like a thriller. I couldn’t believe how many brilliant ideas he used here. It felt almost wasteful, because there were enough creative concepts in this one single novel to easily produce a shelf of substantial books.
Egan tickles your brain on every page, causing the reader to go into a hyperactive mode of philosophical pondering and unending curiosity. When he then takes all this and puts it into geopolitical, sociological and societal context we end up with an absolute masterpiece.
The novel is basically a cosmological thriller(!) about a summit where the accurate ultimate Theory of Everything aka TOE is expected to emerge. The protagonist is Andrew Worth, a science journalist who journeys to the summit in order to write a spotlight feature on Violet Mosala, one of the three competing cosmologists about to present their soon perfected TOE. At the same time, an odd mental disease is emerging randomly all across the world, the symptom being a total loss of subjective reality.
Egan writes in his usual, beautifully literal and rich manner, building his characters complex and fascinating. His psychological insight is unparalleled but even more so is his ability of making high level scientific speculation read like a thriller. I couldn’t believe how many brilliant ideas he used here. It felt almost wasteful, because there were enough creative concepts in this one single novel to easily produce a shelf of substantial books.
Egan tickles your brain on every page, causing the reader to go into a hyperactive mode of philosophical pondering and unending curiosity. When he then takes all this and puts it into geopolitical, sociological and societal context we end up with an absolute masterpiece.
January 27, 2021
I love the idea that we live in a simulation. Problem is, it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion about it. Experience has taught me that when I write/say, “our universe is a simulation,” other people’s minds go to a much different (and sillier) place than mine. They tend to picture a giant row of supercomputers - or maybe even a planetary computer - and think, “Ah, our universe is being run as software on something like that.”
And to be completely fair, it’s kinda like, well what else does it mean that our universe is a simulation? But when I use that phrase, what I really mean is something like, “If I were to design a simulated universe to achieve some aim, it would look remarkably similar to ours.” For example:
1] Classical computer architecture use several data highways (called a ‘bus’) that handle data transfer between the computer’s different parts. For example, the FSB (Front-side Bus) controls data transfer between the CPU and the memory. It’s extremely important that all these elements maintain synchronicity with each other. While the CPU and memory can (and do) run faster than the FSB, the bus-speed is the speed limit of any data transfer between the two.
The universe also has a speed limit of information transfer between different systems: the speed of light. Which is important, just as it is with the system bus. A universe without a constant speed for information transfer would have serious problems with synchronicity and causality.
2] Graphical rendering engines all have various techniques to deal with changing Level-Of-Detail (LOD). For example, if the camera/player is close to trees, those trees might be rendered in full detail with a million polygons. If, however, the trees are very far away, they might be rendered as a “billboard” - a 2d picture - with no geometry whatsoever. Engines do this in order to lessen computational workloads. If the trees are so far away that the player can’t even tell the difference between a simple billboard and fully rendered geometry… then why tax the system with unnecessary rendering?
Likewise, one of the enduring problems of quantum mechanics is that the universe appears to obey different rules at different scales, and we struggle to understand this quantum-classical boundary. Why is it that electrons obey quantum superposition - they exist in multiple locations simultaneously - but that macroscopic objects, like a computer screen or a table, do not?
Well, if you start from the assumption that the universe is a simulation, such a boundary makes perfect sense in terms of LOD. If the universe follows a path of maximal computational efficiency (either because it was designed that way or because extrema are naturally more stable), you would want to render objects only at an observable LOD. It would be far too computationally intensive to fully render every quantum particle in the universe. Indeed, at that point, you don’t really have a “simulation.” You just have… the universe. Instead, you would just render at the LOD to match the perspective of some set of privileged observers.
3] Computer systems have a maximum rendering thoroughput. For example, the new PS5 has a teraflop rating of 10.28. That means it can perform 10.28 trillion math operations per second. So let’s say you’re playing a game and you’re doing something graphically simple, like sitting in a large plain room. The geometry, effects, etc might demand only .17 trillion operations per frame. Since the PS5 can do 10.28 trillion per second, it’s able to render about 60 frames per second.
But suppose you filled your virtual room with objects and explosions and wild physics. Now the various rendering systems demand 1.3 trillion operations per frame. By the same calculation, the PS5 can only render 10 frames per second.
In other words, time is relative between you - sitting outside the tv/computer system - and the simulated scene within the computer. The more complex the scene, the greater the time dilation.
That is similar to how time works in our universe too. If you compare a clock near an area with a high energy density, such as a neutron star or a black hole or even the Earth, with a clock near an area with low energy density, you’ll find that clocks in high density areas run more slowly.
And so on and so forth. But, um, yeah, I should probably get to the actual book review:
You’ll note, throughout the above discussion, I was rather God-agnostic. Accepting the universe as a simulation has minimal relation to religion. It might speak to the Intelligent Designer’s method - or it might just be that stability and computational efficiency naturally go hand-in-hand.
Regardless, in Distress, the universe SHOULD be thought of in terms of informational topology, designed by and driven toward an Omega Point. The Omega Point, if you’re ignorant of the term, takes a view opposite of the Deist’s: God did not create the universe so much as the universe creates God. In Distress, this Omega Point is the first being to grasp a coherent, consistent Theory of Everything, a physics theory that unifies all scales.
That’s basically the setting: a journalist goes to a newly grown island-nation (created by stolen biotechnology) in order to cover a physics conference in which some prominent physicists present and discuss their new Theories of Everything. What follows is a lot of religious, scientific, and political shenanigans.
Honestly, I found that core narrative and core sci-fi conceit relatively lackluster. Not terrible but not up to Egan’s best. I sometimes talk about Egan novels having a “super Egan mode” in which he fully embraces his book’s main sci-fi conceit and goes wild. Never happens here.
But - moreso than any other Egan novel - this book has some of my favorite discussions. I’ve always maintained that Egan, despite being a hard sci-fi writer, has great insight into humanity, and this novel demonstrates it.
