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Instantiation
“Instantiation” is a collection of eleven science fiction stories by Hugo Award winning author Greg
• “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”
• “Zero For Conduct”
• “Uncanny Valley”
• “Seventh Sight”
• “The Nearest”
• “Shadow Flock”
• “Bit Players”
• “Break My Fall”
• “3-adica”
• “The Slipway”
• “Instantiation”
• “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”
• “Zero For Conduct”
• “Uncanny Valley”
• “Seventh Sight”
• “The Nearest”
• “Shadow Flock”
• “Bit Players”
• “Break My Fall”
• “3-adica”
• “The Slipway”
• “Instantiation”
438 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 23, 2020
454 people are currently reading
950 people want to read
About the author
Greg Egan
266 books2,780 followersGreg 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
August 18, 2020
This is a collection of hard SF short stories, quite diverse in scope and quality. I read is as a part of monthly reading for August 2020 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group.
Greg Egan is one of just a few relatively popular SF authors, working in the sub-genre of hard-SF, unlike more popular softer SF with interpretations of modern political issues (which are important), which seems in favor right now. These stories have been already published by Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Tor.com and others, no exclusive new material.
Here are the stories and their individual ratings:
“The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” 5 stars. A man, offering renegotiation on loans loses his job to an algorithm that surveyed his work. And he is not the only one. Is AI trying to rule us?
“Zero For Conduct” 3.5 stars. A woman migrant from Afghanistan to Iran tries to study and run a production of world-changing item in a country that looks askew on both women and migrants. One of the stories, which ask what next?
“Uncanny Valley” 3 stars. An dying famous Hollywood author transferred his memories (and personality?) to a newly developed android, but it seems he had hidden something important and a new person tries to understand who is he and how to live his own life with the secrets of the past
“Seventh Sight” 4 stars. People with artificial eyes due to genetically caused blindness, decide that only three color cones humans have aren’t enough. I was impressed what I found pout a few years back that birds have four and see the world differently. The author was impressed too I guess
“The Nearest” 4 stars. a mystery: a policewoman tries to understand what caused an ordinary woman to kill her husband and daughters and then successfully evade police. She gets much more than she bargained for
“Shadow Flock” 4 stars. Another thriller: a woman, who programs drones is pressed by a gang that kidnapped her brother to help in a great theft.
“Bit Players” 3 stars. A woman wakes up in the world where gravitation started to go east instead of down. Quite soon she understands the impossibility to find out that she is in a virtual reality set on cheap and inaccurate SF and she is not a player but a part of the game
“Break My Fall” 2 stars. A nice idea – a group of asteroids set on the route from Earth to Mars, so that ships slingshot-like get speed to travel fast and cheap. Of course, something broke. A great technical idea but the story is weak
“3-adica” 3 stars. The second story set in the same meta-universe as “Bit Players”, this time in a world with penny stories about vampires and rippers in Victorian London. But the goal it to get to a world with 3-adic (non-Euclidian) geometry. Had to read wiki to get my head around the concept.
“The Slipway” 3 stars. Earth passes through an extremely unusual cosmic event
“Instantiation” 4 stars. The third story set within the same meta-universe as “3-adica”, a great final for the series
Greg Egan is one of just a few relatively popular SF authors, working in the sub-genre of hard-SF, unlike more popular softer SF with interpretations of modern political issues (which are important), which seems in favor right now. These stories have been already published by Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Tor.com and others, no exclusive new material.
Here are the stories and their individual ratings:
“The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” 5 stars. A man, offering renegotiation on loans loses his job to an algorithm that surveyed his work. And he is not the only one. Is AI trying to rule us?
“Zero For Conduct” 3.5 stars. A woman migrant from Afghanistan to Iran tries to study and run a production of world-changing item in a country that looks askew on both women and migrants. One of the stories, which ask what next?
“Uncanny Valley” 3 stars. An dying famous Hollywood author transferred his memories (and personality?) to a newly developed android, but it seems he had hidden something important and a new person tries to understand who is he and how to live his own life with the secrets of the past
“Seventh Sight” 4 stars. People with artificial eyes due to genetically caused blindness, decide that only three color cones humans have aren’t enough. I was impressed what I found pout a few years back that birds have four and see the world differently. The author was impressed too I guess
“The Nearest” 4 stars. a mystery: a policewoman tries to understand what caused an ordinary woman to kill her husband and daughters and then successfully evade police. She gets much more than she bargained for
“Shadow Flock” 4 stars. Another thriller: a woman, who programs drones is pressed by a gang that kidnapped her brother to help in a great theft.
“Bit Players” 3 stars. A woman wakes up in the world where gravitation started to go east instead of down. Quite soon she understands the impossibility to find out that she is in a virtual reality set on cheap and inaccurate SF and she is not a player but a part of the game
“Break My Fall” 2 stars. A nice idea – a group of asteroids set on the route from Earth to Mars, so that ships slingshot-like get speed to travel fast and cheap. Of course, something broke. A great technical idea but the story is weak
“3-adica” 3 stars. The second story set in the same meta-universe as “Bit Players”, this time in a world with penny stories about vampires and rippers in Victorian London. But the goal it to get to a world with 3-adic (non-Euclidian) geometry. Had to read wiki to get my head around the concept.
“The Slipway” 3 stars. Earth passes through an extremely unusual cosmic event
“Instantiation” 4 stars. The third story set within the same meta-universe as “3-adica”, a great final for the series
May 7, 2020
Greg Egan writes brilliant, mind bending, hard SF. More often than not the maths and the science go over my head but I love the ideas and he also has great characters, fully human (even the AI ones! Which is kind of the point, one of the great SF themes is :what is consciousness, what makes us human?). He often takes stories into a different direction to what I’m expecting. This first story in this collection, The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine ,is the perfect example, an easy 5*. It asks the question “what happens when AI and robots take all the jobs?”. Three stories concern the AI characters in computer games becoming self aware and their progress to autonomy. Other stories cover chemistry and superconductors, artificial eyes that see more details, travel to mars by using asteroids as stepping stones, drones the size of flies and astronomy. Another 5* story is The Nearest about a virus that causes the person carrying it to think their nearest friends and relatives have been replaced by identical imposter. A fantastic read.
April 24, 2020
A good but unspectacular read. I’m a big fan of classic Greg and these modern short stories are interesting and clever, but it’s striking that his stories from 25 - 30 years ago were more visionary of the future than these. Frankly it was difficult to believe his early insights into the future, now they are almost humdrum.
Perhaps it’s just that short stories are wrong for him- not allowing enough meat on the bones. That is borne out by the fact that by far the highlight of this collection was a longer collection of three linked stories that was a great read.
Perhaps it’s just that short stories are wrong for him- not allowing enough meat on the bones. That is borne out by the fact that by far the highlight of this collection was a longer collection of three linked stories that was a great read.
February 5, 2020
There's a lot of rubbish circulating around in the science-fiction market. A treasure like this book is what makes it worth one's time to browse through the rubbish.
