Luminous

by Greg Egan

LUMINOUS collects together one original story plus nine previously unpublished in book form. Greg Egan's short fiction is at the cutting edge of the genre. His stories range from near future predictions to far future, far space improvisations. His grasp of the latest scientific breakthroughs is unparalleled in science fiction. The stories include 'Transition Dreams', 'Cocoon', 'Our Lady of Chernobyl', the title story 'Luminous' and 'The Planck Drive'. Egan's particular interests range from the farther shores of chaos theory and black hole science to bio-technology and cloning.

Contents:
Chaff (1993)
Mitochondrial Eve (1995)
Luminous (1995)
Mister Volition (1995)
Cocoon (1994)
Transition Dreams (1993)
Silver Fire (1995)
Reasons to Be Cheerful (1997)
Our Lady of Chernobyl (1994)
The Planck Dive (1998)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Hard Science Fiction, Anthologies, Collections, Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1995

About the author

Greg 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.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta es una novela de ciencia ficción Hard con mayúsculas. Algunos de los cuentos incluyen planteamientos con una base sobre física, matemáticas y química avanzadas que apenas logras comprender. Y aun así, he de admitir que resulta una lectura muy estimulante en cuanto a ideas se refiere. Como en todas sus novelas, Greg Egan es un visionario de un futuro que podría suceder, o al menos esa es la sensación que te dejan.

Si bien 'Luminoso' no alcanza el nivel de la extraordinaria 'Axiomático', otra recopilación, sí contiene cuentos bastante buenos. Antes de entrar a comentar los relatos, decir que Greg Egan es un escritor de corte Pynchon/Salinger, del que apenas se sabe nada, ni tan siquiera se tienen fotos de él. Pero esto es lo de menos, porque hay que quedarse con la obra de este autor, uno de los más destacados de la ciencia ficción actual.

Estos son los diez relatos que incluye 'Luminoso':

- Briznas de paja (Chaff). (***) El protagonista ha de rescatar a un bioquímico que se encuentra en El Nido, una selva artificial del Amazonas, modificada para defender sus secretos.

- Eva mitocondrial (Mitochondrial Eve). (***) Los Hijos de Eva es una organización que permite, mediante el análisis del genema, conocer los antepasados más lejanos de un individuo, y por ende de la Humanidad, rompiendo todas las barreras de géneros y razas.

- Luminoso (Luminous). (***) Lo que empieza como un relato típicamente postcyberpunk, nos conduce a un error hallado en las matemáticas que podría modificar toda nuestra perspectiva. La clave, un ordenador que funciona con luz.

- Señor Volición (Mister Volition). (**) Extraña historia que trata sobre la existencia de más de un yo en nuestra mente, inspirándose en los modelos cognitivos de Minsky.

- Crisálida (Cocoon). (***) Relato realmente original que tiene por tema una tecnología capaz de proteger al bebé nonato de virus, toxinas, fármacos, drogas, y algo más que hace que lo que parece un gran adelanto, no lo sea tanto.

- Sueños de transición (Transition Dreams). (****) El protagonista va a someterse a la transferencia de su mente a un robot. Pero la transición produce sueños, inevitablemente. La verosimilitud con la que Egan trata esta historia es impresionante, al igual que su final, que me dejó helado.

- Fuego plateado (Silver Fire). (***) A Claire, especialista en epidemias, le encargan el estudio de la extraña propagación de fuego plateado, que deja a los infectados en carne viva.

- Motivos para ser feliz (Reasons to Be Cheerful). (*****) El protagonista de este relato es feliz. Hasta que le es descubierto un tumor en el cerebro, que le está matando pero cuya presión provoca altos niveles de leu-encefalina, sustancia similar a ciertos opiáceos que es la que le hace ser feliz. A partir de aquí entramos en una historia fascinante. Un relato imprescindible.

- Nuestra Señora de Chernóbil (Our Lady of Chernobyl). (***) A Luciano Masini le han robado un paquete, con el asesinato de su mensajera, que contenía una representación de la Virgen con el Niño del siglo XVIII, y le encarga a un detective su recuperación.

- La Inmersión de Planck (The Planck Dive). (**) Relato realmente difícil de comprender, donde los protagonistas parecen ser individuos que viven en Polis, realidades electrónicas, donde los cuerpos son meros adornos. El grupo protagonista se propone mandar clones al interior de una agujero negro para entender por fin el espacio-tiempo.

[Metodi Markov · Rating 1 out of 5]

Съвместен прочит с Martin Nedev.

Прочетох първите два разказа и част от далия заглавието на този сборник "Luminous".

Свързва ги според мен това, че са твърде натруфени и скучовати, нямам желание да дочета останалите напъни на Greg Egan...

"Chaff" - 2,5*.

История без задоволителен край, макар и не съвсем безинтересна като замисъл. Заглавието е удачно - "Плява".

"Mitochondrial Eve" - 2*.

Има идея и тук, но посредствено развита и пак без край.

"Luminous" - N/A

Започна добре, но бързо пропадна в някаква безкрайна математическа дискусия, дори фактът, че знам кой е Пиер Ферма и съм чувал за прочутата му последна теорема не ми помогна да се справя с текста.

