Teranesia

by Greg Egan

Two decades after an Indonesian uprising had decimated a family of scientists, the two surviving children return as adults to investigate bizarre reports of genetic mutations rising out of the war-shattered region. Reprint.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook, Mystery

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1999

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

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

...All things considered, Teranesia is a novel composed of a number of interesting parts that somehow don't seem to fuse into a cohesive narrative. The main character has his moments, the science is at times absolutely thought-provoking, the satire makes one grin at several occasions, but all of that is not enough to make this a successful novel. Structurally, the narrative has so many problems that the components remain interesting loose bits of information that do not manage to create something more than the sum of its parts. Interesting as the scientific speculation is, the book doesn't fulfil its potential. I thought it was a mildly disappointing read.

Full, quite spoilerish Random Comments review

[Daniel Kenefick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t understand why Greg Egan generally, and this book specifically, are not getting more respect. Teranesia is unapologetic hard science fiction. It’s by no means perfect, but let’s give credit where credit is due: Egan is a master of the Genre. At the end of the day, his books make you think (quite literally, to understand the science driving them). There is substance behind the big words he uses, as I discovered after several Wikipedia searches and at least one academic paper. Very few authors, or books, will leave you with an idea that you turn over in your head over the next weeks. Egan does that.

Now, thoughts on the common criticisms:

The characters (and plot) as a pretense for the science: Ok, a fair criticism. The science really takes the spotlight here, and for good reason. Egan thinks through some interesting ideas, and the plot (and themes) follow the beat set by the science. Are the two perfectly integrated? Not quite – but this is tough to do. If it successfully pulled this off, this would be a 5 star book (See certain books by Neal Stephenson or Vernor Vinge).

That being said, I actually found the main character rather compelling: war torn, self-reflective, and (plot-drivingly) gay. The plot revolves around this character’s internal struggles, and his protection of his sister. What’s not to like? To be honest, though, I was turning the pages more to figure out “what’s happening with the damned butterflies” that “will our hero ever find his peace?” But that might just be me.

Critical of the humanities: In this book, Greg Egan uses some bullshit-spouting humanities-types as comic relief. Yes, they are straw men. Yes, they are a little indulgent. But they are also funny, and oddly prophetic for a book that is 20 years old.

[Vladimir Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Очень нетипичная книга.

С одной стороны, она, как и любой другой роман Игана, посвящена науке. Биологи рассуждают о механизмах наследования у тропических бабочек, инженеры поясняют принципы работы лодок, приводимых в движение реактивным выбросом водяной струи, и так далее. Много интересных теорий и пищи для ума. Эволюционный механизм, придуманный автором, поражает. В общем, тут все как обычно у Игана :)

А с другой стороны, всегда нейтрально-корректный Иган тут ударяется в политическую сатиру, неожиданно зло высмеивая левацких псевдоинтеллектуалов с их бессмысленными выкриками "трансгрессивный дискурс!", "маскулинная фаллоцентричность!", "гендерный метатекст!" Например, одна из таких персонажей (персонажек?) предлагает перепрограммировать все компьютеры в мире, чтобы заменить все бинарные единицы (1, символ мужского полового органа) на ноли (0, символ женского полового органа) и тем самым совершить мировую киберфеминистическую революцию. Читать без смеха невозможно, настолько верно и язвительно описаны реальные типажи.

<< Транспьютеры будут лишь первой стадией революции, которая изменит полностью гендерный мегатекст науки и технологии. Следующим падет господство самой математики, которая давно нуждается в собственной инверсии. Нам придется восстановить дисциплину с нуля, отказавшись от порочных и предвзятых аксиом прежней, искаженной мужчинами истины, превратив ее застывший, иерархический подход в женский, живой, обучающий. Доказательство мертво. Логика устарела. Следующее поколение надо с детства научить высмеивать Principia Рассела, дергать за бороду Карла Фридриха Гаусса и стаскивать пифагоровы штаны. >>

Надо ж, думаешь, что 2020 год с людьми делает, даже сдержанного Игана допекла эта вакханалия. А потом смотришь на дату выхода книги: 1998. Матерь божья, да как же он это все предсказал с абсолютной точностью на 20 лет вперед??

