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186th out of 257 books
—
681 voters
Schild's Ladder
by
Greg Egan
Twenty thousand years into the future, an experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum that devours everything it comes in contact with. Now humans must confront this deadly expansion. Tchicaya, aboard a starship trawling the border of the vacuum, has allied himself with the Yielders-- those determined to study...more
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
January 1st 2004
by Eos
(first published 2002)
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After they finish Schild's Ladder, I think most people will remember two main things about it: first, the characters are all really weird and don't react to things quite like normal people do. Second, it's full of math, to the point where it's almost unreadable in parts. So, another Greg Egan book! Point 1 was more interesting for me: a big challenge for books that are set tens of thousands of years in the future is that they're often really hard to relate to. We already live in exponential time...more
I really, really wanted to like Egan's Schild's Ladder, because - wow - now THAT's hard SF! This book is so physics-crunchy that it'll scrape your gums raw. So I slogged through the physics (not a quick read), listened to the characters argue physics (because you can't really care about any of them), and finished without really feeling it is a better book than some of the others. It's certainly full of fascinating science and SFnal issues, such as humanity having moved beyond sexual dimorphism;...more
One of the great pleasures of being a reader is in the anticipation of a new book. The disappointment of expectations is perhaps the greatest pain. Greg Egan has always been one of those writers whose new work excites intense anticipation. However recently I have been feeling the pain of disappointment more and more often.
Schild's Ladder has all the ingredients of an Egan classic: speculations on quantum physics, universe-spanning disaster, and characters to whom race, age, size and gender have...more
Schild's Ladder has all the ingredients of an Egan classic: speculations on quantum physics, universe-spanning disaster, and characters to whom race, age, size and gender have...more
This was by far Greg Egan's most cohesive and coherent novel that I've read so far. I will issue a warning: Quite a few chunks of this book read as lectures on quantum mechanics and quantum loop gravity. It's all interesting, and is coherent in the abstract if you're paying close attention, but it is dense as hell. Certainly Greg Egan is not an author for everyone.
His characters are still pretty lifeless. Some of the parts that are supposed to be quasi-romantic come off as cold and unfeeling. He...more
His characters are still pretty lifeless. Some of the parts that are supposed to be quasi-romantic come off as cold and unfeeling. He...more
Nov 16, 2009
Thom Foolery
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Asaro mudmen
Post-humans living in a mostly barren universe unleash a parallel universe of sorts in an experiment involving Quantum Graph Theory, something that apparently brings quantum mechanics and general relativity together. This weird otherworld horizon is expanding at half the speed of light, engulfing systems and necessitating evacuations, and trans-humanity is divided into two factions over what to do about it: those who want to figure out how to stop it and those who want to learn to adapt. Then it...more
About as good as science fiction gets for me. Egan sets his book book 20,000 years in the future, and gives himself a lot of latitude. The brains of the characters are contained on quantum computers (Qusps) that can be backed up and stored. With such a timespan to work from, Egan could think of something he would like to do and decide that there's no reason why humanity wouldn't have figured out how to do it by then. And yet, he never actually breaks the laws of physics as we know them. For inst...more
This book seemed full of missed opportunities. The plot and the future it imagines are both extremely inventive but it just never reaches its potential. The most important relationship in the story is full of unresolved and unrequited love but it's climactic moment is dismissed with a shrug, literally, leaving the reader with no payoff. The character who sets the entire plot in motion vanishes after the first chapter, doesn't reemerge until the end, and when she does it's completely one dimensio...more
Egan's best to date: This is an excellent book. Egan manages to sustain a gripping and surprising plot without a single identifiable villain; instead we have sympathetic characters with opposing views on how to deal with the threat of the novo-vacuum. Yes, there ARE characters - they're just different to the standard SF stand-ins. Egan's prose is as efficient and polished as ever, and there are some lovely images. The science is at times formidable - this particular full-time scientist struggled...more
Another hard sci-fi novel from Egan. I find the physics tend to make me glaze over, I can honestly say I don't get quantum loop theory, and I am at a loss to describe what was happening in this book. The plot moved along quite nicely though, with protagonists you could remember, with motivations that made a certain, logical sense. A few times the plot twists took me by surprise and I was genuinely interested to see how our main heroes could get out of their final adventure. SPOILER- They were sa...more
The story starts almost perfect. Nicely constructed premise, with hints of intrigue and adventure. The only flaw is the main male character's bumbling cluelessness about pretty much everything, which extends throughout thousands of years the story takes place in. I for one am getting tired of weak minded and willed male protagonists in modern sci-fi.
The promise of the story's prelude gets kicked to the curb as the story fast-forwards to the main setting for the story. Suspending disbelief become...more
The promise of the story's prelude gets kicked to the curb as the story fast-forwards to the main setting for the story. Suspending disbelief become...more
Schild's ladder is a fascinating piece of hard-science fiction. It depicts a foreign reality in the far off future, holding many strange ideals and activities as normal. The background is quite vividly detailed, and similar to what one might expect from traveling to the real future. That being said, the odd concepts that are illustrated briefly in the book might be a turn-off for some. Additionally, the work is filled with mathematics that, while not overly complex, is necessary for understandin...more
A unique and fascinating adventure.
The story begins in the distant future, where mankind has spread to many stars.
Much has changed in human society, as is common in Egan's books.
For example, the gender is a thing of the past, but sexual procreation is still the norm.
You'll have to read the book to hear the details of how that trick is performed!
The conflict in the book is the accidental creation of an out-of-control bubble of unstable vacuum that is growing at half the speed of light, swallowing...more
The story begins in the distant future, where mankind has spread to many stars.
