Customer Reviews

Distress

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

(I read the UK paperback.) Greg Egan is currently the best hard sf writer I know of. He writes science fiction the way it SHOULD be: imaginative yet plausible, stuff that makes you think, stuff that draws on real science rather than warp-space hyper-rubbish.

Egan's novels are pretty good but his short stories are really excellent. It's interesting that, although "Distress" is a novel, it opens with a series of interviews (the protagonist is a journalist), each one of which is like a mini-short story about some aspect of biotechnology. This plays to Egan's strength: idea, idea, idea. However, after a while the story settles down to the central plot, about a theoretical physicist whose life is endangered by a lunatic group with some strange ideas about cosmology.

I strongly recommend this book. It deserves a 10 for ideas; I am downgrading it to a 9 because other aspects of Egan's writing could still be improved.

Distress is not only the best of Egan's novels that I've yet read, but one of the most inventive and accomplished sf novels I've read in many years. Andrew Worth is a science journalist in a world populated with ignorance cultists, voluntary autists, and gender migrants. Having finished the 'frankenscience' series Junk DNA, he turns down an offer to tape a show on the newly endemic Acute Clinical Anxiety Syndrome (a.k.a Distress), to compile a profile of quantum physicist Violet Mosala, currently at work on a Theory of Everything, or TOE. Worth leaves Sydney and his marriage (both in ruins), and travels to Stateless, a utopian anarchy on an island constructed with pirated biotech. Plots against both Mosala and Stateless escalate as the novel heads towards an astonishing climax. While Egan is best known for his ideas - and there are more ideas in the first chapter of this book than in many sf novels - his characterization in this book is excellent: Worth is a well-rounded character with his own opinions and motivation, Mosala is a welcome example of a fictional sane scientist, and the asex Akili Kuwale is a masterpiece of sf characterization.

Distress is a very unique novel. It is a quest for the intelect, a discussion of the implications of technology on our lives, and even more importantly, discussion about the implications of actual science on life.

If you want to know what the future will be like, Egan is a place to look for inspiration (although not for answers). Egan not only understands technology and science, and not only has the imagniation to forsee the future in ways which are original and thought provoking, but is able to see the social consequences of technology.

Egan's story, especially in the first two thirds of the novel, is an almost entirely successful and constant challange to the mind, in an enjoyable story. Egan's prose is powerful, and you can often enjoy his phrases, and while his minor characters are awfully indistinguishable, the two major ones, Violet Mosala and Andrew Worth, are very well realised and are sympathetic.

The novel contains ideas about the Theory of Everything. The theory of Everything is a unification of Einstein's theory of Relativity and Quantom Mechanics - it's a theory that can explain, at least theoretically, EVERYTHING, from the motions of planets to those of electrons.

The novel doesn't speculate as much about TOE itself, but about the social and psychological and even ethical responses of it, and it does so by introducing a pseudo-scientific religion which glorifies and demonises the descoverer of the theory.

This religion is interesting, but it is one of the two major failure of the novel because (slight spoiler here) it turns up that it is true in a sense. This changes the story from a scientific to a metaphysic one, and pushes us towards the realms of fantasy.

The other major weakness is that Egan's plotting and story elements are relatively poor. Crisises can be resolved in manners which are hardly satsifactory to the reader, in the sense that they rarely are well established or given proper pay off. Egan attempts to write a 'thriller' especially at the end, and it doesn't work.

But those are relatively minor problems. Distress is a novel of ideas, and thus it functions brilliantly. It'll make you think. So go read it.

In "Distress", Greg Egan has provided a thought-provoking vision of the future, and a chilling view of the essence of reality. He creates a world filled with biotechnology wonders, and has created a place, "Stateless", based on these wonders. He then takes this world and weaves in a plot that dives into a stark philosophy of existence. His view point is that man can assume he is no more than matter and information. But Egan does not despair at that view, but rather uses his two main characters, Violet Mosala and Andrew Worth, to show its power. As Mosala, the physicist, finishes a Theory of Everything, Worth takes his experiences in the book to reconcile the implications of the theory. Alone, the TEO would reverberate through time causing a fatal illness "Distress", but Worth solves that dilemma, and opens a new perspective for mankind.

