Ana and Kata: “Summerland” by Hannu Rajaniemi

“Yet the longer you lived in Summerland, the stranger things became. Your hypersight grew more acute, and little by little, you developed an awareness of two additional directions that were invisible to the living. One was the ana direction, four-up. Towards ana lay the world of the living, in its own thin slice of the aether. It was the direction of the Unseen, the mysterious source of hyperlight and soul. Luz stones fell from ana, lodged themselves in dense aetheric configurations like brains at birth. Upon death, the luz detached and fell below the plane of the living world in the kata direction – the equivalent of down in the fourth [spatial] dimension.”

In “Summerland” by Hannu Rajaniemi

I don’t know how much physics people reading this post know. So, here’s a very, very, very brief synopsis on how objects in 1D, 2D, 3D, 4D space move:

Dimensional space         Movement that can be made in that space

1D         Forward, backward

2D         Forward, backward, right, left

3D         Forward, backward, right, left, up, down

4D        Forward, backward, right, left, up, down, ana (imagine the object coming down from heaven), kata (imagine the object going up from hell)

As you can see, in 4D space we’ve got two additional directions: ana and kata. If want more than this by way of explanation, you’ve got to look elsewhere.

Rachel White and Peter Bloom, the main protagonists of Rajaniemi’s novel, live literally on different planes of existence: life vs. the afterlive. I’ve been told that if one found themselves in a higher dimensional space they would flop and fold in very much the same way that a piece of paper (nearly 2D) does in our 3-D world. In higher dimensions we’re all surface. However a 4-D person sticking their hand in our 3-D space would reveal an internal cross section in the same way our 3D hand crossing through a 2-D Universe would be a cross section. Could our hand be physically cut by the 2D plane? So lower beings going in reverse to higher dimensions would then reveal their entire internal and external surfaces? In essence are they ripped into one flat piece of meat? If they ended up in 5D hyperspace devoid of any laws of physics would they flop around helplessly, and at least stay together in that one flat piece?

The problem with extra dimensions is that our brains have specifically evolved, or adapted if you prefer, to recognise 3D space. If when we try think of 1 & 2D our mind sees them embedded in 3D. 2D animals might exist if they didn’t have a digestive/colon tract because it is this that would separate the 2 halves of the animal. We might be embedded in 4D. However, dimensions don’t have to be macro and might exist on the quantum level as in Superstring theory and compactification. However, we are never likely to be able to prove this since there is no known way to probe at this level.

Here’s a way to visualise the “innards” of a 2D person. Take a piece of paper to be the 2 dimensional world; we will create a person to live in it. First draw a basic outline of a person on the paper. In order to “live” the 2-D person will have to have organs: draw a brain in its head, heart and lungs in its chest, a stomach in its belly and pipes connecting its mouth to the lungs and stomach (note that the mouth has to be on the side of its head so that it opens up into the rest of the paper), as much detail as you feel like. This 2D person lives only in the piece of paper. It therefore considers the organs you just drew to be its innards, since the only way to get to them from the edge of the paper is to pass through its “skin” (the outline of your drawing). However you have a 3D perspective, so you can touch the organs without passing through the skin. This means that what it considers to be innards, the 3-D universe does not, so they would fall out if you ever able to lift the person of the paper.

There would be a few problems for 3D matter existing within 4D space, let alone a human surviving within 4 dimensional space! The first problem is that 4D matter as we understand it would be very unlikely, simply because orbits (or the 4D equivalent) are unstable in 4D space. So, electrons could not remain in orbit around a nucleus, likewise planets would not remain in orbit around a star (or again, their 4d equivalents). The reason for this is, (in the case of a planet) the way gravity falls-off much more rapidly in 4D. (Being proportional to 1/r^3 rather than 1/r^2). So, gravity would be unable to ‘balance’ centripetal force and the slightest perturbation of the orbit would result in the planet either flying-off into ‘space’, or spiralling into the star. Likewise, the force holding the electron in orbit around the nucleus would behave in much the same way, so if electrons & proton/neutron nuclei exist in 4D, they would do so as a 4d soup of charged particles.

The other rather major problem is that a 3D object in 4D space would have no substance, exactly like a 2D ‘object’ in 3 space. A 2D object would extend over only 2 dimensions, much like a sheet of paper with no thickness, it would simply not exist. That fact that a 3D object has no 4D component means that it simply could not exist in 4 space. It would be exactly analogous to the infinitely thin sheet of paper (representing a 2D object) in 3D space.

