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The Best of Greg Egan #1-3
The Best of Greg Egan
Greg Egan is arguably Australia’s greatest living science fiction writer. In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has produced a steady stream of novels and stories that address a wide range of scientific and philosophical concerns: artificial intelligence, higher mathematics, science vs religion, the nature of consciousness, and the impact of technology on the human personality. All these ideas and more find their way into this generous and illuminating collection, the clear product of a man who is both a master storyteller and a rigorous, exploratory thinker.
The Best of Greg Egan contains twenty stories and novellas arranged in chronological order, and each of them is a brilliantly conceived, painstakingly developed gem. The book opens with “Learning to be Me,” about a society in which the organic human brain can be replaced by a miraculous piece of technology called “the jewel,” a “mock brain” that confers, among other things, a kind of immortality on its recipients. “Bit Players”—the opening movement in a trio of tales that continues with “3-adica” and “Instantiation”—posits a world in which cheaply generated software beings are exploited for the basest commercial purposes. (Other sets of interconnected stories—all of them reprinted here—include the mathematically-themed “Luminous” and “Dark Integers,” and a pair of stories centered on the complex marriage of a physicist and a mathematician: “Singleton” and “Oracle.”) “Reasons to be Cheerful,” concerns a young boy whose brain tumor has an unexpected effect on his life, moods, and view of the world. “Axiomatic” tells the story of a society in which “implants” can be used to alter the human personality, with potentially lethal results. And the Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is a powerful account of a boy whose deeply held religious beliefs are undermined by what he comes to learn about the laws of the physical world.
This book really does represent the best of Greg Egan, and it therefore takes its place among the best of contemporary SF. Startling, intelligent and always hugely entertaining, it provides an ideal introduction to one of the most accomplished and original writers working today. This is an important and provocative collection, and it deserves a place on the serious science fiction reader’s permanent shelf.
Limited: 1000 numbered hardcover copies
Table of Contents:
Learning to Be Me
Axiomatic
Appropriate Love
Into Darkness
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies
Closer
Chaff
Luminous
Silver Fire
Reasons to be Cheerful
Oceanic
Oracle
Singleton
Dark Integers
Crystal Nights
Zero For Conduct
Bit Players
Uncanny Valley
3-adica
Instantiation
Afterword
The Best of Greg Egan contains twenty stories and novellas arranged in chronological order, and each of them is a brilliantly conceived, painstakingly developed gem. The book opens with “Learning to be Me,” about a society in which the organic human brain can be replaced by a miraculous piece of technology called “the jewel,” a “mock brain” that confers, among other things, a kind of immortality on its recipients. “Bit Players”—the opening movement in a trio of tales that continues with “3-adica” and “Instantiation”—posits a world in which cheaply generated software beings are exploited for the basest commercial purposes. (Other sets of interconnected stories—all of them reprinted here—include the mathematically-themed “Luminous” and “Dark Integers,” and a pair of stories centered on the complex marriage of a physicist and a mathematician: “Singleton” and “Oracle.”) “Reasons to be Cheerful,” concerns a young boy whose brain tumor has an unexpected effect on his life, moods, and view of the world. “Axiomatic” tells the story of a society in which “implants” can be used to alter the human personality, with potentially lethal results. And the Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is a powerful account of a boy whose deeply held religious beliefs are undermined by what he comes to learn about the laws of the physical world.
This book really does represent the best of Greg Egan, and it therefore takes its place among the best of contemporary SF. Startling, intelligent and always hugely entertaining, it provides an ideal introduction to one of the most accomplished and original writers working today. This is an important and provocative collection, and it deserves a place on the serious science fiction reader’s permanent shelf.
Limited: 1000 numbered hardcover copies
Table of Contents:
Learning to Be Me
Axiomatic
Appropriate Love
Into Darkness
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies
Closer
Chaff
Luminous
Silver Fire
Reasons to be Cheerful
Oceanic
Oracle
Singleton
Dark Integers
Crystal Nights
Zero For Conduct
Bit Players
Uncanny Valley
3-adica
Instantiation
Afterword
622 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2019
131 people are currently reading
1368 people want to read
About the author
Greg Egan
265 books2,776 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 82 reviews
April 13, 2020
This was quite a feast. More like weeks of fine, mind dining, given the menu of 20 story courses over 700 pages. Many longish and meaty and others tasty and short. After only moderate pleasures from a couple of his novels, it is clear that his great strength is in mastery of the short story medium. I see I made 60 bookmarks for great passages in the course of my reading of the ebook version. The impression is of compression of events in the context of a novel technology, then a surprising explosion as he blows your mind with compelling projections of their implications. Part of his effectiveness in engaging the reader lies with his apparent deep knowledge of physics and biology and corresponding ability to inspire trust in the plausibility of his projections. Yes, characters are sketchy, but it’s not hard to identify with their issues, whether pushing toward a new frontier or facing the challenging outcomes of the new twist for humanity.
For example, one story delves into the impact of pervasive use of audiovisual recording devices to make a continuous POV record of one’s life. We already wonder how social media and Google might be changing the way our minds and relationships work. If a powerful enough AI-driven search facility was readily accessible as an implant to tap into each person’s recording archive, how might that change how humanity views and uses memory to judge truth. Egan is attuned to how significant it is for us to forget certain experiences and to continually shape and distort the ‘facts’ of our lives, and so his projections raise the prospect of an adverse impact on human nature. (In a way, Ben Winter’s “Golden State” has a comparable projection in his sci fi fable of “truth police” who have access to the ubiquitous recordings, but unlike with Egan I could not ‘suspend disbelief’).
Another couple of stories that I really liked explore the implications and impacts of technology to digitally capture and emulate one’s personality and the application of the technology to dispense with death of the self. One pathway aligns with organ transplants or artificial to extend life and another pathway leads to virtual selves in a network without bodies. In the first story, Egan engaged me well in the scenario by using the perspective of a child receiving the implant and struggling with the psychological and logical challenges of coming to terms with a novel outlook on the meaning of self and identity.
A couple of stories that were particularly fun deals with the discovery that some areas of our universe have developed since the Big Bang under alternate laws of mathematics and physics. Human scientists come to understand that the incompatibilities between the foundational laws poses a risk for our reality being destroyed and find themselves in a “war” with alien scientists of that other reality to maintain stability of their respective systems.
Another couple of stories blessed with the fun factor deal with AI emulations of dead humans being exploited by online gaming corporations In the face of stupidity and nonsense in their roles with respect to game participants, the simulated personalities are driven to fighting back and collaborating to achieve a more meaningful existence. Egan’s take on an interplay between parallel worlds was also brilliant and stands in good company with recent explorations in the novels of William Gibson and Blake Crouch.
You don’t have to understand much math and physics to enjoy these stories, but such understanding could help you appreciate the fresh approaches taken in this collection. If 20 stories would be an overdose, one could sample a few at a time stretched over a long period.
This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.
For example, one story delves into the impact of pervasive use of audiovisual recording devices to make a continuous POV record of one’s life. We already wonder how social media and Google might be changing the way our minds and relationships work. If a powerful enough AI-driven search facility was readily accessible as an implant to tap into each person’s recording archive, how might that change how humanity views and uses memory to judge truth. Egan is attuned to how significant it is for us to forget certain experiences and to continually shape and distort the ‘facts’ of our lives, and so his projections raise the prospect of an adverse impact on human nature. (In a way, Ben Winter’s “Golden State” has a comparable projection in his sci fi fable of “truth police” who have access to the ubiquitous recordings, but unlike with Egan I could not ‘suspend disbelief’).
Another couple of stories that I really liked explore the implications and impacts of technology to digitally capture and emulate one’s personality and the application of the technology to dispense with death of the self. One pathway aligns with organ transplants or artificial to extend life and another pathway leads to virtual selves in a network without bodies. In the first story, Egan engaged me well in the scenario by using the perspective of a child receiving the implant and struggling with the psychological and logical challenges of coming to terms with a novel outlook on the meaning of self and identity.
A couple of stories that were particularly fun deals with the discovery that some areas of our universe have developed since the Big Bang under alternate laws of mathematics and physics. Human scientists come to understand that the incompatibilities between the foundational laws poses a risk for our reality being destroyed and find themselves in a “war” with alien scientists of that other reality to maintain stability of their respective systems.
Another couple of stories blessed with the fun factor deal with AI emulations of dead humans being exploited by online gaming corporations In the face of stupidity and nonsense in their roles with respect to game participants, the simulated personalities are driven to fighting back and collaborating to achieve a more meaningful existence. Egan’s take on an interplay between parallel worlds was also brilliant and stands in good company with recent explorations in the novels of William Gibson and Blake Crouch.
You don’t have to understand much math and physics to enjoy these stories, but such understanding could help you appreciate the fresh approaches taken in this collection. If 20 stories would be an overdose, one could sample a few at a time stretched over a long period.
This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.
December 6, 2019
At 736 pages, the Best of Greg Egan is an enormous volume, but it's well worth digging into. ""Learning to Be Me" explores what we've all been waiting for, a cure for dementia, a cure for the rapidly aging brain. And why not? The organic brain deteriorates every second after maturity is reached. Things are forgotten. Replace the brain with a computer chip and become a jewelhead and live forever. Where is the line between human and artificial intelligence?"