August 29, 2020
Greg Egan has written very large-scale SF, where civilization has spread out throughout the galaxy and traveling at near-light-speed is an everyday occurence (e.g. Schild's Ladder). Lately he's been writing stories where due to unusual circumstances or weird physics a relatively low-tech society can achieve feats impossible to us, such as generation ships or space elevators (The Clockwork Rocket, Phoresis).
But most recently he's been focused on stories like Zendegi: near-future stories about technology surpassing humans or the creating human-like sapient virtual creatures. Most of the stories in Instantiation fall in this category.
I'm pleased that Egan has obviously spent some time learning how to write characters. In the past, he had that hard-SF habit of focusing heavily on the ideas and leaving the characters pretty thin. But now he's writing stories that are mainly or nearly completely character-driven, which is a welcome development.
The individual stories (with minor spoilers):
"The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine": technological unemployment hits many suburban families, but some manage to find alternate means of employment. Quite many, actually. Uncannily many. Very good, 5*.
"Zero for Conduct": an Afghani schoolgirl in Iran is a chemical prodigy and discovers a way to produce room-temperature superconductor. She has no way to pay for the patent costs, however, so she starts a scheme to make some money - and perhaps help her fellow Afghans a bit in the process. This one didn't feel entirely finished: I felt like I was reading a promising second draft, that still needed some work near the end. 2*
"Uncanny Valley": a robot with uploaded memories and personality of a dead screenwriter tries to secure his continued existence and find out some mysteries in the screenwriter's past. A good tale about the ethics and everyday consequences of mind uploading. 4*
"Seventh Sight": a young boy hacks his cybernetic retinas to see four more colors than normal people. But when you can't even describe what you're seeing to normies, is the enhanced vision really a blessing or a curse? The ending might've needed a bit more work, but this was solid. 3*
"The Nearest": a detective wakes up one night to realize a stranger is sleeping in her bed: a stranger that looks exactly like her husband. Her child's been replaced by another child, as well. Or have they just been.. hollowed in some way? A chilling tale that made me turn the pages very fast. 5*
"Shadow Flock": A drone expert is coerced by a criminal group to use her talents for their grand heist. This had a feeling of near-future techno-triller, only smaller in scale. 4*
"Break My Fall": Unlike other stories in this collection, this one happens in space. A caravan of space ships travels from Earth to Mars using carefully-placed rotating asteroids to boost them along the way. I had a hard time picturing how the "stepping stones" work, which ruined a part of the story for me. And like "Zero for Conduct", this story ends way too abruptly. 2*
"The Slipway": A weird cosmic event hits Earth. The story follows an astronomist trying to figure out what exactly is happening - and convincing the world of her theory. This was very Greg Egan -like short story, in that I had to stop and think to follow the theory, and I probably should've picked up some paper and a pen to try to visualize things better. 3*
"Bit Players", "3-adica" and "Instantiation": This is really a novella in three parts. It tells the story of Sagrada, who is a sub-program in some computer game, created out of brain scans of long-dead people. Very Zendegi-like questions about the ethics of creating human-like digital creatures. 4*
But most recently he's been focused on stories like Zendegi: near-future stories about technology surpassing humans or the creating human-like sapient virtual creatures. Most of the stories in Instantiation fall in this category.
I'm pleased that Egan has obviously spent some time learning how to write characters. In the past, he had that hard-SF habit of focusing heavily on the ideas and leaving the characters pretty thin. But now he's writing stories that are mainly or nearly completely character-driven, which is a welcome development.
The individual stories (with minor spoilers):
"The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine": technological unemployment hits many suburban families, but some manage to find alternate means of employment. Quite many, actually. Uncannily many. Very good, 5*.
"Zero for Conduct": an Afghani schoolgirl in Iran is a chemical prodigy and discovers a way to produce room-temperature superconductor. She has no way to pay for the patent costs, however, so she starts a scheme to make some money - and perhaps help her fellow Afghans a bit in the process. This one didn't feel entirely finished: I felt like I was reading a promising second draft, that still needed some work near the end. 2*
"Uncanny Valley": a robot with uploaded memories and personality of a dead screenwriter tries to secure his continued existence and find out some mysteries in the screenwriter's past. A good tale about the ethics and everyday consequences of mind uploading. 4*
"Seventh Sight": a young boy hacks his cybernetic retinas to see four more colors than normal people. But when you can't even describe what you're seeing to normies, is the enhanced vision really a blessing or a curse? The ending might've needed a bit more work, but this was solid. 3*
"The Nearest": a detective wakes up one night to realize a stranger is sleeping in her bed: a stranger that looks exactly like her husband. Her child's been replaced by another child, as well. Or have they just been.. hollowed in some way? A chilling tale that made me turn the pages very fast. 5*
"Shadow Flock": A drone expert is coerced by a criminal group to use her talents for their grand heist. This had a feeling of near-future techno-triller, only smaller in scale. 4*
"Break My Fall": Unlike other stories in this collection, this one happens in space. A caravan of space ships travels from Earth to Mars using carefully-placed rotating asteroids to boost them along the way. I had a hard time picturing how the "stepping stones" work, which ruined a part of the story for me. And like "Zero for Conduct", this story ends way too abruptly. 2*
"The Slipway": A weird cosmic event hits Earth. The story follows an astronomist trying to figure out what exactly is happening - and convincing the world of her theory. This was very Greg Egan -like short story, in that I had to stop and think to follow the theory, and I probably should've picked up some paper and a pen to try to visualize things better. 3*
"Bit Players", "3-adica" and "Instantiation": This is really a novella in three parts. It tells the story of Sagrada, who is a sub-program in some computer game, created out of brain scans of long-dead people. Very Zendegi-like questions about the ethics of creating human-like digital creatures. 4*
March 29, 2021
Egan doesn't give the same level of care and attention to these stories as he does to his novels. They almost read like abandoned novels, ideas that aren't fully developed and explored. Still, "bad" Greg Egan is better than - well just about anything else sci-fi out there - so this was well worth reading, and as usual, his ideas, rather than the characters, carry the story. Nothing really stuck out as being particularly good (or bad) for that matter. Egan is not a "stylist" or even arguably an "artist", he's a writer of ideas with a basis in hard science that he carries to all kinds of fantastic resolutions. His work stimulates the part of the mind that enjoys reading textbooks in quantum mechanics, not the part that gazes in awe at a Botticelli painting. So his work is "likeable," not "loveable." He's not Tolkien or Ray Bradbury. And yet in a way, by focusing on what is "real", he's very relatable to life in the world today and our interactions with science. and technology.
For example, the first story in the collection, the characters are a bit weak (although not "shallow") and undeveloped, and yet the story has direct relevance to technology today - the way AIs are taking over our jobs and the experience of our lives. Just recently I bought an oven and had to deal with "Jenny the Chatbot" in connection with its delivery rather than a real human being, which was incredibly annoying. You know eventually they will get there with the "Turing Machine" and you won't be able to differentiate the AI from the human - and I feel like to avoid the AIs I'm going to be like the guy in Blade Runner asking the person/bot questions to try to discover if they are real or not. And then eventually - well you'll have to read the story.
So - great sci-fi for the 2020's, good sci-fi generally, but it doesn't scream must-read.
