Customer Reviews

Schild's Ladder

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Woosh. That was the sound of this book going right over my head.
I love hard sci-fi, don't get me wrong. I've read plenty of layman's books on quantum physics and consider myself reasonably well-informed on science in general. Still, large chunks of "Schild's Ladder" were basically gibberish to me, and the book was actually somewhat of a chore to get through. I haven't had that experience in a long time.

The basic plot of "Schild's Ladder" is certainly engaging: 20,000 years in the future, an experiment gone awry creates a new universe that is expanding inside our own at half the speed of light, gobbling up worlds and forcing evacuations of whole planets. The key outpost to study the phenomenon is occupied by two opposing factions: the Yielders, who want to study and even protect the new universe, and the Preservationists, who want to stop or destroy it. The main character arrives at the station as part of the former clique, only to discover his childhood love has thrown in her lot with the other side.

Sadly, neither person really gets fleshed out, and I was puzzled by the main character's emotional obsession with his former love. She never seemed like anything special to me. Interactions with other characters come off as flat. We are told at one point that violent crime has basically been unheard of for 19,000 years, yet a brutal act of sabotage is taken in stride by people for whom a more natural reaction would surely be sheer bafflement or shock-inducing horror. The characters like to make trite quips one instant and in the next display thin-skinned petulance.

The story drags through the middle of the book as the factions solidify their positions, the main character engages in some flashback reminiscing, and the technicalities of quantum weirdness are explored in mind-boggling detail. The last quarter of the book is actually pretty gripping as the researchers make progress in understanding the new universe. Egan does a commendable job of describing what is on the other side of the boundary, and I found his technical descriptions easier to follow as they focused more on technology and engineering rather than quantum theory. He also deserves kudos for employing the etaphor from which the book gets it title. Schild's Ladder is apparently an actual mathematical proof and it's an impressive feat to take that and turn it into a metaphor for human change.

I picked up this book because I like hard sci-fi and had heard good things about Egan. I can say pretty confidently that Egan writes harder than anyone I've read. I felt like I needed to have a graduate degree in physics to fully appreciate the book. This definitely isn't a light read for a general audience.

Not great literature in the classic sense, but there's a lot of intriguing speculation here. The would-be reader should be warned, though: you will not fully appreciate this book unless you've made significant progress toward a degree in physics or a related field! (You could also get away with just reading a lot of pop science, provided you've read enough to be familiar with ideas like decoherence and superselection.) This truly is the hardest SF I've read.

Unlike a lot of hard SF, the characterization is actually more than perfunctory (at least in the main character's case), and the basic idea is very deep. The issues treated in this novel show a lot of philosophical as well as scientific depth. The story is not very gripping, since the future humans don't really face any life-or-death struggles, but I found myself interested enough to finish the book quickly. Recommended only for those with sufficient background.