One of my favorite discussions involves a news-story the journalist covers, about a group of adults with mild autism, who wish to undergo brain surgery to make themselves MORE autistic. There’s just great line after great line in the whole discussion:
My other favorite discussion occurs between the protagonist and a friend, worth quoting in its entirety:
I don’t necessarily agree with all that, but the pragmatic and moral consequences of the conflict between acceptance and rebellion are something I’ve pondered a long time. Ever since I studied Nietzsche’s “will to power,” practically a direct refutation of Stoicism.
Which is to say, I read in order to learn, to have my thoughts provoked, if not titillated. And in that respect, Distress has served this reader well.
And to be completely fair, it’s kinda like, well what else does it mean that our universe is a simulation? But when I use that phrase, what I really mean is something like, “If I were to design a simulated universe to achieve some aim, it would look remarkably similar to ours.” For example:
1] Classical computer architecture use several data highways (called a ‘bus’) that handle data transfer between the computer’s different parts. For example, the FSB (Front-side Bus) controls data transfer between the CPU and the memory. It’s extremely important that all these elements maintain synchronicity with each other. While the CPU and memory can (and do) run faster than the FSB, the bus-speed is the speed limit of any data transfer between the two.
The universe also has a speed limit of information transfer between different systems: the speed of light. Which is important, just as it is with the system bus. A universe without a constant speed for information transfer would have serious problems with synchronicity and causality.
2] Graphical rendering engines all have various techniques to deal with changing Level-Of-Detail (LOD). For example, if the camera/player is close to trees, those trees might be rendered in full detail with a million polygons. If, however, the trees are very far away, they might be rendered as a “billboard” - a 2d picture - with no geometry whatsoever. Engines do this in order to lessen computational workloads. If the trees are so far away that the player can’t even tell the difference between a simple billboard and fully rendered geometry… then why tax the system with unnecessary rendering?
Likewise, one of the enduring problems of quantum mechanics is that the universe appears to obey different rules at different scales, and we struggle to understand this quantum-classical boundary. Why is it that electrons obey quantum superposition - they exist in multiple locations simultaneously - but that macroscopic objects, like a computer screen or a table, do not?
Well, if you start from the assumption that the universe is a simulation, such a boundary makes perfect sense in terms of LOD. If the universe follows a path of maximal computational efficiency (either because it was designed that way or because extrema are naturally more stable), you would want to render objects only at an observable LOD. It would be far too computationally intensive to fully render every quantum particle in the universe. Indeed, at that point, you don’t really have a “simulation.” You just have… the universe. Instead, you would just render at the LOD to match the perspective of some set of privileged observers.
3] Computer systems have a maximum rendering thoroughput. For example, the new PS5 has a teraflop rating of 10.28. That means it can perform 10.28 trillion math operations per second. So let’s say you’re playing a game and you’re doing something graphically simple, like sitting in a large plain room. The geometry, effects, etc might demand only .17 trillion operations per frame. Since the PS5 can do 10.28 trillion per second, it’s able to render about 60 frames per second.
But suppose you filled your virtual room with objects and explosions and wild physics. Now the various rendering systems demand 1.3 trillion operations per frame. By the same calculation, the PS5 can only render 10 frames per second.
In other words, time is relative between you - sitting outside the tv/computer system - and the simulated scene within the computer. The more complex the scene, the greater the time dilation.
That is similar to how time works in our universe too. If you compare a clock near an area with a high energy density, such as a neutron star or a black hole or even the Earth, with a clock near an area with low energy density, you’ll find that clocks in high density areas run more slowly.
And so on and so forth. But, um, yeah, I should probably get to the actual book review:
You’ll note, throughout the above discussion, I was rather God-agnostic. Accepting the universe as a simulation has minimal relation to religion. It might speak to the Intelligent Designer’s method - or it might just be that stability and computational efficiency naturally go hand-in-hand.
Regardless, in Distress, the universe SHOULD be thought of in terms of informational topology, designed by and driven toward an Omega Point. The Omega Point, if you’re ignorant of the term, takes a view opposite of the Deist’s: God did not create the universe so much as the universe creates God. In Distress, this Omega Point is the first being to grasp a coherent, consistent Theory of Everything, a physics theory that unifies all scales.
That’s basically the setting: a journalist goes to a newly grown island-nation (created by stolen biotechnology) in order to cover a physics conference in which some prominent physicists present and discuss their new Theories of Everything. What follows is a lot of religious, scientific, and political shenanigans.
Honestly, I found that core narrative and core sci-fi conceit relatively lackluster. Not terrible but not up to Egan’s best. I sometimes talk about Egan novels having a “super Egan mode” in which he fully embraces his book’s main sci-fi conceit and goes wild. Never happens here.
But - moreso than any other Egan novel - this book has some of my favorite discussions. I’ve always maintained that Egan, despite being a hard sci-fi writer, has great insight into humanity, and this novel demonstrates it.
One of my favorite discussions involves a news-story the journalist covers, about a group of adults with mild autism, who wish to undergo brain surgery to make themselves MORE autistic. There’s just great line after great line in the whole discussion:
What’s the most patronizing thing you can offer to do for people you disagree with, or don’t understand? […] Heal them.and
What’s the most intellectually lazy way you can think of, to try to win an argument? […] To say your opponent lacks humanity.and
Once there was a burgeoning ego, a growing sense of self in the foreground of every action, how was it prevented from overshadowing everything else? […] The answer is, evolution invented intimacy. Intimacy makes it possible to attach some, or all, of the compelling qualities associated with the ego - the model of the self - to models of other people. A pleasure reinforced by sex, but not restricted to the act, like orgasm. And not even restricted to sexual partners, in humans. Intimacy is just the belief - rewarded by the brain - that you know the people you live in almost the same fashion as you know yourself.
My other favorite discussion occurs between the protagonist and a friend, worth quoting in its entirety:
He said, “No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of … glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.”
I said uneasily, “Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?”
He shook his head apologetically. “No. Everything’s fine. Life is wonderful. I love them all. But…” He looked away, his whole body visibly tensing. “Only because I’d go insane if I didn’t. Only because I have to make it work.”
“But you do. Make it work.”