"Axiomatic" delves into the rapidly shrinking lines between human and artificial intelligence. What if instead of drinking to oblivion or taking drugs to deaden our senses and allow us to release our inhibitions, you simply went to a store and bought a program to download and let go of your inhibitions for a short period of time? How would that work out?
""Appropriate Love" is another trip through a future of mind and body alterment. This time it's the insurance company's bizarre means of preserving life that makes the reader gasp.
These are but a few examples of the unique gems found here. Egan explores how technology changes us and makes us something different. Or does it? What is human and what is cyborg?
"Axiomatic" delves into the rapidly shrinking lines between human and artificial intelligence. What if instead of drinking to oblivion or taking drugs to deaden our senses and allow us to release our inhibitions, you simply went to a store and bought a program to download and let go of your inhibitions for a short period of time? How would that work out?
""Appropriate Love" is another trip through a future of mind and body alterment. This time it's the insurance company's bizarre means of preserving life that makes the reader gasp.
These are but a few examples of the unique gems found here. Egan explores how technology changes us and makes us something different. Or does it? What is human and what is cyborg?
July 10, 2023
As I joyfully read my way through this 700-page beast, I have only one regret: that I didn't discover Egan's work sooner.
October 27, 2019
I received an ebook advance reader copy from Subterranian Press through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The book is expected to be published on 31 October 2019.
Greg Egan is a hard science fiction writer, whose stories often involve mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, post-humanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rationalism over religion. Even when the themes do not deal directly with advanced math and/or science, his perspective characters are often math and science researchers. This collection offers a broad cross-section of Egan’s novella-length works, from 1990 through 2019. His writing is dense, and all told, this collection takes up 736 pages in print form – so reading it is a substantial undertaking. In fact, much of the writing here has been previously packaged into one of his series of three prior collections – Axiomatic (1995), Luminous (1998), and Oceanic (2009) – with about five more. So, if you’re a close follower of Egan’s writing, this could be redundant for you. However, you may not have been aware of the interconnected nature of some of the stories which now appear in the same volume. On the other hand, if Egan is new to you, this collection is in fact, his best. I highly recommend it.
Below are some of my non-comprehensive notes on individual novellas. Almost all were first published in Interzone or Asimov’s Science Fiction. And there are a lot of award winners and nominations.
“Learning to be Me” (1990) ***** - In the future, all people have a brain-implanted “jewel” that parallels their brain development throughout their lifetime. By abandoning their flesh brain and switching over to the jewel, all may achieve near-immortality, but it raises unanswerable questions of identity. Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991.
“Axiomatic” (1990) ***** - When you can purchase mind modification implants, what is your true personality? Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991
“Appropriate Love” (1991) **** - A young couple finds that their least costly medically sanctioned option for total body replacement is far more invasive than they anticipated.
“Into Darkness” (1992) **** – It takes an unusual personality to act as on-call rescuer from an anomalous area of spacetime, that has logical but unexpected perils.
“Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies” (1992) ***** – A post-apocalyptic world has resulted from the general breach of the mental privacy of philosophical orientation among humanity. But some individuals have preserved their independence, geographically navigating between monolithic philosophical/religious concentrations.
“Closer” (1992) **** – The concept of a “jewel” is used again. The novella explores just how close individuals could become, by creative transference and communication between bodies and jewels.
“Chaff” (1993) ***** - A criminal empire based in the Amazon has been created by engineering of biological organisms.
“Luminous” (1995) ***** – Early in the formation of the universe, several different mathematical realities competed for dominance. Today, there are regions where each dominates, and conscious exploration extends each into the territories of the others. A small group of people fights against opposing mathematics, unknown to their peers. Nominated for 1996 Hugo novelette.
“Silver Fire” (1995) *** – A government agent pursues mathematical models of the rarified pattern of contagion in a pandemic. I was fascinated by that investigation, but the ultimate cause of the problem is an unrealistic and horrific exaggeration of some weird new age spirituality. I found it to be too heavy handed of an anti-religion polemic.
“Reasons to be Cheerful” (1997) ***** - Whatever the plot, the topic of speculation is the molecular biology of happiness. Fascinating to me, but definitely too info-dumpy for the Star Wars audience.
“Oceanic” (1998) **** – On a colony world, a scientist discovers the biological basis of his own religious experience. That alone is a sufficient concept for the story, but additionally I liked the way that the engineered sexual dimorphism of the culture was revealed only through plot, even if the biology of that aspect is a little flaky. It's the winner of a 1999 Hugo, and was also nominated for the Tiptree Award, among others.
“Oracle” (2000) ***** – A visitor from an alternate time line appears and helps an Alan Turing-like character escape torture and lead the rapid development of interdisciplinary science, all in an effort to avoid painful lives among the branching of many worlds. Nominated for 2001 Hugo and 2001 Nebula.
“Singleton” (2002) ***** – A contemporary physicist couple make a decision to raise a synthetic child, who is also shielded from many worlds branching as a true singleton. Story linked to “Oracle”, giving the back story of Helen. Nominated for British SF Association Award.
“Dark Integers” (2007) *** – Sequel to “Luminous.” Another war with the alternate mathematical space that overlaps with our own. Nominated for Hugo 2008.
“Crystal Nights” (2008) **** - A rich man evolves an artificial intelligence civilization in an extremely high-speed computer, that outstrips humanity. Nominated for British SF Association Award.
“Zero for Conduct” (2013) ***** - An Afghan school girl living in exile in Iran chemically designs a room-temperature superconducting magnet. Message is about the educational oppression of women. The impressive realism of the setting is due to Egan’s personal experiences in modern Iran, from which also came his novel Zendegi.
“Bit Players” (2014) *** – Human characters, who are composites of thousands of public domain recordings, come to consciousness in a gamespace whose designers had a poor grasp on elementary physical laws.
“Uncanny Valley” (2017) *** – A cybernetic heir confronts the incompleteness of memories that was passed on to him.
“3-Adica” (2018) *** – Sequel to “Bit Players.” The gamespace characters move into a bizarre new spacetime setting.
“Instantiation” (2019) **** – Sequel to “3-Adica.” There is a crisis in gamespace, as the real world business that supports it could soon go bankrupt and shut down. In order to move out danger of extinction, the characters must deceive real world characters using simulation. Plays upon Gödel’s theorems.
Greg Egan is a hard science fiction writer, whose stories often involve mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, post-humanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rationalism over religion. Even when the themes do not deal directly with advanced math and/or science, his perspective characters are often math and science researchers. This collection offers a broad cross-section of Egan’s novella-length works, from 1990 through 2019. His writing is dense, and all told, this collection takes up 736 pages in print form – so reading it is a substantial undertaking. In fact, much of the writing here has been previously packaged into one of his series of three prior collections – Axiomatic (1995), Luminous (1998), and Oceanic (2009) – with about five more. So, if you’re a close follower of Egan’s writing, this could be redundant for you. However, you may not have been aware of the interconnected nature of some of the stories which now appear in the same volume. On the other hand, if Egan is new to you, this collection is in fact, his best. I highly recommend it.
Below are some of my non-comprehensive notes on individual novellas. Almost all were first published in Interzone or Asimov’s Science Fiction. And there are a lot of award winners and nominations.
“Learning to be Me” (1990) ***** - In the future, all people have a brain-implanted “jewel” that parallels their brain development throughout their lifetime. By abandoning their flesh brain and switching over to the jewel, all may achieve near-immortality, but it raises unanswerable questions of identity. Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991.
“Axiomatic” (1990) ***** - When you can purchase mind modification implants, what is your true personality? Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991
“Appropriate Love” (1991) **** - A young couple finds that their least costly medically sanctioned option for total body replacement is far more invasive than they anticipated.
“Into Darkness” (1992) **** – It takes an unusual personality to act as on-call rescuer from an anomalous area of spacetime, that has logical but unexpected perils.
“Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies” (1992) ***** – A post-apocalyptic world has resulted from the general breach of the mental privacy of philosophical orientation among humanity. But some individuals have preserved their independence, geographically navigating between monolithic philosophical/religious concentrations.
“Closer” (1992) **** – The concept of a “jewel” is used again. The novella explores just how close individuals could become, by creative transference and communication between bodies and jewels.
“Chaff” (1993) ***** - A criminal empire based in the Amazon has been created by engineering of biological organisms.
“Luminous” (1995) ***** – Early in the formation of the universe, several different mathematical realities competed for dominance. Today, there are regions where each dominates, and conscious exploration extends each into the territories of the others. A small group of people fights against opposing mathematics, unknown to their peers. Nominated for 1996 Hugo novelette.
“Silver Fire” (1995) *** – A government agent pursues mathematical models of the rarified pattern of contagion in a pandemic. I was fascinated by that investigation, but the ultimate cause of the problem is an unrealistic and horrific exaggeration of some weird new age spirituality. I found it to be too heavy handed of an anti-religion polemic.
“Reasons to be Cheerful” (1997) ***** - Whatever the plot, the topic of speculation is the molecular biology of happiness. Fascinating to me, but definitely too info-dumpy for the Star Wars audience.
“Oceanic” (1998) **** – On a colony world, a scientist discovers the biological basis of his own religious experience. That alone is a sufficient concept for the story, but additionally I liked the way that the engineered sexual dimorphism of the culture was revealed only through plot, even if the biology of that aspect is a little flaky. It's the winner of a 1999 Hugo, and was also nominated for the Tiptree Award, among others.