[Guillermo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comienza muy bien, como novela de aventuras, de un chico y su hermana muy menor, que se crían solos con sus padres en una isla remota.
La segunda parte es un interludio pero interesante, con los chicos crecidos, en Canadá, donde fueron recibidos por una parienta tras la tragedia de la primera parte.
Luego la novela afloja, hay muchísimos diálogos con hipótesis sobre genética y evolución, temas que están tratados con demasiada seriedad para una novela y por supuesto con demasiada imaginación para pensar que se acercan a alguna posibilidad cierta. Es decir, se puede inventar todo en la novela, pero no se puede aburrir con textos de no ficción por correctos que sean.
El tercio final se corresponde en su esencia a Drop Dead de Clifford Simak, de 1956, excepto que en el original muere toda la expedición, y en el siglo XXI no muere nadie, y los que mueren resucitan. Signo indudable de la ficción hecha a medida de lo esperado por el público, educado por el cine y la televisión. Tiempos de decadencia.

[Simona B · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Leftjab · Rating 4 out of 5]

My fifth Greg Egan novel and I can safely say he’s one of my favorite science fiction writers. It’s not just the brains/ideas and his delivery of those ideas, but the breadth of these first five novels is really something: Quarantine was a quantum cyberpunkish thriller that blew my mind wide open, Permutation City was the only one (so far) where I felt out of my depth (but I feel a revisit would help immensely – I’ve read some more books on quantum mechanics since I tried it), Distress is akin to Teranesia (near future drama with an eye on what’s coming next) exploring heady scientific concepts, and then Diaspora is just being blown into the universe – a writer just really pushing himself to the edges of imagination. Really, really smart.

Teranesia is more low-key than Diaspora, and (as I read Diaspora earlier this year) felt like Egan focusing on aspects of Diaspora that maybe critics brought up – an emphasis on relationships and dramatics as opposed to ideas. I tend to disagree when critics focus on what’s not in a writer’s work – if you want a psychological exploration, there are a ton of other writers who do that really well. That said, I did like Egan’s drama here, I was engaged (though I was engaged through Diaspora so I don’t know).

It’s science fiction where the science is genetics and evolution (how genetic mutations are shifts in the evolutionary panorama) and it gets pretty deep throughout. The book meanders a bit with a lengthy detour into postmodern theory – Egan largely criticizes intellectual semantic snits here, though I have to say, writing this in 1998-1999 about the 2010s, he hit a long ball in the prescient field of late 2010s sexual politics, though I’m not sure if his criticism here would be seen as necessarily on the right side of the argument? I get the criticism – a celebrated but shallow pop intellectual in the novel gives a speech where she discusses that her gender allows her not just to feel sympathy with Holocaust victims but also to proclaim her a Holocaust victim herself because she’s a woman – which is some pretty thick BS:

“She’d made it clear what her idea of compassion was: to denounce violence, and to show real generosity towards its victims, but then to cash it all in for a cry of ‘Me, too!’ like an infant crying for sympathy. That was what the death of six million strangers meant to her: not a matter of grief, or horror, but of envy.”

Yikes. Yes, contextually this is a criticism of intellectual vapidity at its finest, and the #metoo movement is about SHARED DIRECT experience with the victims of sexual violence and misogyny (as opposed to some safe remove where one could never have the shared direct experience with a tragedy that had happened in history), but Egan’s specific choice of words there I found accidentally prescient. And that’s really from a brief detour that isn’t totally what the book is about, unless you consider Egan’s focus on genetic mutation and personal grief to be significant and the intellectual posturing to be distracted wasted energy.

There were a few things I missed in the read that I had to go back to – were the Sao Paolo gene samples from the Teranesia areas? They become very important to the last 100 or so pages and I went back to try to find how the gene samples got to Sao Paolo (and where they were from). And SPOILER HERE – the main character becomes infected with the Teranesia gene that starts to mutate and change him physically – does he say exactly where that infection came from? I might have been drawing something out of nothing, but I didn’t see it brought up that since the main character grew up on Teranesia that his genetic makeup had been altered in his youth somehow? Or was it from one of his many injuries sustained while exploring the island with Grant? Kudos to the giant snake scene – that was very intense.