For example, the first story in the collection, the characters are a bit weak (although not "shallow") and undeveloped, and yet the story has direct relevance to technology today - the way AIs are taking over our jobs and the experience of our lives. Just recently I bought an oven and had to deal with "Jenny the Chatbot" in connection with its delivery rather than a real human being, which was incredibly annoying. You know eventually they will get there with the "Turing Machine" and you won't be able to differentiate the AI from the human - and I feel like to avoid the AIs I'm going to be like the guy in Blade Runner asking the person/bot questions to try to discover if they are real or not. And then eventually - well you'll have to read the story.
So - great sci-fi for the 2020's, good sci-fi generally, but it doesn't scream must-read.
August 21, 2020
It is Greg Egan. Need I add more?
If I was to recommend only one story it would be:
-for people with maths or physics backgrounds: The Slipway-It all starts with a peculiar astronomical observation
-for others: Seventh Sight-Colours are cool, but what if there were more of them?
If I was to recommend only one story it would be:
-for people with maths or physics backgrounds: The Slipway-It all starts with a peculiar astronomical observation
-for others: Seventh Sight-Colours are cool, but what if there were more of them?
February 29, 2020
I'm a ding-dong, I had not realized that Bit Players and 3-Adica were set in the same universe until I read this collection.
November 6, 2021
I’ve usually been wowed by Egan’s short stories, but this collection wasn’t particularly thought-provoking or engaging at all.
September 6, 2020
It's a great collection, but I had read the best of them, ie, the Sagreda trilogy , Uncanny valley and Zero for Conduct already in the Best of Greg Egan.
The remaining stories however were not near as good.
The best among them was The Discrete charm of the Turing machine. I quite loved it's concept.
Seventh sight was great as well.
The Nearest was great but not sure it classifies as sci fi.
The rest however were unfinished constructs with good conceptualization but not delivering all it could. They ended up being bland.
The remaining stories however were not near as good.
The best among them was The Discrete charm of the Turing machine. I quite loved it's concept.
Seventh sight was great as well.
The Nearest was great but not sure it classifies as sci fi.
The rest however were unfinished constructs with good conceptualization but not delivering all it could. They ended up being bland.
November 29, 2024
Segrada ouvre les yeux se réveille dans un monde à la gravité modifiée. Mais ce n'est pas son problème principal, car Sagreda est surtout une intelligence artificielle.
Une réflexion intéressante sur la singularité mais accompagné d'un discours scientifique bien trop pointu qui exclu le lecteur.
Une réflexion intéressante sur la singularité mais accompagné d'un discours scientifique bien trop pointu qui exclu le lecteur.
August 4, 2022
The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine (2017)
A social science fiction story set in the present day about the causes and effects of economic precarity as told through the everyday life of an average Australian family.
Enjoyable
Zero For Conduct (2013)
A story about chemistry and physics set in the present day. An Afghani girl whose parents were murdered lives with a relative in Iran. She's an industrious genius determined to make the most of her life. It would've been better if weren't essentially all set-up.
Ok
Uncanny Valley (2017)
The protagonist is a sideload, an embodied sentient AI that's a very fuzzy simulacrum of a specific human, hence the title. On top of that the original can choose not to transfer certain memories and traits, which causes selective amnesia in the sideload. Most of the story is the protagonist trying to determine which memories weren't transferred and why, so it reads as a SF mystery. The problems are that it continually undercuts its own findings and never quite finds the right tone that would resonate with the reader.
Meh
Seventh Sight (2014)
A twelve old boy with artificial retinas uses an app to reconfigure his trichromat eyes to allow him to become a heptachromat. The story explores what differences this could bring as it follows him through a couple decades of life. It also has a lot of metaphors.
Ok
The Nearest (2018)
This started as a police investigation and became a psychological horror story. It's the kind of story where I tried to view it as the protagonist did, but I failed. It was just too obvious to me what was going on, and I think that was intended. It made for an interesting case study, though I have a lot of doubts about it, but nothing more than that.
Ok
Shadow Flock (2014)
The protagonist is coerced by a shadowy organization to use her drone expertise to help with a heist of physical cryptowallets.
Meh
Bit Players (2014)
This is surely the funniest work I've read from Egan. If you take this seriously, you're doing it wrong. It's clearly intended to be a parody. The title is quite the versatile bit of wordplay. I searched a bit and found the assumed author and the work it's parodying and why. It's about speculative physics, but the speculation is mostly irrelevant because the world doesn't have to conform to them. It also has various other amusing ideas, like a book to VR world converter. If this were a light novel I'd name it: "I was reincarnated in a VR kusoge that has nonsensical physics and the devs expected me to be an NPC, but I only cared about doing experimental isekai physics!" That may seem like an absurd title, but it isn't relative to light novel naming conventions.
Enjoyable
Break My Fall (2014)
The transit between Earth and Mars involves slingshotting from stepping stone to stepping stone. It doesn't always work out well, but difficulties can be overcome. This would be neat to see visually.
Ok
3-adica (2018)
This is a continuation of Bit Players. The new world is stated to be a mash-up of works from Doyle, Dickens, Stoker, Stevenson, and Shelley. Their goal is to use a GPU exploit involving color values and graphical glitches to transition to the world of 3-adica, which is based on the principles of 3-adic numbers. An accurate visual representation of that world be mind-boggling at the very least. I still found this to be rather amusing. Egan wrote an essay about the math involved, but it certainly isn't required to enjoy this, and I'm not going to pretend that I understood it on anything more than the most superficial level.
The essay: https://fromearthtothestars.com/2018/...
Enjoyable
The Slipway (2019)
A surprisingly beautiful story about the nature and process of science. A cosmic event being momentous and unknown doesn't inherently make it frightening, let alone disastrous. Sometimes what we think changes everything doesn't have any practical significance at all. Those who focus solely on the technical aspects of this story are missing out on a lot.
Enjoyable
Instantiation (2019)
The third story after 3-adica. It's interesting in how these worlds are composites of various works and the characters are composites that this story itself would read like a composite of Egan's own work. The real world VR hardware is much more similar to Ready Player One than Sword Art Online.
Enjoyable
A social science fiction story set in the present day about the causes and effects of economic precarity as told through the everyday life of an average Australian family.
Enjoyable
Zero For Conduct (2013)
A story about chemistry and physics set in the present day. An Afghani girl whose parents were murdered lives with a relative in Iran. She's an industrious genius determined to make the most of her life. It would've been better if weren't essentially all set-up.
Ok
Uncanny Valley (2017)
The protagonist is a sideload, an embodied sentient AI that's a very fuzzy simulacrum of a specific human, hence the title. On top of that the original can choose not to transfer certain memories and traits, which causes selective amnesia in the sideload. Most of the story is the protagonist trying to determine which memories weren't transferred and why, so it reads as a SF mystery. The problems are that it continually undercuts its own findings and never quite finds the right tone that would resonate with the reader.
Meh
Seventh Sight (2014)
A twelve old boy with artificial retinas uses an app to reconfigure his trichromat eyes to allow him to become a heptachromat. The story explores what differences this could bring as it follows him through a couple decades of life. It also has a lot of metaphors.