Корицата прилича на съдържанието на сборника - произволни цветове и форми, съчетани абстрактно и непонятно.

Толкова от мен, надявам се на някои от вас да допадне този сборник повече.

P.S. Стилът на автора удивително напомня на този на Тед Чанг, аз и неговите разкази нещо не харесах...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Miriam Cihodariu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of short sci-fi stories to start the year. More science-driven than most, and it's exactly what I love about the author. So happy I discovered his writing.

It's remarkable the anticipation prowess Egan had since the 90s and so on, and how much of what he conjured seems to come true in the tech developments of today.

What I liked most: the disruptive, hypnotic poetry of his images. The way the humans he paints do not become less tribal as they become enlightened. Our Lady of Chernobyl was my favorite story of this cycle. Very poetic.

What I have mixed feelings about: in every story, at some overwhelming point, a woman has to cry :)).

Who I'd recommend it to: everyone.

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Egan, gran scrittore, purtroppo poco pubblicato in Italia, in questi 10 racconti, raccolti in questa edizione Urania, ci racconta di come l'umanità cerca di destreggiarsi con le scienze applicate alla tecnologia e di come queste condizionino la vita stessa.

Leggere Egan, per me, è come stare davanti ad un computer stile anni '90, schermo nero e testo in verde fluorescente, in una stanza di notte (tipo nei film cyberpunk: Matrix?). Così nel silenzio quasi assoluto della notte, intervallato da qualche sirena delle ambulanze o frenate brusche di qualche automobile dove il guidatore ubriaco torna da una festa, mi ritrovo a digitare un comando e appena l'"invio" viene pigiato, vengo teletrasportato in un mondo meccanizzato, supertecnologico ed oscuro.
Esempio totale di narrativa cyberpunk, ma il bello è che non finisce qui, Egan è anche fantascienza hard, ci sono passaggi dove ti fuma il cervello, con tutti quei termini scientifici tecnici, ritorni indietro e cerchi di barcamenarti come puoi, ma... Infine, ultima ma non per importanza, è la componente sociologica/esistenziale di tutto. Cioè Egan ci racconta delle storie, che ora a circa 20 anni dalla pubblicazione di questi racconti, la situazione sociale e tecnologica ci è molto affine.
I 10 racconti qui raccolti, scandagliano l'insondabile della scienza nella coscienza. Gli argomenti sono i più disparati: si va dalla biologia alla fisica, dalla storia all'astronomia, dal thriller alla medicina, insomma l'autore cerca nella ricerca scientifica, la ricerca di se stessi. Noi esseri umani cosa siamo, cosa facciamo, perchè e come interferiamo con la Natura e in quale direzione dovremmo andare per ristabilire o stabilire da zero una connessione con noi stessi e quindi con la Natura stessa? Tutto questo come si raffronta con l'universo? Il Big Bang ha creato l'universo ed il Big Crunch (forse) ne decreterà la fine... ma in tutto questo l'essere umano come si confronterà?

Mitico, epocale, da recuperare assolutamente!

[Jose Moa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greg Egan is more a scientific speculation writer that a classic sf writer,he takes the known science and tecnology an extrapolates to its very limit,his tales by that are full of wild but plausible ideas and are very exigent with the reader that have take all his bakground in metaphysics,quantum mechanics,matemathics,genetics ,molecular biology ,artificial inteligence and computing sciences ,some times at a very high level;he is the hardest of the hard sf writers and in this sense is unique.To read his works is a mental challenge
This book Luminous is a serie of tales in his usual way,the tales are:

Chaff:is over a hibrid virus that enables to his user to mdify the neuronal sinapsis structure and by that to become the sort of personality he will

Mitochondial eve:uses the quantum entanglement on spliting mitocondrial ADN to use as a statistical molecular clock for search of related ancestors, and as the mitocondrial ADN only comes from the mother the first human woman

Luminous:this is a deep metaphysical tale that explores the relation between the matemathics and the physical world,opposing to the platonic idea that have an independent existence,here the created matemathics are related to the physical states of the brains of the thinkers and by that to the physical proceses of the real world

Mister volition:here appears the colective structure of the I and the will,the I is in no place of the mind,is the colectivity of the mind,Mister Volition is the idea of itself.The autor says this concepts are described in "Society of the mind" by Marvin Minsky

Cocoon:with the pretext of enhance a placentary barrier for toxic mother substances a biotechnology corporation intends comercialice a modulator of hormone interchange with the goal of modify the embriology of the brain,change the sexual inclinations and eliminate the homosexuality

Transition Dreams:here we have the tipical subject of the clone a real person in a virtual pure software reality in acomputing machine.The transition dreams appear in the process of copy as intermediate mental states

Silver Fire:on a epidemiological study over a mortal virus a researcher detective discovers the virus is workshiped and extended by a esoteric secta in a sociologic cultural regression

Reasons to be Cheerful:after a cure of a brain cáncer by mean of a modified herpes virus that mark the cáncer cell for cytotoxics ,the endorfine receptors are destroyed ,and for repair the damage electronic chips are inserted so the person can chose his tastes

