Phoresis

by Greg Egan

Welcome to Tvibura and Tviburi, the richly imagined twin planets that stand at the center of Greg Egan’s extraordinary new novella, Phoresis.

These two planets—one inhabited, one not—exist in extreme proximity to one another. As the narrative begins, Tvibura, the inhabited planet, faces a grave and imminent the food supply is dwindling, and the conditions necessary for sustaining life are growing more and more erratic. Faced with the prospect of eventual catastrophe, the remarkable women of Tvibura launch a pair of ambitious, long-term initiatives. The first involves an attempt to reanimate the planet’s increasingly dormant ecosphere. The second concerns the building of a literal “bridge between worlds” that will connect Tvibura to its (hopefully) habitable sibling.

These initiatives form the core of the narrative, which is divided into three sections and takes place over many generations. The resulting triptych is at once an epic in miniature, a work of hard SF filled with humanist touches, and a compressed, meticulously detailed example of original world building. Most centrally, it is a portrait of people struggling—and sometimes risking everything—to preserve a future they will not live to see. Erudite and entertaining, Phoresis shows us Egan at his formidable best, offering the sort of intense, visionary pleasures only science fiction can provide.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Novella, Hard Science Fiction, Ebooks, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy

168 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 2018

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

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tale of survival and innovation on an icy planet in which the ecology is changing and extinction looms. The people depend on branches from giant “trees” under the perpetual ice on the ocean breaking through to the surface, thereby bringing nutrients up that are essential to soil formation and gas liberation critical to maintaining a breathable atmosphere. We experience one scientist coming round to a theory for harnessing the growth of such penetrating branches to make an ice tower that can let their species reach space and thereby providing a pathway for escape from their dying world and colonization their planet’s twin. And then she has to persuade all her people to follow through on the plan, which will take a big gamble of efforts over several generations and hundreds of years.

Thus, we have a tale of impending apocalypse and an odd take on a space opera scheme for surmounting the threat. What’s different here is that we quickly learn that all the characters are aliens. Two hands and two feet, but little attention paid to what they look like. From the start it dawns on you that all the characters are female. And that they seem to drink ethane. You find out where the males are when you encounter their reproductive behavior. You will undoubtedly be disgusted when it turns up in a matter-of-fact, unemotional scene. But then you likely will chide yourself for judging another species from your own biases.

Like other multigenerational sagas, engagement is hard when the narrative sweeps past so many sets of characters, and in this case compressed within a relatively short novel. But while many sci fi novels suffer from their aliens being too human in their personalities and features, Egan scores some points with me for disorienting the reader with truly alien aliens. The emotional flatness many readers will experience from challenges in getting into their minds and feelings I found to be balanced to some extent by a reasonable amount of quasi-human teamwork or debate about their communal agenda for survival. Egan also fulfills his reputation for applying realistic physics to some creative and strange situations. The principle of the space elevator applies to the ice towers in this tale, as modified by the small size of the planet and associated diminishing mass of objects extending up from the surface. (On the other hand, for twin planets to get close enough for a glider/space plane to make a jump between them seems a bit dubious, as any such tendency in the long course of time would seem likely to lead to a collision).

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Phoresis, or phoresy, is rooted in the Greek words phoras (bearing) and phor (thief). It is used to describe a non-permanent, commensalistic [symbiotic] interaction in which one organism (a phoront or phoretic) attaches itself to another (the host) solely for the purpose of travel.” *

Tvibura is an icy planet, inhabited only by women which are struggling with famine on their dying world. Tviburi is its twin planet, close by, which seems to be a good place to start a new life if they want the next generations to survive. By this point you’ll wonder how are they reproducing if they are only women, right? Well, Egan found a way – mind-blowing from my point of view, albeit quite disturbing (another kind of symbiosis, but one that gave me the creeps).

Anyway, one came with the idea to build a high tower toward Tviburi and from there to be propelled to Tviburi to explore and find out if indeed it’s their salvation or not.

The story has three parts which follow three different generations, far apart, and their task in uniting both planets, the phoresis between them and the tower.

Although I would have liked more focus on the ecology of both planets and their environment, the story is true to its title, meaning that we get to know every detail regarding the tower and how it was used for the above purpose. But that aside, it’s another demonstration of Egan’s incredible ideas.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoresis

[The Captain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys! I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here be me honest musings . . .

