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Diaspora
 
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Diaspora (Paperback)

by Greg Egan (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 14.99
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

By the year 2975, humanity has wandered down several widely divergent evolutionary paths. "Flesher" life is that which resides in a basically human body, though genetically engineered mutations have created communication problems throughout the species. In the "polises," meanwhile, disembodied but self-aware artificial intelligences procreate, interact, make art and attempt to solve life's mathematical mysteries. Then there are the "gleisners," which are conscious, flesher-shaped robots run by self-aware software that is linked directly to the physical world through hardware. Throughout, Egan (Distress) follows the progress of Yatima, an orphan spontaneously generated by the non-sentient software of the Konishi polis. Yatima gains self-awareness, meets with Earthly fleshers and, when tragedy strikes, becomes personally involved in the greatest search for species survival ever undertaken. Though the novel often reads like a series of tenuously connected graduate theses and lacks the robust drama and characterizations of good fiction, fans of hard SF that incorporates higher mathematics and provocative hypotheses about future evolution are sure to be fascinated by Egan's speculations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal

By the end of the second millennium, the human race has evolved into three distinct groups: conscious software programs known as citizens, sentient robots called gleisners, and unaltered humans or fleshers. When a cosmic accident forces the evacuation of Earth, these three groups form a tentative alliance to explore the known universe in search of unknown?and perhaps unknowable?possibilities. Egan's (Distress, LJ 6/15/97) remarkable gift for infusing theoretical physics with vibrant immediacy, creating sympathetic characters that stretch the definition of humanity, results in an exhilarating galactic adventure that echoes the best efforts of Greg Bear, Larry Niven, and other masters of hard sf. A top-notch purchase for any library.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
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1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2.0 out of 5 stars A bit disjointed., Sep 23 2005
By Stephen Keppel-Jones (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Diaspora (Paperback)
Other reviewers have mentioned Egan's emphasis on science and science fiction, and his lack of emphasis on plot and characterization. I would have to agree with these views. I found the first half of the book relatively easy to follow, and interesting to read, up to about the second transition to higher numbers of dimensions. After that I felt that the book more or less completely lost its grip on reality, and turned into the written equivalent of the multicoloured swirling ending of the "2001" movie. In other words it was somewhat of a bizarre experience and didn't leave me with a feeling of having learned anything, or being entertained, or having spent my reading time wisely at all. I kept hoping right up to the end that slogging through ever higher dimensions would somehow eventually lead to a resolution of some conflict, or a final goal that made sense. But that never occurred. I was quite disappointed.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch scifi, Nov 9 2002
This review is from: Diaspora (Paperback)
It's been a while since I read this, so I'll be a little short on specifics. It was the first Greg Egan book I'd read, and it blew me away. It starts off a little on the strange side, with a new form to represent neutre objects, "ve said that vis arm hurt..." instead of "he said that his arm hurt", which initially put me off. I've read enough bad scifi to expect that this was just a lousy gimmick. But, after wading through the first chapter, including some overly abstract mathy bits, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Egan's real charm is his *ideas* - truly firstrate concepts, taking an esoteric idea from current scientific thought and carrying it to its logical extreme. He's a computer scientist by training, and you can see this in his writing. (I'm a grad student in CS, and it's easy to see where he pilfers his ideas from.) Diaspora carries on with an idea originally presented in Axiomatic: what if your brain could be perfectly mimicked by a computer program (a "dual")? How would "real" people interact with computer-simulated versions of their own brains? And what are the impacts - if you could make a copy of yourself, or save a backup version in case you screw something up?

For newcomers to Egan, I'd recommend starting with Axiomatic, which gives you a taste of his originality, and introduces the dual concept. Diaspora is the logical next step, with more firstrate ideas.

For the record, I didn't really like Permutation City, the only other Egan book I've read.

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4.0 out of 5 stars An epic that spans time and space to the INFINITE degree, Jun 6 2000
By "beachie" (WPB, FL) - See all my reviews
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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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly amazing, occasionally incomprehensible
Diaspora is a great novel, profound in scope and mind-blowing, when my mind can percive its concepts. Read more
Published on Jun 26 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars so full of concepts and ideas that the plot can't keep up
Now, first of all: I enjoyed this book. The concepts presented within are amongst the most outlandish and challenging I've ever read and will leave you gasping for breath and... Read more
Published on Jun 25 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable, technical, and vivid
This is a great book for the hard-core sci-fi fan, and a degree in physics doesn't hurt any. The plot is more of an inner journey than anything, but Egan makes significant use of... Read more
Published on Jun 7 1999

3.0 out of 5 stars Greg Egan gives his audience what they deserve
At best we are just stolen moments of poorly designed software. That, at least, is the theme of this astonishingly dense book. Read more
Published on April 19 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars read it asap!
i haven't even finished this book yet, but it's already outclassed everything I've read since Distress came out; why isn't greg egan's name up in lights? Read more
Published on April 6 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Sci-Fi at its Best.
Immortality as software. This is a very possible future considering the direction technology is taking today. HAL may be us! Hard Sci-Fi at its best.
Published on Mar 8 1999

2.0 out of 5 stars Great Science, Atrocious Fiction
Anything that makes a novel worth reading is entirely absent here. If you think Physical Review Letters is good light reading, than you might enjoy this book. Read more
Published on Jan 1 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep, dense, thoroughly enthralling
Greg Egan's DIASPORA is what science fiction should be. This book is not for everyone, and even hard core science fiction fans will find parts of it hard to follow and... Read more
Published on Nov 13 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Best science fiction novel this year
This is probably Egan's best novel so far. I have little doubt that it will be the best science fiction novel published this year. Read more
Published on Aug 26 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars An exhilerating tour through the future of science and mind
This is my favourite of Greg Egan's novels so far. A beautifully balanced structure, painlessly educational in maths, physics and contemporary theories of consciousness... Read more
Published on Aug 4 1998

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