Plank Dive:this tale is related to the novel Diaspora in the sense that the characters are pure software simulations living in a virtual reality in a supercomputing machine named polis.The tale is about testing in the limit the speculative Kumar quantum theory of gravity derived of the Smolin and Penrose theories where the spacetime is quanticed at the Planck lenght;the test is carried in the singularity of a black hole orbited by the polis

Our Lady of Chernóbil:is on a lost byzantinian icone made with radioactive materials of the accident an that suposedly have miraculous effects in curing illness

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not quite as good as Axiomatic, his other short story collection I've read. Some of the stories either didn't feature very interesting ideas or had unmemorable protagonists. Interestingly, several of these stories introduce ideas he would later reuse in his novels (e.g. Luminous' idea of battling universal physical/mathematical systems and The Planck Dive's physics technobabble, reintroduced in Schild's Ladder; Transition Dreams' Gleisner robots and The Planck Dive's polises would show up again in Diaspora), but for the most part it doesn't seem like he outright stole from himself. The stories were written over a span of 5 years, from late 1993 to early 1998. Basically every single one makes fun of religion and religious people; Greg Egan obviously HATED being dragged to church as a child.
- Chaff - An undercover agent visits a genetically engineered jungle in South America in search of drug traffickers; what if the drug can also bring enlightenment?
- Mitochondrial Eve - The battle of the sexes crossed with the search for the Historical Jesus, via quantum paleogenetics.
- Luminous - The Adventures of Johnny Mnemonic, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, and the War Between Universes.
- Mister Volition - A savvy thief steals an ocular implant that offers some apparently intense insights into the way that free will works (or doesn't).
- Cocoon - A company researching technology to block harmful chemicals from reaching babies still in the womb suffers terrorist attacks; a gay detective tries to figure out the ramifications.
- Transition Dreams - A guy paying to have his consciousness scanned and uploaded to a new robot body finds out that the dreams that ensue are Serious Business.
- Silver Fire - A horrifically painful virus called Silver Fire flays its victims alive; a professor investigates a possible cult connection.
- Reasons to Be Cheerful - A guy has a life-threatening tumor as a child, which has the side effect of making him happy; when he undergoes treatment, he loses the ability to feel happiness, and has to endure years of joyless rebuilding of his life to experience the world as a normal person. This was the best and most moving story in the collection.
- Our Lady of Chernobyl - A private detective makes fun of religion while tracking down the theft of an Orthodox icon.
- The Planck Dive - Future people try to dive into a black hole to potentially cheat death. Or, in the language of the story: spacetime worldlines, quantum Feynman diagrams time dilation virtual photons, hypercylinders Schwarzchild radius Belinsky-Khalatnikov-Lifshitz geometry counter-rotation.

[Veronika Sebechlebská · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kúpené kedysi kdesi vo výpredaji za 3 eurá, pretože áno, je tu tak komplikovaná veda, že si k tomu buď potrebujete dorobiť titul z matfyzu alebo mať v hlave prevodové koliečko, ktoré vám všetky tie fyzikálne teórie a fraktálne štruktúry poprehadzuje z ľavej hemisféry do pravej, takže z prečítaného síce nebudete rozumieť nič, ale to nič bude krásne a bude poetické a bude vás nadchýnať. (Ak nemáte titul ani to koliečko naviac, nezúfajte. Oboje poľahky zoženiete v parlamentnom bufete)

[Tim Sharp · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a much weaker book than Diaspora, and with these stories I unfortunately found myself becoming all-too-aware of the shortcomings in that novel that I had previously been willing to overlook because of the sheer giddy weirdness of that particular post-human tale.

I fear my review is going to come off as meaner than I intend, but Luminous somewhat evoked a feeling of being trapped in a room with a person who just mainlined a bunch of PBS science specials/Dawkins books and thinks that spouting a summary of Penrose's Twistor theory is a substitute for good conversation. Egan's strategy with a lot of these stories seemed to be to either throw a bunch of high concept science fiction ideas at the reader in place of an actual narrative, or deliver a thinly-veiled sermon about how any hint of a non-purely-materialist worldview is stupid and anyone who even remotely entertains it is, by association, also stupid.

I also found the overwhelming majority of the stories to be poorly plotted (with a parade of info-dumps upon info-dumps substituting for narrative), riddled with badly-disguised author screeds, thin characterizations, poor dialogue and an almost pathological obsession with a bunch of "science fuck yeah" stuff. Look, I love science. Complexity theory, epigenetics, quantum gravity, sure, it's all great, but if you're writing a narrative it has to be tied into an interesting story, not simply rendered as techno-fetishism. Science fiction works because it uses the concepts of science and technology to say something about the world, not to indulge in self-congratulation. Comparing Greg Egan's stuff to something like Stanislav Lem's short works really highlights what the value of this is.

Three stories I thought that worked best:

Mitochondrial Eve - A genetic researcher gets caught up in the gender wars. Moralistic, but it had its heart in the right place and was also, on balance, probably the closest Egan has yet come to comedy.

Reasons To Be Cheerful - A sojourn into the conscious mind and the structure of identity. I particularly enjoyed this story for the fact that it's as close as I've seen Egan come to really confronting the kind of dark pessimism/nihilistic ideas which many of his other hyper-materialist narratives strongly imply, but often leave completely unexplored. If you can control your emotions/tastes, do they have any value? I thought the story itself was fairly weak, but the idea was good enough that I didn't care.

