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David Katzman's Reviews > Distress
Distress
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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.
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Reading Progress
June 12, 2019
– Shelved as:
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June 12, 2019
– Shelved
September 5, 2021
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Started Reading
September 20, 2021
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Left Coast Justin
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Nov 24, 2021 12:18PM
I haven't heard of this author before, but it sounds like maybe he gets the science largely correct, even if he's off-base on the consequences of it, and of human nature. I'm definitely interested. Thanks David.
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Left Coast Justin wrote: "I haven't heard of this author before, but it sounds like maybe he gets the science largely correct, even if he's off-base on the consequences of it, and of human nature. I'm definitely interested. Thanks David."Thanks, LCJ. He’s definitely thought provoking. Given the different inferences he makes for example about the Copenhagan Interpretation between book 1 and book 3 of this “series,” it’s almost like he’s implying…we have yet to really learn the future of science and what theories really mean is open to diverse interpretation. Speculation is worth doing, even if it ends up being incorrect or fruitless. It helps us imagine the future and that gives us new ideas for the present.
"Here we sit barely able to fend on a single virus from collapsing society..." ...but Egan's society doesn't have fake news and conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers to cope with. Sometimes I think an elitocracy as per the Ancient Greeks might be the best thing for society after all.
But in any case, the miracles of genetic engineering seems to me to have come pretty far by now, so designer bodies might not be all that far off? Granted, I haven't read this book yet, so I may be misinterpreting what you're saying?
Traveller wrote: ""Here we sit barely able to fend off a single virus from collapsing society..." but Egan's society doesn't have fake news and conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers to cope with. Sometimes I think an elitocracy as per the Ancient Greeks might be the best thing for society after all.
But in any case, the miracles of genetic engineering seems to me to have come pretty far by now, so designer bodies might not be all that far off? Granted, I haven't read this book yet, so I may be misinterpreting what you're saying? "
His imagined society here…it sort of did have fake news and conspiracy theories. He didn’t exactly nail the current way this cultural trend has spun out in society, with key global news sources acting as propaganda arms for the conspiracies and violent movements, but he does portray a society where these diverse social cults have their own very specific ideologies that they fight for. Some fighting very literally, killing and dying, for their philosophies. I would describe the authors future predictions in this area being…in the ballpark.
Yes, Egan portrays designer bodies here to a high degree so that, for example, one main character has had all their gender signifying body parts removed. No penis, no vagina, no breasts or even nipples, face restructured to appear gender neutral, etc. But that’s the least of it, he portrays genetic engineering as if an entire huge island could self-assemble from a fast-replicating artificially-created life form—envision floating coral if coral could replicate itself quickly enough for a population of people to trigger it and live on it. I don’t think anything in current genetic engineering comes close to what he’s projecting forward. I think it’s actually quite telling that the few animal clones that have been created…look nothing like the creature they were cloned from. They are not duplicate twins like you see in sci fi, as if clones were identical. I think this points out that we are still extremely far from understanding genetics and being able to manipulate it for positive outcomes without having unexpected side-effects.
Thanks for elaborating, David! This sounds like something I might enjoy. I must get to reading it!
Thank you for this review. The conundrum sci-fi faces has never been described so precise and I think that alone gave me more to think about than Distress ever could.
Saphana wrote: "Thank you for this review. The conundrum sci-fi faces has never been described so precise and I think that alone gave me more to think about than Distress ever could."Thank you, Saphana. Fantasy doesn't have the same issue as Sci Fi, does. And there's a difference between "hard sci fi" and more general speculative fiction. I think if the book is looser in its science then it actually had more potential to be metaphorical instead of literal. Egan is much more of the "hard sci fi" type, and as such, his premises are more at risk of becoming dated.