But don't think you can read this book casually (I made that mistake). The physics is unforgiving (brush up on the integration of the forces of nature, and on the latest theories of space as a dance of virtual particles). And bring a magic marker. The first time you hit a new name, or ANY time there is a reference to one of a myriad of anti- or pro-science groups, highlight it. That will allow you to go back and understand how the actions of that person or group from two hundred pages back, motivate what is happening where you are reading.

This type of book demonstrates that the fiction novel market should break convention and include (heresy here) indexes and tables in books to help the reader. It is this problem of complex and distance references, plus some dangling plot threads, that keep me from rating this higher.

I warn you, the book is full of existentialist introspection; bio-technology and it's impact on people; Utopian ideals set in motion/reality; and most of all, descriptions of "deep" math, physics, and incomprehensible stuff for the layperson. I don't know if it's possible to summarize those concepts for someone with no math background, but it can be done, he didn't do it. Still, the book worked, until the end. I loved the existential feel and discussions in the book, and the way it made you stop, put down the book and actually think! about your life, and how you view it. Good read, at that time (3/4 through). How 100 pages can change your perspective 180°!

First of all the plot: a journalist, who has trouble with relationships, is finishing up a piece for the netzine he works for, SeeNet, called Junk DNA. It's about four extreme uses of DNA, which he calls "frankenscience."

In Andrew Worth's near-future world, he is surrounded by technology - notepads that function as a wireless computer, with a built in dataminer, called Sisyphus. He has an implant in his eye, that he can "invoke," called Witness, and it will date/time stamp and record any event for future use. It is then later simply downloaded, through an umbilical implant attachment, to his notepad, or other device. The cities are deserted as nearly everyone works at home on-line. The cities are figurative"ruins" that can be full of gangs and criminals, but a few have tried to revive parts and brought in theatres and restaurants, many featuring "experimental cuisine," a bio-engineered food substitute, made from various things that are made to taste like regular food, although they look completely different.

The book is full of existential themes and angst. In one crucial scene, while he is going over the demise of his latest relationship, his friend, who had long ago declared he would never marry, but now has a wife and kids, said: "I used to think that if you changed from ... valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you'd learned something new, understood something better. And it's not like that at all. I just value what I'm stuck with. That's it, that's the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can't escape."

This passage made me really think - to put down the book and examine my own life. So, an existential question - does "life' have meaning by itself, or is just a series of compromises we make with what we have?

The title of the book comes from a disease called "Distress," a disease that is growing, and has nightmarish consequences - the victims live in a perpetual state of distress - sort of a PTSD taken to the limits, and are filled with dread, fear, and anxiety, which manifests itself in thrashing about, muttering and moaning, etc. The importance of the disease seems to be irrelevant for most of the book - which makes the title puzzling, even after the book is done.

Andrew is asked to do a piece on Distress, but is seemly afraid (the reason he chooses not to do this prestigious piece is not fully realized in the book) and instead "steals" a different piece from a junior reporter on a major physics conference on TOEs (Theory of Everything) and other theories/models, and Egan does a fine job (although maybe not from a lay perspective) on describing these mathematical and physics models, and the reason for their importance in not only physics/math, but in life as well. The heart of the conference is that one of the speakers might present a true, complete TOE, and that might be the "end" of physics as we know it. Of course that's not true - it is just the starting point, but all sorts of "ignorance" cults have come to the island nation of "Stateless" to take a stand.

Stateless is a "rogue" nation, boycotted by most countries because of it's origins. A group of scientists stole some bio-specimens and bio-tech, and "grew" their own island in the South Pacific. The island is full of artists, musicians, and scientists, etc. There is no government, and people have formed into various knots of cultural ties/religions, but there is no government - it's an "anarchy" in the basest sense. What Andrew can't figure out is why it stays that way, and why the residents feel it always will - why they don't worry about the next generation dissolving into absolute anarchy.

Andrew is assigned to interview and tape one of the TOE presenters, Violet Masala, from South Africa. What starts out as being an easy "vacation" piece becomes fraught with information overload, bizarre fringe cults that impact the conference and himself, and various other things that bring the focus away from the "easy" interview and into the realm of a major assignment. He was not prepared for what he found, and the reporter who did all the background work won't return his calls.

What he makes of it all, you'll have to read. But, except for a lack of information on the titular disease (later explained in the book in some part), and a few other missing details, Egan does a marvelous job of world-building in the near-future. The ubiquitous cults, the island, the existential crises his friend, and later himself, go through, are all intricately detailed and held out for our inspection, and it passes mine. It's the ending that left be feeling that I'd been robbed.