Ok
The Nearest (2018)
This started as a police investigation and became a psychological horror story. It's the kind of story where I tried to view it as the protagonist did, but I failed. It was just too obvious to me what was going on, and I think that was intended. It made for an interesting case study, though I have a lot of doubts about it, but nothing more than that.
Ok
Shadow Flock (2014)
The protagonist is coerced by a shadowy organization to use her drone expertise to help with a heist of physical cryptowallets.
Meh
Bit Players (2014)
This is surely the funniest work I've read from Egan. If you take this seriously, you're doing it wrong. It's clearly intended to be a parody. The title is quite the versatile bit of wordplay. I searched a bit and found the assumed author and the work it's parodying and why. It's about speculative physics, but the speculation is mostly irrelevant because the world doesn't have to conform to them. It also has various other amusing ideas, like a book to VR world converter. If this were a light novel I'd name it: "I was reincarnated in a VR kusoge that has nonsensical physics and the devs expected me to be an NPC, but I only cared about doing experimental isekai physics!" That may seem like an absurd title, but it isn't relative to light novel naming conventions.
Enjoyable
Break My Fall (2014)
The transit between Earth and Mars involves slingshotting from stepping stone to stepping stone. It doesn't always work out well, but difficulties can be overcome. This would be neat to see visually.
Ok
3-adica (2018)
This is a continuation of Bit Players. The new world is stated to be a mash-up of works from Doyle, Dickens, Stoker, Stevenson, and Shelley. Their goal is to use a GPU exploit involving color values and graphical glitches to transition to the world of 3-adica, which is based on the principles of 3-adic numbers. An accurate visual representation of that world be mind-boggling at the very least. I still found this to be rather amusing. Egan wrote an essay about the math involved, but it certainly isn't required to enjoy this, and I'm not going to pretend that I understood it on anything more than the most superficial level.
The essay: https://fromearthtothestars.com/2018/...
Enjoyable
The Slipway (2019)
A surprisingly beautiful story about the nature and process of science. A cosmic event being momentous and unknown doesn't inherently make it frightening, let alone disastrous. Sometimes what we think changes everything doesn't have any practical significance at all. Those who focus solely on the technical aspects of this story are missing out on a lot.
Enjoyable
Instantiation (2019)
The third story after 3-adica. It's interesting in how these worlds are composites of various works and the characters are composites that this story itself would read like a composite of Egan's own work. The real world VR hardware is much more similar to Ready Player One than Sword Art Online.
Enjoyable
April 5, 2022
Egan’s short stories aren’t particularly catchy at first glance but if one’s willing to try and read for a few more pages, it can get quite interesting—that’s the general feeling in Instantiation. The golden rule of skimming/skipping the technobabble as soon as one gets a general/visual sense of what’s going on, must not be forgotten. (Particularly in “Instantiation” where formal logic has no bearing on the story whatsoever. (Unless I didn’t recognise it as a nerdy way of talking about how human beings and composite minds cannot be differentiated?))
A few stories—“Uncanny Valley”, “Shadow Flock” and “Break My Fall” most remarkably—seem to me like their ending is rather weak and unsatisfying. On the other hand, it was a very nice surprise to discover that I would follow “Bit Players” Sagreda’s adventures in “3-adica” and “Instantiation”. I found out about Egan’s beef with Adam Roberts in the GR Questions. Despite its pettiness, “Bit Players” is a good story in its own right. I think one can see another side of Egan’s haughtiness, let’s say, in “Seventh Sight” where the snobbery theme is evoked by Lucy but quietly brushed off at the end of the novel—with the narrator’s contempt for the external technology relied on by the “tris” (for trichromats) who, unlike the “heps”, hadn’t had the chance to get their eyes gouged out and replaced with quantum artificial eyes. That was too bad.
It’s interesting to see Egan veer towards more crime/thriller stories, like “The Nearest” and “Shadow Flock”. It’s funny that Egan would do a Capgras delusion story the same way Criminal Minds or House, MD did a Capgras delusion episode. The plot consisting of finding where the contaminated missing persons are, then tracing back the contamination vector is a rather nice touch.
Instantiation is an interesting development, but there’s still no better entry point in the world of Egan than Axiomatic—which still contains among his best short stories to date.
A few stories—“Uncanny Valley”, “Shadow Flock” and “Break My Fall” most remarkably—seem to me like their ending is rather weak and unsatisfying. On the other hand, it was a very nice surprise to discover that I would follow “Bit Players” Sagreda’s adventures in “3-adica” and “Instantiation”. I found out about Egan’s beef with Adam Roberts in the GR Questions. Despite its pettiness, “Bit Players” is a good story in its own right. I think one can see another side of Egan’s haughtiness, let’s say, in “Seventh Sight” where the snobbery theme is evoked by Lucy but quietly brushed off at the end of the novel—with the narrator’s contempt for the external technology relied on by the “tris” (for trichromats) who, unlike the “heps”, hadn’t had the chance to get their eyes gouged out and replaced with quantum artificial eyes. That was too bad.
It’s interesting to see Egan veer towards more crime/thriller stories, like “The Nearest” and “Shadow Flock”. It’s funny that Egan would do a Capgras delusion story the same way Criminal Minds or House, MD did a Capgras delusion episode. The plot consisting of finding where the contaminated missing persons are, then tracing back the contamination vector is a rather nice touch.
Instantiation is an interesting development, but there’s still no better entry point in the world of Egan than Axiomatic—which still contains among his best short stories to date.
September 5, 2022
More good stuff from Greg Egan. Probably not quite as strong a collection as Axiomatic but I'm a fan of everything I've read of his. “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”, “Zero For Conduct” & “The Nearest” (which does a really cool narrative flip in the middle) are highlights.
The only stories that didn't really click for me were the virtual world threesome ("Bit Players", "3-adica", & the title track "Instantiation"). Between this and Neal Stephenson's Fall it seems like it's just really hard to write an interesting metaverse story. There are definitely exceptions (Stephenson's Snow Crash and a bunch of William Gibson stuff comes immediately to mind) but seems like generally virtual worlds are boring and writing about them is boring.
The only stories that didn't really click for me were the virtual world threesome ("Bit Players", "3-adica", & the title track "Instantiation"). Between this and Neal Stephenson's Fall it seems like it's just really hard to write an interesting metaverse story. There are definitely exceptions (Stephenson's Snow Crash and a bunch of William Gibson stuff comes immediately to mind) but seems like generally virtual worlds are boring and writing about them is boring.
September 11, 2022
This is a really great collection. I've read two of the stories previously, but I liked them so much I ended up rereading them instead of simply skipping them like I tend to do.
Egan has such a great point of view and outlook on things, it's always refreshing. And some of them are very disturbing and Black Mirror esque.
"The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine" and "Instantation" are particular standouts to me from this collection, but they're all really great.
Egan has such a great point of view and outlook on things, it's always refreshing. And some of them are very disturbing and Black Mirror esque.
"The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine" and "Instantation" are particular standouts to me from this collection, but they're all really great.
March 29, 2020
Delicious warping of my mind
I hope this author proves industrious. Fast-working. Because I want MORE! (flashing Megalodon smile)
Excellent. Buy it. If you don't like it, stamp 'FAILED, DISCARD' across your forehead and fade gracefully.