“Yes!” He scowled, frustrated that I was missing the point. “And it’s not even that hard, anymore. It’s pure habit. But… I used to think there’d be more. I used to think that if you changed from … valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you’d learned something new, understood something better. And it’s not like that at all. I just value what I’m stuck with. That’s it, that’s the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can’t escape.”
I don’t necessarily agree with all that, but the pragmatic and moral consequences of the conflict between acceptance and rebellion are something I’ve pondered a long time. Ever since I studied Nietzsche’s “will to power,” practically a direct refutation of Stoicism.
Which is to say, I read in order to learn, to have my thoughts provoked, if not titillated. And in that respect, Distress has served this reader well.
January 28, 2015
If this book was made into a movie (and it will not be), the tagline could be: "We're theoretical cosmologists. We get it right or universes die." Because that's what this is: a suspenseful thriller based on physics, metaphysics, philosophy, and cosmology. Admit it, you're impressed.
So. In Distress, a disaffected science/pseudoscience journalist goes off for what should be a peaceful, easy assignment: a documentary on a physicist who is about to announce her Theory of Everything. Except, well, shit gets weird.
For the first quarter of the book, I didn't think I'd be giving it four stars. The opening scene is dynamite, but -- not really indicative of the kind of book it's going to be. And I found the relationship stuff (the narrator and his girlfriend) honestly repelling. And the discussion of autism -- that is a WHOLE other bucket of issues, and while the ending made me get why he thought he needed to include it, I think that was, at best, a bad idea.
But. BUT. Then the book started to gain momentum. Partly it was that the worldbuilding started to take hold. I loved the detailed near-future world; the science advances, the biology changes, the sex and gender stuff. (I'm reading so much hard SF with great, interesting, thoughtful takes on gender these days, like, what even HAPPENED to this genre? If two genders ("normal" and "sex object/plot device") were good enough for the grandmasters, they are surely good enough for you, Greg Egan and Kim Stanley Robinson and Chris Moriarty.) And then, while I was wallowing in the glee of the worldbuilding, the actual main plot kicked in and started accelerating and every neuron in my brain shrieked "YES! MORE!" in unison.
As it happens, I've read a number of books lately about singularities. This is the best portrayal I've seen of one. It was great and I enjoyed the hell out of it. This story is too much the kind of thing I like for me to recommend it to anyone else, but I can say this: if this is your kind of thing, this is REALLY REALLY your kind of thing.
So. In Distress, a disaffected science/pseudoscience journalist goes off for what should be a peaceful, easy assignment: a documentary on a physicist who is about to announce her Theory of Everything. Except, well, shit gets weird.
For the first quarter of the book, I didn't think I'd be giving it four stars. The opening scene is dynamite, but -- not really indicative of the kind of book it's going to be. And I found the relationship stuff (the narrator and his girlfriend) honestly repelling. And the discussion of autism -- that is a WHOLE other bucket of issues, and while the ending made me get why he thought he needed to include it, I think that was, at best, a bad idea.
But. BUT. Then the book started to gain momentum. Partly it was that the worldbuilding started to take hold. I loved the detailed near-future world; the science advances, the biology changes, the sex and gender stuff. (I'm reading so much hard SF with great, interesting, thoughtful takes on gender these days, like, what even HAPPENED to this genre? If two genders ("normal" and "sex object/plot device") were good enough for the grandmasters, they are surely good enough for you, Greg Egan and Kim Stanley Robinson and Chris Moriarty.) And then, while I was wallowing in the glee of the worldbuilding, the actual main plot kicked in and started accelerating and every neuron in my brain shrieked "YES! MORE!" in unison.
As it happens, I've read a number of books lately about singularities. This is the best portrayal I've seen of one. It was great and I enjoyed the hell out of it. This story is too much the kind of thing I like for me to recommend it to anyone else, but I can say this: if this is your kind of thing, this is REALLY REALLY your kind of thing.
November 30, 2016
From the very first sentence, ‘Distress’ is an arresting and thought-provoking novel. The point of view character, Andrew, is a documentary film-maker. This very useful conceit allows for lengthy explanations of technologies and discussion of their implications, often in a pleasant interview format. The setting is 2055, while the novel was first published in 1995, twenty years ago now. I think it has aged remarkably well, predicting total ubiquity of the internet, handheld computer/phones (‘notebooks’), Siri (‘Sisiphus’), and email as the main form of communication (‘Hermes’ - coincidentally the actual name of the University of Cambridge email system). Egan doesn’t quite predict social media, however, other than ‘netzines’ which seem similar to blogs.
That’s neither here nor there, though. ‘Distress’ has much bigger ideas to play with. It is concerned with the implications of several areas of science and technology which, as one character neatly states, bring about ‘the whole battle for the H words’. To wit, what is Health when biotech can cure all disease? And what is Humanity, when people can radically modify their minds and bodies? Who defines each H word? And in addition, what is gender? These questions are asked early on, yet they pervade the entire book and are discussed from a number of angles by different characters with various agendas. Egan is impressively good at exploring such massive, complex issues without resorting to easy, pat answers. As if that level of philosophical enquiry was not sufficient, events on the artificial island of Stateless raise questions of political economy - can an anarchist state function? What preconditions assist in its survival? How can it defend itself? The core issue of the narrative, however, is the search for a Theory of Everything and its metaphysical consequences. Thus many of the characters exist in and around academia, whilst a great deal of the action concerns what must be the most dramatic academic conference ever held.
When describing the scope of the novel in retrospect, it’s hard to convincingly explain how Egan does all of these topics justice. Yet somehow it all hangs together very well. Andrew is an effective narrator because he doesn’t take up a lot of space in the narrative; it is least interesting when concerned with his domestic life. I was also pleased that, Andrew aside, no other main character was male. The dialogue manages not to be trite, mannered, or boring, which can be a real risk when, essentially, centring your novel on intellectual debates. Moreover, it was nuanced, with each person’s argued perspective carrying conviction. A memorable example:
My main criticism of the novel, however, is that I found the lengthy and vivid description of having cholera unpleasant. I realise that these were intended to emphasise the theme of mind and body being indissoluble, as human consciousness can only exist in a bag of living flesh, but it seemed an unnecessarily revolting way of doing so. Still, if you can handle the opening scene with the corpse, I’m sure you will cope. It is fair enough, I suppose, to avoid the convenient abstraction of technologies that can upload minds or otherwise allow humanity to transcend the inconveniences of our bodies. Egan is more interested in how we reconcile biology, society, and metaphysics. It’s been a long time since I’ve read sci-fi that covered such ground so well. ‘Distress’ will definitely linger in my mind.
