I have to say I didn’t think Australia’s Greg Egan to be an important science fiction author – I have seen a few mentions of his 1994 novel Permutation City in a few lists over the years, but that’s about it. He got a Hugo for a novella, but overall he’s not a prize winner, and there doesn’t seem to be a big buzz when a new title of his appears.
But all those parameters are social stuff, and Egan is “famously reclusive”. This excerpt from his website paints his character a bit: “I do not approve of the practice of using quotes from authors on book jackets, since I believe it blurs the distinction between advertising copy writing and reviewing. I’ve never provided such quotes myself, or sought them for my own books. However, because I neglected to tell my new editor at Gollancz how I felt about this, the UK editions of Schild’s Ladder have some comments by Stephen Baxter on the jacket, alongside the excerpts from bona fide reviews of previous books. This glitch was my fault entirely, of course, and I’ll do my best to ensure that nothing similar happens again.”
I like that. Egan seems to be rigorous, a man of principle, and he doesn’t care for commercialism – he also doesn’t attend conventions or sign books, for instance. But enough about the social: what about the writing itself?
In that regard, it’s also no surprise Egan isn’t really popular: he writes very dense, hard theoretical science fiction. Harder than Seveneves, to give you a benchmark. Much, much harder than Kim Stanley Robinson. Even Blindsight was a walk in the park compared to this. That’s also because Egan’s writing generally focuses on the hardest of hard science: mathematics and quantum theory. Other themes include the nature of consciousness, “genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.”
I have to say, based on reading Schild’s Ladder: Holy Moly, Egan is one of today’s most important writers of speculative literature, and those who like their stuff only light and fluffy are missing out big time. This is highly stimulating stuff. When I was 150 pages in, I went on a quarantine shopping spree and ordered 5 other of his books.
I used to think the Culture of Iain M. Banks represented the creative pinnacle of imagining a transhumanist future, but consider that position revised: it seems Egan has picked up the baton a long time ago.
Weighing a pig doesn't fatten it. 