In Greg Egan's inventive new novel Schild's Ladder, the diverse range of characters utilise a number of different languages and communication techniques, but manage to find a common ground of meaning through the use of Mediator programs. For the scientific layperson (like myself) trying to comprehend the depths of physics and quantum theory which drive Schild's Ladder, a Mediator program would be most welcome. At times, this hard SF is just a little too hard as the narrative is intersected with lengthy, heavily detailed descriptions of theoretical physics that are beyond my capacity to comprehend. On the other hand, the epic struggle that unfolds encompassing the fate of not one but two unique universes, combined with a vibrancy of characterisation, more than compensate for the sporadic opacity of scientific jargon.
In the opening section, the scientist Cass travels to the Mimosan's station in order to use their unique equipment to momentarily create a `novo-vacuum', a microscopic universe with a completely new set of physics. The novo-vacuum is only expected to exist for a fraction of a second, but in that time Cass hopes that what is discovered about the alternative universe will enrich the understanding of her own. Of course, the experiment goes horribly wrong and the physics of the novo-vacuum turn out to be more stable than those of the outside world, with the result that the alternative universe begins expanding, engulfing the old, wiping out all in its path.
Six hundred years later former lovers Tichicaya and Mariama both find themselves onboard the Rindler, the foremost research centre focused on the novo-vacuum. Significantly, the Rindler is also a spacecraft maintaining the velocity which keeps the ship the closest possible distance from the expanding boundary of the mysterious, new universe. Despite their past together, Mariama and Tichicaya find themselves on opposite sides of the philosophical rift that divides the ship's occupants. Mariama is in the Preservationist camp, desperate to destroy the novo-vacuum and stop the destruction of the planets in its wake. At the other extreme, Tichicaya's group have been labelled Yielders, those who believe the novo-vacuum is the greatest scientific discovery of all time and that is should be studied, understood and if possible adapted to rather than eradicating it. As the experiments on board the Rindler reach a point where the novo-vacuum's exterior might finally be breached, the philosophic divide becomes a material battle for the fate of both universes.
To readers of Egan's past novels, much of Schild's Ladder will seem distantly familiar. Although Egan never writes sequels, his stories reveal an almost evolutionary development of ideas and theories. As with his novel Diaspora, for example, there is a dichotomy between those characters who choose to remain embodied and those who exist as acorporeals, living only as informatic patterns in virtual worlds. However, unlike Diaspora, even the embodied make their choice at a philosophic level; every individual's identity is stored on a Qusp-Quantum Singularity Processor-and the choice to be embodied or otherwise is the choice as to whether the Qusp exists as part of a digital network or embedded in a flesh body. Similarly, the idea of opposing worlds (or universes) clashing against each other has appeared in Egan's short stories and in Permutation City. In Permutation City, however, the conflict was on an ontological level when the Lambertians developed an Autoverse ontology without the need for a creator and somehow this act started to unravel their progenitors' digital world. In Schild's Ladder, the struggle is far more scientifically based detailing the collision of two unique physical universes, but the development of ideas from Permutation City are apparent.
The most significant development in Egan's recent work, though, is his vastly improved characterisation beginning with Teranesia and continuing in Schild's Ladder. The plight of Tichicaya and Mariama in human terms-their love, their motivation, and their similarities even when philosophically opposed-is what drove Schild's Ladder for me. If the scientific theories are as credible and intriguing as the human story in Schild's Ladder, then this book will be impossible to put down for a scientifically literate reader. For me, I learnt a little about science, glimpsed an intriguing future, and revelled in the complications of an all too human story.

Twenty thousand years into the future, humanity has conquered everything in its path including death yet so far at least no other sentient life form has been found that did not originate from earth. Science rules, as knowledge is everything. However, a quantum physics experiment inadvertently creates a vacuum effect that forms a new universe with physical laws different from the current one. This universe is growing rapidly and eats anything in its path though nanotechnology has kept humanity safe by instant evacuation.

However, what is to be done about the ever-expanding new universe that threatens life as we know it becomes the subject of great debate. The Preservationists want to destroy the new universe before it consumes humanity. The Yielders prefer to allow the growth of the new universe in order to study the phenomena. In that void, star crossed lovers Tchicaya and Mariama join separate and opposing hostile camps.

SCHILD'S LADDER is brilliant science fiction as it entertains the reader with an action-packed plot yet requires the audience to think about the ethical clashes that make up the science community as part of the larger society. The story line is cleverly designed to run faster than the speed of light yet maintains a cerebral moral fiber to the plot. Characters are fully developed so that the audience understands for instance the split between Tchicaya and Mariama. Fans of science fiction will want to read Greg Egan's distant future intelligent thriller that leaves the audience hungering for more novels like this one while debating current scientific moral dilemmas confronting society today.