Question: As I understand it, the compactification scale within 3D space is a similar order of magnitude to the Plank length? Answer: the plank length would be greater in 4D space, (by several orders of magnitude?) so it should follow that the compactification scale in higher dimensional space is also increased (for the remaining 9, 10 or 25 dimensions, as one of the previously compactified dimensions in 3D space in now BIG in 4D space!). However, wouldn’t it be true to say that the scale is still sub-micro, i.e.: the dimensions still being many orders of magnitude smaller than any 4D subatomic particle and also so small that gravitational effect would be negligible to non-existent? I suppose I have also ‘conveniently’ ignored the recollection I have that ‘G’ in 4D space is quite a bit larger than in 3D space. I don’t think that changes the suggestion that ‘orbits’ (both of them!) are unstable in 4D.

I have a different idea of time and although I have worked some equations I still have problems so it remains an idea and not a theory. The idea is that time as we use it (‘arrow of’, sequence of events, progression of change, etc.) is a manifestation of something more fundamental which I refer to as Component Time. In this, C.T. is multidimensional and I’m considering 4D C.T. where one of those is the part we recognise. However, it needs to be an evolving system and what I call ‘repeatable relative function’ as the math to describe it. The nearest analogy would be a ‘time gene’. Certain numbers appear to be constants some of which, coincidentally, are very close to what we use in space/rocket science. If such an idea was applied to macro extra D then each 3D instant might be a ‘patch’ on an expanding 4D (or 4+xD) surface. This could mean that the past still exists as ‘patch’ and that opens the flood gates doesn’t it. I have posted some of these ideas but they remain just ideas.

I’ve always wondered something. If 3D beings can place objects in 2D space, and that 2D space beings would have no conception of how it got there or what it’s for, couldn’t we argue that a 4 dimensional “being” may have placed something in our 3D space at the beginning of the universe thus solving the mystery of how something (our universe and the big bang) came from nothing? I say this because we have no concept of how it’s even possible to make something of nothing like how 2D beings have no concept of a 3D object placed in there space, even though us as 3D beings have full understanding of how it’s possible (for example, picture your life as a dot on a piece of paper and a 3D being set down a coffee mug. What would you see? You would see nothing but a flat plane in front of you, but even though there is still something there).Could different higher level dimensions create other lower dimensions? If a 4D “object” was placed in our 3D universe it would have to have mass based on the theory of relativity, otherwise it would just be traveling at the speed of light. So assuming this object has mass it would HAVE to have energy (gravitational potential) thus making something come from nothing (from a 3D beings perspective of course). Are these “objects” from a 4D world being placed in our dimension, dark matter? Dark matter, of course, is not observable from a 3D perspective (does not absorb or reflect light) but we know it has to exist because it alters gravitational pulls in our observable universe. A final question to leave with would be… could a 4D being see dark matter as we see the very coffee cup we placed on the piece of paper? How can we say a 2D object cannot exist in a world with three dimensions? Maybe they can exist here, but due to their lack of a third dimension and therefore volume we simply cannot observe them. Perhaps it works in the same way for 3D objects in a world with four dimensions. The 3D object can exist there, but will simply be unobservable to a being living in that world with four dimensions, due to it lacking that fourth dimension.

I tend to think the concept of wormholes or the like are linked with the fourth dimension. The idea that you can take a 2D object in a 2D world and move it into the third dimension (think having a 2D picture on a page and you pull a piece of that picture off the page) and then back into the 2D world at a different location (think placing that object back on the page in a different spot), this object, to an observer in the 2D world, would appear to have ‘teleported’ (because the 2D observer cannot see what is occurring in the third dimension). This might also hold true in our three-dimensional world. An object is pulled into the fourth dimension and is then returned to the three-dimensional world in a different location. This would give to us (the observer in the three-dimensional world) the appearance that that object ‘teleported’.

