Paul Bryant's Reviews > Distress
Distress
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![416390](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p2/416390.jpg)
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..."
![](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380303812i/687876.jpg)
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..."
![](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380303812i/687876.jpg)
This is SF for scientists. I prefer SF where all you have to do is say "wow" loudly every twenty minutes.
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![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
see what you think.
![Gendou](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1229408059p1/1339246.jpg)
Of course, I probably should save my opinions until I get a chance to read it for myself. ;)
I like your review of The Road to Science Fiction 3!
I agree on all points except 3, especially 6-8.
Some authors use science jargon as a tool for story telling.
This is lame; no better than the magic in a fantasy novel.
Paul, you and I seem to agree up to this point. :)
The difference between an episode of Star Trek and a good Greg Egan novel is that, in the later, the jargon is REAL.
I also object to points 3A and 3B:
3A: "You have to know the science" -- I think this is less a problem with the SF genera, and more a problem with the undereducated reader. Anyone can read Richard Feynman, Steven Hawking, Brian Greene, etc. They have all written books for the layperson with enough material to easily prepare a person to read Poul Anderson, Greg Egan, etc.
3B: "The physics have changed" -- Yes, many SF books rely on a big crunch, which won't happen in our universe due to the small positive value of the cosmological constant. This has NEVER spoiled my enjoyment of a SF novel. Sure, anything written before the year 1900 is a different story, I grant you that. This is why I tend to read fewer classic SF, and more modern SF.
![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
![Ian "Marvin" Graye](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1702079141p1/5022264.jpg)
Surely the science is permitted to become, well, fiction?
![Ian "Marvin" Graye](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1702079141p1/5022264.jpg)
I assume that the italicised section isn't just one of your exquisite parodies?
![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
![Ian "Marvin" Graye](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1702079141p1/5022264.jpg)
![Gendou](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1229408059p1/1339246.jpg)
Read Einstein's Relativity, or any book on quantum mechanics, and tell me you experience no epistemological conundrum!
Reading good science fiction feels, to me, a lot like reading science nonfiction.
You have to suspend your current beliefs just long enough to follow the chain of logic.
The reader of fiction is already used to the idea it isn't all true.
Why does it have to be true?
It's fun!
Now, Paul, it seems like part of your issue may be mistrust of science because it's dynamic.
Are you one of those chaps to say Newton's laws have been "discredited"?
Well, they haven't.
Newton's laws are just as useful for throwing rocks and sending rockets into space as they have been for the last 200 years.
No new discovery is going to change our predictions on the appropriate energy scales.
It's those energy scales not yet explored where fiction can be creative.
Yes, when we fired up the LHC, a whole bookshelf full of SF became, as you put it, as-it-were.
There are still good books on this shelf which I find pleasurable to read, despite their being based on previously inaccessible science.
We can still give them 5 stars, if they deserve it!
![Ian "Marvin" Graye](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1702079141p1/5022264.jpg)
http://tinyurl.com/3dr7h7r
This guy always has an interesting spin on what's popular in popular culture.
![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
I think either
a) this is a confused area in sf or
b) maybe it's njust me who's confused!
Yeah, probably b.
![Ian "Marvin" Graye](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1702079141p1/5022264.jpg)
I haven't read as much sci-fi as you, but there is a whole genre of fiction concerned with "alternate history".
Theoretically, this history is wrong, because it didn't happen like that.
I suppose the whole exercise is premised on "what if", so that it knows it was wrong.
Whereas, I suppose you are talking about science in sci-fi that was later proven to be wrong?
Still, I would say we can read this stuff "as if" it was right.
My problem with the type of writing that you quoted is that it seems to take large chunks of "science" and stick "fiction-y" interstitials between the science bits ("so, Albert, what exactly is the relationship between energy and the speed of light?"..."Well, funny you should ask").
Neither the science nor the fiction ends up convincing.
It would only make it more unbearable if the science was wrong, even if the author didn't know at the time of writing.
I would be more forgiving if the fiction bit was better.
![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
![Gendou](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1229408059p1/1339246.jpg)
This is how the standard model was constructed!
QM predicts some particle masses a LOT heavier than what we measure.
