Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Full of Fascinating Ideas, but Flawed, April 1, 1998
I'm sometimes not sure exactly how to react to the works of Greg Egan. Diaspora, while a good book, generated the same react as other Egan I've read. Sometimes his works seem brilliant. At other times, Egan seems too clever for his good, intent on showing off lots of details about new ideas. Sometimes the work moves right along. At others, it stops with the old hack of "tell me again professor exactly how wormholes work." (This one really happens in Diaspora.) Sometimes the novels seems driven by an interesting story. At other times, it seems like a loose collection of events, a travelogue, the plot of which is only there to allow Egan to explore wonder after wonder. Parts of Diaspora had me saying, as I read, "this is brilliant and belongs on the Hugo ballot." Other parts had me saying "OK, so he wants to show off with more future physics/math" or "OK, he dreamed up yet another universe, so our characters have to go there so he can write about it." In the end, I still think that Diaspora was a good book, with flashes of brilliance and ideas that in and of themselves are exciting and interesting. But overall, it's impact is lessened by its rambling nature and by Egan's tendency to go into information-dump mode.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An epic that spans time and space to the INFINITE degree, June 6, 2000
Once again, Egan has struck a chord across many disciplines--the non-fiction studies of AI, multidimensional geometry, mathematics, astrophysics, and others are woven into a novel of pure, hard, sf.Have you ever read a sf book and thought, "That was a great concept... but the author could have gone farther"? You can NOT do that with Egan's work. He explores and pushes back the outer boundaries of the comprehensible with his stories. Diaspora, particularly, spans as far as one can go--at least, as far as its own concept of the future can be pushed. The book develops from extremely small beginnings--the "womb" of one of Earth's virtual-reality cities called "polises"--where Yatima (the artificial-intelligence protagonist) is born. From there, Yatima grows in a quest for understanding of the world around ver (neuter for "his" or "her"). From ver polis, to the realms of the other lifeforms inhabiting Earth, to the questions of "Who is out there? Who came before us? Why are we HERE?" Yatima struggles and discovers, traveling faster and faster through space (and time). The urgency of the pitch accelerates as ve nears ver goal. Without spoiling the ending, I'll say this: have you ever hiked a "strenuous" trail to reach a peak, and then stood by yourself at the very top and listened to the wind whistle around you? It's amazing how deeply you can look into yourself when you know you're at the pinnacle of experience. For those who hate Egan's copious (and admittedly rigorous) studies within the text: maybe adapting your style of reading would help. I'm not telling you to do anything difficult or that would detract from the story; just learn to skim over the heavy details the first time you read the story. I guarantee you'll come back again for them ... for in Diaspora, as in Quarantine and others, Egan uses high-technology magic to restate our own questions: "Who is out there? Who came before us? Why are we HERE?"
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ingenious but..., December 20, 2000
First, let me tell you this: Greg Egan is a genius. His ideas are unparalleled by any other science fiction writer I know of. I have read several of his books, and his novels/short stories are the most unique stories I have ever read. Having said that, I have to say he has a bit of a problem with writing long novels and tends to lose focus and drift away. He shines with short stories, though. This book has the same problems. It actually seems like 2 books, really, the first and the second part are so different. The first half of the books tells the story of Yatima, an artificial intelligence being who lives inside a "polis", which is the equivalent of a city of AIs. The story details how Yatima was "born", how did he evolve, and elaborates on his experiences. The background of the story is complex and detailed - yet still remains believable: most of what is left of humanity chose to turn themselves to digital beings, others turned themselves to Gleisners (Robots). But a few chose to remain human, albeit genetically modified humans. This part is *awesome*, *amazing* - it is very, very good! Then, roughly in the middle of the book the story takes a turn: after an unexplained phenomena which occured and wiped the remaining human population, one of the polises decides to go on a "Diaspora", clone itself and explore the galaxy. This part elaborates on the journey. The thing is, there is very very little story, most of it is complicated scientific theories. I'm sure Greg Egan knows his science, from what I understood (I couldn't follow everything), he got it right to the point. But it gets way too complicated. Seriously, I had university courses easier than this part of the book! And it is not really necessary, most of the time, a theory is introduced, and then the story moves on to the next theory. In the meanwhile, there isn't much left of the original story - the scientific background seems to be much more important than the plot! I would give 5 (or more!) stars to the first half of the book, and 2 to the second part. But overall, the second part really ruined a lot of the book for me. Nonetheless, I'd still recommend it - just be prepared for a very high level of physics! And check out "Axiomatic", this is truly one of the best short science fiction stories of all time - Greg Egan at his best.
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