Cocoon - This was the story that worked the best for me. A gay privately-employed policeman is called in to investigate an attack on a genetic research laboratory. The story contained a surprising moral twist which I liked for its audacity and resolution.

I don't mean to be unduly harsh, there were definitely some parts of this book that I liked and I'm glad that someone from my hometown of Perth is writing such high concept stuff, I just wish it was more focused on actually telling interesting stories, rather than getting lost in an ocean of science-fetishism, there's already more than enough of that in Wired Magazine.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall: This story collection actually got better when I tried to write up my reviews for each story, because I started to take the time to think through how the different parts played into each story's narrative. I'm not saying that you need to do some sort of post-modern literary criticism to understand this book, but taking a moment to reflect on what each story is trying to tell you does give you a richer appreciation for the structure and implications.

Initially, I was disappointed because these stories seemed pretty dated and bland compared to those in Axiomatic , which has many stories that I still think about all the time (e.g. Unstable Orbits in the Space Of Lies and Seeing). To be honest, this book is not nearly as world-shatteringly good as Axiomatic, but the stories here have much more subtle points to make, and I'm convinced now that many of them will stick with me. If you only want to read a few stories from this collection, I highly recommend Reasons to be Cheerful and The Planck Dive, with Luminous as runner-up.

4 of 5 stars

Individual reviews per-story below:

Chaff (1993)
This seems like a pretty weak offering to start the book off with. It has a lot of elements that, individually, make for an interesting world, but none of it really pays off in my opinion. A section of forest run by a strange amalgamation of drug cartels and bio-engineers, nearly impossible to penetrate because of the biological defenses they've designed, and a black-ops agent sent to retrieve a defector. Sounds like an interesting set-up, but the bulk of the story is spent either setting up the scene or doing normal spy infiltration stuff. When the main character actually gets into the forest, it is revealed both that he was used as a vector for a disease intended to kill both him and the defector, and that the defector has detected this and intends to instead use him as a test subject for a new drug that allows the user to alter their state of mind at will (which the defector has already used).

The idea of changing your own state of mind and your own preferences comes up a few times in this book, and it's a fascinating one, but this story barely scratches the surface. It ends with the main character trying to avoid feedback loops and focus on keeping their own sense of self as they start to change..
2 of 5 stars

Mitochondrial Eve (1995)
This story is almost less about hard science and more about the kind of tribalism people engage in for the flimsiest of reasons. I found the story itself a bit of a slog because the specific technobabble that Egan was using to justify this didn't really matter (and definitely seemed like nonsense), and served mostly to build anticipation. I did like, however, that the main character was not a partisan one way or the other and found the whole thing to be a bunch of nonsense.

The message about tribalism feels very prescient, but of course in 1995 I didn't have the same viewpoint that I have now, so it may be that we're just in a new cycle of identity politics and Egan was just being topical at the time. The aspects of it highlighting how many people treat science as something that should be bolstering their position rather than a neutral process of discovery certainly seems evergreen.
2.5 of 5 stars

Luminous (1995)
This is the kind of thing I'm looking for in a Greg Egan story. Abstruse mathematics with a dash of cyberpunk thrown in there. Two people discover that not only is mathematics consistent everywhere, the border is unstable, so solving a "contested" theorem one way can move the border. It's hard to imagine what it would mean for mathematics to be a property of our universe, much less one that is not consistent across the whole domain, but given that premise, it's an interesting story.
4 of 5 stars

Mister Volition (1995)
I think I missed the point of this story. I think the general idea is that the unity of self - and by extension the notion that there's any one self that can make a decision - is an illusion that masks a much more chaotic decision-making process. Perhaps this is something that has simply not aged well and this story was more interesting at the time it was written, but it felt to me like the story didn't go anywhere.
1.5 of 5 stars

Cocoon (1994)
This story was a bit middle-of-the-road to me. Egan is one of the few sci-fi writers who seems to be willing to explore the fact that once we have control over our own preferences, a lot of the axioms of human behavior become a lot less axiomatic. The science-fiction elements of this story have that flavor, but they are barely explored in favor of a more straightforward detective story and morality tale about corrupt business interests. In some ways that is a good thing, though - I think the idea of "what if you could make it so everyone born after a certain date were cis and straight" seems almost too trite to bother exploring in a Greg Egan story, and he explores analogous concepts better in other stories anyway.
2.5 of 5 stars

Transition Dreams (1993)
This was another weak story, though it was at least a short one. The idea is pretty simple - consciousness is a side effect of sufficiently complicated calculations (or at least computation of the sort that is carried out by the human brain), so the degraded versions of those calculations that would be necessary to build up any sort of model of a human consciousness would themselves be ephemeral consciousnesses. I have to say the idea that "oh we have no idea what these things could be like because any model of what they are like would, themselves, be conscious" seems like an obvious failure of imagination (though I imagine the character that says this had no particular incentive to actually find out the answer, since it was basically immaterial).