“Oracle” (2000) ***** – A visitor from an alternate time line appears and helps an Alan Turing-like character escape torture and lead the rapid development of interdisciplinary science, all in an effort to avoid painful lives among the branching of many worlds. Nominated for 2001 Hugo and 2001 Nebula.
“Singleton” (2002) ***** – A contemporary physicist couple make a decision to raise a synthetic child, who is also shielded from many worlds branching as a true singleton. Story linked to “Oracle”, giving the back story of Helen. Nominated for British SF Association Award.
“Dark Integers” (2007) *** – Sequel to “Luminous.” Another war with the alternate mathematical space that overlaps with our own. Nominated for Hugo 2008.
“Crystal Nights” (2008) **** - A rich man evolves an artificial intelligence civilization in an extremely high-speed computer, that outstrips humanity. Nominated for British SF Association Award.
“Zero for Conduct” (2013) ***** - An Afghan school girl living in exile in Iran chemically designs a room-temperature superconducting magnet. Message is about the educational oppression of women. The impressive realism of the setting is due to Egan’s personal experiences in modern Iran, from which also came his novel Zendegi.
“Bit Players” (2014) *** – Human characters, who are composites of thousands of public domain recordings, come to consciousness in a gamespace whose designers had a poor grasp on elementary physical laws.
“Uncanny Valley” (2017) *** – A cybernetic heir confronts the incompleteness of memories that was passed on to him.
“3-Adica” (2018) *** – Sequel to “Bit Players.” The gamespace characters move into a bizarre new spacetime setting.
“Instantiation” (2019) **** – Sequel to “3-Adica.” There is a crisis in gamespace, as the real world business that supports it could soon go bankrupt and shut down. In order to move out danger of extinction, the characters must deceive real world characters using simulation. Plays upon Gödel’s theorems.
February 14, 2022
A collection of stories selected by Greg Egan, it showcases some stories that have made people, like me, who enjoy the genre of 'Hard SF' (speculative science fiction based on the rules of nature) pay attention to what he has to say about the nature of the world around us. Some stories here overlap with another of his collection, "Instantiation", which I have already read, so the individual review for those stories are the same.
"Luminous" was the story that got 'hooked' on Egan: a wonderful tale about regions of the universe that obey different mathematical rules and what it says about the people who will fight against corporations that are eager to take advantage of the situation (by manipulating the mathematical rules that drive the stock market).
- Axiomatic: a man buys an implant that can alter his basic beliefs. For what he wants to do to is confront the man who killed his wife, discover why he did it, and act on his modified convictions.
- Appropriate Love: when an accident leaves her lover near death and in need of a new body, she becomes the host for his brain while a new body is being prepared. But the experience world leave her feelings for him mixed up.
- Into Darkness: a wormhole appears, and it's the job of rescuers to enter it, rescue who they can in it, and make it to the centre. In the wormhole, time moves forward towards the centre, making it impossible to move back, or to see ahead, so the rescuers are always running into darkness.
- Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies: two wanderers navigate a strange future where belief systems can reach out from person to person, attracting people into believing in them. The two wanderers have managed to weave a path between belief systems in a city, but now they find out that their wanderings may not be as free is belief as they thought.
- Closer: a man is obsessed with the idea of really understanding another person's viewpoint to become closer to them. The journey he would take would lead to swapping of bodies and a melting of minds, but may not lead to the answer he seeks.
- Chaff: a man has to enter a bioengineered jungle in Colombia to find and retrieve a researcher who has run there. What he finds is a man who had found a way to change the way people's brain work and is willing to use it.
- Luminous: a fantastic tale involving mathematics and mathematical statements. A conversation about mathematics being physically manifested and whether a different system of mathematics could also exist leads to a discovery of a weapon that could be used to corrupt financial systems that depend on maths: and a whole new universe.
- Silver Fire: an investigator goes on the hunt for Silver Fire, a virus that is slowly spreading and killing its victims. Her investigation leads to a series of villages building dance parties, and she would find the cause of the outbreak is tied to New Age spiritualism that has also being taking over the world.
- Reasons to be Cheerful: an overly happy young boy learns he has brain cancer. He undergoes an operation to get rid of the cancer, but the operation accidentally destroys all feeling of pleasure. Later on, he learns of a possible way to restore the feeling of pleasure, but after so long, can he control how much pleasure he should be feeling?
- Oceanic: on a world thousands of years in the future, humans lived and worshipped Beatrice for giving up Her life to save theirs. One person discovers embraces the faith after being nearly drowned, but would discover years later that his faith in Beatrice may only be an accidental interaction. But will it cancel a person's faith?
- Oracle: a man being confined in a cruel way is suddenly freed by a woman who turns out to be more than she appears, in a story of an alternate universe involving characters that would be familiar to those who know computing and fantastic children's literature in Britain after World War Two.
- Singleton: the decision to intervene and save a stranger from a beating sends a person down the path to creating a device that would ensure that there is only a single decision made at a time by an artificial person, even when the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics applies.
- Dark Integers: a follow-up to "Luminous", this involves the characters now communicating with those that live under a different system of mathematics discovered in the original story. But now, a new danger has emerged with a new discovery that could cause whole mathematical systems to collapse. Should such a weapon be controlled and be used, even for defending the mathematics on which your life depends on?
- Crystal Nights: a rich entrepreneur develops a computer on a crystal that is very powerful and fast. Then, he uses it for the task of evolving an AI civilization that would fulfil his dreams. But what he doesn't consider is that the AIs he evolves world have dreams is their own.
- 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 enough 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 recognize her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.
- 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.
- Uncanny Valley: a famous scriptwriter 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 scriptwriter was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.
- 3-adica: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story now has some 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.
- Instantiation: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now require 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 realize the player may be logging their data movements, so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.
"Luminous" was the story that got 'hooked' on Egan: a wonderful tale about regions of the universe that obey different mathematical rules and what it says about the people who will fight against corporations that are eager to take advantage of the situation (by manipulating the mathematical rules that drive the stock market).
- Axiomatic: a man buys an implant that can alter his basic beliefs. For what he wants to do to is confront the man who killed his wife, discover why he did it, and act on his modified convictions.
- Appropriate Love: when an accident leaves her lover near death and in need of a new body, she becomes the host for his brain while a new body is being prepared. But the experience world leave her feelings for him mixed up.
- Into Darkness: a wormhole appears, and it's the job of rescuers to enter it, rescue who they can in it, and make it to the centre. In the wormhole, time moves forward towards the centre, making it impossible to move back, or to see ahead, so the rescuers are always running into darkness.
- Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies: two wanderers navigate a strange future where belief systems can reach out from person to person, attracting people into believing in them. The two wanderers have managed to weave a path between belief systems in a city, but now they find out that their wanderings may not be as free is belief as they thought.
- Closer: a man is obsessed with the idea of really understanding another person's viewpoint to become closer to them. The journey he would take would lead to swapping of bodies and a melting of minds, but may not lead to the answer he seeks.
- Chaff: a man has to enter a bioengineered jungle in Colombia to find and retrieve a researcher who has run there. What he finds is a man who had found a way to change the way people's brain work and is willing to use it.
- Luminous: a fantastic tale involving mathematics and mathematical statements. A conversation about mathematics being physically manifested and whether a different system of mathematics could also exist leads to a discovery of a weapon that could be used to corrupt financial systems that depend on maths: and a whole new universe.
- Silver Fire: an investigator goes on the hunt for Silver Fire, a virus that is slowly spreading and killing its victims. Her investigation leads to a series of villages building dance parties, and she would find the cause of the outbreak is tied to New Age spiritualism that has also being taking over the world.
- Reasons to be Cheerful: an overly happy young boy learns he has brain cancer. He undergoes an operation to get rid of the cancer, but the operation accidentally destroys all feeling of pleasure. Later on, he learns of a possible way to restore the feeling of pleasure, but after so long, can he control how much pleasure he should be feeling?
- Oceanic: on a world thousands of years in the future, humans lived and worshipped Beatrice for giving up Her life to save theirs. One person discovers embraces the faith after being nearly drowned, but would discover years later that his faith in Beatrice may only be an accidental interaction. But will it cancel a person's faith?
- Oracle: a man being confined in a cruel way is suddenly freed by a woman who turns out to be more than she appears, in a story of an alternate universe involving characters that would be familiar to those who know computing and fantastic children's literature in Britain after World War Two.
- Singleton: the decision to intervene and save a stranger from a beating sends a person down the path to creating a device that would ensure that there is only a single decision made at a time by an artificial person, even when the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics applies.
- Dark Integers: a follow-up to "Luminous", this involves the characters now communicating with those that live under a different system of mathematics discovered in the original story. But now, a new danger has emerged with a new discovery that could cause whole mathematical systems to collapse. Should such a weapon be controlled and be used, even for defending the mathematics on which your life depends on?
- Crystal Nights: a rich entrepreneur develops a computer on a crystal that is very powerful and fast. Then, he uses it for the task of evolving an AI civilization that would fulfil his dreams. But what he doesn't consider is that the AIs he evolves world have dreams is their own.