To get around that problem, a technique is used called Renormalization.
We subtract a hugely precises and unlikely mass to produce the empirical mass.
It's not a "retrograde step", but a real-life problem in the standard model.
This is an interesting topic for SF to tackle!
Now, you don't have to be "another scientist reader" to appreciate it.
I have a degree in computer programming and that's what I do for work.
Still, I manage to read a few popular science book and blogs.
This is all the education one needs to deeply appreciate Egan's books.
That, and an open mind.
![nostalgebraist](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1362603036p1/8178894.jpg)
As a scientist myself, I really enjoy this kind of stuff. But that's because I think about stuff like "excluding topologies for no good reason is a retrograde step" every day.
To riff on Ian's point, I'd say the following analogy is approximately true: "level of scientific detail in Distress : level of scientific in an actual scientific paper :: level of historical detail in a typical alternate history novel : level of historical detail in a typical work of academic history"
Which is to say, to people who are really interested in this stuff (people who e.g. read academic work on the subject), the science in Egan is really pretty mild. But if you have no interest in science then yeah, it'll be too much. Similarly, if someone has no interest in history, then any amount of historical detail in a novel will be "too much" for them -- but that doesn't mean historical fiction is some sort of bafflingly over-expository genre.
About the question of SF that gets invalidated: I think it's still interesting to see the speculations people made in the past, even when it's been proven wrong. Serious but invalidated speculation is different from pure fantasy; when we read Aristotle we see a guy doing his best to figure out the world as it appeared to him, which is not the case when we read, say, Lucian. (SF authors are somewhere in between because they're writing fiction -- but in hard SF the fiction is supposed to be constrained somewhat by "the world as it appears to us")
![Paul Bryant](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1224113172p1/416390.jpg)
![C](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_25x33-ccd24e68f4773d33a41ce08c3a34892e.png)
From Cosma Shallizi's review:
"We have, in addition: artificial islands grown by sociobiology-minded anarchist genetic engineers, voluntary autism, windmill farms, mercenaries, a devastating caricature of Fay Weldon, mathematical physics jargon I expect to see enter the literature, failing relationships, a one-sentence dismissal of the cosmology of Permutation City, technolibération which has nothing in common with technolibertarianism, seven distinct biological sexes, at least three shattering ontological realizations (this is an Egan novel: drink up!), non-violent resistance, a wired refugee camp, a tour of downtown Sydney, street theater, epidemic psychosis; and for starters, the resurrection of the dead for judgement"
![Dmitry Farber](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_25x33-8a3530ed95c3dbef8bf215b080559b09.png)
![Glenn Russell](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1505195595p1/23385697.jpg)
As a fellow non-scientist, I can appreciate you take more to soft SF than hard SF. Greg Egan requires a reader to break a mental sweat, and that's for sure. My modest advise for any non-science type approaching the author is to first read his novel Zendegi for the reasons I outline in my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Then move to Egan's short fiction since it is relatively easier to get your mind around even the most science/mathematics heavy stories. For example, two stories I reviewed:
The Infinite Assassin: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Axiomatic: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Sure, as a non-science type, it took a bit of effort to write these reviews, but the reward was so worth it.
![Eddie Smith](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1489861518p1/66064173.jpg)
![Glenn Russell](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1505195595p1/23385697.jpg)
A Scanner Darkly: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
![Eddie Smith](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1489861518p1/66064173.jpg)
But perhaps Mr. Egan is a more interesting subject. Have you checked his personal site? There's no doubt in my mind, Egan is a highly intelligent person, and he manages to impress that on many of his readers.
![Glenn Russell](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1505195595p1/23385697.jpg)
For me, a glimpse of just how bright and well-educated is noted by Manuel in Message #2 at the bottom of my review of The Infinite Assassin. Link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
![Eddie Smith](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1489861518p1/66064173.jpg)
This implies you have to be a scientist to appreciate it.
That just isn't true.
The "S" in "SF" stands for SCIENCE!!!
REAL science fiction has REAL science in it.
The great thing about science is that anyone can appreciate it.
You don't have to be a professional scientist.
Paul Bryant, you seem not to appreciate true science fiction.
Maybe you should go read some nice Harry Potter.