I hope this author proves industrious. Fast-working. Because I want MORE! (flashing Megalodon smile)
Excellent. Buy it. If you don't like it, stamp 'FAILED, DISCARD' across your forehead and fade gracefully.
October 8, 2025
Ça n'a peut-être pas la puissance de La Cité des permutants mais ça reste un bon cru de Greg Egan 😊
July 14, 2020
Not bad
But not his best. Most of the stories just drag on a bit, ramble around, and fail to really grab the attention. I did enjoy the ones about sentient non-player characters mapped from real brain scans and trapped in games/simulations serving the needs of perverse overlords and desperate to escape their lot. Aren’t we all?
But not his best. Most of the stories just drag on a bit, ramble around, and fail to really grab the attention. I did enjoy the ones about sentient non-player characters mapped from real brain scans and trapped in games/simulations serving the needs of perverse overlords and desperate to escape their lot. Aren’t we all?
May 26, 2020
I loved that (almost) every story could stand alone, but that they all took place with reference to each other. that they all built on the preceding ones.
July 8, 2020
Greg Egan’s latest short story collection “Instantiation” consists of 11 hard science fiction stories that were published between 2013 and 2019.
His ideas on how technology and science might evolve are as interesting and mindblowing as ever, and you get a quite diverse set of them here. Just to name a few examples:
-What would happen if gravity would pull you sideways instead of downwards?
-How would life in a universe look like if its geometry were 3adic instead of euclidian?
-What if you could transplant your memories into a robot?
There is something for every kind of Greg Egan fan here:
The Nearest is full of existential horror akin to his book “Quarantine”. It’s masterfully plotted and will keep you on the edge of your seat.
The Slipway is about making sense of new stars suddenly appearing on the night sky. It not only describes the science behind this unlikely phenomena but also explores the social dynamics between scientists and the public.
Seventh Sight is a delightful take on technological self-modification. What were the consequences if you could hack your own brain to see more colours? It’s a subtle topic that Egan explores gracefully.
My least favourite story was Break My Fall, which describes a journey to Mars. The descriptions of the orbital mechanics went a little over my head. I felt a blog post with some nice visualisations would have been more appropriate to communicate this idea.
Shadow Flock is a heist story that makes you think about the scary consequences of insect-sized drones.
Bit Players, 3-adica and Instantiation, are not three separate stories, but three parts of a novella. They are my personal highlight of the collection and are about a game AI trying to escape its game world. There is so much awesomeness here. Just to give you a little sneak peek: At some point in the story, the characters have to sneak into a vampire mansion to get a particular oil colour so that they can instantiate a GPU glitch.
Greg Egan stories are all about ideas. So in his old stories, the characters were often only of secondary importance. This seems to be no longer true. In this collection, he manages to write round and very human characters, which is quite hard to do in the limited space of a short story, while still conveying interesting scientific concepts. Zero Of Conduct is an excellent example of that. It’s about a girl making a world-altering discovery. The story illustrates that it’s not enough to be a genius if you grow up in a society where everything is rigged against you.
Another thing I noticed when comparing old with new Egan is the more frequent humour, often in the form of little quips. And in The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine you will also laugh (or cry?) when realizing to which absurd ends capitalism might lead us.
I also enjoyed Uncanny Valley, which is, among other things, about robot rights.
Verdict: It’s a fantastic short story collection you should not miss if you like hard science fiction 5/5
His ideas on how technology and science might evolve are as interesting and mindblowing as ever, and you get a quite diverse set of them here. Just to name a few examples:
-What would happen if gravity would pull you sideways instead of downwards?
-How would life in a universe look like if its geometry were 3adic instead of euclidian?
-What if you could transplant your memories into a robot?
There is something for every kind of Greg Egan fan here:
The Nearest is full of existential horror akin to his book “Quarantine”. It’s masterfully plotted and will keep you on the edge of your seat.
The Slipway is about making sense of new stars suddenly appearing on the night sky. It not only describes the science behind this unlikely phenomena but also explores the social dynamics between scientists and the public.
Seventh Sight is a delightful take on technological self-modification. What were the consequences if you could hack your own brain to see more colours? It’s a subtle topic that Egan explores gracefully.
My least favourite story was Break My Fall, which describes a journey to Mars. The descriptions of the orbital mechanics went a little over my head. I felt a blog post with some nice visualisations would have been more appropriate to communicate this idea.
Shadow Flock is a heist story that makes you think about the scary consequences of insect-sized drones.
Bit Players, 3-adica and Instantiation, are not three separate stories, but three parts of a novella. They are my personal highlight of the collection and are about a game AI trying to escape its game world. There is so much awesomeness here. Just to give you a little sneak peek: At some point in the story, the characters have to sneak into a vampire mansion to get a particular oil colour so that they can instantiate a GPU glitch.
Greg Egan stories are all about ideas. So in his old stories, the characters were often only of secondary importance. This seems to be no longer true. In this collection, he manages to write round and very human characters, which is quite hard to do in the limited space of a short story, while still conveying interesting scientific concepts. Zero Of Conduct is an excellent example of that. It’s about a girl making a world-altering discovery. The story illustrates that it’s not enough to be a genius if you grow up in a society where everything is rigged against you.
Another thing I noticed when comparing old with new Egan is the more frequent humour, often in the form of little quips. And in The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine you will also laugh (or cry?) when realizing to which absurd ends capitalism might lead us.
I also enjoyed Uncanny Valley, which is, among other things, about robot rights.
Verdict: It’s a fantastic short story collection you should not miss if you like hard science fiction 5/5
July 23, 2020
A collection of Egan's recent stories, this collection shows the strength and breath of the author's imagination in stories that span from personal crisis, financial and biological, to ones that envelop the whole world and involve characters that think about and solve complex problems. “The Slipway” stands out as a story that involves scientists solving an astronomical problem, yet remains personal by showing that scientists are human and argue about but finally agree on the solution to a Hard SF problem.
- “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”: in a future when people are being replaced by machines at their jobs, one man loses his job and struggles to find work and support his family. But unusual events, like a parent who apparently makes a living secretly writing monthly porn novels or a relative who believes the machines are out to get him, start to make him wonder what kind of future is in store, especially when his own desperate plan to get money suddenly appears to succeed. Could it be yet another plan by the machines for those out of work?
- “Zero For Conduct”: an Afghan girl who is very smart 'dabbles' in chemistry and creates a long sought after material. But now living in Iran, she has to resort to trickery and deception to get enought money first to secure a patent on it before she can earn her well deserved riches. This, she will have to do with the help of her relatives who recognise her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.
- “Uncanny Valley”: a famous script writer uploads a copy of himself into another body. But for unknown reasons parts of his memory are left out of the copy, rendering it almost complete. Now, after his death, the copy wants to find out why some memories were left out; and it may involve it in finding the uncomfortable truth about a period in the past when the script writer was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.
- “Seventh Sight”: a young boy fitted with a implant to replace his failing eyesight 'upgrades' the implants by unlocking additional features that enable him to see additional shades of colour. He also get involved with a group of teens who have also done the 'upgrades'. But what happens when technology catches up with them and let's everybody see the world in additional shades of colour like them?