And the characters were flat to me - to me, I have to have someone I can root for, and I just couldn't get anywhere with Andrew - although his personal life and existential crises are detailed out, it never rings quite true, and indeed, his one rant (when he was ill) was quite odd. And Violet Masala - she started out as a witchy sort - later became "cool," and at the end finally, seemed to thaw. But she never was more than a buzz in his ear, and his ostensible reason for going to the conference, as well as a vehicle to truly describe the TOE that is the heart of the book.

I'd give it a 6 (originally an 8, and that was because it's premise is slight, but it's treatment was first class, until those last 100 pages).

SPOILERS REMOVED! In order to do justice to my opinion of the book, I would have to give some stuff away, but don't want to do that here. If you want all the "good stuff" check out my review at http://thehouseai.wordpress.com.

There is much discussion of some of the cults that exist, throughout the book, and in particular, a few which attend the conference to protest the TOEs. One of these Mystical renaissance, is a front-runner, but in the last 100 pages, sort of disappears, and you're left wondering why they were given so much space.

Another important cult are the Anthrocosmologists, one of the cults embracing "technolibération, which means the "empowerment of people through technology, and the 'liberation' of the technology itself from restrictive hands" - in other words, supporting technology in all it's bizarre applications (like in Junk DNA), but also taking it away from the White Male West, and into the hands of the people, especially science starved Africa.

ACs, as they are called, believe (at least the moderate wing) in merging information theory, an old science, with the TOE, to achieve what they believe is the "end" result. As the books explains "Imagine this cosmology...take as your 'starting point' the fact that there's a living human being who can explain an entire universe, in terms of a single theory. Turn everything around, and take it as the only thing given that this one person exists."

"From this person, the universe 'grows out' of the power to explain it: out in all directions, and forward and backward in time. Instead of being blasted out of pre-space - instead of being 'caused' inexplicably at the beginning of time - it crystallizes quietly around a single human being."

Then there are extremist ACs, who believe that only ONE person is designed to be the Keystone and that person is predetermined, and they will go to any lengths to fulfill their mission.

In Violet Masala's TOE, she uses the concept of forgetting the fine-tuning of the Big Bang theory. Taking our own existence as given, which in some ways parallels the AC's views, she uses various experiments in which she knows the variables, etc., and assigns them a probability of existing as 100%, something the other TOE theorists won't do - they want to start with a clean empty slate of physical constraints, and bring it down to pure mathematics. She takes these established facts (the results and conditions of known experiments) as a kind of anchor for the math. It's her TOE that is the focus of the ACs

The last 100 pages differ dramatically from the first 400+. What happens in the end, in the crazy environment he created, becomes an exercise in self-indulgence. It's as if the author is experiencing a mystical look into the cosmos. The TOE becomes something grander than a mere physics exercise. He describes it in lyrical prose, and it simply doesn't fit the tone of the earlier 3/4 of the novel, which relied heavily on science and physics/mathematics in particular. It's as if "The Little Prince," "What the Bleep! Do We Know," and "The Secret" suddenly all melted into the end of the book, a SciFi novel, and becomes an author's over-indulgent rapturous look at the cosmos, the universe, ourselves, and the interconnectedness of it all. For when the Toe is eventually "read," what happens is pure New Age. and the epilogue is bizarre for a HardSF book.

The book is replete with little "mysteries" and lots of red herrings that have no real part of the story - they are interesting in their own right, but end up just "floating" in the story line - not a part of it at all. But this isn't a mystery novel, it's Hard SciFi.

It was a disappointment, in a novel that held much promise, from an author that has been widely touted. It was just too mystical and New Age for my tastes. That part spoiled the book for me.

A somewhat enjoyable book for the most part, especially if you can skim across the more detailed math and physics and focus on the interactions, the sociological implications of the ubiquitous cults, and the notion of a "stateless" state. The book is a study in near-future - what SciFi SHOULD be, when done right (at least the first part). This is the first book of his I have read, and it definitely will NOT be my last, as I'm curious if this is a fluke, since others have thoroughly enjoyed his books, and even gone so far as to say "since when is there a BAD Egan book."? Well, I might quibble with that, but later reflection might find that the ideas presented outweigh the negative ending, and move it up a notch.s

From the opening "revival" scene that I had to read three times to the final page, Distress was a great read. I really enjoyed his play with gender--ve and ver, for example, were intriguing. The Theory of Everything was scientific enough to be credible, but written such that even a non-science reader could appreciate it. And the concept of "Stateless" was great. This is science fiction as it is meant to be: plausible, but pushing the envelope.