And as the novel goes along and Prabir (main character) realizes he’s carrying the Teranesia gene and it might have been changing him earlier than he’d suspected, I liked how Egan tied the character’s sexuality into the plot. Prabir is gay and he starts having feelings for Grant, the woman with whom he is exploring the islands. If sexuality is genetic (I’m not sure it is, I actually have no idea) and that the character’s sexual desire is altered as the gene starts manifesting itself prior to a physiological manifestation, it would make sense that it would start mutating his impulses as well. Just one of those grace note details Egan throws out that made me think. And that is the bottom line with the science fiction – sure, something like The Expanse series is entertaining, but I’d much rather have a little more meat with my potatoes.

Teranesia is akin to Annihilation and Blood Music – exploring ideas of mutation and evolution on earth. I completely enjoyed it and will keep reading Greg Egan – really one of the very best science fiction writers still writing today.

[Tomislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really amazing book. 10 year old Prabir Suresh and his 3 year old sister, Madhusree, live on a remote Indonesian Island, where their biologist parents are studying an unexplained genetic mutation among the island's butterflies. But civil war breaks out and their lives are shattered. Twenty years later in Toronto, Prabir remains plagued by feelings of guilt and responsibility for his sister. Madhusree is now a biologist herself and wants to return to the island. What's amazing is that Egan has created both a very strong character in Prabir, and speculates an interesting combination of evolutionary biology with the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Along the way, he has no qualms about lampooning academic postmodernism/feminism, or delving into the unfamiliar politics of the region. I thought this book was well on its way to being one of those few have-it-all sf novels, and then he had to go and have an abrupt and meaningless ending. What a shame. Back down from 5 stars to ****.

[Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gran romanzo di Egan, che si svolge principalmente nelle Molucche e tratta di evoluzionismo, cybernetica e mette in scena un protagonista angosciato e schiacciato da un errore fatto da bambino, quando coi genitori e la sorellina viveva in una isoletta dove il padre studiava l'evoluzione di alcune farfalle, fenomeno che poneva delle domande pressanti sulle anomalie del fenomeno. Intorno a loro è scoppiata la guerra d'indipendenza delle Molucche dall'Indonesia, guerra che finirà male e si porterà via i genitori del protagonista, che da quel momento vivrà solo per la sorella, perché la sua colpa segreta è quella di aver provocato l'attacco governativo.
Egan qui si dimostra molto critico verso le illusioni della religione e soprattutto verso le azione del suo paese, l'Australia, verso i migranti.
4 stelle e non cinque perché a tratti Egan perde un poco la bussola dell'enigma scientifico a favore dell'analisi sociologica.

[Peter Tillman]

I have only dim memories of this book. I wonder if I really read it? Does get mixed, but generally good, marks here. OK, I'll send off for the library copy..... Fortunately, the Sta Paula branch is reliable for holding onto their old books.... IB they just acn't afford many new boojs!

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author's major weakness as a writer is that he doesn't care about things like plot or characterization or setting. For him, fiction is just a means of working out scientific ideas. In this book, he tries to overcome that weakness by creating the character of Prabir Suresh, but he doesn't fully succeed. I'm taking off an additional star for his offensive and inaccurate depiction of humanities scholars. Considering how curious he is about anything related to science, it's frustrating that he's so completely uninterested in the humanities. It shows a lack of intellectual curiosity and an anti-intellectual attitude on his part.

[Danada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting story!
I'd class it as hard science/speculative fiction (biology).
Completely not what I expected, but fun and interesting.
Complex relationships, main character, and particularly interesting speculative biology.... though I can't say I understood it all! :D
Definitely worth a second (third.....) reading :)

[Martin L · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always with Egan you have to power through the first half to get to the good stuff. High concept biology sci-fi with some quantum screwy stuff. I liked it

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very slow but pulls the grand finale ending in the last 20 pages or so. Points for some original ideas and a strong young female character.

[Gary Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was sent to me by a mystery philanthropist in South Africa. (Actually, I have a pretty good idea who sent it.) It took almost three months to get here. Three months. Roll on quantatronic matter transfer machines I say.

