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Schilds Ladder Mm
  
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Schilds Ladder Mm (Mass Market Paperback)

by Greg Egan (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Amazon.co.uk

Greg Egan's ability to imagine wonders of cosmic scale is shown again in his SF novel Schild's Ladder, with future galactic society confronting a disaster of almost unimaginable vastness--or is it a springboard to new hope?

The fatal experiment was right at the edge of theoretical physics. Could there be an alternative structure for vacuum itself, the void underlying our cosmos? Unfortunately, yes. Once created, this artificial "novo-vacuum" successfully competes with normal space, expanding at half the speed of light in an all-consuming sphere. Inside, physics is radically, incomprehensibly different...

Six centuries later, thousands of inhabited solar systems have been gobbled. Scientists investigating the novo-vacuum from starship Rindler are split between trying to destroy it with tailored spatial viruses ("Planck worms") and hoping to understand the teeming richness beyond that deadly interface.

In a lonely galaxy where only humans are intelligent, whole planets have been evacuated to give microscopic alien organisms their chance to evolve. The novo-vacuum may be bursting with new orders of life, so that killing it would be a monstrous act of genocide. But frightened people dare dreadful things. Violence erupts on the Rindler.

Building up from ideas of human intelligence in disembodied storage or artificial bodies, Egan finally takes his lead characters on a mind-boggling joyride through novo-vacuum, mapping them into a space where a tense eight-hour flight from deadly predators covers just one millimetre. There's a lot of room in there.

Schild's Ladder makes easy reading out of terrifying physics, generating a real sense of wonder even as your jaw drops at the immensity of its implications. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



From Publishers Weekly

Australian Egan (Teranesia) writes some of the hardest SF around in terms both of difficulty and cutting-edge scientific content, as shown in his latest challenging novel, set some 20,000 years in the future. Though superhuman by our standards, Egan's characters often disembodied intelligences who prefer to live as programs in virtual reality or in still stranger, high-tech media are still capable of making mistakes. At the start, an experiment in quantum physics goes badly astray, creating another universe with physical laws that differ from our own. Its border expanding at half the speed of light, this new universe swallows planetary systems whole. Fortunately, humanity is so highly developed that entire populations can be quickly evacuated with little if any loss of life. Soon the scientific community divides into two groups, those who would destroy the new universe, and those who would study it. The debate becomes even more tense when evidence of life is found behind the rapidly expanding border. Characters invariably speak the language of quantum physics fluently, and the author makes little effort to bring their discussion down to the layman's level. Not until the end, when scientists begin to explore the new universe, does Egan make any real attempt to engage the reader's senses or emotions. The pleasures of this impressive novel, although considerable, are almost entirely intellectual.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Science a scientist will be thrilled by, Sep 7 2002
By Sarah Koniewicz (Morrisville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Schild's Ladder (Paperback)
Hello everybody,

I am constantly arguing with my physics professors about how a science fiction book can sometimes provoke more understanding than a textbook. I will be well-equipt for my next debate with Schild's Ladder on my side, and relish in the new areas of speculation as I take Quantum Mechanics next semester. Sometimes the scientist has to imagine.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Mediation, Quantum Theory and a whole new universe ..., Jun 5 2002
By Tama Leaver (Perth, Western Australia Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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3.0 out of 5 stars more quantum gibberish, May 31 2002
By Thomas D. Gulch "tdgulch" (Pennsauken, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Ever since the photon/two slit experiment and hugh everetts'
many world's theory,science fiction writers have had a field
day with speculation. But Egan's looped nodes of Quantum
Graph Theory present gibberish as plausible fact. I can see
the possiblity of thorne's quantum foam and the delectable
nonsense of schrodingers cat, but overlapping nodal quantum
gaphs as a foundation of all reality? Come on! Egan should concentrate more on fiction and less on quantum speculation
or people will start drying puddles in their basements by standing over the puddle and reading this book alound.
The whole book was a chore to read.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Science, Not Enough Fiction
One of the great pleasures of being a reader is in the anticipation of a new book. The disappointment of expectations is perhaps the greatest pain. Read more
Published on May 22 2002 by flying-monkey

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant science fiction
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... Read more
Published on May 16 2002 by Harriet Klausner

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment
I like Egan's work and don't generally mind it when he gets technical (e.g., as he did, ferquently, in Diaspora), but this books often seems to be little more than characters... Read more
Published on May 15 2002 by Andrew X. Lias

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful mind expanding stuff - but not his best work
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," wrote Arthur C. Clarke. The fiction of Greg Egan embodies this claim. Read more
Published on May 15 2002 by Bris Vegas

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