If there were just one book here, it would be easier to review.

There is the book about life in 2055, in a world completely transformed by biotech. This book deserves more than 5 stars. I wish I was going to be around to see how much Egan got right.

There is the book about how an actual working anarchy might behave and come to be. This is fascinating, and far different from the usual rightish libertarianism to be found in political SF. Four stars for this part.

And then there's the scientific book. You have to seriously suspend disbelief here, to take the threat to the universe seriously. But if you can do that (and I could), it's an extremely exciting and well put-together plot. Two or three stars for science fiction, or six for fantasy.

It's a mind-bender.

Some of the reviews here seem to think it's anti-religious. I don't read it that way. In fact, the ending seems suffused with an eloquent and most unusual mysticism. Whatever this is, it's not so simple as a cold, mechanistic, purposeless universe. As Violet says in the book, the Theory of Everything is what lets us touch.

Give it a chance. It's worth the trouble.

Distress is aptly named, and should, perhaps, be the subtitle of all his novels. This is because you WILL find your mental faculties in considerable distress while you read. Thought provoking is an understatement in this, as well as all his works. The author sometimes gets carried away in his explanations, as if he has to hammer home the point that he KNOWS what he is talking about, but in my opinion the stories would be just as good without. However, for those of us who love Hard Sci-Fi, the explanations are part of the fun!

I came away liking this book quite a bit, I found the end satisfying. As for those who have existential/religious problems with the book, I too noted some of the "attitude" there, but I just didn't take it personally, and took it as one man's opinion. That allowed me to enjoy the book.

One problem I do have with this and another of his books (Diaspora), is his use of asexual characters (although their use in Diaspora is more understandable), and the "V" pronouns that he uses for them. It seems to me to be an uneccessary convolution to an already complicated story. I "get" the point he is trying to make about relationships, etc, but I found it dehumanizing nonetheless. I don't think people would ever choose such a path in the forseeable future. Now that I've read it in two of his books, I think the idea is getting silly.

That said, this is my favorite book by this author, and now that I have read 5 of his works, I feel my brain has grown in at least another 3 or 4 dimensions.

Distress was an interesting novel to say the least. I haven't read many like it in the past. Though some of it is quite believable (we are getting close to implanting computers within our own bodies, and the 'pharms' aren't too far off either), it predicts things a bit differently than we might see them now, 11 years after the book was written, at least involving some of the 'notepad' (equivalent of a Pocket PC today) technology.

The story gets you hooked right at the beginning with the description of the 'Junk DNA' project, and it is a fast read up until past the middle of the story. However, Egan has a tendency to throw in a lot of little details that don't really add much to the story, just added bulk you have to wade through.

One such example would be the 'v-' terminology and the asexual people, I can't really say that I liked this part of the novel so much, as it could have been left out without changing the story too much.

The other issue I have is the lack of connection to 'Distress'. Seeing as the title is Distress, I expected the plot to be more intertwined with the mental illness, but in fact it was very weakly linked to the main plot.

It could also be mentioned that some of the conflict in the story is poorly written; for example, a part where the journalist is trapped on board of a cargo ship is made about as exciting as someone who lost their golf ball in the water.

Despite these faults, this book still makes for an interesting read. If you enjoy lots of philosophical discussion you will be reeled in by this novel.

If it were possible, I'd give this work three-and-a-half stars instead of just three. The problem with Egan, and many other "hard" sci-fi writers, is that they spend so-much time building and explaining their settings that all other elements of fiction, such as characters and plot, are left underdeveloped. That has left a genre filled with great ideas, but little literary value.

This work is a perfect example. Egan has filled the novel with wonderful themes both scientific and philosophical. But I do not feel that Egan had the literary talent to pull what he set to accomplish. His prose is bland, his scientific observerations are often long and unneeded, his characters never assume any type of three-dimensional personality, and his plot has so many twists and turns that it soon becomes predictable. But before I become to cynical, I should state that his themes are thought-provoking, and that he wisely uses them for more than plot development. If Egan could learn some writing skills, then he could become a fairly good writer. But until then he is limited to his genre.