That’s neither here nor there, though. ‘Distress’ has much bigger ideas to play with. It is concerned with the implications of several areas of science and technology which, as one character neatly states, bring about ‘the whole battle for the H words’. To wit, what is Health when biotech can cure all disease? And what is Humanity, when people can radically modify their minds and bodies? Who defines each H word? And in addition, what is gender? These questions are asked early on, yet they pervade the entire book and are discussed from a number of angles by different characters with various agendas. Egan is impressively good at exploring such massive, complex issues without resorting to easy, pat answers. As if that level of philosophical enquiry was not sufficient, events on the artificial island of Stateless raise questions of political economy - can an anarchist state function? What preconditions assist in its survival? How can it defend itself? The core issue of the narrative, however, is the search for a Theory of Everything and its metaphysical consequences. Thus many of the characters exist in and around academia, whilst a great deal of the action concerns what must be the most dramatic academic conference ever held.
When describing the scope of the novel in retrospect, it’s hard to convincingly explain how Egan does all of these topics justice. Yet somehow it all hangs together very well. Andrew is an effective narrator because he doesn’t take up a lot of space in the narrative; it is least interesting when concerned with his domestic life. I was also pleased that, Andrew aside, no other main character was male. The dialogue manages not to be trite, mannered, or boring, which can be a real risk when, essentially, centring your novel on intellectual debates. Moreover, it was nuanced, with each person’s argued perspective carrying conviction. A memorable example:
”No-one can deal with an unknown chance of the end of the universe. How many people can you kill, for a cause like that? One? A hundred? A million? It’s like… trying to manipulate an infinitely heavy weight, on the end of an infinitely long lever. However fine your judgement is, you know it can’t be good enough. All you can do is admit that...”
My main criticism of the novel, however, is that I found the lengthy and vivid description of having cholera unpleasant. I realise that these were intended to emphasise the theme of mind and body being indissoluble, as human consciousness can only exist in a bag of living flesh, but it seemed an unnecessarily revolting way of doing so. Still, if you can handle the opening scene with the corpse, I’m sure you will cope. It is fair enough, I suppose, to avoid the convenient abstraction of technologies that can upload minds or otherwise allow humanity to transcend the inconveniences of our bodies. Egan is more interested in how we reconcile biology, society, and metaphysics. It’s been a long time since I’ve read sci-fi that covered such ground so well. ‘Distress’ will definitely linger in my mind.
March 17, 2019
I didn't want to read anything about the Subjective Cosmology series without first reading them all, so, it's now confirmed: they are three completely independent books, they don't happen in the same universe, they don't happen one after another. What they share is a theme. I've seen other authors do this, explore the same theme from very different angles and it always sounds more exciting than the end result. So far, this series is by far the best I ever read that does it.
About Distress in particular, in my opinion, it's the weakest of the three. I find the subjectiveness this book introduces to be the least believable, making it feel too much like magic (not something I'm fond of). Having said that, the background of the story is amazingly interesting on itself. It includes, but it's not limited to, an exploration of the role of journalism in the world, where would humans go with more technology in self-modification, specially around gender and sex, how that impacts relationships, an interesting anarchic culture (it reminded me a bit of The Culture, except that they were just humans on an island).
If the list of things I mention are appealing, be careful when reading this book. They are only secondary plot points of various importance. Don't go in expecting a lot of content for each of those things.
About Distress in particular, in my opinion, it's the weakest of the three. I find the subjectiveness this book introduces to be the least believable, making it feel too much like magic (not something I'm fond of). Having said that, the background of the story is amazingly interesting on itself. It includes, but it's not limited to, an exploration of the role of journalism in the world, where would humans go with more technology in self-modification, specially around gender and sex, how that impacts relationships, an interesting anarchic culture (it reminded me a bit of The Culture, except that they were just humans on an island).
If the list of things I mention are appealing, be careful when reading this book. They are only secondary plot points of various importance. Don't go in expecting a lot of content for each of those things.
May 18, 2011
A whole new sense to "hard SF". "Hard SF" usually means Science fiction that tries to take very few liberties with Science, sticking to what is known to be, or expected to become, possible. Egan takes it a quantum leap beyond - the science is HARD! If you can wrap your head around it, though, it's worth the effort.
June 4, 2016
frustrated the thick book................finished.
at that time Greg Egan wrote Rough cutting novels.
I recommend you to read his novels after it.
at that time Greg Egan wrote Rough cutting novels.
I recommend you to read his novels after it.
March 16, 2021
This is a science fiction mystery thriller concerned mostly with its core idea, though as with every other Egan novel I've read that idea is only teased until the climax. For this book that idea is The Theory of Everything and as with his other books it's eventually taken to its metaphysical extreme.
The protagonist is an investigative journalist who creates video documentaries that explore a single subject in-depth for SeeNet, which I thought was possibly a play on CNET, but probably isn't since it was founded the year prior to this book's publication. Most of the book is the protagonist investigating, interviewing, and being a tourist at a scientific conference on a man-made island. The island is governed by an informal system of anarchy, formal concepts and thinkers are explicitly derided.
I'm unable to tell whether this is the most personal novel Egan has written or if he thought it'd be interesting for characters and events to be as they are. Considering the thematic similarity in most of what I've read from him, I lean towards it being personal. A recurring issue is how relationships are handled. The protagonist's relationships continue to be troubled and disagreeable.
Egan provides many political opinions, which seem to be much more relevant today than when they were written. Two of the most prominent are ignorance and identity.
The Murdochs are called out by name as being the worst news publication, Fox News wouldn't even be founded until next year, and a leading promoter of the worst Ignorance Cults. Yes, in this book there are literally cults who worship being ignorant, though of course that isn't how they refer to themselves, let alone think of themselves.