The earliest conception of “modern” space-time by Minkowski in his space-time diagrams was that objects (including us) are all really examples of a four dimensional manifold, the world-lines of their particles stretching from the Big Bang to an unknown distant future. We as 4-manifolds do not experience all the events of our lives simultaneously, but as successive moments of time — successive 3-d “slices” of the 4-manifold. This is probably because causality has a speed limit — the speed of light — which essentially fragments what our consciousness can perceive into the enormous number of “frames” (3D cross-sections or individual moments) of our lives. This is because of relativity of simultaneity demanded by Einstein’s Special Relativity, which makes successive moments possible. The mystery is how our “conscious selves” at each one of these moments experiences a transition from one “frame” (3D slice) to the next. The perceived “Arrow of Time.” It is what physicist David Park called “the fallacy of the animated Minkowski diagram.” I am not a single conscious entity aware of my entire life, but something resembling a train of boxcars, with each boxcar a conscious self-observing an instant at a time, with each boxcar moving forward. Some thinkers use this as an argument for consciousness being not an emergent property but rather something “outside” of the material world.

Rajaniemi constructed a wonderful world wherein the existence of higher dimensional creatures ‘a la H.P. Lovecraft would explain certain phenomena, such as so-called poltergeist manifestations, where, for example, objects sometimes disappear from locked cupboards or safes, only to reappear after a time back there or somewhere else. It is as if some mischievous 4D creature reaches down into our 3D world and grabs something. I thought hard about what Rajaniemi is trying to tell us in a fictionalized way and I too ask the question as follows: if energy (in our case it’s matter in space and time) never dies, could it change its form in a dimension beyond ours?  But I am grappling right now with how our notion of “energy” might have to be changed. In 1926 Sir Arthur Eddington said on the verge of the astonishing realization of quantum physics, “something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” I think we’re in the same place here. Who knows what other dimensions there are because as mere mortals we do not really know for sure; however, some people believe in ghosts or spirits, and some people claim evidence of such. If this is true then the realm they live in could be another dimension of existence. Everything is happening at once. Different aspects of ourselves do exist in other dimensions and I believe that certain energies can indeed be allowed entrance (this is what my SFional self wants to believe…). As Rajaniemi says: "The material world was invisible, except for electricity and the soul-sparks of the living."

Bottom-line: 4D space has an extra spatial ‘direction’ at right angles to the other three. (So, in addition to up/down, left/right and back/forth, there’s ana/kata as Rajaniemi uses in his book – see quote above). We don’t live in a ‘dimension;’ we live in a three dimensional space, with time being considered to be analogous to a 4th dimension. Stating that we live in our ‘dimension’ is not really correct, it’s simply convenient shorthand for saying the ‘3 dimensional space’ we live within. Whether beings are entering our 3D space from a space with more dimensions (= a higher dimension, in this case!) as ‘spirits’ is really a matter for pseudo-scientific speculation. It might turn out to be the case, but somehow I very much doubt it…

Sorry for this long review. Hannu Rajaniemi and Greg Egan are two of the most extraordinary SF writers of the hard stance kind of tone. You should read them for the science. Not so much for the stories. Incidentally, Summerland’s spy story is a little bonkers…5 stars for the physics, 1 star for the story: 3 stars altogether.

NB: SF = Speculative Fiction.

The Quest for Immortality, variant no. 843: “A Calculated Life” by Anne Charnock

“’That’s the heart of the problem. I haven’t lived enough. My character is just the combination of my intellect and my faults. I haven’t had time to become more complex, more interesting. […] I’m not sure if you realize this but without my flaws I’d be pretty dull. You should know that.’”

In “A Calculated Life” by Anne Charnock

For the sake of argument let me be devil’s advocate.