This is lifted from the cover:

As a young boy, Prabir Suresh lives with his parents and sister on an otherwise uninhabited island in a remote part of the Indonesian peninsula. Prabir names it Teranesia, populating it with imaginary creatures even stranger than the evolutionarily puzzling butterflies that his parents are studying. Civil war strikes, orphaning Prabir and his sister. Eighteen years later, rumours of bizarre new species of plants and animals being discovered in the peninsula that was their childhood home draw Prabir's sister back to the island - Prabir cannot bear for her to have gone out alone and he follows, persuading a pharmaceutical researcher to take him along as a guide.

I'm undecided about this one. It was entertaining but - and this may be down to my appalling memory of whatever happened at the beginning - the protagonist somehow developed an intimate understanding of genetics by the end of the book. It is well written but there are times when I don't believe the cause and effect, such-and-such happened to this character so he reacts by doing whatever. I didn't quite buy it sometimes. And there's a scene with a snake which didn't seem to move the plot along or enlighten me at all.

The author seems to know a shed-load about genetics. Do you ever watch House? The TV show? Part of the pleasure for watching House, for me, is the bewildering language the doctors use when trying to figure out whatever is wrong with the patient. "He may have Fibro-hairy-mitosis, so start him on ten CC's of Streptro-fusion-olive-duplo-matt, stat." There's a bit of that in this book too - though about genetics and DNA strands and RNA re-combatant yadda-blah. Not too much. Just enough to make you me feel stupid.

All-in-all a pretty good read but erring on the side of 'meh'. I'd be interested in what you think.

I have another Greg Egan, Distress, which has been entertaining dust-bunnies on my shelf for several years. I'll read that shortly as the guy seems to have a lot of fans.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in December 2002.

This novel cunningly avoids two clichés of the science fiction genre, something that in itself makes Teranesia an interesting read for aficionados. The first, one which has tended the ghettoisation of science fiction as a genre considered suitable only for adolescents, is the coming of age story of a precocious teenager. Central character Prabir Suresh is certainly precocious, but his adolescent years are omitted - in part one he is not yet a teenager, and in part two and the rest of the novel he is in his twenties. The second cliché is the science fiction novel which is more interested in ideas than people, something which is a problem with other Egan novels. Prabir is an interesting central character not just because a homosexual non-Caucasian hero is unusual in genre fiction, and his personality is made more central than the idea. (This is why it takes almost the whole novel for it to become clear just what its main idea actually is.)

In part one, Prabir is a nine year old child, living on an otherwise deserted Indonesian island with his biologist parents and baby sister; his parents are there to investigate some strange mutations in the butterflies of the region. Political instability becomes civil war, and armed men kill the adults; the children are able to escape and end up in Canada with their aunt (made a figure of fun by Egan for her post-modern relativist ideas). In part two, about fifteen years later, Prabir has a strong emotional reaction when his sister (now a student) wants to join an expedition to that part of Indonesia, where abnormalities are beginning to be observed in a wider range of animals.

The biggest problem that Teranesia has is its ending - which it is not really possible to discuss without giving it away (so you are warned!). Things seem to be heading towards a bleak finish rather similar to Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, when a frankly unconvincing happy ending is suddenly contrived. It undermines the whole novel, leaving the reader unsatisfied. Up until the last ten pages, Teranesia is a most enjoyable read, better than most genre novels.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oldie but a goodie. The satire of a certain strand of academia I found prescient until I recalled Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures was published in 1997. Slightly oddly paced, but that's not GE's strong suit and who reads him for that?

[Mark M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last sentence of the book brought from 3 stars to be 5 stars.

This is the second book I read by Greg Egan, after reading Distress ages ago and purchasing most of his books up to now, but never having the time to dwell upon them.

While mostly reading hard sci-fi, I don't read much hard biology sci-fi. This is simply because I prefer my hard to be physics. However, in spite of that, the book did not fail me.

What made me finally approach to this book specifically, rather than Permutation City, Diaspora or many of his other books that await me on my bookshelves, is that I wanted to read hist almost first novel, and see how he treated the gay character. Luckily, I wasn't disappointed.

