Greg Egan | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

SFF Author: Greg Egan

Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. He is a Hugo Award winner 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. 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.

Quarantine: Cool quantum mechanics, pedestrian plot

Quarantine by Greg Egan

Greg Egan is an Australian writer of hard science fiction who specializes in mathematics, epistemology, quantum theory, posthumanism, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc. When you pick up one of his books, you know you will be getting a fairly dense crash course in some pretty outlandish scientific and mathematical ideas, with the plot and characters coming second.

The cover blurb advertises Quarantine as “A Novel of Quantum Catastrophe,” and the back describes “an impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15,

Permutation City: A staple of transhumanistic fiction

Permutation City by Greg Egan

What would you give in exchange for immortality? Greg Egan‘s unabashed answer to that question in Permutation City is simple: Your humanity. Its sounds cliché, but Permutation City is a book that is able to do what only the best science fiction books can: make you think of questions you never knew you had, and imagine futures that seem ever more possible as time passes.

Around the mid-21st century, mind-uploading technology has been perfected,

Distress: Lots of big ideas

Distress by Greg Egan

The unique talent that is Greg Egan has written another novel that barely strains the limits of modern technology in a near-future socio-political world that is more than believable. Cameras are biologically inserted into humans, rendering reporters as close to the definition of the word “witness” as philologists will permit; pharmaceuticals exist which allow a person to be one button away from a desired mood; and fundamentalists and activists emerge from all corners as science replaces religion in the global mindset. Distress contains enough ideas for three novels;

Dark Integers and Other Stories: Humanism and hard science

Dark Integers and Other Stories by Greg Egan

Though the count may not be high (five stories all told), Greg Egan’s Dark Integers and Other Stories packs a theoretical punch, quite literally. Novellas and novelettes only, the 2008 collection is filled with the author’s trademark hard science speculation. The selections were published between 1995 and 2007; one pair of stories is set within the same universe as his 2008 novel Incandescence, another pair within a near-future Earth setting,

The Clockwork Rocket: Hard SF with heart

The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan

The Clockwork Rocket, which is the first volume in Greg Egan‘s brand new hard science fiction trilogy ORTHOGONAL, is a book with three different but equally important focal points. On the one hand, it’s the story of a young woman who also happens to be a very alien alien. On the other, it’s a novel about a planet — a very alien planet — on the cusp of tremendous social change. And, maybe most of all,

Stefan Raets´s rating: 3.5 | Greg Egan | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred: An SF spin on the Trolley Problem

The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred by Greg Egan

Subterranean Press is one of my favorite publishers because they’re always putting out distinctive speculative fiction that’s beautifully packaged. I especially appreciate the many novellas they publish because I am often in the mood for shorter works these days and novellas give me the opportunity to read authors whose stories I might not otherwise have time for.

The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred (2016) is Greg Egan’s recent science fiction novella about a woman named Anna who directs the spaceport on the asteroid Ceres.

Magazine Monday: Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014

The Winter 2014 issue of Subterranean Magazine was edited by guest editor Jonathan Strahan, the editor of a popular year’s best anthology and a number of other anthologies. He has good taste, as the stories chosen for this issue demonstrate — with the exception of the longest and last piece, a snarky bit of irreligious, virtually plotless prose by Bruce Sterling (about which more below).

“The Scrivener” by Eleanor Arnason is structured as a fairy tale often is, with three daughters each setting out on an errand prescribed by their father.

SFF Author: Greg Egan

Quarantine: Cool quantum mechanics, pedestrian plot

Permutation City: A staple of transhumanistic fiction

Distress: Lots of big ideas

Dark Integers and Other Stories: Humanism and hard science

The Clockwork Rocket: Hard SF with heart

The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred: An SF spin on the Trolley Problem

Magazine Monday: Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014

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