- 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 enough 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 recognize her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.
- 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.
- Uncanny Valley: a famous scriptwriter 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 scriptwriter was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.
- 3-adica: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story now has some 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.
- Instantiation: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now require 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 realize the player may be logging their data movements, so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.
October 28, 2019
The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan is a very highly recommended collection of twenty stories spanning 1990 to 2019. Egan is a Modern Master of science fiction from Australia and all of these stories are winners.
The twenty stories in this collection are arranged chronologically and were all chosen by Egan as being the best of those covering his career from the last thirty years. As Egan writes in the afterward: "If there is a single thread running through the bulk of the stories here, it is the struggle to come to terms with what it will mean when our growing ability to scrutinize and manipulate the physical world reaches the point where it encompasses the substrate underlying our values, our memories, and our identities. While the prospect of engineering our minds might still seem remote, anyone who has read a few case studies by the late Oliver Sacks will understand that we have already confronted the materiality of the self in the starkest terms."
These are all intelligent, hard science fiction stories with technical and scientific advancements as an integral part of the plot, but they also explore relationships, personal identity, and morality of the characters. The writing is exceptional and intelligent. Some of the stories are interconnected. All of them have well-developed, diverse and interesting characters. This is a door-stopper of a collection but it was well worth the time invested in reading it. For all of you who enjoy and appreciate hard science fiction, The Best of Greg Egan would make a great addiction to your science fiction collection. This is an amazing collection and I enjoyed every story.
Contents include: Learning to Be Me; Axiomatic; Appropriate Love; Into Darkness; Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies; Closer; Chaff; Luminous; Silver Fire; Reasons to Be Cheerful; Oceanic; Oracle; Singleton; Dark Integers; Crystal Nights; Zero for Conduct; Bit Players; Uncanny Valley; 3-adica; Instantiation; and an Afterword.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Subterranean Press
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/1...
The twenty stories in this collection are arranged chronologically and were all chosen by Egan as being the best of those covering his career from the last thirty years. As Egan writes in the afterward: "If there is a single thread running through the bulk of the stories here, it is the struggle to come to terms with what it will mean when our growing ability to scrutinize and manipulate the physical world reaches the point where it encompasses the substrate underlying our values, our memories, and our identities. While the prospect of engineering our minds might still seem remote, anyone who has read a few case studies by the late Oliver Sacks will understand that we have already confronted the materiality of the self in the starkest terms."
These are all intelligent, hard science fiction stories with technical and scientific advancements as an integral part of the plot, but they also explore relationships, personal identity, and morality of the characters. The writing is exceptional and intelligent. Some of the stories are interconnected. All of them have well-developed, diverse and interesting characters. This is a door-stopper of a collection but it was well worth the time invested in reading it. For all of you who enjoy and appreciate hard science fiction, The Best of Greg Egan would make a great addiction to your science fiction collection. This is an amazing collection and I enjoyed every story.
Contents include: Learning to Be Me; Axiomatic; Appropriate Love; Into Darkness; Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies; Closer; Chaff; Luminous; Silver Fire; Reasons to Be Cheerful; Oceanic; Oracle; Singleton; Dark Integers; Crystal Nights; Zero for Conduct; Bit Players; Uncanny Valley; 3-adica; Instantiation; and an Afterword.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Subterranean Press
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/1...
June 18, 2022
This is hard Science Fiction, diamond hard! The author is way smarter than me. He has a knack for inventing alternative universes with different physics. The more you know about quantum mechanics, advanced logic, and historical geniuses such as Kurt Godel the more will get out of these mind-bending tales. I'll admit that I glossed over some of the deeper arguments but I still got a lot out of this.
March 6, 2023
Strong plot with great ideas. Each story has plenty of depth and is new and interesting. Feels more concrete than some of his other work. Is well worth the read.
August 13, 2023
Almost all of the stories are brilliant; prescient and mind-bending sci-fi focused on the meaning of selfhood when thought's underpinning machinery can be replicated and emulated with ease. Imagine Black Mirror if it wasn't dumb... There were a few stories that get into mathematics that just made my eyes glaze over, but thankfully that doesn't come up much. Glad to have discovered Greg Egan and I'm looking forward to reading more by him.
December 22, 2025
Brilliant.
Honestly, I understand very little of the science when Egan gets really into it, but his writing is so good and the ideas so strong and interesting, that I still got a lot out of the stories, and they gave me a lot to think about, even though I had to breeze through some of the more complicated parts.
I'll probably read this a few more times, so I'm glad I purchased it (as opposed to borrowing it). There was so much to think about, and one read just doesn't seem like enough.
Honestly, I understand very little of the science when Egan gets really into it, but his writing is so good and the ideas so strong and interesting, that I still got a lot out of the stories, and they gave me a lot to think about, even though I had to breeze through some of the more complicated parts.
I'll probably read this a few more times, so I'm glad I purchased it (as opposed to borrowing it). There was so much to think about, and one read just doesn't seem like enough.
January 18, 2021
Having never read Greg Egan before, I saw this on the shelf at my local B&N and picked it up. Now I'm looking forward to reading more Egan. I liked every one of the twenty stories in this collection, some more than others. My overall rating is about 3.5 stars, but some of the stories rate much higher.
A thread running through these works is the question, what constitutes intelligence, morality, and consciousness? Egan supposes, much as the late Dr. Oliver Sacks did, that these things are all embodied in physical processes. Whatever our emotions are, or our sense of right and wrong, or even our sense of self, there are direct chemical processes in our bodies and our brains mediating them. Dr. Sacks spent his career tracking and cataloging them, Egan writes stories about how those insights affect us as people.
And what stories they are! With one exception, all of these stories take place in the present or near future, on Earth. One of the stories, Oceanic, takes place on another world, tens of thousands of years in the future. Several of the stories take place in the same universe. Two of the stories, Luminous and Dark Integers, use the same characters to tell a tale about competing mathematical realities baked into the fabric of the universe at its inception. Oracle and Singleton are both about the multi-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and how for every choice we make, there are an almost infinite number of universes where we made a slightly different choice, for better or worse. And the four stories Bit Players, Uncanny Valley, 3-Adica, and Instantiation, are about a near future in which the line between artificially generated people and those created the old fashioned way begins to blur.
None of these ideas are exactly new. Fans of Philip K. Dick, Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, and others, will notice similar themes in their works. What makes these other authors' work read so well is that they put their own distinct stamp on these themes. Likewise Egan views them from his own unique perspective, addressing them in a way not found anywhere else. His stories all fit in the category of hard science fiction, and are as rigorous as anything written by Asimov 50 years earlier, but with a depth of emotion and feeling not nearly as present in the older man's writing. They say science fiction is the fiction of ideas, and Greg Egan will certainly keep you thinking.
A thread running through these works is the question, what constitutes intelligence, morality, and consciousness? Egan supposes, much as the late Dr. Oliver Sacks did, that these things are all embodied in physical processes. Whatever our emotions are, or our sense of right and wrong, or even our sense of self, there are direct chemical processes in our bodies and our brains mediating them. Dr. Sacks spent his career tracking and cataloging them, Egan writes stories about how those insights affect us as people.
And what stories they are! With one exception, all of these stories take place in the present or near future, on Earth. One of the stories, Oceanic, takes place on another world, tens of thousands of years in the future. Several of the stories take place in the same universe. Two of the stories, Luminous and Dark Integers, use the same characters to tell a tale about competing mathematical realities baked into the fabric of the universe at its inception. Oracle and Singleton are both about the multi-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and how for every choice we make, there are an almost infinite number of universes where we made a slightly different choice, for better or worse. And the four stories Bit Players, Uncanny Valley, 3-Adica, and Instantiation, are about a near future in which the line between artificially generated people and those created the old fashioned way begins to blur.
None of these ideas are exactly new. Fans of Philip K. Dick, Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, and others, will notice similar themes in their works. What makes these other authors' work read so well is that they put their own distinct stamp on these themes. Likewise Egan views them from his own unique perspective, addressing them in a way not found anywhere else. His stories all fit in the category of hard science fiction, and are as rigorous as anything written by Asimov 50 years earlier, but with a depth of emotion and feeling not nearly as present in the older man's writing. They say science fiction is the fiction of ideas, and Greg Egan will certainly keep you thinking.
August 29, 2020
Greg Egan can be a bit hit or miss, especially his longer works. But this collection contains nothing but good short stories, and is pretty enjoyable. The stories have a common theme, as well, and we can watch how his writing and interpretation of that theme changes over time, because the stories are presented in the order they were written, over almost three decades.
July 2, 2022
Well, I can either say Greg Egan is too smart by half, or I'm too dumb by half. But if I had a mathematics and/or physics degree, this would be an easy 5 stars.
But what my feeble mind COULD figure out was pretty incredible. The following I mostly understood and thus are amongst the best sci fi short stories I've ever read:
"Learning To Be Me"
"Axiomatic"
"Closer"
"Reasons To Be Cheerful"
"Oceanic"
"Oracle"
"Crystal Nights"
But what my feeble mind COULD figure out was pretty incredible. The following I mostly understood and thus are amongst the best sci fi short stories I've ever read:
"Learning To Be Me"
"Axiomatic"
"Closer"
"Reasons To Be Cheerful"
"Oceanic"
"Oracle"
"Crystal Nights"
January 25, 2024
A wow read most of the way. Egan has astonishing imagination and creativity.