This books is not for everyone. Even when I'm not a biologist, the science in the book didn't scare me away, however I was also not drawn into it, unlike it would've been with physics. I ended up caring more about the mystery and the characters. That, until a glimpse into physics occurred, and I was finally able to fully enjoy the book.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1069410.html[return][return]This is basically the book I wished that Darwin's Radio, by Egan's near namesake Greg Bear, was going to be. The central idea is the same: peculiar mutations are occurring which will not only upset evolutionary biology but also perhaps imperil the future of humanity. However Egan ties his viewpoint character into a disturbing but believable family background with consequent psychoses, and the politics and biology all seemed considerably more credible. It is set in a part of the world I don't know at all - the South Moluccas, in the near future; with excursions to the gay/academic scene in Toronto - but all very vivid and believable. I'm not surprised that this won prizes, if anything I'm surprised it didn't win more.

[Raja · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sluggish start, but it builds up into something quite interesting, and less weird than Quarantine or Distress -- although still weird, in the way that only Egan is. The end is abrupt, but does wrap things up. Needlessly heavy-handed in its uniformly scathing treatment of the religious and the intellectuals of the arts community, but that's really my only criticism. Otherwise, a solid entry in Egan's impressive opus. I'd still start with Incandescence, but Teranesia is easily up there with Distress.

Like Egan in general, this is about as hard as hard SF gets. I like that a great deal, but others might not.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who but Greg Egan could combine quantum physics with genetic biology? I rated this book a 4 simply for the enjoyment of exploring how those two could be related. Egan has a light touch in this book and banters about genetics, he also pokes fun at academic postmodern pseudo-science. The plot itself was less enjoyable, a bit heavy on the childhood guilt theme, but interestingly the main character's homosexuality turned out to be significant in terms of the plot twists - so not gratuitous.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read this book twice now. Once in 2004 and again 2017. Both times I found it compelling up until the last chapter or so. At that point the story ending appeared to become inconsequential due to the hard-sci genetics/biology idea exploration having already run its course in the preceding prose. So the ending as it stands is something of a fizzle.

Interesting in many ways, but not my favourite of his works.

[Kasey Haught · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the basic premise and enjoyed the writing, but the ending seemed abrupt, and the story half-finished, without really getting a chance to address the possible impacts of the phenomenon on the world and humanity going forward.

[Dan Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very understated and quite brilliant. Bring an IQ with you when you read it.

[Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A while ago I went into a bookstore looking for Diaspora by Greg Egan. They didn't have it but they did have this, and the biology focus intrigued me so I picked it up. I also read that it had some "quantum genetics" going on, and I've been toying with a faintly related idea and wanted to see what someone smarter than me had come up with. The reviews for the book on here are not very good, and it doesn't seem like one of Egan's more popular works, so I was fairly apprehensive, expecting the story to focus mostly on ideas rather than characters and plot, as most of the hard SF I've read does. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Teranesia. This is a great book with a careful balance of plot, character, theme, and idea, and in my opinion it deserves better than fading into the endless sea of SF history that it seems to have.

The protagonist, Prabir, is a gay Indian man, which struck me as pretty unusual for the time this was written, and both aspects of his identity, especially his homosexuality, are important plotwise and thematically to the novel. Egan sketches a fairly interesting portrait of this character from childhood through adulthood, and he undergoes a complete arc overcoming past trauma and guilt. He had an almost melancholically analytical way of looking at things, and the way his adult self had seemingly lost most of the passion and even knowledge for/of science so exhibited by his child self was all too real to me. I've got no complaints about the depth of the protagonist of this book, which is more than I can say about a lot of science fiction.

As with any hard SF book, the "big idea" is the star of the show (though I stress that it does not overshadow the actual story), in this case being "quantum genetics", where a selfish gene acts as an organic quantum computer, altering DNA to match one of any potential histories. I've got no idea how Egan came up with this idea, given the topics of his other books and his reputation for headiness it's no question that he's something of a genius. As a biologist it was fun to read an SF book where the SF is all in genetics. Even better, the biology in this book felt pretty authentic, even if it is fiction, and given the general insipidness of most biology in SFF (most SFF writers seem more interested in physics and/or magic), this is pretty high praise. I couldn't have written it better myself. This will definitely be a book I recommend to any biologist friends looking for science fiction to tickle their brains with.

