William's Updates

"If you come to hard sci-fi in search of ideas about how humanity might change as we integrate with our machines, or how the universe (or universes) might fit together well beyond the observable world we know, you might well love this book. It's got some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, it's so bogged down by over-the-top "science-ish" writing, weak character development and two oddly stitched together plots that I kept cursing in annoyance as I read, rather than delighting at the novelty of author Greg Egan's ideas.

Each of the two stitched together plots is based on a distinct premise.

The first premise: It's the distant future. People can be male, female or genderless. They can inhabit mortal bodies like our own, or genetically altered bodies, or immortal robot bodies, or they can become converted into immortal human minds/souls that live forever in the digital realm. And some people -- including Yatima -- are born digitally, the result of a DNA-like sequence that allows randomness to shape the ingredients necessary for humanity into a self-aware being. People being what they are, those who inhabit mortal bodies think theirs is the only "true" way to experience humanity, the fully digital souls don't understand why anyone would choose to be limited by the constraints of the physical world, the robot dwellers think theirs is the perfect compromise, all seem to prefer separate spheres of existence as they remain warily aware of the other modes of being.

The second premise comes a fair chunk of the way in to the book, after the first premise is firmly established: All these different kinds of folks have just become aware that world-destroying (and maybe even solar-system-destroying or galaxy-destroying) astronomical events are more likely and harder to predict than they've ever understood before. Now the race is on to find a way to escape or hide before humanity and life come to an end. It's not clear if survival requires traveling great distances across the universe, or innovations in science to create wormholes, or the discovery of non-human intelligence, or another path altogether. We follow a group of digital souls as they venture far from earth in search of understanding and salvation.

Both premises are intellectually interesting, though they seem kind of disjointed, as does the array of characters we meet along the way. The book starts by introducing us to Yatima, a genderless new-born digital soul, as "ve" explores "ver" world, and introduces us to this world along the way. We get to know and like a number of characters, and it's frustrating when, in the second half of the book, a huge chunk of these characters fade from view completely, or disappear until the last few pages.

Egan also doesn't know when to stop with his detailed explanations of the speculative/imagined science that underpins the vast world he's imagined. These explanations read like dense academic treatises, except that they aren't real science, and they bog down the book. As one of these quagmires of over-explanations opens the book, I'm amazed that thousands of readers appear to have been, like me, stubborn enough to push through to see what the story might really be about. As I read, I learned to skim the science-ese and start paying attention at the end of each of these passages. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have made it through."