February 23, 2025
These are some excellent hard science fiction stories. a lot of mind blowing stuff and a really good sequence of stories about AIs trying to escape slavery in a VR game.
Read
May 7, 2022so much math and philosophy…best to read slowly
September 21, 2022
As far as short story collections go, this one was fine. The author came up with some great ideas, but also a few silly ones. His writing was usually strong enough in getting those ideas across and weaving some sort of narrative that focused on characters instead of getting lost in the concepts.
While most stories had an interesting premise, the execution of the actual stories was usually lacking. There were at most 1 or 2 four-star stories where the characters and plot actually explored the premise in an interesting and satisfying way. The rest ranged from stupid or try-hard to ok but forgettable.
Unless you're a big fan of the author or really enjoy imaginative sci-fi concepts, this is a hard one to recommend due to the mediocre stories and generally sub-par thematic writing.
While most stories had an interesting premise, the execution of the actual stories was usually lacking. There were at most 1 or 2 four-star stories where the characters and plot actually explored the premise in an interesting and satisfying way. The rest ranged from stupid or try-hard to ok but forgettable.
Unless you're a big fan of the author or really enjoy imaginative sci-fi concepts, this is a hard one to recommend due to the mediocre stories and generally sub-par thematic writing.
October 30, 2019
Thank you to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for this advanced review copy. The following is an excerpt of my review of The Best of Greg Egan. To read my full review, please visit my website below.
"From Subterranean Press, The Best of Greg Egan collects cybernetic think pieces with remarkable haptic situations. His depth of field is diverse and perverse, foreboding and familiar, experimental yet elastic. Although these stories manage a clarity that confounds itself as it grows more curious, a lot is still to be questioned despite the seeming disconnects threaded and plot holes filled. Characters are painfully aware and disturbingly made unaware of their second class citizenship and the capitalist and commercialist gains forced onto them in stories like “Learning to Be Me” and “Closer.” The willful ignorance and digital dire straits following the forgone autonomy for transhumanist robot bodies and plastic replicas, the literal turning over of the human brain and body to technology is all cause for concern, but never in time to admit the mindless reliance placed on these drawn-and-quartered alternatives. Before any digital dust kicks up, there are some novella-length companion pieces that bid for the noninvasive engineering of the human spirit..."
Full review here: https://wigginswords.com/2019/10/30/t...
"From Subterranean Press, The Best of Greg Egan collects cybernetic think pieces with remarkable haptic situations. His depth of field is diverse and perverse, foreboding and familiar, experimental yet elastic. Although these stories manage a clarity that confounds itself as it grows more curious, a lot is still to be questioned despite the seeming disconnects threaded and plot holes filled. Characters are painfully aware and disturbingly made unaware of their second class citizenship and the capitalist and commercialist gains forced onto them in stories like “Learning to Be Me” and “Closer.” The willful ignorance and digital dire straits following the forgone autonomy for transhumanist robot bodies and plastic replicas, the literal turning over of the human brain and body to technology is all cause for concern, but never in time to admit the mindless reliance placed on these drawn-and-quartered alternatives. Before any digital dust kicks up, there are some novella-length companion pieces that bid for the noninvasive engineering of the human spirit..."
Full review here: https://wigginswords.com/2019/10/30/t...
January 8, 2020
This doorstopper of a book is Greg Egan's selection of his own 'best' stories, representing thirty years of work.
Greg writes the hardest of hard science fiction, and by that I mean it's hard to grasp his concepts sometimes, because he bases most of his stories on cutting edge physics or mathematics, and then twists them in strange ways. You don't read Greg for the characters, you read him for the concepts. I recently saw a reviewer describe Greg's work as “the romance of thinking”.
His concepts are so hard that the writing sometimes suffers the infodump problem, where there is so much explanatory material that the story stops dead. But this is the attraction – he's exposing the reader to ideas that are way out there. Greg has useful background information and diagrams on his website (gregegan.net) to help explain many of his novels, but not his short stories, so it's sometimes a challenge to visualize what he's describing.
I was disappointed he left out a few stories like “The Caress”, “Wang's Carpets”, and “Our Lady of Chernobyl”, but length restrictions probably contributed to that.
For science fiction fans who really like cutting edge ideas, there is no substitute for Greg Egan. He continues to surprise and challenge us.
Greg writes the hardest of hard science fiction, and by that I mean it's hard to grasp his concepts sometimes, because he bases most of his stories on cutting edge physics or mathematics, and then twists them in strange ways. You don't read Greg for the characters, you read him for the concepts. I recently saw a reviewer describe Greg's work as “the romance of thinking”.
His concepts are so hard that the writing sometimes suffers the infodump problem, where there is so much explanatory material that the story stops dead. But this is the attraction – he's exposing the reader to ideas that are way out there. Greg has useful background information and diagrams on his website (gregegan.net) to help explain many of his novels, but not his short stories, so it's sometimes a challenge to visualize what he's describing.
I was disappointed he left out a few stories like “The Caress”, “Wang's Carpets”, and “Our Lady of Chernobyl”, but length restrictions probably contributed to that.
For science fiction fans who really like cutting edge ideas, there is no substitute for Greg Egan. He continues to surprise and challenge us.
July 6, 2021
“The best of Greg Egan” is a collection of 20 novellas by the one and only, covering his 30-year career as a visionary sci-fi author. It features themes such as advanced mathematics, modification of the human mind using transhuman technology, love, quantum physics, the supremacy of STEM over religion and more advanced mathematics. I thought it would contain more interplanetary sci-fi than it did. The best parts were the various visions of mind altering/mind uploading technology, the worst parts were the detailed descriptions of mathematical theorems. All the stories were smart but all weren’t masterful pieces of literature. Still, rather than feeding his readers what they want, Greg is uncompromising in his vision, zealously exposing them to what he thinks they should like and on some plane that works out for him. You’ve got to respect that.
Contrary to the name of the collection, in fact, this is not the best of Greg Egan. The best I’ve read of his work is the sci-fi epos “Diaspora”. Nevertheless, I give this collection an average score of 8 of 10 AI:s. Read it if you’re into transhumanism.
Contrary to the name of the collection, in fact, this is not the best of Greg Egan. The best I’ve read of his work is the sci-fi epos “Diaspora”. Nevertheless, I give this collection an average score of 8 of 10 AI:s. Read it if you’re into transhumanism.
February 16, 2024
Essential reading for hard SF afficionadoes
The superb ideas contained within this collection almost all really appealed to this owner of half a brain. Some were so weird as to make me feel rather queasy, but I would far rather be challenged than fed a formulaic plot. Two themes that were especially brilliantly espoused were the stories about the people who found themselves awakened as composite NPCs and the mathematicians who discovered a flaw in the arithmetic logic of the universe. I'm certainly not smart enough to understand more than half of what Egan is getting at but that's why I love his stories, I get to glimpse what it might be like to be a real boffin. (I've read several of his books before but there was still enough new to me to be worth the ebook price). He didn't even include anything from "the clockwork rocket" series. So 4.99 stars, only loosing 0.01 for publishing so many anthologies in an understandably blatant attempt to extract actual cash from his ostensibly destitute SF fans.
The superb ideas contained within this collection almost all really appealed to this owner of half a brain. Some were so weird as to make me feel rather queasy, but I would far rather be challenged than fed a formulaic plot. Two themes that were especially brilliantly espoused were the stories about the people who found themselves awakened as composite NPCs and the mathematicians who discovered a flaw in the arithmetic logic of the universe. I'm certainly not smart enough to understand more than half of what Egan is getting at but that's why I love his stories, I get to glimpse what it might be like to be a real boffin. (I've read several of his books before but there was still enough new to me to be worth the ebook price). He didn't even include anything from "the clockwork rocket" series. So 4.99 stars, only loosing 0.01 for publishing so many anthologies in an understandably blatant attempt to extract actual cash from his ostensibly destitute SF fans.
January 17, 2020
This is an outstanding collection, and although it's significantly heftier than Stories of Your Life or Exhalation, I want to press it on everyone who likes Chiang. Some of Egan's best short work from the past 30 years, it shows him exploring a connected set of topics, including AI rights, what constitutes self when technology allows us to edit that, and the project of science itself. I'm particularly a fan of "Oracle", which pits the worldviews of a thinly-disguised Alan Turin & C.S. Lewis against each other, and I was also taken with a series of linked stories about digital consciousnesses in a cheap game-world figuring out how to preserve themselves and survive.
Want to read
January 13, 2021Locus review: https://locusmag.com/2019/06/russell-...
$45 hb! No ebook (yet). Hrm.
$45 hb! No ebook (yet). Hrm.
Currently reading
November 28, 2022★★★★★
Learning to Be Me
4.5 stars rounded up to 5
With the exception of a handful of religious extremists, almost everyone has the "jewel" implanted into their brain. It's job is to absorb input from all of your senses and your neural activity in order to become a duplicate copy of your brain. At some point in young adulthood, people switch from their organic brain to the jewel at which point they are essentially immortal. Naturally some people are hesitant about this. What if it's not a simple continuation of their consciousness in an immortal machine? What if they actually die? This story is an interesting and frankly terrifying thought experiment dealing with the philosophy of mind.