A few of the characters are "asex", including one of the more important ones, though several other variations are presented. Whether they would be called suitable representation considering how fraught the issue has become is a different matter. The other issue of identity is whether it's allowable to voluntarily engage in brain damage to enhance one's life.
As with the other books I've read from him, I enjoyed the majority of the book quite thoroughly, but then when it reveals what it's truly about, I care less. The title is "Distress" and that's certainly how I felt about the disconnect between what I thought of the ending and how it was presented. I don't think it's a reasonable conclusion.
This was an enjoyable SF mystery thriller marred by an unreasonable and heavy-handed ending that tells you not to disagree with its conclusions.
The protagonist is an investigative journalist who creates video documentaries that explore a single subject in-depth for SeeNet, which I thought was possibly a play on CNET, but probably isn't since it was founded the year prior to this book's publication. Most of the book is the protagonist investigating, interviewing, and being a tourist at a scientific conference on a man-made island. The island is governed by an informal system of anarchy, formal concepts and thinkers are explicitly derided.
I'm unable to tell whether this is the most personal novel Egan has written or if he thought it'd be interesting for characters and events to be as they are. Considering the thematic similarity in most of what I've read from him, I lean towards it being personal. A recurring issue is how relationships are handled. The protagonist's relationships continue to be troubled and disagreeable.
Egan provides many political opinions, which seem to be much more relevant today than when they were written. Two of the most prominent are ignorance and identity.
The Murdochs are called out by name as being the worst news publication, Fox News wouldn't even be founded until next year, and a leading promoter of the worst Ignorance Cults. Yes, in this book there are literally cults who worship being ignorant, though of course that isn't how they refer to themselves, let alone think of themselves.
A few of the characters are "asex", including one of the more important ones, though several other variations are presented. Whether they would be called suitable representation considering how fraught the issue has become is a different matter. The other issue of identity is whether it's allowable to voluntarily engage in brain damage to enhance one's life.
As with the other books I've read from him, I enjoyed the majority of the book quite thoroughly, but then when it reveals what it's truly about, I care less. The title is "Distress" and that's certainly how I felt about the disconnect between what I thought of the ending and how it was presented. I don't think it's a reasonable conclusion.
This was an enjoyable SF mystery thriller marred by an unreasonable and heavy-handed ending that tells you not to disagree with its conclusions.
January 3, 2012
Distress is a hell of a book. It starts off with a bang, slows down
in the middle and then speeds up again to great speeds into the end
page. I couldn't set it down after page 320. Main character Worth is
a reporter that does documentaries on different scientific and psyche
subjects. He's wrapping up a docu on `Junk DNA' which happens to
include one of the most intriguing (and barely brushed on characters
in this story) people, a guy named Landers. His body is a one-man
biosphere that doesn't need oxygen and could shoot up AIDS and shoe
polish all day without blushing. He brags he could "survive off tires
for one thousand years". What a card (pitiful sapiens)!
So, after four interesting subjects the docu is wrapped up and
it's off to the functioning Anarchist state of "Stateless". Home grown, Stateless,
is an island in the middle of the ocean where everyone has no nationalistic
or jingoschisms tied to their face. Egan explains carefully how this
island functions physically and humanly with an excellent grade for
his report. The subject he's covering there in Stateless is the TOE
though. Theory of Everything. It's a knock down drag out scientist
fight on how the universe works, inside and out. African Nobel prize
winner Violet Mosala is all over the TOE and some people hate her
for it. Once the big bang and all it's fallout is explained you
settle easy with the rest of your life. Or not. You betcha there's
some drawbacks to this. Fanatical religious fops (oh dear god no
more mystery in the universe, lies!) show up and refute, juggle, and
annoy with mystical yammering to make everyone amused and upset.
Reporter Worth turned down the job of covering the mental plague
Distress which is slowly tapping out the brains of the earth with
spasming psycho-babble. Going to the anarchist island was a little
more interesting. A walk in the park. Right. Asexuality movement,
gunshots, homegrown designer plagues, and people who would like to
see anarchy put between cloaked-out metal insect laser crosshairs
have something to say about the flowing joy of being in the tropics
on the world's biggest homegrown starfish island. There's a great
line in the book I have to share with you: "Self-esteem is a
commodity invented by 20th century personal growth cults. If you want
self-esteem, or an emotional center, go to Los Angeles and buy it."
I loved this book, and out of the 3 Egan books I've read so far this
is consistently well written. Science, cloak and dagger, science, non-
sex sex in a good sized tree palm pulp (450pgs). Read it.
Review originally posted on Brutalsfx group.
in the middle and then speeds up again to great speeds into the end
page. I couldn't set it down after page 320. Main character Worth is
a reporter that does documentaries on different scientific and psyche
subjects. He's wrapping up a docu on `Junk DNA' which happens to
include one of the most intriguing (and barely brushed on characters
in this story) people, a guy named Landers. His body is a one-man
biosphere that doesn't need oxygen and could shoot up AIDS and shoe
polish all day without blushing. He brags he could "survive off tires
for one thousand years". What a card (pitiful sapiens)!
So, after four interesting subjects the docu is wrapped up and
it's off to the functioning Anarchist state of "Stateless". Home grown, Stateless,
is an island in the middle of the ocean where everyone has no nationalistic
or jingoschisms tied to their face. Egan explains carefully how this
island functions physically and humanly with an excellent grade for
his report. The subject he's covering there in Stateless is the TOE
though. Theory of Everything. It's a knock down drag out scientist
fight on how the universe works, inside and out. African Nobel prize
winner Violet Mosala is all over the TOE and some people hate her
for it. Once the big bang and all it's fallout is explained you
settle easy with the rest of your life. Or not. You betcha there's
some drawbacks to this. Fanatical religious fops (oh dear god no
more mystery in the universe, lies!) show up and refute, juggle, and
annoy with mystical yammering to make everyone amused and upset.