The cover drew me in and three things convinced me to read this book:

1) Like Robert Silverberg, this was another Hugo winning author whose work I have never read;
2) It is a Subterranean Press book and they do great work; and
3) The story is driven by women characters facing a catastrophe.

What I didn’t know before reading this was that the author is known for his hard science fiction. So while I loved the introduction to the story, I quickly became lost in the physics of the first section. I understood enough to know what Freya was trying to accomplish but not how it would work or how the “experiment” she set up convinced people. This section was from 11 to 30%. In this short work, it wasn’t too onerous and I was intrigued enough to continue reading.

After that the story picked up pace, and I found it mostly fascinating. The science played a part but then there were fun things like tower building, gilders, and dealing with the challenges of living on a new planet.

The book has three parts and ye follow the women through multiple generations, which was cool. One of the awesome aspects was that the women were always looking at the larger long-term goals. Most projects were on a scale where many generations would pass before results could be determined. The women had to choose between starvation today or the potential possibility of survival of their descendants tomorrow. I enjoyed seeing why they chose to do things, the consequences of their choices, and how time changed perspectives.

The not so cool part was that many of the women felt very similar and interchangeable. I happened to like their take-charge personalities, intelligence, and determination. But perhaps it would have been nice to see other personality types. Or maybe those types were the only possibilities to guarantee survival.

Also the process of reproduction made me less than comfortable. That is where the phoresis title comes in. This biological phenomenon is when one organism transports another. In this book each woman carries three of her brothers inside of her. The brothers’ emotions can influence the women’s actions as all of them are dependent on each other for survival. The brothers are hardly intelligent and fight with each other for the right to breed. So far, fine with that. It posed some interesting problems in women taking life-risking challenges. It is the how of the breeding that was unappetizing. Basically the brothers emerge from the uterus and . . . um . . . merge with another women for fertilization. This only happened once in this book and was hazy in detail but me mind filled in the blanks.

Ultimately while I enjoyed the story overall and thought the writing style was excellent, this is not one I would re-read. I am also not sure I could read anything else by the author if the physics is like this in everything he writes.

This be the third read in me April BookBum Club Challenge! Much thanks to the BookBum Club for giving me the incentive to finally read this “short and sweet” book (168 pgs). Day three – challenge complete! Next up: i met a traveller in an antique land. Check out that review on Monday!

So lastly . . .

Thank you Subterranean Press!

Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...

[Antti Värtö · Rating 4 out of 5]

Egan continues with very much the same spirit as in Orthogonal trilogy. Phoresis is very much like Clockwork Rocket in miniature: there are aliens with weird reproductive system, with circa 17th-18th century tech level, doing a space program that would be impossible for todays Earthlings and succeeding, because of special circumstances of their place of birth. This time it's not a generation ship (of sorts) but rather a space elevator... of sorts.


Egan's sci-fi is still as hard as ever, but this time he doesn't show his work as meticulously as in earlier works: there are some parts where the characters discuss the physics of their project, but they are rather short ones, especially compared with the ones in Incandescence or Orthogonal.


I hope Egan keeps doing books of this kind. Nobody else will.

[Bandit · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where do I even start with this? Subterranean Press normally puts out quality work, things I’d read without doing due diligence, research, etc. This one was an exception, one tragically far from exceptional. What is this…agrarian science fiction? Agra fi? Two twin planets and the starving denizens on one planet are trying to build a way to get to the other. All female cast, although with hermaphroditic qualities, apparently their brothers live inside them and come out (partially, the business end as it were) to reproduce. But primarily it’s just hunting for plants and building things and climbing things. In exhaustive exhausting detail. Lots of talk about plant cuttings and such, which is about as much fun as you’d imagine. No idea how this is even a book, albeit a novella length one. The weird thing is the quality of the writing itself is perfectly decent, it’s the story itself that doesn’t work. Sure, not every book has to be exciting, but I’ve spaced out studying design configurations in the carpet and had more fun than I did reading this book. Strangely tedious, strikingly uninteresting, superbly unengaging. Literally, the only superlatives to bestow upon this book would be accompanying and highlighting its negative qualities. Not sure if I read the author before (maybe a short story? definitely never a novel) and this wasn’t the most auspicious of introduction, its only positive attribute being its brevity. And the title itself, always good to learn a new word. This one refers to a form of symbiosis where one species transports the other. Which I suppose just goes to show that even disappointing lackluster books have something to teach us, other than being more selective in reading choices. Thanks Netgalley.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard SF novella, eligible for Hugo 2019 Award.

