- Hardcover: 300 pages
- Publisher: Night Shade Books (Sep 14 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1597801747
- ISBN-13: 978-1597801744
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.7 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 612 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #263,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
Set in a near future Iran (where the theocracy has been overthrown, but where Muslim religion still dominates the culture), an Arab/Muslim focused MMORG gaming companies cutting edge AI software might hold the key achieving "uploaded consciousness." Martin is an Australian journalist who covered uprising and overthrow of the Iranian theocracy, and has since "gone native" with a Iranian wife and child. As tragedy strikes his multi-cultural family, Martin struggles to maintain his place in his adapted culture, and to provide for his child. Zendigi explores what it means to be human, and the lengths one will go to in order to provide for ones children. This emotional roller coaster explores a non-Western-European near future that both challenges ideas of global mono-culture and emphasizes the humanity we all share.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Egan imagines the near future,
By
This review is from: Zendegi (Hardcover)
Greg Egan is one of the best of the current hard science fiction writers, but until this book his stories have examined a more distant future. This latest novel is set in the much nearer future and imagines one of the ways in which his more remote ideas about uploading our minds into machines may come about. The action in part 1 is set in 2012, and part two leaps ahead 15 years to cover 2027 to 2028 and takes place mostly in Iran. The first part, then, is scarcely science fiction at all, and is a very plausible extrapolation from our current state of social computing and video gaming. Perhaps the politics is slightly less plausible; I hope it comes true, but it is hard to imagine that Iran will liberalize quite so easily, though stranger things happened with the fall of the Soviet bloc.Egan tells a spell-binding story of Iranian and global politics, together with strong character development as the protagonists, a journalist and an engineer in the field of neuroscience and computer science and face moral issues in business, science and politics. By looking at a couple of steps on the way to Egan's wilder imaginings of the future, we can see some of the issues we could easily face on our journey to that future, as well as many we are already facing today. As a fan of hard science fiction, I found the book to be one of Egan's best, but I also as found this to be a book with more literary depth than most of the science fiction I read, and this book can also succeeds on that level; it will appeal to the more adventurous of readers who normally avoid the genre literature. I bought this in hardback because I knew I would like anything Egan wrote. I read it in one sitting, which is rare for me as I usually have several books on the go, but I couldn't put this one down.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews) 21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful speculation,
By Mike Fazey - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Zendegi (Hardcover)
The idea of mapping and uploading human consciousness isn't new to science fiction. Indeed, Egan has explored it in a couple of his earlier novels and in his short stories. Other SF writers have done so too. But Zendegi isn't stale or hackneyed; quite the opposite in fact.Zendegi is the name of a virtual reality role-playing game whose designers manage to create game characters from partially mapped human minds. They do so for commercial reasons, to give their product an edge in an increasingly competitive VR market place. It's ironic that something so complex and amazing should be applied to such mundane purposes - entertainment and money-making. Egan juxtaposes this scenario with another far more worthwhile one - using a virtual version of a dying parent as way of ensuring that the child doesn't grow up totally without parental guidance. But what are the moral implications of doing this? And what other applications, altruistic or otherwise, might such technology lead to, especially given the increasingly commercial nature of scientific research? Exploring big questions like these is what great SF is all about, and Egan's treatment of this particular topic is fascinating. Equally fascinating is the setting - a near-future Iran which is now democratic but where religious ideology is still a factor. By contrast with his previous two novels, Egan balances the science and the storytelling really well, creating believable characters and putting them in a setting that, while speculative, is eminently plausible. There's also a touch of humour where, early in the novel, one of the characters is confronted by a science journalist whose previous works include `The Sociobiology of The Simpsons' and `The Metaphysics of Melrose Place'. Ha ha! Shades of the pretentious academics in Teranesia whose careers have been forged in the cutting edge fields of X-Files Theory and Diana Studies. The characters in the book are not heroic, but they are very human. The story does not have a dramatic climax, but it leaves you thinking about morality, about politics, about business, about humanity's future. It's a provocative speculation on the possibilities of technology and it's Egan's best novel in years. 9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unexceptional,
By Polarity Reversal - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Zendegi (Hardcover)
What could have been a very good short story has been stretched into a so-so novel, which (at times) is more about parenting than anything else. The story is not riveting and it's not in league with Egan's best. It drags in several places and only has a couple of mildly interesting ideas.
17 of 25 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Far from Egan's best,
By Turing Complete "Halting is not an option" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Zendegi (Hardcover)
I've loved most of Greg Egan's novels up to this point, and so was eagerly looking forward to Zendegi but unfortunately Greg has dropped the ball this time around. Zendegi is a novel that plays it safe; a dull, methodical, ramble that tries far too hard to present a politically correct view of a future Iran (with some safe, token jabs at obvious targets) and as a result never really goes anywhere. It is a timid novel lacking almost entirely in creativity -- something I never thought I'd see from Greg Egan -- full of dull characters and anemic story telling. The groan-inducing cliché of a (non)ending is simply icing on a horrible cake.I know Greg means well, he did visit Iran while writing Zendegi (you can find details on his homepage) and his trip notes make for a far more interesting read about Iran and its beauty than you will get from Zendegi. I just wish Greg had had the courage to tell a stronger story. |
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