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Distress
 
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Distress (Paperback)

de Greg Egan (Author)
3.5étoiles sur 5  Voir tous les commentaires (17 évaluations de client)

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From Kirkus Reviews

About 60 years from now, SeeNet journalist and narrator Andrew Worth (he has a camera and computer software hardwired into his body) muscles in on a colleague's assignment to cover a physics convention on the artificial coral island, Stateless, at which Nobel laureate Violet Mosala is expected to announce a watertight Theory of Everything (TOE). The event, however, is complicated by the presence of several noisy anti-science cult groups--among them the mysterious and secretive Anthrocosmologists who believe that whoever first formulates the TOE will become the Keystone in which the completed TOE, mingling information theory with particle physics, will actually change the structure of the universe. Andrew's Anthrocosmology contact, Akili Kuwale, a ``gender migrant'' (s/he has no breasts or sexual organs), warns that a particularly violent, extreme faction intends to assassinate Violet to prevent the Aleph Moment when the completed TOE's effects kick in. Soon, Andrew falls sick--the extremists have infected him, intending that he pass the virus on to Violet; she falls ill, but has arranged for supercomputers to complete her calculations and disseminate the results. As the extremists redouble their violent efforts, Stateless's former owners send mercenaries to recapture the island, while a sort of reverse echo of the Aleph Moment results in a wave of mass insanity, or Distress, whose victims apparently have all turned into Keystones! Challenging, well informed, and iconoclastic, but also abstruse and often heavy: admirable rather than enjoyable, but an impressive first hardcover nonetheless. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description

Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness -- "Distress," or acute clinical anxiety syndrome, for another assignment. He's on his way to the artifical island of Stateless, where the world's top physicists are gathering to decide on a new TOE, or Theory of Everything, to replace Einstein's outmoded legacy.

Chief among the scientists is the brilliant African Nobel laureate, Violet Mosala, the focus of Worth's story, who is the subject of mysterious death threats. Worth begins his own investigation, but it takes on even more urgency when he finds that Distress, the mental plague now affecting millions, is linked somehow to the approaching "Aleph Moment" when the TOE is finalized. The countdown has begun for a disaster that will reach all the way back to the Big Bang. And beyond...


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L'avis des consommateurs

17 évaluations
5 étoiles:
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3.5étoiles sur 5 (17 évaluations de client)
 
 
 
 
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3.0étoiles sur 5 Read the Originals !, Sep 4 2001
Par Gregg Silk (Gaithersburg, MD) - Voir tous mes commentaires
Very strong start in a familiar city of tomorrow changed by broadband communications and biotech. Interesting character development. Then it goes to a floating island and much time is spent describing its infrastructure and politics. Pretty convential techy sci-fi, minus much action. Many characters, characters lecture each other and posture.

As far as Egan the "idea man," well.....
The scenario of the butchered man revived for questioning is Alfreds Bester's The Stars My Destination.

The mob of New Agers besieging the cosmologists is Isaac Asimov's Nightfall.
And the computer that triggers the end of the universe by calculating ultimate truth is Ray Bradberry's The Nine Million Name of God.

.... All of which were better than Distress

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2.0étoiles sur 5 too much philosophical lecturing, unreasonable plot, Aoû 15 2001
Par Mark "purplie" (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - Voir tous mes commentaires
Not everyone agrees with me (judging by the other reviews), and you may not either, but I find more effective a novel which *shows* me the possibilities of human nature, rather than lecturing me on it.

Egan's other novels (the two i've read) do a much better job of that. But in this one... For the first half of the book, the scenes don't develop the plot at all; they're just triggers for the protagonist to spout another philosophical or ethical lecture. These tend to be not very deep and most of the people reading this book will probably agree with them anyway.

The actual plot doesn't start being developed until page 200 or bette, and when it comes, it may disappoint a lot of hard science readers. The thesis that intelligent beings somehow have a special place in the laws of the universe (rather than obeying the same laws of particles, forces, quantum mechanics, etc. as all other objects) is very weak---much weaker than the similar theme put forth in Egan's other novel "Quarantine".

And in the end, the plot's resolution doesn't come out of the desire to have a good story; it's just a final shot at delivering the main philosophical message (and yes we do get a final "lecture" at the end), which is that it is impossible for people to really understand each other.

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4.0étoiles sur 5 Mind Blowing, Avril 17 2001
Par Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - Voir tous mes commentaires
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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.

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Commentaires client les plus récents

2.0étoiles sur 5 Tons of Technology Presented Awkwardly
I gave it my best shot, but I guess I'm not a "hard" science fiction fan (if that means all technology and no character development). Read more
Publié le Avril 9 2001 par Petra Soft

5.0étoiles sur 5 A science fiction gem.
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. Read more
Publié le Mars 25 2001 par Stephen Dedman

5.0étoiles sur 5 First Class Hard Science Fiction
If you like the "Killer B's" (David Brin, Gregory Benford, or Greg Bear) you'll like this. Read more
Publié le Déc 23 2000 par Glenn H. Reynolds

5.0étoiles sur 5 I was never a fan of sci-fi until now
Most of the time when I read Sci-Fi I thought that it was ridiculous, until now! Greg Egan writes Sci-Fi the way that it should be written. Read more
Publié le Sep 22 2000 par Edna Eudave-Jones

4.0étoiles sur 5 Unconventional Science Fiction
Greg Egan's "Distress" is a most unusual work of science fiction. Most of the story takes place on Earth in the middle of the next century, but on an artificially... Read more
Publié le Juil 29 2000 par Brian D. Rubendall

5.0étoiles sur 5 Great thought provoking reading
From the opening "revival" scene that I had to read three times to the final page, Distress was a great read. Read more
Publié le Déc 3 1999 par D. Stamnitz

5.0étoiles sur 5 Egan's best so far. A real masterwork.
Epistemology and TOE metaphysics stretched together in the best work of fiction I have ever read on the subjects. Read more
Publié le Aoû 10 1999

3.0étoiles sur 5 Bring Your Mind, But also a Magic Marker
In "Distress", Greg Egan has provided a thought-provoking vision of the future, and a chilling view of the essence of reality. Read more
Publié le Juil 5 1999

4.0étoiles sur 5 thought provoking and immensely enjoyable
The exposition blew my mind more than anything I've read in a long time - it's soemthing you have to read. Read more
Publié le Jui 25 1999

1.0étoiles sur 5 Another example of reckless pseudoscience
Stereotypes abound in this inane novel that dares call itself SCIENCE fiction. So, I suppose those that don't endorse the Big Bang and the 'uselessness' of intimacy are all... Read more
Publié le Mars 26 1999

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