Phoresis means in layman terms that a creature uses another solely for the purpose of travel. This is a story of two tidally locked small planets. On the one of them, called Tvibura by locals, intelligent life is present. We, the readers, don’t get a lot of explicit details about them, akin to an ordinary contemporary fiction doesn’t give a lot of details about humans – like you can read tens of novels and never know that there are toes. The planet is covered with thick ice and had a thin atmosphere; the ocean beneath the ice is the source of minerals and gases, which makes the life possible. Tidal pressures sometimes break the ice and throw minerals up. Also there is a ‘tree’, Yggdrasil (nice allusion!), which lives below the ice, but branches of which go through the cracks and reach the surface to breathe and photosynthesize. And when the story begins there is a crisis: geysers, which are essential become rare and he population is starving.

The locals are described as female but in reality it seems they are Hermaphrodites similar to garden snails – their biology has some role in the middle of the novella. They have ‘usual’ Earth names (Fryda, Rosaline, Joan etc) and are extremely curious: a lot of the story at the start is supplied via their dialogue about how the world works. Their solution to the food crisis is to build an ice tower from which they can jump to the other world, which seems more hospitable. It is not a fantasy, but hard science.

The story is a bit heavy with science, compared to most current SF, so it can be not to everyone’s taste. I myself liked it even if sometimes science descriptions would be easier with just a link to known physics and math, but this would have broke the alienness of the story

[Whitney (SecretSauceofStorycraft) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hard sci fi story of a type of space elevator on a pair of twin planets.

A book broken into 3 parts. First follow Freya, a young alien whose entire civilization lives on an ice planet rapidly running out of fresh air and fertile soil. They are dependent on a plant that grows from center of planet up to bring fresh air — when one day she gets the idea to build up the ice to make a tower so tall they could migrate to their planet’s twin….

The rest of the story follows what happens to next few generations.

The alien civilization and biology is very intriguing… but of course egan cares more about the science of plot.

This was very accessible, probably due to the length but i found alot to like here.

[Yev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Phoresis is another of Egan's extremely science based books. In this case the novella is told in three parts covering many generations, each representing a different phase of an epic feat of interplanetary engineering in the form of connecting two nearby planets. The speculation about engineering, physics, geology, and earth sciences is all that matters. It's to the point where all the characters are more or less interchangeable and probably only exist so that it isn't a sole character monologuing all the time. There's almost nothing at all besides the practical matters of their many lives long projects, so expecting anything other that would be a mistake.

I tried reading this before, though I wasn't able to get very far. It was a struggle to read this and it probably wasn't worthwhile for me personally, but I wanted to do anyway. Egan's more science based works are usually a miss for me. Even so, sometimes it's possible to get a weird sense of pleasure from just letting all the explanations wash over you. That wasn't so much the case here for me. I have no doubt that it's far more interesting for those who'd have a specific interest in the experiments detailed by the novella. Not every book is for every reader and several of Egan's are clear examples of that, yet I persist in trying even for those that clearly aren't for me.

As with some of Egan's other writings, starting with his first published work, how reproduction functions for the species of this book could be considered body horror in human terms. You might think the engineering project depicted on the cover might have something with the title, but that'd be wrong. It's their reproductive system that it's referring to. All the characters are female, in the sense that they're the ones who give birth. All the males, in the sense of that which impregnates, have separate bodies, and live inside the female for the duration of their lives and only emerge to procreate. To say that this species is sexually dimorphic is an extreme understatement. There's a single sex scene and what it made me imagine based on what was written was honestly horrific, and even more so based on what's later described.

I'd like to read everything Egan has written despite that being rather difficult for me due to there being some such as this. Yes, it's an arbitrary and irrational idea, and one that I don't know that I'll be able to do, though I want to try anyway. There's already been a few that I don't know if I'll ever go back to though. Even if I don't enjoy all of what Egan does, I appreciate that someone is writing stories like this. That's an abstract idea of questionable merit as well, especially considering when he's written other books of wider appeal, but I think a creative should do what they want. That's arguably not in the best interest of anyone, which may just be one of the costs of having unrestricted creative freedom.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know how Bach and the like wrote symphonies and stuff? But also wrote études and exercises and fugues that were for teaching or demonstrating, or exploring a concept? This is the concept exploration.