The big "gotcha" (if I'm understanding the ending correctly) is that these "transition dreams" happen routinely even for organic beings, which are always moving data around inside the brain and thus creating weird eddies of consciousness, and in fact most conscious experiences are transition dreams - we just don't notice because they never get incorporated into the linear worldview of the main consciousness. It's an interesting enough idea, though feels a bit navelgaze-y to me.

1.5 of 5 stars

Silver Fire (1995)
This is something of a cautionary tale, but not the kind of cautionary tale you're expecting. Egan builds an interesting little world in this story - it would be great to see a Robert Charles Wilson story set in the world of microvillages.

The story is ostensibly about a woman who is tracking down some new vector of an incredibly deadly contagious disease, and it becomes increasingly clear that the "new vector" is hippie types deliberately infecting themselves because they believe that the disease is some sort of path to enlightenment. The moral of the story is that even though our generation has fully embraced reason and science, superstition and magical thinking are actually the natural mode, and we as a society will regress to the mean if we assume otherwise.

As a card-carrying skeptic, this definitely feeds into my ego, though there is some reason to doubt that "we" ever really fully embraced rationality as a society in the first place. I will also note that an interesting vector for non-rational thinking to creep in is the degree to which science is politicized (also addressed in the "Mitochondrial Eve" story in this collection), a regular theme of Steven Pinker's books, including The Blank Slate and Enlightenment Now. I suspect that subtle corruption of the meaning of "rational" and "scientific" are more likely to overtake the part of society that cares about rationality than outright magical thinking, but who knows.
3.5 of 5 stars

Reasons to Be Cheerful (1997)
This is one of the best stories in the book (neck-and-neck with The Planck Dive for the number one spot) because it deals with the mechanical and somewhat arbitrary nature of preferences - which is definitely Egan's stock in trade. In my experience, other writers tend to skirt around the boundaries of a world where it's possible to change your preferences, because once that's possible you no longer have firm anchor point. The universe is indifferent and there are no axioms from which to derive a framework for "meta-preferences"; because there's not really an objective frame of reference for making meta-preference decisions, I think that sci-fi writers tend to either avoid the question or invent some universal axioms so that readers are more comfortable doing so. Egan instead dives right in.


This story is about a boy whose childhood cancer first makes him feel pleasure in everything, and eventually robs him of the ability to feel pleasure at all, when he grows up he gets a neural prosthetic that is supposed to repair his normal brain function, but it ends up being to indiscriminate, and he likes nearly everything in the world equally and intensely; the scientists end up giving him controls to allow him to deliberately choose which things give him pleasure and which things don't.

This story is well-crafted in that it first very clearly establishes (without saying, because this is not the point of the story), that preferences and happiness are a physical phenomenon in the brain, and then it finally introduces the idea of "you can choose your own preferences" into a person who never really knew what he naturally would have liked in the first place. Giving him no way to anchor his preferences in status quo bias makes the near impossibility of his task evident, but Egan also shows a very plausible recovery as he establishes a new baseline. Very well done.

4.5 of 5 stars

Our Lady of Chernobyl (1994)
This is one of the weaker stories in the book. The main character is a private detective, hired to retrieve a surprisingly high-priced artifact when it goes missing after the courier is mysteriously killed. I think the underlying point was something about the emergence of new religions (possibly with some cyberpunk overtones), but it didn't seem terribly deep to me.


It turns out that the artifact is not very old but rather very new, having been created by a dying Chernobyl responder using some sort of radioactive materials. It has no actual unusual properties, it's just a modern relic that is forming the basis of a new church. Perhaps this was more impactful in the early 90s, when Chernobyl was much fresher?

1.5 of 5 stars

The Planck Dive (1998)
This is another contender for best story in the collection. I partially liked it because it takes place in something very much like the "polis" universe that I liked so much in Diaspora. What's great about this is that it takes as background the fact that these people live in a world where non-linear lifetimes are common, and where people are all the gods of their own universe, carving out what meaning they want to see.

The best part, to me, is the ending. It was a perfect ending for the whole story collection and left me with a smirk on my face. After the citizens make their "Planck Dive" and are stuck apparently beyond hope of recovery from the black hole, they discover exactly what they were hoping for - new physics! Can it be used to escape the black hole and share this with the rest of their world? Moment of suspense... no! Awesome ending that would be hard to pull off in a full book length.

The interesting thing that this story brings up is that these characters are planning on sending clones of themselves into a place where they will get to satisfy their curiosity about the physics in black holes, but the assumption is that they will never be able to communicate it to the world outside the black hole, and then immediately die. Is the fact that some form of you knew the answer to the question you wanted to know enough?
4.5 of 5 stars

[Simona · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this maybe 15moths ago. I couldn't get past the last story. Finally I made myself read it. If you don't see yourself understanding it, it is very skippable. On author's website, there is a nice applet as to how the "falling into a black hole" would look like http://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Tour/T... . You can also find technical notes there.

But, the stories are overall excellent as always with Greg Egan :)

[Elchamaco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una buena antología, si que es verdad que esta algo por debajo de axiomático. Pero la he disfrutado igualmente.