Harriet Klausner

You live forever, you can manipulate every aspect of your mind and experience, you travel light-years from home and are separated from every person and every place you ever knew by the time dilation effects of relativity and the accumulated changes of the millenia. How do you remain true to yourself? How do you even maintain an identity?
At one point, Egan's characters dismiss "transcendence" as an empty term, a fossil left over from long-dead religions. The irony is delightful, as the entire novel is a portrait of the quest for transcendence - in the life of each character, in the fate of the species, in the history of intelligence itself. The characters struggle to transcend stagnation, guilt, fear of change, loneliness, the limitations of biology and above all ignorance.
Physics drives the plot and provides the two most powerful metaphors in the book. Firstly there is the concept of decoherence (thankfully explained in depth at the author's web site...) which implies the universe we live in, the one Newton described, is the way it is only because of our limited viewpoint. If we could get access to more information, a more complete truth, our universe would be infinitely richer, stranger and more promising.
This leads to the big problem with living in an infinitely richer, stranger universe - how do you relate to it without being overwhelmed and annihilated by it? Do you run and hide, create an illusion to live in, or do you embrace it and change enough to be enhanced by its infinite potential?
Various characters in the novel choose different answers. Perhaps the author's own response may be divined in the central metaphor, Schild's Ladder itself. I won't explain it here - read the novel.
The author obviously loves the intellectual challenges of modern physics, and the book does not pull any punches when it comes to theory. Most readers will be left behind sometimes, and that can make the novel seem rather dry. I recommend not to give up if you can't follow all of the science. There is so much food for thought on scientific and philosophical levels that anyone with an enquiring mind and some patience will have a worthwhile experience, and the pace does pick up considerably in the last third of the novel.

I read Shild's ladder, and although I agree that understanding everything is beyond the grasp of most people (including myself), I enjoyed it quite a bit. I just skipped a bit on occasion. If you can enjoy looking through the journals "Science" and "Nature", even though you don't understand all the details, you could enjoy this.

I consider it a fair trade that Egan is allowed by his editors to insert so much uninteresting deep physics into his novels, in exchange for his extremely well thought out premises on the future evolution of humanity and society. I have a science degree and am extremely science minded, but theoretical physics is quite beyond me. I would gladly see Egan lose the hard physics and concentrate on purely social and ethical issues. To my mind, he is one of the most interesting thinkers on the morality of trans-humanist ideas.

What does it mean to be human? Is there an allegiance to flesh and blood that should be adhered to? Is a perfect society possible? What would it mean to have immortality?

Egans answers more or less just scratch the surface. Still, they did what good science fiction is supposed to do- make you think. Having all of the answers set out before you and having all the threads neatly wrapped up at the end is wonderful in a regular space opera. But there is a difference between an adventure set in space and true science fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of grand epic sci-fi, but it's the search for answers to new and old questions that is the heart of SF. Egan is looking into the far future at how humanity and current society might evolve and how we might solve some of our looming issues, like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, WMD proliferation, etc.
Ultimately the characters and the story are a little flat, and the physics is remote, but it's the ideas that make it a very worthwhile read. If you're looking for regular good SF, go to Vernor Vinge or Kim Stanley Robinson. If you're looking for something to make you really think, then try Schild's Ladder.

Egan's imaginative ideas about physics, and to a lesser extent human societies, make this book well worth reading, and more thought-provoking than most science fiction.
The characters in the story aren't all that exciting. The ending was particularly disappointing, as the conflict builds to a crisis that looks like it requires a fairly sudden and decisive ending, but then fizzles out slowly with inadequate explanation of why the good guys get more time than expected to stop the final dangers.

I'm years behind in my reading, so I may have missed half a dozen, but to my knowledge Egan is the only SF writer who can turn the dizzying ideas of quantum theory into excellent novels. And he's gotten progressively better at it; I don't think I'll ever recover the first-time euphoria of *Quarantine*, but *Diaspora*, *Teranesia*, and now *Schild's Ladder* are all at least as good in their ways.
This is certainly not the best introduction to his work, though. If you don't have at least a *Scientific American*-level grasp of quantum physics (which is all I have), the ideas that fascinate me will be snore-inducing gibberish to you. If you are repulsed by the idea of non-meat humans, you won't like this future where all but a few deranged relics have their minds in quantum-computer 'Qusps', with a flesh body as a peripheral that many forgo, and regard death as a minor annoyance.
My problem with this novel is the inevitable consequence of any far-future scenario: everybody's too twentieth-century. Some of this can be explained away, some can be ignored. But (e.g.) when one character makes a conceptual breakthrough that's key to the plot, and that breakthrough would certainly have been made 20,000 years previously (after all, Greg Egan came up with it), my suspension of belief is strained.
In sum, a qualified recommendation. If you've read and enjoyed *Quarantine* or *Diaspora*, you will should read this book. If not, you may have to work your way up to it.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," wrote Arthur C. Clarke. The fiction of Greg Egan embodies this claim. His stories are breathtaking, not just for their scientific rigour, but for their enormous scope and an audacious willingness to boldly go where no one has gone before. Schlid's Ladder, his latest novel, is no exception.