If this is your first Egan, you MUST know going in that this is HARD sf, diamond-hard.
There isn't going to be any handwaving or impossibilium. See http://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Scien... for a taste of where he's coming from.

So, we have a thought exercise on "what if this planetary configuration existed somewhere? What challenges would entities living there face?"

Egan was right, I think, to keep it down to novella length and skim across the top of the science. It would have been easy to sink into the details, and lose the plot about struggling for generations to build something that might not work but also might save civilization. And building it in a time of shortages, when many would argue that the resources required should be directed to short-term problems.

You can read present-day allegories into this if you like; I chose not to, because short-term vs long-term and resource allocations are eternal problems. Do you keep hunting field mice, or do you send some hunters across the mountains in search of larger game? Do you keep making arrows as fast as you can, or do you have some people looking into this "gonne" thing?

Sure, I would have liked some diagrams and so on, but I expect they'll turn up on Egan's website in the near future.

I am going to go and read something simple now. My brain hurts.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phoresis by Greg Egan is a hard science fiction novella detailing life on an icy desolate planet, a generations long construction project, and the journey and exploration of a new but familiar world. The survival of a species depends on the ingenuity and courage of the planet’s women inhabitants.

Two twin planets circle each other, while one is inhabited and the other is not. The inhabited planet Tvibura is experiencing the decline of conditions necessary for food production. Geysers that start deep underneath the planet’s icy crust are needed to bring water and trees to the surface, creating soil and the proper conditions for grasslands. The geysers are happening less frequently, and the inhabitants of Tvibura depend on them for survival. An ambitious project is started to build a towering ice bridge between Tvibura and the twin planet Tviburi.

Phoresis showcases the best of Greg Egan’s talent for hard science fiction, and the exploration of new ideas. We get to explore the physics of building a towering structure of ice, the difficulty of life on an icy planet, and the ways in which life could exist on such an icy world.

This novella is heavily focused on physics and concepts, and, while it does introduce interesting characters, it lacks in character development. Like most of Greg Egan’s writing, the focus is more on the hard science and ideas, rather than character building.

I did find some parts of the novella, mainly the middle, a little boring. Egan spends too much time writing about how gliders work while one of the characters attempts to glide a long distance. Gliding, while it can be an interesting way for a character to travel, is not interesting enough to go into great detail.

Overall, Phoresis is a solid hard scifi novella. Fans of Greg Egan will enjoy this story, and it would be a good story for those who are interested in hard scifi but haven’t read Egan yet.

[Vladimir Ivanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Игана нежно люблю (хоть он и зануда), но тут у него явно что-то пошло не так. Вместо книги получился подробный 100-страничный отчет о жизни обитателей системы из двух ледяных планетоидов, вращающихся друг вокруг друга. На родном шарике постепенно заканчивается еда, и обитатели вынужденно реализуют мегапроект — построить гигантскую ледяную башню аж до точки Лагранжа (благо обе планетки крохотные и крутятся совсем близко друг к другу), а с ее вершины на планерах спуститься на "сестру Земли".

Сначала Иган подробно описывает, как жители проектируют башню, потом — как они ее строят (это занимает несколько поколений), потом — как первые экспедиции планеристов отправляются покорять новый мир (он в точности похож на старый, только ресурсы не растрачены), потом — как колонисты строят симметричную башню со своей стороны и соединяют оба планетоида ледяным мостом. На этом отчет о строительстве заканчивается.

Было очень скучно, спасибо. Неизбежные ассоциации с «Астронавтами в лохмотьях» Шоу заметно не в пользу Игана. 3/5 за оригинальную идею с башней.

[Tsana Dolichva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable read.

The premise is a close binary planet system orbiting a red dwarf and the people struggling to live on the smaller planet investigating migrating to the larger for a better life. Plus alien biology!

The best thing about this novella is how well all the weird stuff (planets, biology) is shown rather than told. It’s absolutely hard SF and some of the characters think about physics (don’t worry, there are no equations) but a lot is left to the reader to infer.