[Geraud · Rating 1 out of 5]

Des histoires médiocres et souvent peu cohérentes cachées sous un vernis prétentieux de fatras scientifique.
Quel sont les motivations des personnages ? quelle est la pertinence de l'histoire ? On se pose souvent la question.
Par exemple la nouvelle Radieux commence avec une scène assez réussie : le personnage principal est menotté et charcuté par un chirurgien mercenaire mais il s'en sort grâce à son sang trafiqué et peut garder en sécurité un secret caché dans son organisme, et puis tout à coup l'auteur nous balance une dizaine de page absconses de théorèmes mathématiques (c'est ça la Hard science fiction ? et ben, c'est pas intéressant) pour ensuite finir sa nouvelle avec une scène en eau de boudin dans laquelle nos héros font quelque chose de vraiment fabuleux avec un ordinateur et des maths. On y crois pas. on s'en fiche. On se dit : tout ça pour ça ?
Fort heureusement ce bouquin se lit vite et la seule raison pour laquelle je vais le finir, c'est que j'ai déjà laissé le précédent livre inachevé. Non, si vous cherchez de bonnes nouvelles de SF, je vous conseille Philippe K Dick ou Fredric Brown.
Quand je pense Que Iain M Banks est mort en juin, tiens, ça me fous le bourdon !

P.S. : après avoir fini ce....livre, je révise mon jugement et je lui enlève encore une étoile : pour la suffisance complaisante de "La plongée de Planck" qui n'a même pas le mérite d'être une histoire bien ficelée, juste un grand étalage de connaissances ; pourtant le "voyage sans retour dans le coeur d'un trou noir" annoncé sur la 4e de couverture présageait de quelque chose de bon, là, Disney aura fait Mieux que Greg Egan, c'est dire.

[Daniorte · Rating 3 out of 5]

La antología en sí está bien pero no es ni la sombra de lo que es Axiomático.

Los relatos son más largos y algunos finalizan con bastante indiferencia. Quién haya leído "Diáspora" se encontrará con dos relatos relacionados, uno sobre los Gleisner(Sueños de transición) que está muy bien, y otro sobre una polis que para quién no se haya leido "Diáspora" le aconsejo que lea ese relato "La inmersión de Planck" para que se haga una idea de lo que va "Diáspora" y ya luego decida bajo su responsabilidad!. Para mi gusto ese relato es infumable.

Mientras que en Axiomático destacaría muchísimos relatos como imprescindibles aquí solo podría quedarme con un par que me hayan dejado buen sabor de boca y un motivo para pensar a lo largo del día, por un lado el que da nombre a la antología "Luminoso", y por otro lado "Motivos para ser feliz". Por lo demás una antología que aporta ideas originales pero que también deja ver la parte mas dura de Greg Egan con lo que ello supone.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

boring.

[Jiří Pavlovský · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jelikož se mi líbily povídky (dobře, spíš nedbale maskované úvahy) Teda Chianga, byl mi doporučen sborník hardcore SF povídek Grega Egana. A z něj vyplynulo, že i já mám své hranice, Luminous mi fakt nesedlo. Chiang se odrazil od zajímavého nápadu a uvažoval, co by bylo dál. Egan se až klinicky soustředí na to, jak by to fungovalo. Ano, má to nějaké vyústění, ale obvykle je přinejmenším pootevřené, a hlavní pozornost je věnovaná mechanismům a vědě. Přičemž téma je obvykle spíš středně zajímavé a vyústění dost často poměrně jasné. Daleko větší pozornost než to, co by se stalo, kdybychom dokázali určit, z koho přesně pochází všichni lidi na světě, je věnována tomu, jaký by k tomu byl nutný počítač.

Asi nejvíc mě zaujala povídka Důvody ke štěstí, ve které si hrdina může sám volit, co se mu bude líbit a co ne, což je zajímavé téma. Ale nevyužité - v okamžiku, kdy už to vypadá, že to začne být zajímavé, povídka končí. U povídky Pana Maria Černobylská jsem zase moc nepochopil, proč název prozrazuje pointu příběhu.


Kniha je na mě moc poetická, akademická a konce jsou opravdu spíše do vytracena. Pokud jsem psal u Chianga, že se zbavuje dramatismu tím, že nastoluje různé přístupy k problémům a zvažuje jejich klady a zápory (aniž by jeden vysloveně prohlásil za dobrý), tak Egan veškeré drama zcela ignoruje. Sice má hrdiny často různé zabijáky, detektivy i zločince, ale spíš jsou to pořád stejní vědci, ale stejně spíš jen tak mudrují, utápí se ve svých myšlenkách, občas se nechají zmlátit a unést a pláčou do piva. Plus mě nápady zase tak převratné nepřišly… možná ale, pokud jste vědečtější týpek, tak vás to ohromí. Já to neocenil.