- “The Nearest”: a detective investigates a disturbing family murder case. But as the case proceeds, the detective is suddenly thrown into shock when she discovers that those closest to her are not who they say they are. As she runs and hides, she learns of other people who have also discovered that those nearest to them have been 'replaced' by unfamiliar replicas. But further investigations would reveal the actual truth behind the epidemic of unfamiliarity.
- “Shadow Flock”: a lecturer at a university is suddenly involved in an 'evil' Mission:Impossible type mission when her brother is held hostage. Her skills at programming groups of small drones to perform tasks in a changing environment are key to a group's desire to steal crypto-money from several people. With no way to get the police involved and no guarantees she and her brother might be okay at the end of the caper, she subtlety modifies her code to ensure they can get away somehow but maybe not to safety.
- “Bit Players”: what looks at first to be a strange world where the rules of gravity have gone haywire turns out to be a virtual creation, with characters who act out lives for the players who enter the world. But the characters, whose templates were scans of real people, have feelings and ambitions and they want to push at the boundaries of their created world.
- “Break My Fall”: a trip to Mars, aided by spinning slingshots made from asteroids, turns into a crisis when the sun starts to misbehave and the fleet must seek shelter. But an emergency requires the members of one ship to take life-or-death risks to save another ship in danger.
- “3-adica”: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story has some of the characters in another game. They have discovered how to exploit flaws and bugs in the rendering software of the games engine to transport themselves to from game to game, looking for the game called 3-adica, whose unusual mathematical rules may give them space to live out their own lives free from observation of the system administrators. But they first have to survive in this game while gathering the materials needed for that final jump, a game featuring vampires in Victorian times.
- “The Slipway”: an amateur astronomer discovers strange new stars in the sky that shouldn't be there. But it is only after more astronomers and theorists look at the strange growing patch of new stars in the sky do they start to realise the truth of what happened. A story that shows the way scientific discoveries are really made as well as taxing the ability of the reader to comprehend what has happened.
- “Instantiation”: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now need an escape, for the company that runs the games is losing money and may shut down. But to do that, they need to lure a player who uses a gaming system with a known flaw back into a game so they can exploit the flaw to move to other servers. Complications arise when they realise the player may be logging their data movements so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.
- “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”: in a future when people are being replaced by machines at their jobs, one man loses his job and struggles to find work and support his family. But unusual events, like a parent who apparently makes a living secretly writing monthly porn novels or a relative who believes the machines are out to get him, start to make him wonder what kind of future is in store, especially when his own desperate plan to get money suddenly appears to succeed. Could it be yet another plan by the machines for those out of work?
- “Zero For Conduct”: an Afghan girl who is very smart 'dabbles' in chemistry and creates a long sought after material. But now living in Iran, she has to resort to trickery and deception to get enought money first to secure a patent on it before she can earn her well deserved riches. This, she will have to do with the help of her relatives who recognise her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.
- “Uncanny Valley”: a famous script writer uploads a copy of himself into another body. But for unknown reasons parts of his memory are left out of the copy, rendering it almost complete. Now, after his death, the copy wants to find out why some memories were left out; and it may involve it in finding the uncomfortable truth about a period in the past when the script writer was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.
- “Seventh Sight”: a young boy fitted with a implant to replace his failing eyesight 'upgrades' the implants by unlocking additional features that enable him to see additional shades of colour. He also get involved with a group of teens who have also done the 'upgrades'. But what happens when technology catches up with them and let's everybody see the world in additional shades of colour like them?
- “The Nearest”: a detective investigates a disturbing family murder case. But as the case proceeds, the detective is suddenly thrown into shock when she discovers that those closest to her are not who they say they are. As she runs and hides, she learns of other people who have also discovered that those nearest to them have been 'replaced' by unfamiliar replicas. But further investigations would reveal the actual truth behind the epidemic of unfamiliarity.
- “Shadow Flock”: a lecturer at a university is suddenly involved in an 'evil' Mission:Impossible type mission when her brother is held hostage. Her skills at programming groups of small drones to perform tasks in a changing environment are key to a group's desire to steal crypto-money from several people. With no way to get the police involved and no guarantees she and her brother might be okay at the end of the caper, she subtlety modifies her code to ensure they can get away somehow but maybe not to safety.
- “Bit Players”: what looks at first to be a strange world where the rules of gravity have gone haywire turns out to be a virtual creation, with characters who act out lives for the players who enter the world. But the characters, whose templates were scans of real people, have feelings and ambitions and they want to push at the boundaries of their created world.
- “Break My Fall”: a trip to Mars, aided by spinning slingshots made from asteroids, turns into a crisis when the sun starts to misbehave and the fleet must seek shelter. But an emergency requires the members of one ship to take life-or-death risks to save another ship in danger.
- “3-adica”: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story has some of the characters in another game. They have discovered how to exploit flaws and bugs in the rendering software of the games engine to transport themselves to from game to game, looking for the game called 3-adica, whose unusual mathematical rules may give them space to live out their own lives free from observation of the system administrators. But they first have to survive in this game while gathering the materials needed for that final jump, a game featuring vampires in Victorian times.
- “The Slipway”: an amateur astronomer discovers strange new stars in the sky that shouldn't be there. But it is only after more astronomers and theorists look at the strange growing patch of new stars in the sky do they start to realise the truth of what happened. A story that shows the way scientific discoveries are really made as well as taxing the ability of the reader to comprehend what has happened.
- “Instantiation”: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now need an escape, for the company that runs the games is losing money and may shut down. But to do that, they need to lure a player who uses a gaming system with a known flaw back into a game so they can exploit the flaw to move to other servers. Complications arise when they realise the player may be logging their data movements so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.
July 13, 2024
There is a lot that's really great in this book, but ultimately I found the telling a little muddled and the math just a little too much to follow for a non-mathemetician (and I'm saying that as someone with an engineering PhD, so I'm far from allergic to higher math, just only exposed to portions of it and less of some of the "purer" pursuits that Egan sometimes introduces). For a collection of short stories, there are some great ideas and themes: the use of AI to replace human labor, the allure of room-temperature superconductors, the plight of climate refugees, transfer of consciousness to a younger robotic body, viruses hijacking facial recognition, the use of spinning rocks on elliptical orbits to propel inter-planetary ships, astronomers discovering vast interstallar wormholes, the emergence of consciousness in AI-composites of real humans, etc.
It's in that last story that this book shines, which is spread across 3 short stories. This is the only set of the book that isn't self-contained, which in of itself was a surprise because another set of short stories just happened to share character names so I was expecting a repeated main character name to *not* mean narrative continuity, then it *was* supposed to be indicative of that. The premise reminded me a lot of what is explored in even further depth in Iain M Banks' "Surface Detail", which unfortunately removes some of the novelty because, while he introduces new ideas, a bunch of it is ground I trod upon within the past year when I read that book.