Amusingly, when I was adding this to goodreads, I saw a brief review from a friend, wishing it had been 100 pages longer. While reading I didn’t agree until I got to the very end. The last section is quite short and, yes, would have been nice if it were longer and the end less abrupt 🤷‍♀️ However, it’s not a bad ending and it does mark the end of the inter-generational journey. It’s just that the last protagonist didn’t get as much character development as the first two.

Did I mention weird alien biology? It was very thought-provoking at times. Also, the biological set up meant that all the characters were female, so that’s another potential point of interest.
(PS There were sex scenes but they were not explicit.)

Overall, highly recommended.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novella makes me believe that I may enjoy Greg Egan. While Dichronauts (the only other book I've read by Egan) did not work for me, the writing in Phoresis was enjoyable. I generally view Egan as a writer that ponders a physics exercise and then builds a story around that. It makes for some complex narrative sections that are not always enjoyable. Phoresis is easy to read in that regard. The story takes place on a planet that is rotating around a twin planet which together rotate around the sun. The inhabitants of Tvibura are in a crisis of famine and set out to try to reach the twin planet Tviburi. The overall story arch is done well and is a fun read. The story falls apart from there. My frustration comes in with the absolute lack of a believable biome described for Tvibura which most of the story hinges on.

Also of note the ARC I received (thanks NetGalley and Subterranean Press) is very poorly formatted for Kindle.

[Ralph Blackburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phoresis by Greg Egan- This was very difficult for me to complete. As to why, I thought the story was okay, lots of expert world-building and complicated inhabitants, with definite survival problems. I found much of the goings on to be laboriously described and very slow moving. Staying with the story was a chore and I found other things that captured my attention better. I've read several Greg Egan novels and short works and always found them to be very engaging and thought provoking. This one not so much. The story is about the inhabitants of one planet trying to build a bridge from their world to a sister planet that orbits close at times. They are slowly starving to death and see this close neighbor as a possible salvation. Kind of a stretch, but made possible by rigorous scientific method and brave endeavors. It's not horrible, just not what I expect from such a talented writer.

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard Sci-Fi Novella by one of the Kings of Hard Sci-Fi. Very original, but requires patience: if you're familiar with Egan, you will know he usually goes into serious technical detail that can cross-fire your brain-bullets this way and yon.

But being a novella, "Phoresis" is more accessible, due to a streamlined plot: a race of beings live on a planet that has a twin within the same gravity well (that's super roughly speaking, don't quote me). Their planet, Tvibura, is experiencing lessening food yields due to the decrease in the production of arable soil (the reason for this is unique and interesting and not what you'd expect). Most just see this as cyclical and nothing to apocalypse about, but a handful don't think so- they see a gradual extinction level event in process. These folks, and one especially, come up with a generations-long plan to be able to travel from their planet to Tvibiri, the twin planet, in order to ensure the survival of their species...

What makes "Phoresis" more than just an imaginative and detailed hard-sci schematic is the attention the author pays to the dynamics within the character relationships. We don't spend a lot of time with any of them (as this is a multi-generational tale), but the time we do spend is very revealing about the character of their species overall. If you keep trucking through the initial pages, you will find what ends up being a surprisingly epic tale of commitment and sacrifice; to the extent where, even though SCIENCY SCIENCE, it becomes obvious that this is really an allegory about what can be accomplished when the whole is put before the individual- or when visionary optimism triumphs over fearful anachonism.

In conclusion: a surprisingly affective sci-fi tale, whose originality is nicely complimented by a kind of wondrous and optimistic spirit. Recommended for all sci-fi fans, not just those who favor the sciency hard sub-genre.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

More aliens that at first seem like us (bipedal, etc.) but then you notice that all the characters are females. Hmm...where are the males? You gotta have males to make babies. THen the author teases us with glimpses of where the males are. One female character refers to her brothers being rowdy and presses on her stomach. So I'm thinking, oh, they are like kangaroos with pouches and the males must be small and in the pouches. Wrong! I won't spoil it but there is a brief sex scene (don't get excited it's not racy or anything, more like "What the...!!!!") later on in the novel that gives us the whole picture of how these aliens propagate.

More importantly is what the book is about: a starving population and how they problem solve a way out of it. They build an ice tower straight up towards their sister planet that they revolve around and then use gliders to make the transistion to the other planet. They find rich soil atop a field of high root-like things. But when they try to plant their own seeds they don't grow. The roots don't like anything sharing their soil! What to do now?