The scientific materialist assumption is that the body is the primary organ and consciousness is secondary. This is not so; consciousness is the primary experience and the body and all other experiences are secondary. The body is a construct of consciousness. Forward thinking scientists are just beginning to realise this. Man might be able to prolong life but a 'machine' existence will never happen because the 'reality' of phenomenal existence is simultaneously 'real' and 'not real'. People, including scientists tend to see everything in terms of being a binary system. Yes/no, off/on, is/isn't, 0/1, true /untrue. Reality is not that simplistic. Mm, that's some good pseudo bullshit. Preventing aging is almost certainly more achievable soon than consciousness transfer, but ultimately the latter offers greater security and opportunity. Immortal DNA is all very well, until you suffer catastrophic injury or brain damage. With transferable consciousness, you get the immortality, along with the option to backup and restore in the event of a fatal accident, as well as the ability to travel at light-speed as a digital signal to be reawakened on arrival. And that's before we even get into the idea of truly inhabiting the virtual world as digital consciousness. With an infinitesimal fraction of the earth's current energy use, you could have untold trillions living in a virtual utopia, with a near infinite diversity of cultures, worlds and lifestyles. Nevertheless, is it misleading to talk about 'transferable' consciousness? What would be uploaded would be a facsimile of your consciousness. As far as the exterior world, interacting with the facsimile, would be concerned it would be you. However, it would actually be a totally new instance of you, with no continuity of your original consciousness. It's what's always troubled me about the idea of Star Trek-type teleportation - the thought that disintegrating someone in one place and then reassembling them in another, would effectively mean the death of the original, internally-experienced consciousness (although nobody else would notice or care!). Of course, it all depends on the manner of the transfer, and your outlook on identity and consciousness. Personally, I would consider an accurate facsimile to be me. A second version, sure, but I don't see that as an obstacle to identity. Once they start experiencing separate things though, they will diverge, and the concept of which is the "true" me becomes less meaningful. The continuity of consciousness is interesting; a new instance would be me, but would leave the original me intact, so from the original's POV, the copy is a clone. However, if you could first augment the brain with computers, allowing consciousness to run on both subtracts at the same time (imagine your normal consciousness, but with access to extra digital memory, for example) then you could theoretically effect the transfer smoothly, "moving" your consciousness purely into the inorganic memory. Basically, this kind of stuff will force us to challenge our ideas of self, and of identity, because we've never had cause to think of ourselves as anything other than singular beings, though observations after the severing of the corpus callosum in epilepsy sufferers has already put strain on that idea, suggesting that we are already less easily defined than we like to think (I recommend Greg Egan's SF books as a great place to explore these ideas, beginning with Permutation City).

The joy of intelligent thinking. We have it. Computers don't. Computers will be able to make decisions (and sometimes those decisions are going to be wrong), but there are so many ways in which computers cannot compete with the human. "I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do". (HAL 2001). Just look at the European Language top level C2 - "Can express themselves spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations." Being able to say things with "shades of meaning", heck native speakers cannot even do that sometimes. And when it comes to listening or reading humans can read between the lines and they can understand subtleties and nuances. Computers and robots will enhance the world - hey, they can even go to visit Mars rather than risking the life of a person - but it will take much more time before they can out think us.

Chess - Go - Tic-Tac-Toe these are games! And they have finite boundaries. Real life? Enjoy it.

Charnock plays with these concepts in a manner that felt non-gimmicky. Lots of SF nowadays feels all too gimmicky and swamped in crap. Charnock’s basic presumption is that the mind is ultimately not just software, running on the hardware of the brain. Thus, we can transfer it, duplicate it, upload it and the rest. Throughout the novel we’re kept in doubt as to the nature of the human mind. Real science has made very little headway in that direction. Some scientists and philosophers deny there is such a thing as the mind at all. They say the mind is just what the brain does. Jayna’s rebooting makes me thing: "It won't be her surely", but this doesn't even quite catch it, it's worse than that. It won't even be a copy of her. No Jayna 2. Whatever Charnock created on another piece of hardware and software - even if the constructors used another biological neural network! - will approximate aspects that we as the readers will be able to identify, but a) Jayna will never be the same, and b) point (a) does not even matter, because it won't be identical. Even if some godly creature made an atom-for-atom copy of Jayna, that's going to be another “person”. Doesn't matter that it's a copy, meaning same memories etc. From the point of creation of the copy there are two different and separate physical beings without any connection. Will there be a sequel to this wonderful novel? For the first time in many years I wouldn’t mind reading it now.

 

NB: At the end of the novel Charnock mentions Kurzweil’s “The Age of Spiritual Machines” which I read a long time ago. One word: crap! Kurzweil never gives indication of understanding that a finite but infinitely varied and magnificent environment exists in the real world, beyond humans, nor what its relationship would be to this kind of bizarre transformation. The perpetrators of this nightmare seem to be unaware that we are in the Sixth Great Extinction now and that it will include humans. One must believe these people have been in their cells with computers and chips for too long. Perhaps their whole lives. What will happen when the EMP attack takes it all down? I live in Lisbon that is so far away from this kind of isolated industrial society conceit that I can hardly believe Kurzweil understands the real world. But I tell you, in my real world, my swallows were back 2 months early…That much I know.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Phildickian SF: "After the Apocalypse" by Maureen F. McHugh

8:51 am 29 November 2014

(#60 - 2014#). Published in 2011.

This kind of book epitomizes the reason why I prefer SF above anything else, reading-wise.

In my last book review ("The Burning Room" by Michael Connelly), I ranted about the likeness of (some) novels in the SF field.