[Bogdan · Rating 3 out of 5]

O analogie potrivită pentru această a doua colecție de proză scurtă a lui Egan este exercițiul descrierii frumuseții percepute a unui fractal. Se va încerca oare punerea în valoare a esteticii sale oarecum șuie, dar și perfecte în același timp, sau vom folosi serii infinite de sume și ecuații diferențiale pentru a ne referi la setul lui Mandelbrot, fulgul lui Koch, triunghiul lui Sierpinski sau setul Julia? Acesta este și punctul de boltă care susține toate cele 10 povești scurte de SF-tare (ca piatra) din această colecție: eventual vom avea parte din nou de transferul conștiinței într-un mediu digitalo-virtual, analize genetice dar și de matematici speciale, război virusologic și analiza găurilor negre.
Chiar dacă în Axiomatic (prima colecție de povești gen a lui Greg Egan) autorul-matematician australian balansa cele două roluri ale sale (cel de povestitor și cel de profesor emerit) aproape excelent, în aceasta de față înclină din ce în ce mai mult spre cel din urmă, majoritatea firelor sale epice necesitând un efort susținut al atenției și o cunoaștere mai mult decât de suprafață a unor concepte științifice. Astfel sunt înăbușite câteva idei geniale sub o plapumă foarte groasă de paranteze teoretice, matematice și de astrofizică de ultimul nivel. Conceptele din narațiune au rămas geniale și profunde, a fost schimbată doar paradigma care le pune în evidență, situațiile fiind în același timp și mai comune (decât în prima colecție) dar și mai greu de aprofundat.

[Nicolas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ce recueil d enouvelles rassemble une dizaine d'écrits de Greg Egan datant des années 90. Dans l'ensemble, je le trouve moins bon qu'Axiomatique, qui m'avait vraiment ébloui.

Là, peu des nouvelles remettent en question ma conception de l'univers (au sens le plus physique du terme), même si elles abordent pour la plupart des thèmes assez intéressants, que je m'en vais détailler ici.

Comme pour le précédent recueil de nouvelles, je m'en vais les détailler avec mon avis en guise de conclusion.

Paille au vent

une espèce de version hard-science (avec jungle génétiquement modifiée et ingéniérie génétique visant à modifier le cerveau inclues) d'Apocalypse Now : un homme part à la recherche d'un savant perdu dans la jungle, pour y découvrir un truc de dingue.

L'Ève mitochondriale

Une scete prétend que tout le monde descend de la même femme (ou du même groupe de femme) et le démontre grâce à l'ADN mitochondrial. Un chercheur en physique se met en tête de voir si l'Adam mitochondrial existe ... ou pas. Pas forcément inintéressant conceptuellement (après tout, toute l'humanité descend d'un groupe de pré-hominiens de la vallée du Rift), mais pas non plus renversant.

Radieux

Ca c'est intéressant : une quête dans les mathématiques des très grands nombres qui amène à l'utilisation d'un ordinateur de lumière (ça parle forcément à l'informaticien en moi), qui nous mène dans des espaces mathématiques proches des paradoxes de Gödel Escher et Bach et de Cantor. Il y a de plus à un moment donné un renversement de perspective intéressant (avec la résistance de certains sous-espaces des grands nombres, pour des raisons pas tout-à-fait anodines).

Monsieur Volition

Qui est je ? Quel est la partie d enotre cevreau dans laquelle siège le moi ? Une question psychanalytique que Marvin Minsky a démonté dans La société de l'esprit (mentionné par l'auteur en post-scriptum de la nouvelle). Greg Egan s'en empare donc, pour nous montrer ce qui se passait si nous pouvions examiner nos propres processus inconscients/subconscients/para-conscients. Et, franchement, c'est moche. Un peu comme la nouvelle, d'ailleurs, qui n'apporte pas grand chose, je trouve.

Cocon

Je crois que l'auteur a une sensibilité particulière pour l'identité sexuelle (encore heureux ça montre qu'il est encore incarné biologiquement). Et dans ce récit, mettant en scène un privé enquêtant sur l'explosion d'un laboratoire de biotechnologies, elle est au coeur du récit : est-elle innée ou acquise ? Peut-on la choisir (ou pas) avant la naissance d'un enfant ? Si le thème est intéressant, l'enquête est traitée d'une manière un peu plate, je trouve, et nous laisse un léger goût de cendre froide par sa conclusion pas vraiment joyeuse, mais pas non plus terrifiante - juste barbante, en fait.

Rêves de transition

J'ai bien aimé cette histoire un peu fantasmatique, dans laquelle le personnage principal espère se réveiller, à l'issue d'un de ces fameux rêves de transition, dans un corps robotique potentiellement immortel. La conclusion nous révèlera l'horrible vérité qui se cache derrière cette illusion ...

Vif Argent

Vous avez déja vu la série américaine NIS où ils passent leur temps à traquer des microbes mortels en slips ? Ben là, c'est pareil : une chasseuse de microbes écume les communautés du XXIème siècle aux trousses d'un méchant virus écorcheur ... sans pour autant comprendre la nature de la révélation que ce virus peut apporter. Bon, moi non plus, j'ai pas compris cette espèce d'esthétique de la mortification, mais ça doit être mon côté hyper-rationnaliste ... ou pas.

Des raisons d'être heureux

Indubitablement le meilleur récit de ce recueil : un enfant rendu heureux par la maladie déprime parce qu'il guérit et qu'on l'a trépanné du centre du plaisir pour ça (jusque là, normal) avant de retrouver goût à la vie grâce à l'implantation d'un morceau de cerveau de rechange. La conclusion est étonnante, tout comme la nouvelle en fait.

