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Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
> Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good. You could consider „Diaspora“ by the same author a good sequel a couple of thousands of years into the future where humanity is but a faint memory called „dream apes“ as living fossils in this story.
Thanks!
Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
Been asking myself the same question for months. So Egan's stories are basically a mathy whodunit -- start from first (fictional) principles and eventually solve some universe-scale question or crisis. His characters are basically walking textbooks meant for info dumping / FAQing the derivations. In that light, some similar stories I've found are... - Dragon's Egg (Robert Forward) - Of Ants and Dinosaurs (Liu Cixin,…
The same captivating exploration of interesting ideas is omnipresent throughout his work, and that's always been why I keep coming back. I think it's important to go into his stories with an open mind towards what literature is allowed to be - namely that it can focus on things other than narrative or characterization without being a detriment to itself. A steak does not need to be as sweet as a cake in order to satisfy a diner, after all. And that's not to say that he avoids interesting narration or character development entirely, but there are definitely stories of his where he's clearly focusing on other aspects, and the choice to do that feels intentional and appropriate to me.
Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
Yeah, this book was incredible and the tech in it has aged extremely well. Have you tried any of Ted Chiang's books? They're also great hard sci-fi. Another one that plays with similar ideas to Permutation City is the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor.
Thanks!
Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
Egan is the only great Australian science fiction writer I’m aware of. I principally recommend Diaspora for far future post-human history with a strong focus on physics and maths, and Quarantine which is a sort of heist thriller with a unique quantum physics hook in a relatively near future Northern Australia setting where First Nations people have gained independence and positioned themselves as an Asian financial /…
> Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak, but almost every page has a new creative concept. I agree with all of that. I was thinking recently about how Egan compares to Neal Stephenson after some discussion of his (NS) fiction here a few days ago [1]. They both (imo) are weak at characterisation etc. - but to me Egan's work is among some of the best sf I've ever read [1], wheras I find reading Ste…