My complaints aside from one are pretty superficial. Because Egan wanted to save a twist for the end, some of Prabir's actions as a child are pretty unclearly motivated and had me scratching my head. As a result the book doesn't really come into its own until the 1/3ish mark. Additionally the science exposition could get pretty heady, even for me. I can't imagine trying to read this book without knowing anything about genetics. He makes some attempts to explain basic terms like "promoter", but at the end of the book what the São Paulo protein does is still pretty nebulous to me.

My main complaint is how (in Internet parlance) "STEMlordy" this book is. I suppose this was written in a time when rational naturalism and militant atheism were "cooler" than they are today, but even as someone who A) doesn't believe in magic, and B) doesn't believe in God, I found a lot of the self-righteous "Hail Science!" asides in this book a bit cringe. Worse yet are the strawmen characters representing humanities researchers as superfluous navelgazers solving problems that don't exist. I mean, I can see where Egan is coming from, and he did predict how the humanities would grow ever more solipsistic and political in the two decades since Teranesia's publication... But it all just struck me as a neckbeard atheist's idea of a joke. "Ha ha! These woke feminists think the number 1 is patriarchy!" As a STEM researcher myself many of the most important classes I took in my undergraduate degree, in terms of shaping my thinking about the world and my approach to research, were humanities classes. The fact that Egan can so casually dismiss the humanities and its ideas, even if it is just a joke as I'm sure he'd say when asked, is evidence of his own STEMlord solipsism.

Other than that though... the book is good!

[Juulia-Gabrielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started this book, I was wondering: What will be awaiting me ? The back-cover seemed rather interesting and gloomy all the same. However, the adventure would be quite different and nonetheless interesting.

My review is based on a 3.5/5 and contains some spoilers.

Without telling about the story, I prefer to explain how this book is built, relative to my expectations and experience in reading. The book is classified as science-fiction and predicts a very dooming ending. However, in my opinion, the book better describes a drama which is painted with science-fiction and thriller. The science-fiction is more a plus rather than a need to the story. The characters' life and destiny could as well unfold without the science-fiction thematic. Indeed, whatever the threat is, it barely influences the character choices. It only help to tie them together rather than to influence them.
The very positive point of this book is to present a very original character, a sad and stoical character, which destiny wasn't the one he would have chosen, would his parents hadn't died. But he is under constrain and must bear with it. And the book bears it with us too and this is what makes the book better.
I personally found the "excess" of hard science-fiction breaking the rhythm of the book and giving some reason to say "this is a SF book". The SF is there, but it barely makes it to the podium. It is a second plan. We do not really feel any threat until the very end... and yet... I will not criticise that choice, but it gives some background to the story and makes us a bit anxious as well :-).

The very positive point of this book is to present an LGBT main character which is brought forward rather than just being a "status". There is questioning, affirmation and love, however a broken love may be during the entire book.

(+) good characters, a story that unfolds along the reading, atmosphere of the different visited regions, a single but nice climax, a very good family story.
(?) promised science-fiction but which is not so much put forward. However it makes us waiting till the end.
(-) too much hard science-fiction, which is a paradoxal...; the main character science is rather unequal along the book; no real threat after all...

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a mixed response to this one. On the one hand, the main idea--once we finally get to it--of quantum evolution is fascinating (if very unlikely) and looks fair to represent a genuine existential threat. The protagonist mostly irritated me, but Egan does ultimately justify his erratic and frankly assholish behaviour in plausible psychological terms (survivor's guilt, mainly). There is some quite amusing mockery of postmodernism--amusing especially because some of it just sounds too real. My favourite, perhaps, is the scholar who sees binary code as sexist because it is made up of active ones--penises--and passive, absent zeros--vaginas. Her plan to subvert this mathematical sexism? Convert every one to zero, and vice versa, thereby destabilizing and subverting the underlying sexism. Sadly, that idea is not as as loopy a parody of postmodernism as one might hope. On the other hand, the plot is disjointed and takes a long while to get going. Despite being an almost fanatic rationalist, the protagonist nevertheless does numerous irrational and even downright stupid things. I can't give this a bye as irony, as the narrative voice seems itself to be as impatient with anything other than material rationalism as is the protagonist. Worst, though, is how the novel's central problem is resolved by a nineteen-year-old student, who jerry-rigs, within days, a fix for an aggressive genetic development that has only just been discovered and transforms whatever it infects into ... well, we never quite find out, thereby saving her brother--and humanity. Far too implausible an ending for a book so insistent on the scientific method and rationalism. Egan does, however, find an interesting way to make nihilism actually key to the resolution of the problem: who'd have thought that the sentiment "life is meaningless" might actually have an optimistic side to it? BTW, the cover is deceptive; nobody turns into a giant human/butterfly hybrid--which would have been pretty cool, actually.