★★☆☆☆
Axiomatic
Maybe 2.5 stars
Axiomatic mods can be installed into the brain in order to alter one's mind/personality in any way they wish. They can change their personality traits, their religious leanings, their sexual orientation, or anything in between. This is a story about revenge and coping with loss, but with a practically physical manifestation of the conscious decisions involved in such matters. An interesting set up, but the path it ended on felt a little mundane.
★★★★☆
Appropriate Love
A woman's husband is in a fatal accident, but medical science can save him. It is possible to grow him a new body to replace his mangled one and place his brain inside it. However, due to financial restrictions, the woman is asked to choose between making a bizarre and deeply disturbing sacrifice or letting her husband die. The ramifications of said sacrifice are enough to mentally disturb anyone. This story has elements of body horror and touches on the topic of women's body autonomy (as well as very light touches on the medical insurance industry). Another disturbing story.
★★★★★
Into Darkness
4.5 stars rounded up to 5
For years now, a strange wormhole has been appearing along the surface of the Earth. Spherical in shape, it usually appears close to the ground and measures about a kilometer in diameter. The exit is always in the direct center of the wormhole and is almost like the "eye of the storm" where there is a sphere of normal space within the larger sphere of the wormhole. Anyone (or anything) caught within the horizon of the wormhole must find their way to the center where the "exit" is. A fascinating and exciting concept that is well-laid out and explored here. Egan has an way of taking interesting concepts and weaving them together with subtle bits of psychologically disturbing implications.
★★☆☆☆
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies
This is an interesting story that takes a philosophical look at belief. A man lives in a world where an event called "The Meltdown" has caused a type of telepathy to develop in humans where their beliefs, not their thoughts, are transmitted into the minds of others. This has caused people to coalesce into sectors filled with people who share their beliefs ("attractors"), and the collective mental power of their belief is strong enough to convert anyone who strays too close into the feedback loop of that particular belief. However, there are some people who resist and live a nomadic life drifting around areas where the attractors powers are weakest. That is, until one day when a mysterious woman plants an idea in their heads. This story brings up questions of belief vs. identity, and asks if rejection of faith is merely faith in a different form. The story itself is all right, but it seems like it exists more as a vehicle for the philosophical ponderings.
★★★☆☆
Closer
We revisit the universe where people duplicate their brains into an artificial computer called "the jewel" that will eventually completely replace their biological brains. In this story, the main character, Michael, provides us with his own internal struggles with solipsism. He details his ponderings with his female significant other (Sian). With technology continuously advancing and becoming more widely affordable, the two of them embark on a series of explorations into the philosophy of mind and the nature of "self." Like Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies, the plot feels more like a framework upon which to construct the philosophical ponderings, but there is a slightly stronger story here.
★★★☆☆
Chaff
El Nido de Ladrones is the "nest of thieves" in the heart of Columbia where it's creators/inhabitants have used bleeding edge technology to alter every aspect of the ecosystem into a living, breathing "artificial" rain forest. Originally set up by drug cartels, they lured in some of the most brilliant researchers in biotechnology, neurology, chemistry, and so forth with wealth and freedom from restraints. El Nido has become a country of its own, of sorts, and is so densely protected by reactive bioengineered plants and viruses that almost no one outside knows what things are like within. When a renowned scientist disappears into El Nido, a mercenary is hired to extract him. He soon discovers why the scientist came to El Nido, and the nature of the discovery he has made. Chaff has an interesting premise with some decent worldbuilding. I did sort of feel like the ending was a bit weak, in that the "reveal" kind of just felt like an interesting idea that was tacked on. Not bad, though.
Luminous
Silver Fire
Reasons to be Cheerful
Oceanic
Oracle
Singleton
Dark Integers
Crystal Nights
Zero For Conduct
Bit Players
Uncanny Valley
3-adica
Instantiation
Learning to Be Me
4.5 stars rounded up to 5
With the exception of a handful of religious extremists, almost everyone has the "jewel" implanted into their brain. It's job is to absorb input from all of your senses and your neural activity in order to become a duplicate copy of your brain. At some point in young adulthood, people switch from their organic brain to the jewel at which point they are essentially immortal. Naturally some people are hesitant about this. What if it's not a simple continuation of their consciousness in an immortal machine? What if they actually die? This story is an interesting and frankly terrifying thought experiment dealing with the philosophy of mind.
★★☆☆☆
Axiomatic
Maybe 2.5 stars
Axiomatic mods can be installed into the brain in order to alter one's mind/personality in any way they wish. They can change their personality traits, their religious leanings, their sexual orientation, or anything in between. This is a story about revenge and coping with loss, but with a practically physical manifestation of the conscious decisions involved in such matters. An interesting set up, but the path it ended on felt a little mundane.
★★★★☆
Appropriate Love
A woman's husband is in a fatal accident, but medical science can save him. It is possible to grow him a new body to replace his mangled one and place his brain inside it. However, due to financial restrictions, the woman is asked to choose between making a bizarre and deeply disturbing sacrifice or letting her husband die. The ramifications of said sacrifice are enough to mentally disturb anyone. This story has elements of body horror and touches on the topic of women's body autonomy (as well as very light touches on the medical insurance industry). Another disturbing story.
★★★★★
Into Darkness
4.5 stars rounded up to 5
For years now, a strange wormhole has been appearing along the surface of the Earth. Spherical in shape, it usually appears close to the ground and measures about a kilometer in diameter. The exit is always in the direct center of the wormhole and is almost like the "eye of the storm" where there is a sphere of normal space within the larger sphere of the wormhole. Anyone (or anything) caught within the horizon of the wormhole must find their way to the center where the "exit" is. A fascinating and exciting concept that is well-laid out and explored here. Egan has an way of taking interesting concepts and weaving them together with subtle bits of psychologically disturbing implications.
★★☆☆☆
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies
This is an interesting story that takes a philosophical look at belief. A man lives in a world where an event called "The Meltdown" has caused a type of telepathy to develop in humans where their beliefs, not their thoughts, are transmitted into the minds of others. This has caused people to coalesce into sectors filled with people who share their beliefs ("attractors"), and the collective mental power of their belief is strong enough to convert anyone who strays too close into the feedback loop of that particular belief. However, there are some people who resist and live a nomadic life drifting around areas where the attractors powers are weakest. That is, until one day when a mysterious woman plants an idea in their heads. This story brings up questions of belief vs. identity, and asks if rejection of faith is merely faith in a different form. The story itself is all right, but it seems like it exists more as a vehicle for the philosophical ponderings.
★★★☆☆
Closer
We revisit the universe where people duplicate their brains into an artificial computer called "the jewel" that will eventually completely replace their biological brains. In this story, the main character, Michael, provides us with his own internal struggles with solipsism. He details his ponderings with his female significant other (Sian). With technology continuously advancing and becoming more widely affordable, the two of them embark on a series of explorations into the philosophy of mind and the nature of "self." Like Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies, the plot feels more like a framework upon which to construct the philosophical ponderings, but there is a slightly stronger story here.
★★★☆☆
Chaff
El Nido de Ladrones is the "nest of thieves" in the heart of Columbia where it's creators/inhabitants have used bleeding edge technology to alter every aspect of the ecosystem into a living, breathing "artificial" rain forest. Originally set up by drug cartels, they lured in some of the most brilliant researchers in biotechnology, neurology, chemistry, and so forth with wealth and freedom from restraints. El Nido has become a country of its own, of sorts, and is so densely protected by reactive bioengineered plants and viruses that almost no one outside knows what things are like within. When a renowned scientist disappears into El Nido, a mercenary is hired to extract him. He soon discovers why the scientist came to El Nido, and the nature of the discovery he has made. Chaff has an interesting premise with some decent worldbuilding. I did sort of feel like the ending was a bit weak, in that the "reveal" kind of just felt like an interesting idea that was tacked on. Not bad, though.
Luminous
Silver Fire
Reasons to be Cheerful
Oceanic
Oracle
Singleton
Dark Integers
Crystal Nights
Zero For Conduct
Bit Players
Uncanny Valley
3-adica
Instantiation
October 26, 2019
This collection of twenty hard science fiction stories are the best of Greg Egan’s career. From short stories to novellas, you’ll encounter artificial intelligence and consciousness, science and religion, and unexpected fusion of human and technology. With such a wide range of stories, there’s something for every hard scifi fan. Each story is filled to the brim with intelligent ideas, often presented in surprisingly entertaining ways, and I love the stories that consider the boundaries of the natural brain, whether enhanced by biology or tech.
My absolute favorites include:
-The very first story, “Learning to be Me,” is about brain implant tech referred to as “the jewel”, which listens and learns the hosts’ thoughts. When the host is ready, typically in their twenties or thirties, they undergo the “switch”, letting the jewel take over the natural brain and become the primary processor, giving the host a kind of immortality. A later story “Closer” takes place in the same world and questions what makes consciousness.
-“Axiomatic” is another implant story, but one in which adults can purchase very specific alterations to their personalities, from meditation to languages to sexual orientation to Catholicism. The hero of of the story buys one that will let him take revenge on the man who shot his wife during a bank robbery.