Egan's characters aren't bad, and I actually like his representation of a variety of cultures (it's sometimes just set-dressing, but I think still is handled well overall), but they're not the focus of the book, so most are fairly static, fairly flat. That knocks off one star. And then the technical content is just a little too "inside baseball" which makes some of the stories feel a bit off. I can still follow the story, but there's a spark meant for the pure-mathematically-minded and so I can feel myself not capturing that interest as I read.
I read "Axiomatic" recently which I think overall was a stronger collection - the core ideas just that much sharper/more interesting to explore. I still enjoyed Instantiation, but there's not a ton that will stick with me.
It's in that last story that this book shines, which is spread across 3 short stories. This is the only set of the book that isn't self-contained, which in of itself was a surprise because another set of short stories just happened to share character names so I was expecting a repeated main character name to *not* mean narrative continuity, then it *was* supposed to be indicative of that. The premise reminded me a lot of what is explored in even further depth in Iain M Banks' "Surface Detail", which unfortunately removes some of the novelty because, while he introduces new ideas, a bunch of it is ground I trod upon within the past year when I read that book.
Egan's characters aren't bad, and I actually like his representation of a variety of cultures (it's sometimes just set-dressing, but I think still is handled well overall), but they're not the focus of the book, so most are fairly static, fairly flat. That knocks off one star. And then the technical content is just a little too "inside baseball" which makes some of the stories feel a bit off. I can still follow the story, but there's a spark meant for the pure-mathematically-minded and so I can feel myself not capturing that interest as I read.
I read "Axiomatic" recently which I think overall was a stronger collection - the core ideas just that much sharper/more interesting to explore. I still enjoyed Instantiation, but there's not a ton that will stick with me.
June 7, 2023
Either they moved out into the countryside and became subsistence farmers, or they stayed and fought to regain some kind of agency, using the only weapons that worked now. The idea that every person in the world ought to learn to code had always struck Dan as an infuriating piece of proselytizing, as bizarre as being told that everyone just had to shut up and become Rastafarian. But in the zombie apocalypse, no one ever complained that they needed to learn to sharpen sticks and drive them into rotting brains. It wasn’t a matter of cultural homogeneity. It was a question of knowing how to fuck with your enemy.
That’s a quote from the first story, set in a near-future where AI is pushing more and more people out of the job market. The story’s main conceit manages to be simultaneously a Kafkaesque nightmare and a relatively optimistic vision.
Some of the stories are probably longer than they needed to be, but all of them are pretty good. I come to Egan mostly for trippy post-Singularity adventures, so my favorite part of this collection was the three-story sequence about “composite” digital humans built from public-domain brain scans who are forced by a low-budget game company to fill the role of NPCs. It’s strange to read fiction where the focus shifts suddenly from plot and character drama to a detailed exploration of bizarre geometries, but it’s a kind of strange I enjoy.
(crosspost)
June 9, 2020
Instantistion
Seventh sight - quantum dot camera retinal implants that let you see far more of the visible spectrum and in far more detail. Really cool concept and the story flowed really well.
The nearest - a rash of people suffer a brain defect where even the people closest to them - husband, wives, kids - appear as strangers whom they don’t recognize - automata that have replaced their loved ones. Reminded me of an Oliver Sacks story about a particular kind of damage suffered by someone who’d had a stroke. They thought everyone around them was an imposter.
Bit Players - interesting setup where apparently gravity shifts towards pulling East instead of down, but only in a zone a couple miles below the surface and a couple miles above it. None of it makes any sense and Sagreda quickly realizes something is not as it seems. They are composite AIs spun up in some cheap VR world created for customers in the future (reminds me of Westworld a bit), and they decide to build a whole actual civilization.
Break my fall - interesting method of space travel from earth to mars using asteroids that were maneuvered into specific orbits like stepping stones, with cables attached. They effectively fling you into higher and higher orbits closer to Mars, one by one. And a daring space rescue in the face of a solar coronal mass ejection.
3-Adica continues Sagreda’s journey out of East that started in Bit Players and takes her to some nightmarish Victorian England gothic horror show with vampires and monsters etc. Wow. Really well done. Very cool.
The slipway - a physics mystery. Is it a wormhole? Is it an exotic string?
Instantiation - the conclusion of Sagreda’s journey out of the terrible composite AI VR game world. Excellent all around.
Seventh sight - quantum dot camera retinal implants that let you see far more of the visible spectrum and in far more detail. Really cool concept and the story flowed really well.
The nearest - a rash of people suffer a brain defect where even the people closest to them - husband, wives, kids - appear as strangers whom they don’t recognize - automata that have replaced their loved ones. Reminded me of an Oliver Sacks story about a particular kind of damage suffered by someone who’d had a stroke. They thought everyone around them was an imposter.
Bit Players - interesting setup where apparently gravity shifts towards pulling East instead of down, but only in a zone a couple miles below the surface and a couple miles above it. None of it makes any sense and Sagreda quickly realizes something is not as it seems. They are composite AIs spun up in some cheap VR world created for customers in the future (reminds me of Westworld a bit), and they decide to build a whole actual civilization.
Break my fall - interesting method of space travel from earth to mars using asteroids that were maneuvered into specific orbits like stepping stones, with cables attached. They effectively fling you into higher and higher orbits closer to Mars, one by one. And a daring space rescue in the face of a solar coronal mass ejection.
3-Adica continues Sagreda’s journey out of East that started in Bit Players and takes her to some nightmarish Victorian England gothic horror show with vampires and monsters etc. Wow. Really well done. Very cool.
The slipway - a physics mystery. Is it a wormhole? Is it an exotic string?
Instantiation - the conclusion of Sagreda’s journey out of the terrible composite AI VR game world. Excellent all around.
August 16, 2020
This book consists of eleven recent short stories that appeared in various publications from 2013 to 2019. All were new to me since I haven’t been reading SF short stories for many years. Four of the stories I really liked – standing alone, I would rate each of them a “5”. Three of the four were related to each other, continuations of the same story and world. The rest of the stories I liked to varying degrees. All of them were hard science fiction, which I prefer, even when I don’t entirely understand the science (or in some of these, the math!). My main criticism of the stories I liked the least was that they didn’t seem to have enough plot or a satisfying ending (specifically, I didn’t like as well “Zero for Conduct” or “The Slipway”.)
The three related stories were “Bit Players”, “3-Adica”, and “Instantiation”. In this world, neural maps from deceased people are combined to create new personas. These personas (called “contributors”) are self-aware just as though they were real people, even though their memories are not specifically of their personal past life (just memories of the times in which they lived). They have no legal standing and are forced by a gaming company to serve as characters in a large array of VR games. Wow! I love the concept. As I said above, I love a scientific background even if I don’t always “get it”. In “Bit Players”, the environment of the game world defied the laws of physics and was hard for me to imagine fully. “3-Adica” invoked difficult mathematical concepts. But no matter. I loved the stories.
I hadn’t read anything by Greg Egan since the late ‘80s and “Blood Music”. This gives me incentive to read more.
The three related stories were “Bit Players”, “3-Adica”, and “Instantiation”. In this world, neural maps from deceased people are combined to create new personas. These personas (called “contributors”) are self-aware just as though they were real people, even though their memories are not specifically of their personal past life (just memories of the times in which they lived). They have no legal standing and are forced by a gaming company to serve as characters in a large array of VR games. Wow! I love the concept. As I said above, I love a scientific background even if I don’t always “get it”. In “Bit Players”, the environment of the game world defied the laws of physics and was hard for me to imagine fully. “3-Adica” invoked difficult mathematical concepts. But no matter. I loved the stories.
