⇒ PDF Schild Ladder A Novel Greg Egan 9780061073441 Books

Schild Ladder A Novel Greg Egan 9780061073441 Books

Download As PDF : Schild Ladder A Novel Greg Egan 9780061073441 Books

Schild Ladder A Novel Greg Egan 9780061073441 Books

Unique story of what another creation, another universe, might be like. On another level, it deals with what humanity will be like after transcendence to a post human state. Greg Egan suggests we will be as divisive and polarized as ever, even deceitful, yet also much more humane and compassionate. Oddly enough, our future descendents will be prone to predjudice​, at least when it comes to the decaying flesh sacks that ordinary or previous humans used to be. These cultural assumptions come back to haunt the ascended, who indeed treat alien microbes with more tespect than their unevolved progenitors. This story is like a mixture of Robert Heinlein on extrapolated societies with Rudy Rucker in higher dimensions. Yes, this is definitely hard science fiction. If you find it hard to accept extrapolations from known physics as an acceptable basis for a plot, maybe this kind of adventure is too much to accept. If you like to speculate, then you will enjoy this ride immensely and have no trouble being able to identify with the characters. This is a good story. Keep it!


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Schild Ladder A Novel Greg Egan 9780061073441 Books Reviews

I am giving this 5 stars conditionally...this book is for deep thinking science people only. This is not Star Wars or even Dune. To really get it all you're probably going to need to be a physics professional of some kind. I am a layman who is really into this stuff (watch the shows, read the media) and I only understood about 70% or 80% of what was going on. This book is about the science...the character stories are mildly interesting but the characters are not deep...they are mostly used as a platform to explain life in the future. I did not find myself caring about the characters that much.

That being said, it was a great book. Lots of mind-melting stuff. The centerpiece of the story is a vacuum metastability event that was triggered unintentionally. But a lot of the book is about describing life in the far future (think 20,000 years+). Human sexuality and identity has become almost alien. People can casually backup copies of their consciousness at will and re-organize their physical bodies on a whim (so everyone is more or less immortal...I think this is a big part of why I didn't care about the characters).

If you feel you are pretty familiar with physics, this book will probably be enjoyable, as it explores a lot of stuff you will not find in other science fiction.
It was another good read by Mr. Egan. I always look forward to getting engrossed in his stories and seeing physics and science from an unexpected perspective. Although I wouldn’t call it his best work, it is still well worth the time.

The only downside to the book is that it ends just when you want to know what is goi g to happen after all of that. There are a few unrelated things that seem to go on but they added to to the story if not necessarily supporting the plot.
Third Egan book for me, and the least enjoyable. Egan loves his science, and so do I, therefore I don't mind an intelligent sci fi book with firm scientific foundations. I like to have my imagination challenged when the effort is worth it. The book has an interesting premise a future humanity discovered that spacetime is something akin to loop quantum gravity, a geometrical abstract representation. Change the geometry and you change the physics. And these future humans have found a way to tinker with this geometry at the fundamental level. Pretty deep stuff already, not for the scientifically faint of heart. Of course one of these experiments goes horribly wrong. While it was supposed to create a tiny, unstable sub universe with new laws of Physics, it turns out it's not unstable at all, in fact it starts growing, cannibalizing the surrounding "normal" space, eventually swallowing entire planetary systems.
Humanity is split into factions, those who want to study the novo-vacuum to stop its growth or even destroy it, and those who think it should be left alone. After all, humans now have encapsulated their consciousness into quantum chips, they can decide to live disembodied as computer simulations, or grow themselves bodies at will, traveling from planet to planet and from body to body as information. In other words, your planet being swallowed by the novo-vacuum isn't such a big deal anymore, so why fret. Even death isn't a problem since your mind is regularly backed up and therefore can be restored if your current body meets an unfortunate end.
Eventually a couple of scientists find a quantum trick to inject a copy of themselves into the novo-vacuum, which turns up to be more than they thought. Unfortunately this part reads like an acid trip Kubrick would be proud of, with the author trying to translate abstract mathematical concepts into concrete descriptions, without success. It was impossible for me to care about any of it, I just wanted it to finally end, and by the time it did, I had stopped caring about the whole book. The characters are neither relatable nor likable. It's hard to worry about characters that can't die, and their worries are so alien that it's hard to feel involved in any way. When people exchange mathematical equations as presents, or can model their anatomy in incomprehensible ways depending on the partner they sleep with, how does one relate to them?
I appreciate Egan for not dumbing things down to the lowest adolescent common denominator, but things need to stay somewhat interesting. Egan is a fairly prolific author, so I am sure I will find another book of his that keeps me interested.
Warning, Spoilers...

What a thrilling books... up until the ending. It needed about 3 more chapters after the boarder entry to engender a more deserved climax and appropriate resolution. All the buildup explicating complex mysteries that surely exist beyond the surface of the novovacuum - a place with completely different physics than our own universe. Yet here is the ending Egan painted for me In an escape from the Langoliers the party met a group of garden gnomes that marched them to a rock that contained a pivotal character; they promptly freed this person, didnt really figure out who was communicating at the surface, had a quickie, and left. The end.
Unique story of what another creation, another universe, might be like. On another level, it deals with what humanity will be like after transcendence to a post human state. Greg Egan suggests we will be as divisive and polarized as ever, even deceitful, yet also much more humane and compassionate. Oddly enough, our future descendents will be prone to predjudice​, at least when it comes to the decaying flesh sacks that ordinary or previous humans used to be. These cultural assumptions come back to haunt the ascended, who indeed treat alien microbes with more tespect than their unevolved progenitors. This story is like a mixture of Robert Heinlein on extrapolated societies with Rudy Rucker in higher dimensions. Yes, this is definitely hard science fiction. If you find it hard to accept extrapolations from known physics as an acceptable basis for a plot, maybe this kind of adventure is too much to accept. If you like to speculate, then you will enjoy this ride immensely and have no trouble being able to identify with the characters. This is a good story. Keep it!