Reporter Worth turned down the job of covering the mental plague
Distress which is slowly tapping out the brains of the earth with
spasming psycho-babble. Going to the anarchist island was a little
more interesting. A walk in the park. Right. Asexuality movement,
gunshots, homegrown designer plagues, and people who would like to
see anarchy put between cloaked-out metal insect laser crosshairs
have something to say about the flowing joy of being in the tropics
on the world's biggest homegrown starfish island. There's a great
line in the book I have to share with you: "Self-esteem is a
commodity invented by 20th century personal growth cults. If you want
self-esteem, or an emotional center, go to Los Angeles and buy it."
I loved this book, and out of the 3 Egan books I've read so far this
is consistently well written. Science, cloak and dagger, science, non-
sex sex in a good sized tree palm pulp (450pgs). Read it.
Review originally posted on Brutalsfx group.
October 10, 2014
Cualquier persona que lea por primera vez a Greg Egan y coja este libro sale corriendo y no vuelve a mirar atrás. Una vez que sabes cómo es Egan, y que te puedes esperar, el libro ya es otra cosa. Teniendo claro que leer a Egan siempre tiene un toque de masoquismo que es lo que le da la vidilla,
Prepárate para una novela completamente conceptual y abstracta, no al nivel extremo de Diáspora pero si al rebufo. Todo gira entorno a una supuesta Teoría del Todo en donde las disertaciones sobre la misma son infinitas, a fin de cuentas es como un gato de Schrödinger pero con el universo completo.
Yo me he sentido constantemente en la cuerda floja de la comprensión y afortunadamente he conseguido seguir la novela y disfrutarla. Como puntos negativos le veo lo enrevesado que se pone en las discusiones sobre la teoría que hace que puedas desconectar. El final me parece coherente (Nunca mejor dicho) y lo mejor, sobre todo, es el escenario social, el surgimiento de las sectas anticientíficas, la isla de Anarkia, los conceptos sobre la sexualidad y los "Asex" y el protagonismo de la biotecnología. Las ideas originales que propone que siguen siendo la mejor arma de Egan.
Para mi no es de los mejores de Egan aún asi lo que recomiendo siempre y cuando uno haya leído otros libros de este señor como Cuarentena o Ciudad Permutación. Si no, sería como ir a la guerra en pijama y terminaría abandonando un autor que te puede hacer disfrutar mucho.
Prepárate para una novela completamente conceptual y abstracta, no al nivel extremo de Diáspora pero si al rebufo. Todo gira entorno a una supuesta Teoría del Todo en donde las disertaciones sobre la misma son infinitas, a fin de cuentas es como un gato de Schrödinger pero con el universo completo.
Yo me he sentido constantemente en la cuerda floja de la comprensión y afortunadamente he conseguido seguir la novela y disfrutarla. Como puntos negativos le veo lo enrevesado que se pone en las discusiones sobre la teoría que hace que puedas desconectar. El final me parece coherente (Nunca mejor dicho) y lo mejor, sobre todo, es el escenario social, el surgimiento de las sectas anticientíficas, la isla de Anarkia, los conceptos sobre la sexualidad y los "Asex" y el protagonismo de la biotecnología. Las ideas originales que propone que siguen siendo la mejor arma de Egan.
Para mi no es de los mejores de Egan aún asi lo que recomiendo siempre y cuando uno haya leído otros libros de este señor como Cuarentena o Ciudad Permutación. Si no, sería como ir a la guerra en pijama y terminaría abandonando un autor que te puede hacer disfrutar mucho.
January 27, 2019
I think, if you like Distress, you'll probably like The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang, and vice a verse.
Although they are different. Distress is about physics theories, Lifecycle is about AI and morality. Distress prefers to talk of science and topology rather then shooting and running. Lifecycle has no shooting and running at all.
I think, if you like Distress, you'll probably like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. not sure about vice a verse. MoR is a song of science, and Distress sometimes shows brief but sincere delight for the World Cognized.
I'm not sure about Distress, how much I like it. I did like it while reading a lot; although sometimes it was like chewing road tar, I don't know why. It ended up too smooth, maybe. Too caramel for smth that started like goudron. But I still like this song of science at the last pages.
Anf if you read it, you should've thought of this
Although they are different. Distress is about physics theories, Lifecycle is about AI and morality. Distress prefers to talk of science and topology rather then shooting and running. Lifecycle has no shooting and running at all.
I think, if you like Distress, you'll probably like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. not sure about vice a verse. MoR is a song of science, and Distress sometimes shows brief but sincere delight for the World Cognized.
I'm not sure about Distress, how much I like it. I did like it while reading a lot; although sometimes it was like chewing road tar, I don't know why. It ended up too smooth, maybe. Too caramel for smth that started like goudron. But I still like this song of science at the last pages.
Anf if you read it, you should've thought of this
May 23, 2016
Ранний ��оман Игана, довольно неудачный, на мой вкус; скорее даже не роман, а набор футурологических эссе, формально объединенных под одной обложкой через общего героя-журналиста, который сначала пишет статью про перспективы генинженерии человеческого организма, потом - про проблему адаптации аутистов в обществе, потом - про тонкости устройства коммуны анархосиндикалистов на удаленном острове, и про появление новых гендеров, и про единую теорию всего, и еще, и еще.
В итоге у автора накапливается слишком много разнородных научных идей и мыслей, он слишком спешит поделиться ими с читателем, они вытесняют и сюжет, и персонажей, в цельное повествование не объединяются, и в итоге вместо связной книги получается каша. Этот же синдром, к��тати, сгубил и ваттсовскую "Эхопраксию".
Ближе к финалу сюжет таки проявляется, но он такой чисто ньюэйджевский, что лучше бы его и вовсе не было. Все эти проповеди "человек есть бог, сотворяющий новые вселенные своей мыслью" - это совсем не то, чего мы ждем от Игана.
Оценка, повторяю, чисто субъективная, потому что лично мне такие сборники авторских мыслей на разные научные и политические темы читать неинтересно. Если у вас такой формат подачи материала не вызывает отторжения - смело беритесь за Distress, там много занятных идей.
В итоге у автора накапливается слишком много разнородных научных идей и мыслей, он слишком спешит поделиться ими с читателем, они вытесняют и сюжет, и персонажей, в цельное повествование не объединяются, и в итоге вместо связной книги получается каша. Этот же синдром, к��тати, сгубил и ваттсовскую "Эхопраксию".