Most of the novels of today are dull, uninspired, lifeless and more-of-the-same. This is the state of the art nowadays. And then there are short stories…

If books were bricks, short stories would be pebbles, every one of them totally different. A pebble can be polished until it becomes a ruby, and each one is unique, just like a short story.

I’ve always thought writing short stories is more difficult than writing novels: word for word, page for page, they are just far more difficult to write (I’ve got a writer-friend,Álvaro Cordeiro, and I’m always amazed at the way he produces short story prose out of the blue; his short story prose is always asking for something more, ie, we can sense a novel wanting to come out).

The feeling I have while reading McHugh, Cadigan, Shepard, and Cordeiro tells me there’s something here to be learned. In a short story every word is paramount; every phrase, every sentence, every paragraph. Because they are short, this kind of stories have to be polished until “perfection” is within reach. Such “perfection” is much more difficult to attain with novels, where writers can easily afford to waste words, to go in pursuit of the writing Nirnava. That’s why we have bloated novels. The writer of novels is more prone to get lost, because he goes wandering away for several pages, even chapters (I could name a few books, but I won’t…), before returning to the story.

With every passing year, novels grow longer and longer, their themes and ideas stretched ever more thinly. SF novels are beginning to resemble real bricks.

Maureen F. McHugh belongs to the Pat Cadigan, Lucius Shepard, and Greg Egan lineage. They write short fiction of the best kind (even though they also write wonderful novels).

I’m a huge fan of clean, evocative prose. A killer eye for detail is not to be dismissed as well. McHugh’s sympathetic, and humorous view into the human condition, gave me a crafted work of speculative fiction about what humanity might stand to lose (or maybe gain), when we are faced with the burdens of the end times already rearing their ugly heads. Her characters are astute, funny and absolutely believable.

The stories included in this collection are:

“The Naturalist”: Zombies in Cleveland. The story is far above the quality of most zombie fiction I’ve ever read elsewhere;

“Special Economics”: Not much originality here but the execution is top-notch;

“Useless Things” (perfect Story; the best short story in the collection): An unnamed woman builds “reborns,” dolls that look like newborn infants. “The point is to make them look almost, but not quite real;

“The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large”: Dissociative fugues. Fugue states in fiction. One word: “wonderful”;

“The Kingdom of the Blind”: AI is rampant here. Wonderful characterization. When a cold backup restore takes place, this fact alone will be apocalyptic to an AI machine. The most interesting part of the story is the interaction between the female programmer and the men around her;

“Going to France”: Borges' magic realism raises its head here. One of the best treatments of magic realism in SF I’ve ever read. A woman who gives aid to some folks “flying” to France;

“Honeymoon”: The destruction of dreams on a devastating level;

“The Effect of Centrifugal Forces”: Families may not be able to look after parents as their mental faculties disintegrate. This is a powerful and sad story;

“After the Apocalypse”: It’s about biding ties that sometimes fail to bind.

For me there’s always something of Philip K. Dick about the way Mchugh writes fiction. For starters McHugh does not write about heroes, and she doesn’t go for the unexpected twist, so common in fiction nowadays. By just introducing a minor reality displacement to her ordinary characters, going about their business, we are able to read something truly different. McHugh’s minimalist style, grounded in reality is what makes the difference for me.

There really isn’t a bad story here, which is extremely rare for a collection of short stories (be it SF or otherwise).

I’ve always believed that SF is not (only) about the future. “After the Apocalypse” is about what comes “after”, ie, it’s all about us.

This is the kind of book that still makes me believe there’s Story in SF.

NB: Too bad Maureen F. McHugh isn’t more prolific. For me, she’s got a 2 out of 2 5-star rating review (the other being “China Mountain Zhang” – vide review here).

SF = Speculative Fiction.

"Greg Egan" by Karen Burnham

11:19 am 9 March 2014

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

The book is due to be published on April 30, 2014.

Last year I decided to re-(…)-re-read Egan’s most successful novel: “Permutation City” once again. It still resonates highly with me:

http://antao.booklikes.com/post/606443/post

When I took notice that a book on Greg Egan, by none other than Karen Burnham herself (vide Locus Magazine Roundtable on Greg Egan: http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2012/03/roundtable-on-greg-egan/ ), I just jumped at the chance to get an advance reader’s copy by NetGalley.