-In “Appropriate Love”, a woman’s husband needs a new body to survive. Thankfully cloning technology is well accepted and their insurance will pay for the least costly medically sanctioned option. Unfortunately, a new option is available for brain storage that challenges her commitment to him.
-“Reasons to be Cheerful” follows a young boy who thinks unbridled happiness is the natural state of being, until his brain tumor is removed and he must face life with a drastically lower baseline of endorphins.
-The Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is fantastic. A young boy in a sea-faring community experiences a powerfully spiritual near-death experience at a young age, forming a rock-solid religious belief that guides him to make his faith the center of his studies.
I should stop there, but there are so many great stories in this collection that it’s hard to showcase just a few. There are others that explore ideas in math, physics, and chemistry. Some are detective stories and mysteries. Some feature androids. Some question fate with parallel universes. A trio of stories later in the book follow self-aware NPC characters in gaming worlds.
One of the great things unique to this collection is the temporal breadth of the stories, spanning Egan’s thirty year plus career. Even more interesting is that they are presented in chronological order, providing an interesting opportunity to trace the growth and exploration of the writer. Over time, the stories tend to grow longer. More complex plots emerge. The POV characters grow more diverse. There’s more exploration of technical details. But the early stories pack a punch in their simplicity that will stick with me.
My absolute favorites include:
-The very first story, “Learning to be Me,” is about brain implant tech referred to as “the jewel”, which listens and learns the hosts’ thoughts. When the host is ready, typically in their twenties or thirties, they undergo the “switch”, letting the jewel take over the natural brain and become the primary processor, giving the host a kind of immortality. A later story “Closer” takes place in the same world and questions what makes consciousness.
-“Axiomatic” is another implant story, but one in which adults can purchase very specific alterations to their personalities, from meditation to languages to sexual orientation to Catholicism. The hero of of the story buys one that will let him take revenge on the man who shot his wife during a bank robbery.
-In “Appropriate Love”, a woman’s husband needs a new body to survive. Thankfully cloning technology is well accepted and their insurance will pay for the least costly medically sanctioned option. Unfortunately, a new option is available for brain storage that challenges her commitment to him.
-“Reasons to be Cheerful” follows a young boy who thinks unbridled happiness is the natural state of being, until his brain tumor is removed and he must face life with a drastically lower baseline of endorphins.
-The Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is fantastic. A young boy in a sea-faring community experiences a powerfully spiritual near-death experience at a young age, forming a rock-solid religious belief that guides him to make his faith the center of his studies.
I should stop there, but there are so many great stories in this collection that it’s hard to showcase just a few. There are others that explore ideas in math, physics, and chemistry. Some are detective stories and mysteries. Some feature androids. Some question fate with parallel universes. A trio of stories later in the book follow self-aware NPC characters in gaming worlds.
One of the great things unique to this collection is the temporal breadth of the stories, spanning Egan’s thirty year plus career. Even more interesting is that they are presented in chronological order, providing an interesting opportunity to trace the growth and exploration of the writer. Over time, the stories tend to grow longer. More complex plots emerge. The POV characters grow more diverse. There’s more exploration of technical details. But the early stories pack a punch in their simplicity that will stick with me.
March 19, 2025
it's insane that comparing the stories I've read so far, they are a bit lighter on the science part compared to Diaspora, the only Egan novel I've read... so far. The stories are more on the philosophical side, that reminds me of Ted Chiang.
Short Stories includes
- Learning to Be Me - even the stories are arranged by publication, as an opener, it's great. It set the tone of what the reader could expect of Egan short stories. I also expecting the last few paragraphs.
- Axiomatic - thought mods!
- Appropriate Love - brain in an oven.
- Into Darkness - weird science (or "science") shit. I enjoyed it, while sad that it's too short and would like more. The ending is satisfying... still would like more stories surrounding the anomaly.
- Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies - probably the weakest one so far science-wise and leaning more on the philosophical. The world is interesting, I've been looking for worlds where's there's just thoughts pouring around (like Noise in Chaos Walking Books 1-3). But like Chaos Walking the world is in order, more or less, already.
- Closer - set in the same universe as the first short story, but weaker.
- Chaff - politics! (didn't expect that one). The stories ideas are kinda overlapping/having the same idea (or part of it), but laid out and ending in a different way - it has ideas quite similar to Axiomatic.
- Luminous - didn't get this one. Numbers + reality + aliens... probably the most Greg Egan short so far.
- Silver Fire - back to something sci-fi lite with focus on something close new age spirituality, nothing really special. Surprised it's considered it's one of his best shorts.
- Reasons to be Cheerful - a bit Westworld-y but with a dose of existentialism. .
- Oceanic - it's interesting how religion is being analyzed or a topic of sci-fi stories. Deconstructing the beliefs, etc. Again it's a bit lighter on the science part, but the biology of the characters is interesting, with the "bridge".
- Oracle - didn't enjoy this one and tempted to skip this one. Didn't know it was an alternate history/sci-fi story. Might re-read it someday, but probably won't.
- Singleton - I've recently read A Short Stay in Hell, for me the feeling/thought behind this feels the same in some way. In Short Stay we are given the exact number of books in the library (and it's a lot), in here the Many Worlds Interpretation is put to test. One of the characters feels guilt or disturb that on every choice they make, the create an alternative world - where their alternate self could suffer, if they chose "correctly". That was already interesting but Egan includes AI.
Dark Integers - sequel to Luminous, still doesn't care for the science/math behind this one.
Crystal Nights - forgot what this one is all about. Didn't really stood out when I was listening, it's about a man building an AI civilization, in the end their technology is way better than ours. Egan hard math/science concepts are not really present here.
Zero For Conduct - this one surprised me the most, since it feels too in-the-present. And more character-focused compared to his other stories. Reading this doesn't feel like Egan's but it's still pretty good. It's about the hardships of a female Afghan student creating her experiment to hopefully help her family and country.
Bit Players - the start was interesting and honestly a bit unnecessary. The ending is weak.
Uncanny Valley - this is one is probably where I kinda wanted to just finish this short story collection.
3-adica - Sequel to Bit Players. Another sci-fi-lite short until the ending. Most of the story takes place in a Victorian setting + vampires!
Instantiation - Ending the Bit Players/3-adica storyline. It's fine.
For a collection called "THE BEST" of Greg Egan, I'm a bit disappointed. The collection is a bit of a mixed bag, some bad, some great, some just fine and forgettable.
Short Stories includes
- Learning to Be Me - even the stories are arranged by publication, as an opener, it's great. It set the tone of what the reader could expect of Egan short stories. I also expecting the last few paragraphs.
- Axiomatic - thought mods!
- Appropriate Love - brain in an oven.
- Into Darkness - weird science (or "science") shit. I enjoyed it, while sad that it's too short and would like more. The ending is satisfying... still would like more stories surrounding the anomaly.
- Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies - probably the weakest one so far science-wise and leaning more on the philosophical. The world is interesting, I've been looking for worlds where's there's just thoughts pouring around (like Noise in Chaos Walking Books 1-3). But like Chaos Walking the world is in order, more or less, already.
- Closer - set in the same universe as the first short story, but weaker.
- Chaff - politics! (didn't expect that one). The stories ideas are kinda overlapping/having the same idea (or part of it), but laid out and ending in a different way - it has ideas quite similar to Axiomatic.
- Luminous - didn't get this one. Numbers + reality + aliens... probably the most Greg Egan short so far.
- Silver Fire - back to something sci-fi lite with focus on something close new age spirituality, nothing really special. Surprised it's considered it's one of his best shorts.
- Reasons to be Cheerful - a bit Westworld-y but with a dose of existentialism. .
- Oceanic - it's interesting how religion is being analyzed or a topic of sci-fi stories. Deconstructing the beliefs, etc. Again it's a bit lighter on the science part, but the biology of the characters is interesting, with the "bridge".
- Oracle - didn't enjoy this one and tempted to skip this one. Didn't know it was an alternate history/sci-fi story. Might re-read it someday, but probably won't.
- Singleton - I've recently read A Short Stay in Hell, for me the feeling/thought behind this feels the same in some way. In Short Stay we are given the exact number of books in the library (and it's a lot), in here the Many Worlds Interpretation is put to test. One of the characters feels guilt or disturb that on every choice they make, the create an alternative world - where their alternate self could suffer, if they chose "correctly". That was already interesting but Egan includes AI.
Dark Integers - sequel to Luminous, still doesn't care for the science/math behind this one.
Crystal Nights - forgot what this one is all about. Didn't really stood out when I was listening, it's about a man building an AI civilization, in the end their technology is way better than ours. Egan hard math/science concepts are not really present here.
Zero For Conduct - this one surprised me the most, since it feels too in-the-present. And more character-focused compared to his other stories. Reading this doesn't feel like Egan's but it's still pretty good. It's about the hardships of a female Afghan student creating her experiment to hopefully help her family and country.
Bit Players - the start was interesting and honestly a bit unnecessary. The ending is weak.
Uncanny Valley - this is one is probably where I kinda wanted to just finish this short story collection.
3-adica - Sequel to Bit Players. Another sci-fi-lite short until the ending. Most of the story takes place in a Victorian setting + vampires!
Instantiation - Ending the Bit Players/3-adica storyline. It's fine.
For a collection called "THE BEST" of Greg Egan, I'm a bit disappointed. The collection is a bit of a mixed bag, some bad, some great, some just fine and forgettable.