Ближе к финалу сюжет таки проявляется, но он такой чисто ньюэйджевский, что лучше бы его и вовсе не было. Все эти проповеди "человек есть бог, сотворяющий новые вселенные своей мыслью" - это совсем не то, чего мы ждем от Игана.
Оценка, повторяю, чисто субъективная, потому что лично мне такие сборники авторских мыслей на разные научные и политические темы читать неинтересно. Если у вас такой формат подачи материала не вызывает отторжения - смело беритесь за Distress, там много занятных идей.
August 12, 2020
Me ha parecido bastante bueno. Este hombre tiene tantas ideas que casi no tiene espacio por donde meterlas. Se aprovecha del personaje principal, un periodista, para describir diversos aspectos de ese mundo futuro dominado por la bioingeniería: la manipulación genética, las patentes, los límites a la diversidad, la libertad para elegir sexo, condición y forma del vehículo temporal en el que pasamos los años de la vida.
Además de toda esa explosión de ideas, la trama es bastante potente, pero a mi juicio mal desarrollada. Creo que toda esa efervescencia creativa deja poco espacio a la trama central. Aun así, la búsqueda de una teoría unificada del universo creo que es un tema lo suficientemente interesante para atraer a cualquier lector. Y más cuando se mezcla con una isla anárquica producto de la ingenería genética y con la teoría de la información. Hace un poco de trampas (porque se ve dónde está el cabo suelto en su argumentación, después de todo) pero la especulación es brillante y deja un regusto la mar de bueno.
Así que sí, pese a su palabrería hard, es bastante recomendable.
Lo que menos me gusta de Egan es que todos los personajes se parecen. En el fondo parece estar hablando siempre el mismo...
Además de toda esa explosión de ideas, la trama es bastante potente, pero a mi juicio mal desarrollada. Creo que toda esa efervescencia creativa deja poco espacio a la trama central. Aun así, la búsqueda de una teoría unificada del universo creo que es un tema lo suficientemente interesante para atraer a cualquier lector. Y más cuando se mezcla con una isla anárquica producto de la ingenería genética y con la teoría de la información. Hace un poco de trampas (porque se ve dónde está el cabo suelto en su argumentación, después de todo) pero la especulación es brillante y deja un regusto la mar de bueno.
Así que sí, pese a su palabrería hard, es bastante recomendable.
Lo que menos me gusta de Egan es que todos los personajes se parecen. En el fondo parece estar hablando siempre el mismo...
December 30, 2013
I have only read a few of Greg Egan's books before, but I think this is the one I've enjoyed most so far. My biggest motivation for reading science fiction, is to find new ideas about the physical universe and humanity's place in it. Distress is filled with enough ideas to populate multiple more conventional science fiction novels. To begin with, Andrew Worth is a journalist who is creating a sensationalistic feature about abuses of biotechnology, and his piece consists of four original concepts each explored at some length by Egan. And then we get to the real story as Andrew travels to Stateless, an artificial land in the south Pacific in order to cover a Nobel Prize winning physicist planning to make a breakthrough announcement at a conference there. While revealing the concepts that make the island nation possible, Egan brings extremist groups into the plot, who will stop at nothing to prevent the announcement. Who is really behind those groups? Are their fears legitimate? Will the announcement lead to a waveform collapse on the nature of reality?
March 23, 2022
This isn't one of Egan's best, I think -- as always, the mathematical and science ideas are solid (and pleasantly mindblowing), but at times I felt like the story itself was taking a backseat. Extra points for some very positive explorations of gender and sexuality (including having a very sympathetically-written gender-neutral, asexual character who played a large part in the story). It's good overall, solid Egan -- I just thought that, while it started out strong and ended strong, there was a bit of a slog in the middle. Maybe it wasn't quite fair to read it just after rereading Axiomatic.
October 13, 2018
Written 20 years ago, but it feels like it could have been written 2 weeks ago. I love the world and subtle things in this book, the plot though is another story. I don't know that I liked it during the unfolding, but the epilogue ties it together, and more than anything it is a fascinating thought experiment that is a bit of a trip.
March 30, 2021
«Твердую» НФ я одновременно люблю и боюсь. Мне нравится этот жанр за возможность поскрипеть мозгами и залезть ту область науки, в которой ты ничего не понимаешь. И ровно этот же факт вызывает у меня боязнь за то, что я что-то совсем не пойму, поэтому потеряю главную суть романа.
В этом плане «Отчаяние» был для меня чуть более комфортным романом, потому что в нем Грег Иган взял за основу не физику, а метафизику. А мне философия все же ближе точных наук. В 2055 году ученые подошли вплотную к тому, чтобы объявить Теорию Всего. То есть они смогут объяснить существование Вселенной. После этой Теории в мире не останется тайн. Журналист-документалист отправляется на искусственный остров-государство, которое живет по анархическим законам, поэтому называется Безгосударство, на котором должна состоятся конференция ученых. Среди участников есть 27-летняя ученая, которая как раз и занимается Теорией Всего.
Как быстро выяснилось, у этой теории есть как сторонники, так и противники. Причем противники прямого действия, которые слова подтверждают делом (читай, практически что терроризмом).
В этом противостоянии, лично для меня, кроется странность романа. То, что лежит в основе теорий, описываемых в романе, находится на уровне утопии. Это все интересно, но не более чем словоблудие. И для меня очень странно было читать о реакции на эту «туманную» теорию. Даже главный герой говорит: «Ну почему вы решили, что объяви Теорию Всего, Вселенная самоуничтожится?». И у меня точно такой же вопрос.
С другой стороны, я всегда считал, что на любое неожиданное открытие может быть получена негативная реакция. Вечный двигатель или дешевая замена нефти кому-то будут в радость, а кто-то решит убить ученого, придумавшего все это, и его записи, в которых он делает открытие.
Поэтому как раз научная составляющая романа была для меня не совсем убедительной. никаких доказательств теории нет и в помине, просто слова.