Burnham's book is divided into 5 chapters:
⦁ Writing Radical Hard SF
⦁ Ethical Standards
⦁ Identity and Consciousness
⦁ Scientific Analysis
⦁ Science and Society (includes an interview with Greg Egan)

The scope of Burnham’s book on Greg Egan is a rather extended analysis of the latter’s work. Greg Egan has been for more than 20 years one of my favourite authors (not specifically of SF).

I’ve been reading SF for more than 30 years, and in SF criticism and scholarship the accumulation of facts is still being done, as the stream of books and articles in the last decade testifies. Burnham is less concerned with surveying the bare facts of Egan’s body of work than with interpreting its significance. Burnham successfully attempted to establish the common proprieties of Egan’s writing, whether in the treatment of a theme or in the broader scope of the SF field. SF considered as a system belongs within much larger systems. Burnham is able to fully contextualize Egan’s work, in a way I’ve seldom seen done before in the SF field (eg, John Clute, Gary Wolfe, David Langford, Damien Broderick, and now Karen Burnham; They all set out to establish their own lexicon and understanding of SF – to criticize it in its own language, not the language of another art form). With the exception of the above-mentioned, I’ve always found that SF’s current modes of criticism are extremely lacking in creativity.

In the current SF environment, a writer like Egan must appear as mutant. What distinguishes him from other writers is, apart from his erudition and depth of knowledge, is his ear for the slightest nuances of language, and his abundance of imagination and ideas. His work is the product of a personality exerting the whole range of his intellectual faculties to the utmost. Not, as it’s quite common in SF, merely playing with worn-out ideas that have been used and recombined ad nauseam so often that all that remains for the writer to do is to invent some minor twist. Egan’s imagination never seems to tire, and he gets better, and his ideas become more daring, the older he gets (I’m still saving the two first books of the Orthogonal trilogy for later). SF nowadays is full of burn-out writers, bound to repeat themselves forever. What strikes as the most fundamental truth about Egan’s work is his ability to appeal to sophisticated readers, and not to those who are willing to accept the most silly explanations, if only they get an explanation at all. Egan is a man hungering for absolute truths, and yet only too painfully aware that there are none. That all our knowledge is conditional and temporary, and is ever likely to be superseded. Egan does not advocate any form of passivism, quite on the contrary, he urges responsible action, and the need to create ethical systems in a world devoid of higher meaning, lacking absolute values, a world that just is.

Burnham was able to shed light on the fact that much of the intellectual tension of Egan’s novels is derived from the contrast between the essence of things, and their outward appearance, and never more so than in his masterpiece “Permutation City”. Egan’s heroes yearn for the haven of absolutes, but they’re faced with the recognition that they don’t exist, that man is alone, and confronted with the task of creating his own, necessary relative standards of moral action. Egan is a moralist who does not believe in unchangeable moral laws, but who urges intelligent thought from this reader.

On page 13 of the introduction: Russell Letson when referring to Greg Egan states: "I'm willing to defend the preposition that the ruling passion of Egan's work-as-whole is curiosity [...]"and "'curiosity' is such a watery word for what I sense in Egan. [...] a passion not only for structural, functional, and operational understanding but for the implications and connections that make for value or meaning". This for me epitomizes what makes Egan different from other SF writers.

Burnham’s book makes me want to read Egan again, but this time by using her book as support and basis for this rediscovery. This way I’ll be able to appreciate Egan more. As hard SF goes, Egan’s is harder than most. Usually, if an author wants an interstellar civilization, he or she must introduce wormholes, warp drives, or whatever to get the characters from one place to another. Not Greg Egan. For him there’s no easy way out (on page 30: "there can be no doubt, that Egan has staked his reputation on the notion that pure scientific enquiry is a worthy subject for fiction in its own right, and that it is entirely fair to challenge readers to stretch their understanding of physics and math as far it will go”). Not for Burnham as well. No better praise is needed.

On a side note I loved the conspiracy theory involving Ted Chiang and Greg Egan, instantiated through comparisons of some of the work from both authors.

Also worth mentioning in Egan's 2011 interview was his take on the purpose of SF, which was also a clever insight on Burnham's approach to the interview: "you can find critics who have spent their whole careers discussing the genre who don't think scientific discovery even counts as a form narrative. But understanding how the universe works is by far the most important story in human history; nothing has had more impact on our lives" (page 170 on my advance reader's copy). For me that's still the reason I keep reading SF nowadays. Although less and less so, but that's the nature of the beast (aka "The SF Market", especially the american one).