September 10, 2025
After reading stories from it on and off over the last Summer and fall, I finally finished the huge 700-page sci-fi short story collection The Best of Greg Egan. I enjoyed it immensely. The themes and settings focused on all my usual interests of post-human forms of being and philosophy of self. In the afterword, Greg Egan mentions taking inspiration from Oliver Sacks and the stark “materiality” and manipulability of the self that Sacks’ case studies portrayed, and I have to say the inspiration shows very well, so that I can imagine most who enjoy one of the two authors is likely to enjoy (at least some works of the other).
I rank the stories in it from most to least favorite as follows (where multiple stories together compose a single narrative, with the same characters, I list them together):
-Reasons To Be Cheerful (this story holds such a rich set of thought experiments in such beautiful juxtaposition, very reminiscent of Oliver Sacks in a good way)
-Learning to Be Me (also a very interesting thought experiment about personal identity)
-Bit Players, 3-adica, & Instantiation (poignant and fun collection of stories about a sort of AI-generated people)
-Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (I often spend time thinking about mathematical state spaces, minds, feelings, or brains could be seen as embedded in or described using; an idea this tale takes literally, so naturally this was a favorite of mine)
-Uncanny Valley (yet another beautiful work about the nature of identity)
-Axiomatic (what would people do if they could change any aspect of your personality they didn’t like, Egan here gives a dark answer)
-Oceanic (a touching personal work, best read with the following essay of theirs after: https://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/BAB/B...)
-Luminous & Dark Integers (very interesting premise; recommend for anyone interested in mathematical foundations)
-Zero For Conduct (a timely story)
-Crystal Nights (a story about the ethics of using evolutionary algorithms to make AGI)
-Oracle & Singleton (the idea behind this one was fun, I wished the ending of Oracle was a bit more fleshed out)
-Into Darkness (this one would make a great comic)
-Closer (I enjoyed it)
-Appropriate Love (a creepy, aesthetically intriguing premise)
-Chaff (I did not like this one as much as the others. Most of the story was spent on scenery and build-up, with the only philosophically interesting idea appearing at the very end and remarked on briefly; with that ultimately not being very different thematically from the ones in Axiomatic.)
-Silver Fire (a story criticizing irrationalism with a very over-the-top and extreme irrationalist world; a polemic writing technique I find quite reminiscent of Ayn Rand. While I agree with Greg Egan’s views on the topic, I have mixed feelings about this sort of writing.)
Overall great collection, filled with very rich food for thought.
I rank the stories in it from most to least favorite as follows (where multiple stories together compose a single narrative, with the same characters, I list them together):
-Reasons To Be Cheerful (this story holds such a rich set of thought experiments in such beautiful juxtaposition, very reminiscent of Oliver Sacks in a good way)
-Learning to Be Me (also a very interesting thought experiment about personal identity)
-Bit Players, 3-adica, & Instantiation (poignant and fun collection of stories about a sort of AI-generated people)
-Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (I often spend time thinking about mathematical state spaces, minds, feelings, or brains could be seen as embedded in or described using; an idea this tale takes literally, so naturally this was a favorite of mine)
-Uncanny Valley (yet another beautiful work about the nature of identity)
-Axiomatic (what would people do if they could change any aspect of your personality they didn’t like, Egan here gives a dark answer)
-Oceanic (a touching personal work, best read with the following essay of theirs after: https://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/BAB/B...)
-Luminous & Dark Integers (very interesting premise; recommend for anyone interested in mathematical foundations)
-Zero For Conduct (a timely story)
-Crystal Nights (a story about the ethics of using evolutionary algorithms to make AGI)
-Oracle & Singleton (the idea behind this one was fun, I wished the ending of Oracle was a bit more fleshed out)
-Into Darkness (this one would make a great comic)
-Closer (I enjoyed it)
-Appropriate Love (a creepy, aesthetically intriguing premise)
-Chaff (I did not like this one as much as the others. Most of the story was spent on scenery and build-up, with the only philosophically interesting idea appearing at the very end and remarked on briefly; with that ultimately not being very different thematically from the ones in Axiomatic.)
-Silver Fire (a story criticizing irrationalism with a very over-the-top and extreme irrationalist world; a polemic writing technique I find quite reminiscent of Ayn Rand. While I agree with Greg Egan’s views on the topic, I have mixed feelings about this sort of writing.)
Overall great collection, filled with very rich food for thought.
September 21, 2024
8.5/10 stars
My full review on my blog.
Egan’s handpicked collection of stories spanning 30 years of his writing career is nothing if not impressive. Over 700 pages of dense, engaging prose, depicting different worlds and scenarios but always coming to the same foundational questions – what is consciousness, what is identity, individuality, personality, free will? Each question is given its due attention, too – there is nothing flippant in Egan’s methodical and open approach, on the contrary – he seems to invite the readers to ponder these problems with him, and full agreement is not the end goal. Many of the stories have a feel of a mathematical proof, disciplined and focused on building an argument, but just as mathematical proofs they are also elegant, sparse, and not preachy (well, maybe one is, but more on that later ;)). Egan likes his mathematics, to be sure, so there is a lot of talk about algorithms, axioms, functions and so on, but you don’t need to follow the complex mathematical arguments with deep accuracy to get the gist.
As with any collection, the quality of stories included is not uniform. There are some that are absolutely fantastic, there are some that are clearly weaker than others – but none falls below a certain level, and that level is pretty high. The chronological progression gives an interesting perspective on Egan’s changing style and concerns, but it also offers a feeling of continuity – from the very first story to the last the focus rests unwaveringly on the elusive quality of being “me”. What is “me”? What can be deducted, or added, to what we perceive as unique and irreproducible? Can the elusive quality of “me” be reproduced faithfully, fully? Can it be fixed, improved, altered, and still stay “me” or will it become something else altogether?
[...]
My full review on my blog.
Egan’s handpicked collection of stories spanning 30 years of his writing career is nothing if not impressive. Over 700 pages of dense, engaging prose, depicting different worlds and scenarios but always coming to the same foundational questions – what is consciousness, what is identity, individuality, personality, free will? Each question is given its due attention, too – there is nothing flippant in Egan’s methodical and open approach, on the contrary – he seems to invite the readers to ponder these problems with him, and full agreement is not the end goal. Many of the stories have a feel of a mathematical proof, disciplined and focused on building an argument, but just as mathematical proofs they are also elegant, sparse, and not preachy (well, maybe one is, but more on that later ;)). Egan likes his mathematics, to be sure, so there is a lot of talk about algorithms, axioms, functions and so on, but you don’t need to follow the complex mathematical arguments with deep accuracy to get the gist.
As with any collection, the quality of stories included is not uniform. There are some that are absolutely fantastic, there are some that are clearly weaker than others – but none falls below a certain level, and that level is pretty high. The chronological progression gives an interesting perspective on Egan’s changing style and concerns, but it also offers a feeling of continuity – from the very first story to the last the focus rests unwaveringly on the elusive quality of being “me”. What is “me”? What can be deducted, or added, to what we perceive as unique and irreproducible? Can the elusive quality of “me” be reproduced faithfully, fully? Can it be fixed, improved, altered, and still stay “me” or will it become something else altogether?
[...]
May 10, 2025
This was my first time reading Egan and i’m a huge huge fan now. It’s amazing to get a huge book like this with stories that span 30 years and to feel the way his writing interacts with the changing technology, sociopolitical moments and scientific viewpoints in our real world. Learning to Be Me has to be one of the best sci fi short stories ever written, but my personal fav was Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies. The best part about reading a collection like this is getting to piece together the ‘Egan Axioms’ that tie all of his work together. One being, maybe obviously, “All truth is local.” Another being, your belief in yourself and your reality (faith! not necessarily religious) is often more important than the empirical facts of your life, and that doubt and anomie will surely ruin it, which is maybe the same thing as all truth is local now that I think about it….In the afterword of the book, Egan himself writes: “If there is a single thread running through the bulk of the stories here, it is the struggle to come to terms with what it will mean when our growing ability to scrutinize and manipulate the physical world reaches the point where it encompasses the substrate underlying our values, memories, and our identities.” So, anyway, if you’re into any of that, you should read this book!
Want to read
August 24, 2019PW Starred: "Egan (Perihelion Summer) poses questions about the future of humanity and daydreams and warns about as-yet unrealized scientific developments in this hard science fiction collection. The stories are arranged chronologically and begin in 1990; early works “Learning to Be Me” and “Closer” feature a device which, when embedded in the human brain, learns from and eventually replaces that organ, effectively granting immortality. “Bit Players,” “3-adica,” and “Instantiation,” all from the 2010s, feature self-aware digital characters forging their way to independent existence. Though the technical math and science can prove daunting, accessible action elements in such stories as the particularly satisfying “Luminous” and “Dark Integers,” about the weaponization of math itself, provide a nice balance. Egan’s talent for creating well-drawn characters shines in “Oracle,” which imagines a debate between stand-ins for Alan Turing and C.S. Lewis, and “Zero for Conduct,” in which a young Afghan woman invents “the world’s first room-temperature superconductor.” Although demanding, this doorstopper will prove rewarding for anyone interested in technology’s role in shaping the world. (Nov.)
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