Pat Rondon reviewed Diaspora. by Greg Egan
None
5 stars
The cover promises "the greatest adventure of all is about to begin",
which is pretty cliched and hokey, but it's hard to argue that this
novel, with its artificial intelligences exploring this physical
universe, computational universes embedded in it, and an infinite
hierachy of universes beyond ours, all in the name of avoiding just
about the largest imaginable natural disaster, doesn't deliver on the
promise. There's so much interesting stuff that the only dull moments
here are when the author focuses on the characters, who are pretty
bland, rather than the worlds they live in, which are anything but.
Think Flatland, but not flinching from going all the way into ever
more spatial dimensions, and working in dimensions of
computations-within-computations, showing surprising similarities.
Still, that's only a start, and a small sliver of the scope of the
novel, which is really, really ambitious.
Time, even in small amounts, is hard …
The cover promises "the greatest adventure of all is about to begin",
which is pretty cliched and hokey, but it's hard to argue that this
novel, with its artificial intelligences exploring this physical
universe, computational universes embedded in it, and an infinite
hierachy of universes beyond ours, all in the name of avoiding just
about the largest imaginable natural disaster, doesn't deliver on the
promise. There's so much interesting stuff that the only dull moments
here are when the author focuses on the characters, who are pretty
bland, rather than the worlds they live in, which are anything but.
Think Flatland, but not flinching from going all the way into ever
more spatial dimensions, and working in dimensions of
computations-within-computations, showing surprising similarities.
Still, that's only a start, and a small sliver of the scope of the
novel, which is really, really ambitious.
Time, even in small amounts, is hard on even the best sci-fi, and some
(very few) of the (many) ideas here are much less surprising now than
they must have been when the book came out sixteen years ago. Mind
uploading and lifeforms living in universes made entirely of software
might have seemed radical then: the only people living a significant
portion of their lives in virtual worlds were basically hard-core
video game and IRC junkies. Now almost everyone spends at least a few
hours a day interacting with others in purely virtual worlds
(Facebook, WoW, etc.). The clear trend now is to spend more time in
online as the available experiences become richer, inevitably
approaching and surpassing the possibilies of the physical world ---
who wouldn't prefer to live in a world that's just as rich as the
natural world, but better because we would have full control over
every aspect, from the laws of physics to how we experience time
passing? We take it for granted now that more of our lives will be
carried out in virtual realities, and our main concern is how we're
going to avoid amusing ourselves to death in a world of endless
hedonistic possibilies. Then again, even if you could foresee that in
1997, why bother writing about it? I prefer the more optimistic and
adventurous vision shown here.