Notre-Dame de Tchernobyl

Des adorateurs d'icônes radioactives lancent encore une secte bizarre (comme disait Colaro en son temps). Un enquêteur qui ne sait rien de tout ça est lancé à la poursuite d'une icône disparue, et met à jour ce sombre traffic. Pas vraiment passionant, sans doute parce qu'Egan ne me semble pas vraiment à l'aise dans le genre policier : il se contente d'en aligner les poncifs sans réellement en tirer d ela force, mais plus comme un canevas dans lequel il peut planter ses délires scientifiques.

La Plongée de Planck

Peut-on trouver dans un trou noir une éternité plus durable que l'univers ? Voilà à quoi doivent répondre les avatars de cette expédition sans retour. Il y sera encore question de calcul infinitésimal, de Cantor, et d'autres joyeux gadgets mathématiques, malheureusement gâchés par un récit d'une aridité rare.

Mon avis

Je crois que ça fait des années qu'un livre ne m'était pas ainsi tombé des mains. J'ai mis deux MOIS pour le lire ! Alors franchement, dire qu'Egan est le roi de la nouvelle, c'est mentir. Et ce livre en est la preuve. Une ou deux nouvelles arrivent péniblement à y surnager ... C'est à mon avis nettement trop peu, surtout que je veux bien reconnaître être plutîot fan de hard-science. Alors si ce genre et/ou cet auteur ne sont pas votre tasse de thé, passez votre chemin, vous allez vraiment vous emmerder à crever.

[V. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot weaker that "Axiomatic", his somewhat earlier short story collection, though I'm struggling to say why. Too many first person narrators? Stories too similar in their cadence (if not quiet in subject matter)? Nothing as mindblowing as "Cutie"? An almost perceptive lack of interesting interhuman (in a very broad sense of human) relations?

I also do not quiet remember thinking "oh, I've seen this is a novel of his, too!" with so many of the stories in Axiomatic. Is this on purpose? Or by chance? Mind me, this is not a negative point, not at all, just an interesting one.

Anyway, an interesting collection if you, like me, want to read everything by Egan. If you are just starting out, head over to Axiomatic that is just amazing and mindblowing.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.6 ⭐️

This collection of short stories was somewhat disappointing compared to Axiomatic. There are some interesting stories, but most of them are not. Anyway, it still shows Egan’s big ideas and concepts.

[fixmyshoes · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite stories from the collection: Luminous, Transition Dreams, The Planck Dive.
I like how the word "luminous" pops up here and there and somehow connects the stories into one collection.

[Noah Markewitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

A little disappointing after axiomatic. Pretty much every story in axiomatic was a banger.
“Luminous”, “Reasons to be cheerful”, and “the plank dive” are absolutely worth reading. This is the kinda stuff I expect from Greg Egan. High quality stuff! The rest are skippable.

[Cryptid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a Czech language edition from the local library. Translation is quite ok, but it still makes any usual Egan's terminology sound a bit too weird for me. No need to even point out that he's definitely not a very poetic writer in the first place and there's definitely no improvement... he's probably the most purposeful clinically descriptive writer I'm able to enjoy and he's got some far future characters who still believe in Big Crunch (which seems now pretty improbable but I think is ok in 1995 sci-fi). He's also got some really amazing ideas and arguments that actually make sense... and he's not afraid of making black hole physics metaphors (although that particular story felt a bit too one-sided). In other words: there are some really compelling reasons to keep reading this guy/person for everyone who enjoys science-fiction and he probably can't get less then 4 stars from me...

[Username · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the stories are excellent. Three of them are less interesting to me: Our Lady of Chernobyl, Chaff, and Transition Dreams. Our Lady of Chernobyl, like Silver Fire, and to a lesser degree, The Plank Dive, deal with obscurantism and ignorance as constrasted to the light of science. It seems to me that Egan dispairs too much in that. Or he was expecting way more than possible from humanity.

[Aude · Rating 1 out of 5]

These weren't short stories, these were concepts, synopses maybe, that could have eventually evolved into stories with proper characters - not "generic male hero" and "occasional female sidekick" cardboard cutout.
It shouldn't have been published, it felt like reading a novelist's draft or notebook.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Egan gets it. He understands how things work — science, mathematics, the human brain — and uses that understanding to create mind-blowing but completely plausible scenarios of how they could work. Luminous is a more uneven collection than Axiomatic, but his best stories are ridiculously brilliant.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Každé sci-fi je pro čtenáře výzvou. Test hranic vaší imaginace. U Egana je to výzva jako prase.
Po literární stránce to není až tak líbivé, je tu víc vědy než citu. Povídky jsou ale originální, hodně hardcore, jak je u Egana zvykem.
Těším se na další knihy.

[Eloi Puig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ressenya en català:

http://www.elkraken.com/Ressenyes_Cat...

Reseña en acstellano:

http://www.elkraken.com/Esp/L-esp/R-L...

[Stefan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Egan's weakest work by far. Characters are cardboard level. Read Axiomatic again instead.

[Ben Shee · Rating 4 out of 5]

More classic Egan exploration - love it.

[RG · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little dissapointed with this collection compared to axiomatic. Felt like most of the stories had great concepts but not enough substance.