[Wouter K · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I was going to give this book 3 stars. The beginning is rough. To me there's some plotholes to the early story, it is fragmented and there is very little attention to the main characters inner world. In all honesty, if this book was written today I'm quite sure that the whole first part of the book would be slowly revealed in emotional flashbacks.

But then the rest of the story ensues. And it is actually quite good. Prabir's trauma response, guilt and shame are not cliché but very plausible. His relationship with his sister and his boyfriend are well fleshed out from his inner world. As the story continues the interactions are quite great, although the amount of knowledge that bank worker Prabir has on the topics at hand are somewhat overly impressive. Still they do fit the profile.

I found it interesting that Egan clearly took from the 90's unrest in Indonesia and extrapolated it to the near future as a context. I saw some reviews that find this too detailed, but I think it is a worthwhile reflection. It is good to notice that Egan after publishing this book actually publicly advocated for helping Indonesian refugees.

The exploration in the second half of the book of the biological mystery at hand is interesting. The hard science discussions are as well. I found the ending a bit far-fetched, but it gave closure simultaneously to the personal story arc as well as the mystery which is satisfying and elegant in itself.

It's a fun book. and it's something else for a change.

[Kelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

3This is a book of ideas just barely held together with a narrative, which doesn't make it a bad book, exactly, just one that feels ultimately unsatisfying. I actually love reading about characters sitting around swapping ideas and speculations about whatever their particular mystery is, and I especially love a science fiction story that focuses so heavily on biology, but there has to be something more than that to make 250+ pages of book worthwhile.

I mean, the book tries. It tries really hard. There's a lot about the main character's emotional journey, the things people do and sacrifice for family, and even a couple perfunctory action scenes. But it's clear that's not where the book's interests truly lie, so it all comes across as a bit empty.

As for the science, it's decent, but the age of the book shows. Despite the bulk of the story taking place in something like 2030, some of the biotechnology and techniques mentioned (the real ones, not the made up futuristic stuff) are already no longer cutting edge right now in 2017. But I can't fault an author for not being able to actually see into the future.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our protagonist survives his parents' death while studying some mysteriously-severely-mutant butterflies in Indonesia. Twenty-odd years later, having grown up and basically parented his sister, he protectively urges her not to go on a university expedition to study those same mutants. When she goes anyway, he feels bound to secretly follow... and winds up unpleasantly involved when the mystery is explored.

This's a meditation on the relation between motivations and evolutionary biology, explored both in our protagonist (in numerous ways) and in the mutant genes themselves. I'm sure this would be much more interesting to me if I shared Egan's materialism, but as it is, all the angles explored feel unavoidably fragile. The scientific premise could've been interesting, but the mystery of the mutations is put on the back burner for far too long and then explored much too quickly.

But there was one part of the book I loved: the protagonist's relationship with his sister, and the exploration of his protectiveness. As an older brother myself, I found it very relatable - and it drew my sympathies like nothing else in all Egan's protagonists.

[Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a 5 until close to the end. I couldn't put it down, I was riveted to the progression of events. And throughout the book I wasn't sure WHAT we were chasing this entire time. So that's gotta be a skill when writing a novel, right?

I don't like Greg's characters. They feel flat to me. In my last review of a Greg Egan book (Diaspora) I was wailing on about how every character is a goddamn genius, which felt kind of 1 dimensional. In this book at least we meet some idiots. They're all the academic types of idiots, but idiots nonetheless.

His Sci-fi concepts are always cool af. They redeem his books for me. The details tend to fly 10 feet above my head, and I accept that I'm the idiot in this relationship. I'm ok with it. I'm still able to follow the general idea and dream of a possible pathway towards the future. And isn't that what books are all about?

Anyways I dropped both Teranesia and Diaspora into a little free library (I kept Incandescence. That one is special to me. I'll review it after a re-read and see if my mind changes). I'm not going to read them again, but someone should.