This novel goes through many generations because it takes so long to build the tower and face other challenges. It reminded me of the Othogonal series where we read multi-generations problem solving. Those were some strange aliens too! Egan is awesome at coming up with strange physics and strange aliens that talk like we do but he gives us glimpses of their shape or function that is non-human. He's one of a kind.

[Douglas Cosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars -- A three-part novella covering many generations living on paired sister planets that deal with issues of famine by building a very low-tech bridge between the two planets. Not only are the logistics of the massive projects and the details of the science well thought out, but the bravery and vulnerability of the characters bring a level of depth to the story that is missing in many "technical" sci-fi books. At 163 pages, Phoresis feels like an epic, but reads like butter. My only gripe is that some of the more complicated scenes really need pictures to explain the full physics of the events that are occurring. I'm sure Egan gets them right, I just can't quite picture what is going on.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not bad. It’s a novella, and has an interesting premise. Though it’s heavy on setting and light on character, I still liked it.

[Cecilia Bigelow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique sci-fi that brings hope.

‘Building bridges between worlds.’
Except in this case it’s female aliens on twin planets building ice towers in order to get from one planet to the other.

The science was a bit over my head, but I understood it for the most part.
No character building, but I think the story overall is well crafted. So many books focus on character building and reading this was like a break from all that and a focus more on the story/environment. However, it could have used a little more description.

The female aliens with their sexual parts being called ‘brothers’ makes no sense what so ever. These ‘brothers’ seemed to have minds of their own and would even hiss.

Still, I don’t know any other author who could come up with something as sci-fi mesmerizing as this story.

[David H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting multigenerational tale of aliens on one-half of a double world seeking to reach the other half. It takes a bit of time to realize that the aliens aren't human at all, as Egan casually slips in clues to their harsh environment and biological adaptations, which was clever. Due to the time-skipping nature of the story (I believe the story likely covers a couple hundred years), it's hard to be very invested in any one character, but this is an idea story, not a character story. Definitely clever in many bits.

[Bogi Takács]

Review coming (IY"H) but it will be along the lines of "this would have worked well if it was 100 pages longer, but this way it was rather unsatisfying". Interesting worldbuilding and plot, cool science as expected, but so few character interactions that I was gnashing my teeth. (And Greg Egan can write cool character interactions!)

The characters have nonhuman biology including sex and reproduction, but I think adding this to the intersex reviews would be a bit of a stretch, so it will be separate.

Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library

[Anna]

An interesting hard-sf allegory of the cultural drivers and impacts of emigration. Weird alien biology.

[Joe Karpierz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming up on 10 years ago I reviewed the only Greg Egan novel I ever read, INCANDESCENCE. I didn't like it. Even though I have many Greg Egan novels on my to-read list, I never go for them first. I like hard science fiction, but Egan always seemed a bit out of my reach. A couple of years ago I read and reviewed the novella "The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred", which I liked quite a bit. Based on that novella, and the general impression I've gotten that Egan works better in smaller chunks when he doesn't have time to go all info-dumpy on the reader, I picked up "Phoresis".

The story is about two planets - Tvibura and Tviburi - which are tide locked and exist extremely close together. Tvibura is inhabited, while Tviburi is not. The driving issue in the story is that Tvibura is becoming less and less able to support its inhabitants by producing conditions that generate the air and soil needed to maintain the ecology of the planet. Because the planets are in such close proximity to each other, it is fairly easy to get a telescopic view of Tviburi from Tvibura.
Because the inhabitants of Tvibura are in danger of starving, two plans are developed. One attempts to generate more of the geysers that produce the necessary air and soil. The other is more daunting: building a tower that will eventually allow the inhabitants of Tvibura to cross over to Tviburi and hopefully start a colony with the end result of getting the rest of the inhabitants of Tvibura to make the crossing.

The story takes place in three parts over multiple generations. The first part mainly talks about the planning for and engineering of the tower, the second deals with the crossing by the first pioneers and their struggles on the new planet, and the third relates the story of people living on Tviburi going back to Tvibura to investigate what had happened to those that stayed behind.

