|
|
Greg Egan
I discovered Greg Egan while reading
The Spike by Damien Broderick. Egan's novels are mainly
thought experiments about post
singularity scenarios, but also about events leading up to the
singularity. To read these novels and short stories it helps if you know
something about computer programming, mathematics, & quantum mechanics. If
you need to get up to speed on some of the technical material, Egan has some
background information on his
website .
If you are looking for some light reading for wasting your time, don't bother
with these novels. Greg Egan is not a great story teller, although much
better than William Gibson, he is an idea person. Read these books because
you like to think, and like to have your mind expanded. If you haven't
done any thinking about the effects of exponential growth in science and
technology these books might be a little too weird for you. Defiantly not
the science fiction your father read when he was young.
I have mentioned that Egan is not a great story teller, but Teranesia is an
exception. Its a very well written story, with good character development.
The ending is a little unusual, as is most of Egan's endings. He probably
does that on purpose, so that you can spend several days, going over it in your
mind coming up with your own endings. Teranesia is one of his rare
pre-singularity stories.
Read these novels and short story books to start thinking about what you are
going to do after you get uploaded or augmented with a few extra teraflops. Maybe you will think about quantum loop gravity, spin networks,
re-write the fundamental laws of the universe, create cellular automata
universes, or explore parallel universes.
Some of the links below will not work, and many of the books are out of
print, but they can be used as a starting point. Once you follow one of the
links below to Amazon, you can click on the author's name to find alternate
printings when available. I have only listed the books which I have read.
wburris at telusplanet dot net |
|