After the painful hyping of the latest myopic journey through Mr. Lucas's Star Wars Universe, it is comforting to know that there are individuals who are interested in brave speculations on the fundamental nature of the universe and the nature of our own existence in it. From somewhere in Perth, Australia, this reclusive and intellectually brilliant author has extrapolated his way from the latest cutting edge theoretical physics to a theory of everything, not just for this universe, but for an entirely new one as well.

Set some 20,000 years into the novel opens with an experiment designed to probe the origin of the universe, however an accident sees an entirely new universe created, which proceeds to expand uncontrollably, gobbling up nearby stars and planets at the half the speed of light

To the rescue, or at least to the research front, come thousands of quantum-computer-people. They are scientists mainly (like seemingly all of Egan's characters), and while many feel threatened by the wholesale destruction wrecked upon their home-worlds, others want to study the new universe. The main character, Tchicaya, is one such scientist, fascinated by the rich physics and signs of life in the new universe, he works to save it when terrorists attempt to squash the new world.

In many ways, Schild's Ladder is a distillation of much of Egan's pervious work sharing both their strengths and their flaws. Egan's international reputation as one of the most admired and respected writers in the genre is based upon his hard science and big ideas. Some idea of just how big can be gauged by the fact that Egan is now working with some notable US physicists in the computer modelling of some of the theories set forth in his book. Not bad for a work of fiction - but not always easy to understand either. The long horizons are equally daunting: the book is set 20,000 years in the future.

In this utopian future, death has been eliminated, or at least relegated to the level of a small inconvenience. Everyone in the 220th Century keeps a safe backup of themselves somewhere handy, so any lethal misfortune means merely restoring your consciousness from the last available backup. Evidently, operating systems have improved considerably since the time of Bill Gates.

Gender has also been banished from this future and is merely an archaic remnant of language rather than a state of being. Some of humanity's distant descendants have given up flesh altogether and have taken on the form of sentient quantum computers. Of course there are still a few backward souls, the Anachronauts, who refuse to make the great leap and instead crawl across the universe in sputtering craft making quixotic jousts at defending what they see as the last remnants of true humanity.

Here Egan does casually what so much science fiction struggles to do, address the fundamental questions of what it is to be human and the forces that shape our society. It is ironic that Egan's social commentary is some of his most poignant and accessible writing, when his characters return to their scientific explorations as they inevitably do; his writing becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.

Consequently, the book is rather lumpy - a strange hybrid between Kubrik's 2001 and Stephen Hawking's `A Brief History of Time'. This makes for some mind-expanding descriptions of astrophysics, but rather poor dialogue. Nor is the book helped by a relatively weak ending.

Schild's Ladder repeats many of the characteristic themes and obsessions of this extraordinary author: the future of human consciousness, the problems of gender, the elegance and beauty of the mathematical world. The "hardest" of hard science fiction, the novel comes complete with scientific diagrams and a bibliography. No wonder the phrase "ideas man" pops up constantly in reviews of his work.

A heady brew of astounding ideas - quantum physics, cosmology, advanced mathematics - Schild's Ladder makes a wonderful primer in contemporary "theories of everything." But it also sets out to be read as a novel, and here it is far less successful. Part of the reason is that Egan appears more interested in his amazing theories than in the craft of language. His characters - perhaps appropriately for computer intelligences - are artificial and affect-less, and he is no J.G. Ballard when it comes to his prose.

But to judge Egan for his skill as a wordsmith rather misses the point. Like much of the very best literature, Egan's work makes bold statements about our universe and the nature of humanity itself. Egan offers his readers glimpses of strange new universes; the chance to luxuriate in a poetry of brilliant ideas.

While it falls short of his best work, Distress and Diaspora,
fans of Egan will find Schild's Ladder at least as satisfying and intelligent as Terranesia or Permutation City. More literary-minded readers will find the effort involved in getting to grips with his concepts well worth the reward as even his weaker novels ar more worthwhile than 95% of other books in the genre. Finally, for anyone interested in physics or mathematics, Schild's Ladder is an absolute delight.