While "Phoresis" does have a great deal of the hard science and exposition that Egan is known for - engineering, climate, orbital mechanics, physics, astronomy, geology, and botany (and I until I typed that out I didn't realize just how much Egan crammed into this novella) - it's a story that also deal with the social dynamics of a people that are trying to survive in a very unfriendly environment. While the characters are humanlike, they definitely aren't human. All the characters are female, and the males provide a rather, uh, unique way of reproduction (it was difficult enough to get my head around it, let alone try to describe it here). There is also some mention of the people not having to breathe for long periods of time. So, the characters are humanlike but not quite human.

I don't quite know what to make of "Phoresis". It has all the hallmarks of a Greg Egan story, but not so much that they're overwhelming. There's a good story and good character interaction. The social aspect of this story is really what makes it work...I think. But it doesn't quite work for me for some reason. There's nothing wrong with the story; it just didn't do anything for me.

Still, for Greg Egan fans, "Phoresis" probably is a winner; I'm okay with that.

[Lou Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great experience in world building .. provided by the Master . Egan does it again! A weird and fascinating world made not only plausible but probable.
Tvibura, an inhabited world every day orbits a sister world - Tviburi ... mysterious and unknown. Tvibura is slowly floundering with incrementally advancing difficulty in feeding its's all female inhabitants. Beneath the immense ice fields resides the gift of life ... roots known as Yggrasils approximate or penetrate the surface resulting in "geysers" which flood the environment with life sustaining nutrients to their soil and crops. Unfortunately they are progressively dwindling in occurence. The Yggdrasil is like the tree of Norse mythology, extending upward from the ocean bottom to the heavens and sustaining life.
The inhabitants of Tvibura are all female, and yet, reproduction is accomplished by the process of phoresis .... each female carries in her womb three sentient but unintelligent "brothers" that emerge at appropriate times to allow fertilization with another female tribe member.
Freya, the initial main protagonist, envisions an engenious solution to their dilemma by joining the two worlds. The story unfolds in a triptych spanning generations of inhabitants determined to bridge the two worlds and thus allow survival ... utilizing fantastic and plausible science.
Written with Greg Egan's superlative world building skills ... and, hopefully suggesting more to come in this unique universe of character. Thanks to Netgalley and Subterranean Press in providing this Advance E Book in exchange for an honest review .... @SubPress

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a very interesting book and am a bit confused by the low to middling reviews I see here. It has some really great concepts that it explores to interesting ends, and which are generally well explained; there is one part that gets a bit mathy in a way that somewhat disrupts the flow of the narrative, and my eyes glazed a bit at that point, but that is fortunately only a minor part of the book.

Unlike the novella that I read immediately before this one, this one was really well-paced and constructed. It covers a much longer time period-- several generations, though how long a generation is for the characters is unclear-- but each section is about one character and her role at a pivotal point in an incredibly ambitious plan to connect twin worlds. There is just enough detail about the characters to draw you in, but even if characterization seems a bit light that is besides the point, since it is a story about ideas, not characters. The corollary to that, however, is that the characters' physical appearances and biology is only lightly touched on, which I found a bit frustrating since I'm not sure how to visualize them. And there are many other instances where familiar terms (plants, cats, lizards) are used, but the things given these labels must be far different from Earth norms given that they exist in a biosphere where liquid ethane is referred to as "water". Still, I liked the story a great deal, both for the topics it deals with directly, and the many other interesting ideas it only hints at.

[Marko · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very imaginative story of perseverance. Extremely hard sci-fi at certain points; definitely would have preferred Egan lingering/expanding on certain events that unfolded, but the world building is exceptionally well done and the manner in which so many generations of characters work towards a common goal while knowing full well they themselves won't live to see it through to the end should teach us a thing or two.

For context, this is the definition of phoresis:

Phoresis or phoresy is a non-permanent, commensalistic interaction in which one organism (a phoront or phoretic) attaches itself to another (the host) solely for the purpose of travel.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but this is essentially the gist of the book and Egan manages to make it both interesting and meaningful.

[Punk]

Currently free from Subterranean Press, US only. You need an account with them, and the book comes in DRM-free epub or mobi. April 16, 2020.

[Sky Sorenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, I loved Egan's work.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobody writes ideas like Greg Egan. His stories always make my brain hurt, in a good way.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this may have been the first Greg Egan book I've read, it certainly won't be the last.