Но на роман можно посмотреть и с другой стороны. Как развилось человечество к 2055 году? Процветающая журналистика, 5-минутное воскрешение трупов, но самое для меня интересное — это расширение двух полов до пяти. Есть мужчина, женщина, сменивший пол мужчина и женщина, а также асексуал, который отверг вообще какое-либо понятие чувств и отношений. И как же здорово Иган показал отношение мужчины к асексуалу — просто сказка. Честно, хотелось бы про это прочитать целую отдельную книгу=)
Местами очень интересный и необычный роман, написанный несложным языком. К сожалению, чуток не дотянул до 8-ки, потому что люблю, когда теория подтверждается практикой. А рассуждать о том, как влияет шахматная доска на фигуры — это не более чем слова, после которых странно хвататься за штамм вируса... 7/10
В этом плане «Отчаяние» был для меня чуть более комфортным романом, потому что в нем Грег Иган взял за основу не физику, а метафизику. А мне философия все же ближе точных наук. В 2055 году ученые подошли вплотную к тому, чтобы объявить Теорию Всего. То есть они смогут объяснить существование Вселенной. После этой Теории в мире не останется тайн. Журналист-документалист отправляется на искусственный остров-государство, которое живет по анархическим законам, поэтому называется Безгосударство, на котором должна состоятся конференция ученых. Среди участников есть 27-летняя ученая, которая как раз и занимается Теорией Всего.
Как быстро выяснилось, у этой теории есть как сторонники, так и противники. Причем противники прямого действия, которые слова подтверждают делом (читай, практически что терроризмом).
В этом противостоянии, лично для меня, кроется странность романа. То, что лежит в основе теорий, описываемых в романе, находится на уровне утопии. Это все интересно, но не более чем словоблудие. И для меня очень странно было читать о реакции на эту «туманную» теорию. Даже главный герой говорит: «Ну почему вы решили, что объяви Теорию Всего, Вселенная самоуничтожится?». И у меня точно такой же вопрос.
С другой стороны, я всегда считал, что на любое неожиданное открытие может быть получена негативная реакция. Вечный двигатель или дешевая замена нефти кому-то будут в радость, а кто-то решит убить ученого, придумавшего все это, и его записи, в которых он делает открытие.
Поэтому как раз научная составляющая романа была для меня не совсем убедительной. никаких доказательств теории нет и в помине, просто слова.
Но на роман можно посмотреть и с другой стороны. Как развилось человечество к 2055 году? Процветающая журналистика, 5-минутное воскрешение трупов, но самое для меня интересное — это расширение двух полов до пяти. Есть мужчина, женщина, сменивший пол мужчина и женщина, а также асексуал, который отверг вообще какое-либо понятие чувств и отношений. И как же здорово Иган показал отношение мужчины к асексуалу — просто сказка. Честно, хотелось бы про это прочитать целую отдельную книгу=)
Местами очень интересный и необычный роман, написанный несложным языком. К сожалению, чуток не дотянул до 8-ки, потому что люблю, когда теория подтверждается практикой. А рассуждать о том, как влияет шахматная доска на фигуры — это не более чем слова, после которых странно хвататься за штамм вируса... 7/10
November 28, 2022
In the future, medical/genetic and computer sciences have advanced, and physicists are closing in on a Theory of Everything, or TOE. Our protagonist is a journalist; working mostly with implanted equipment. He's also pretty self-centered, and not that nice a person. Most of the book takes place as he covers a physics conference on a settlement called Stateless, built up out of the ocean. Some of the best parts of the book describe Stateless's structure and culture.
The titular Distress is an illness, presumably engineered, that causes its sufferers to be so upset they need to be hospitalized. But it's not a big part of the book.
This book is 25 years old. It's a tribute to Egan's vision that (mostly) the technology and the culture don't seem quaintly retro, as they do with many books after a quarter century. His writing is excellent, if elaborate enough that reading the book was slow going for almost the first half. One of the main plot elements was possible consequences of pinning down the TOE, and for me, that was not that exciting or plausible. Three and a half stars, rounded up for sheer writing quality.
The titular Distress is an illness, presumably engineered, that causes its sufferers to be so upset they need to be hospitalized. But it's not a big part of the book.
This book is 25 years old. It's a tribute to Egan's vision that (mostly) the technology and the culture don't seem quaintly retro, as they do with many books after a quarter century. His writing is excellent, if elaborate enough that reading the book was slow going for almost the first half. One of the main plot elements was possible consequences of pinning down the TOE, and for me, that was not that exciting or plausible. Three and a half stars, rounded up for sheer writing quality.
May 27, 2019
Egan is very heavy on the science in his science fiction, but his writing struggles a bit otherwise. He is a great writer of ideas, many of which are interesting but some are kind of not all there. Anyway it was slightly better than the second book in the series but still suffered from the vagueness of the second.
Some parts are extraordinarily good, especially the idea for Stateless, a country formed out of bioengineered coral. So is the concept for the main character, a journalist of the future. He is consistently interesting.
Egan is a bit of a recluse and refuses to be photographed. I suspect he's a bit crazed like Rothfuss. Some of his ideas are a bit paranoid and I am incredulous. The views on sex and autism expressed are just too outside the believable. When the ideas expressed in science fiction make you worry about the mental health of the author it's a distraction. Could have been dealt with in a better way.
Anyway I admire the bravery of his writing, but too uneven.
Some parts are extraordinarily good, especially the idea for Stateless, a country formed out of bioengineered coral. So is the concept for the main character, a journalist of the future. He is consistently interesting.
Egan is a bit of a recluse and refuses to be photographed. I suspect he's a bit crazed like Rothfuss. Some of his ideas are a bit paranoid and I am incredulous. The views on sex and autism expressed are just too outside the believable. When the ideas expressed in science fiction make you worry about the mental health of the author it's a distraction. Could have been dealt with in a better way.
Anyway I admire the bravery of his writing, but too uneven.
September 5, 2022
A more complex story that his "Quarantine" this plot adds a questionable journalist chasing a major story on the Theory of Everything , as being revealed in an upcoming event, weaponized diseases, multiple cults, and geo-politics. The discussions are not very easy to follow for a non- physics person but I stayed on for the intrigue.
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