I hadn’t read anything by Greg Egan since the late ‘80s and “Blood Music”. This gives me incentive to read more.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2023
I thoroughly enjoyed Instantiation. Unlike a lot of sci-fi writers, Egan takes the time to create characters who feel like people, with reasonable motivations, behaviors, and development. He is known as a hard sci-fi writer though. So for some readers, (ahem, me) who are less science literate, the detailed science exposition can be a bit of a slog. But it's worth sticking with the stories because Egan is exploring extremely interesting ideas.
Two themes seem to run through this collection: (1) the nature of identity and personhood when technology is able to replicate some aspects of human consciousness and (2) economic insecurity in an environment of increasing technological progress. Stand out stories in the collection include the trio of "Bit Players", "3-Adica", and "Instantiation", which explore the personhood theme and "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine" which is a disturbingly too-close-to-home exploration of the economic insecurity theme. As an aside, "Uncanny Valley" has a different, more unsettling feel once you've read the end of the story "Instantiation". Finally, "Nearest" is also a great story, even though it doesn't fit with either theme. And since the science involved is medical rather than Egan's familiar math, physics, and chemistry territory, there's considerably less exposition and more character development.
Two themes seem to run through this collection: (1) the nature of identity and personhood when technology is able to replicate some aspects of human consciousness and (2) economic insecurity in an environment of increasing technological progress. Stand out stories in the collection include the trio of "Bit Players", "3-Adica", and "Instantiation", which explore the personhood theme and "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine" which is a disturbingly too-close-to-home exploration of the economic insecurity theme. As an aside, "Uncanny Valley" has a different, more unsettling feel once you've read the end of the story "Instantiation". Finally, "Nearest" is also a great story, even though it doesn't fit with either theme. And since the science involved is medical rather than Egan's familiar math, physics, and chemistry territory, there's considerably less exposition and more character development.
December 1, 2021
I got this so I could read 3-adica after reading up on p-adic numbers. I'm not convinced p-adic numbers translate well to the short story format. I also didn't realize three of the short stories are a single story, and 3-adica is the second installment.
I read the rest of the stories in the collection after 3-adica and I liked them a lot. They have the distrust of institutions and corporations that I think is characteristic of Greg Egan. But it's mostly in the background. (E.g. SludgeNet.) The stories focus more on characters collaborating to overcome natural obstacles. I love stories like this! (Is this hopepunk?)
My favorite story was “The Slipway”. It's an interesting lesson in how the finite speed of light is unintuitive even in non-relativistic situations. The premise is also weird, scary, and fascinating. ()
I read the rest of the stories in the collection after 3-adica and I liked them a lot. They have the distrust of institutions and corporations that I think is characteristic of Greg Egan. But it's mostly in the background. (E.g. SludgeNet.) The stories focus more on characters collaborating to overcome natural obstacles. I love stories like this! (Is this hopepunk?)
My favorite story was “The Slipway”. It's an interesting lesson in how the finite speed of light is unintuitive even in non-relativistic situations. The premise is also weird, scary, and fascinating. ()
January 27, 2025
Short stories.
I love short stories, I love Egan, so what more could you ask for?
Of course, some I liked more than others.
“The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” A man, offering renegotiation on loans loses his job to an algorithm that surveyed his work. And he is not the only one. Very topical, everyone redundant, bots and Ai taking jobs, bot nurses...no-one employed, no-one unable to afford anything, what are the corporations to do when there is no-one able to buy?
“Zero For Conduct” A woman migrant from Afghanistan to Iran tries to study and creates a world-changing item
“Seventh Sight” People with artificial eyes due to genetically caused blindness, decide that only three color cones humans have aren’t enough. But how useful is it?
“Break My Fall” A group of asteroids set on the route from Earth to Mars, so that ships slingshot-like get speed to travel fast and cheap.
“The Slipway” Earth passes through an extremely unusual cosmic event. These type are some of my favourite. The science, well I can't comment, not techy enough. But fun.
I love short stories, I love Egan, so what more could you ask for?
Of course, some I liked more than others.
“The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” A man, offering renegotiation on loans loses his job to an algorithm that surveyed his work. And he is not the only one. Very topical, everyone redundant, bots and Ai taking jobs, bot nurses...no-one employed, no-one unable to afford anything, what are the corporations to do when there is no-one able to buy?
“Zero For Conduct” A woman migrant from Afghanistan to Iran tries to study and creates a world-changing item
“Seventh Sight” People with artificial eyes due to genetically caused blindness, decide that only three color cones humans have aren’t enough. But how useful is it?
“Break My Fall” A group of asteroids set on the route from Earth to Mars, so that ships slingshot-like get speed to travel fast and cheap.
“The Slipway” Earth passes through an extremely unusual cosmic event. These type are some of my favourite. The science, well I can't comment, not techy enough. But fun.
June 4, 2020
While I'm a long-time fan of Greg Egan's work, his prose was somewhat lacking from a literary perspective. While his ideas are always fascinating and thought-provoking, the writing itself was not as well executed. Not so with this book. This book is a collection of short stories, themed mostly about the near future and AI (but not exclusively). The stories are well written, and each and every one of them has an interesting character dynamic as well as the author's brilliant take on some social and technological challenges the future may (or man not) have for us. Whatever the new technologies will be developed in real life, these stories make one thinking about some of the assumptions in the foundations of modern society and think about them as what they are - assumptions, not the laws of Nature.
While background knowledge in STEM would help a reader to appreciate some of the technical aspects of ideas in the stories, it's by no means required. Can't recommend this enough.
While background knowledge in STEM would help a reader to appreciate some of the technical aspects of ideas in the stories, it's by no means required. Can't recommend this enough.
September 28, 2020
I'm so torn on everything Greg Egan. Every once in a while, a short story of his will absolutely blow me away with its premise and storytelling - but just as often, he'll delve into a detailed thought experiment revolving around pure mathematics or physics and never surface back into any sort of plot.
I loved "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine", "The Nearest", and "Uncanny Valley" (although the last two are available to read for free through his website). "Seventh Sight" was kind of interesting, but still more of a thought experiment than a story. I just couldn't get into the core trilogy or the rest here, and although I'm sure there is an audience for scientific papers pondering "what if gravity went east instead", it's not really the kind of SF I find compelling at all, personally.
My ratings: Five stars for the 3 first stories mentioned above, two for "Seventh Sight", and one star for the rest.
I loved "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine", "The Nearest", and "Uncanny Valley" (although the last two are available to read for free through his website). "Seventh Sight" was kind of interesting, but still more of a thought experiment than a story. I just couldn't get into the core trilogy or the rest here, and although I'm sure there is an audience for scientific papers pondering "what if gravity went east instead", it's not really the kind of SF I find compelling at all, personally.
My ratings: Five stars for the 3 first stories mentioned above, two for "Seventh Sight", and one star for the rest.
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