Much has changed in human society, as is common in Egan's books.
For example, the gender is a thing of the past, but sexual procreation is still the norm.
You'll have to read the book to hear the details of how that trick is performed!
The conflict in the book is the accidental creation of an out-of-control bubble of unstable vacuum that is growing at half the speed of light, swallowing...more
Jun 14, 2012
Nick Black
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Nick by:
Twitch
Shelves:
likely-reread,
snap-crackle-pop-science
pretty interesting! i'm not sure how i feel about this -- i don't read much sci-fi, so elements of the style were quite grating. also, what was up with the liquidgoo on the warehouse roof? i loved a few of the lines, though: "nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting, except perhaps an original theorem." also, gotta love the reference to Thorne+Wheeler's Gravitation at the end.
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Supposedly "the hardest science fiction ever written," I'll freely admit that I'm reading this ma...more
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Supposedly "the hardest science fiction ever written," I'll freely admit that I'm reading this ma...more
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Brilliant ideas and brilliant writing.
"The balance was only approximate: according to the Sarumpaet rules, even an infinite network built from this motif would decay into ordinary vacuum in a matter of seconds. At the Planck scale, that was no small achievement; a tightrope walker who managed to circumnavigate the Earth a few billion times before toppling to the ground might be described as having similarly imperfec balance."
I'm not sure I understood it, but I liked it. The explanations and made-up physics were a little hard to follow- especially since I've only studied the math he used enough to say that it was real math. Was it correctly used? Ask a professor. Anyway, a good far-future novel is hard to come by, and this one might be more interesting for that stuff than anything else. Overall, I have to recommend it- it's very very solid sci-fi.
Aug 18, 2009
Jimbo
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
physics/maths geeks
Egan's view of the future is both alien and quintessentially human. This book examines the vast and changing chasms between people, places and even universes. Schilds Ladder is a challenging read - those without some background in science will inevitably object to the physics and maths that have been woven into the story. But those who can appreciate it will enjoy the setting in a universe so very true to our own, even if by the end, they are rooting for it's destruction.
Schild's Ladder, done! Probably the hardest SF book I've ever read. Luckily have plowed through a few books on quantum physics etc previously (Brian Greene and his pals), so this helped my brain from melting down entirely while trying to get what Egan was on about here. Even with that, the book was hard going in places, so not for the scientifically fainthearted. Overall, thumbs up from me - great concept and storyline.
Greg Egan puts the 'science' back into science fiction with this superb piece of far-future imaginative storytelling.
'When I was ten years old, all I gave my sweetheart was a pair of projections that turned the group of rotations in four dimensions into principal bundles over the three-sphere. Ancient constructions, though I did rediscover them for myself.'
'How were they received?'
'She liked them so much, she extended them to larger spaces and gave me back the result.
'So what about you?'
'I've ge...more
'When I was ten years old, all I gave my sweetheart was a pair of projections that turned the group of rotations in four dimensions into principal bundles over the three-sphere. Ancient constructions, though I did rediscover them for myself.'
'How were they received?'
'She liked them so much, she extended them to larger spaces and gave me back the result.
'So what about you?'
'I've ge...more
Aborting reading this after 2 chapter. Sorry just to much heady mathematics, quantum physics, and pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo and not enough plot for me. It's ok for a book to get "scientifically heavy" like say, Spin did...but I think they have to start out with a LOT more plot building than this one did to hold my interest and make it worth trudging through all the mind-bending stuff.
Some rather hard science fiction, but fortunately I already have heard of most of the math Egan is dipping into to spin his premise. It's a crazy ride, full of what are apparently his favorite post-singular themes of universe-creation, abiogenesis, and weirdness due to quantum effects, simulation, time-relativity. The only fault I find with it is the ending seemed kind of abrupt and unresolved.
I really liked this even though it was science fiction for quantum physicists! I didn't get much of it but the author gave just enough that I could pretend I was following along. I have never read a sf book like this. Very interesting. Probably around 10 "f" words, though. There was a tiny sex scene that was bizarre rather than offensive. The characters are not considered men or women so...
Odd book from my perspective. A kind of philosophical perspective on life, humanity and evolving of character. I liked much of it, but unfortunately a part give me strong associations to the psychedelic part of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that is never a good thing.
I might consider reading more from this author but I will probably first check that it's different from this book.
I might consider reading more from this author but I will probably first check that it's different from this book.
What a disappointment. This book came highly recommended but was not able to live up to the hype. The basic plot was interesting. Regrettably, no one taught the author the difference between entertainment and a dry physics lecture. Almost a third of the book was wasted on explaining concepts that would have been better left to magic. If I wanted a lecture on physics, I'd dig out some dusty tome to read. The point of scifi is to entertain with a bit of education as a sidebar. When the education p...more
1 like · like · see review
Quite a fun read, though I had to use wikipedia every few pages to crib up on the mathematics and Quantum Physics. I have a suspicion Greg Egan said - "Hang it, I'm going to write this one for all the scientists out there who love reading science fiction". There was a surprising amount of humanity in this post human vision. Applying Schild's Ladder to the arrow of identity was a lovely touch.
I run hot and cold for Greg Egan. When he's good he's great, and when he's not he's a chore. I have to admit that it's entirely possible that whether I think he's good or not is entirely related to my ability to understand (or at least to think I understand) what he's talking about. This is possibly the hardest SF I've ever read - and I loved it!
The only downside for me was that he essentially turned an entirely new universe — one that not only did not run on the same laws of Physics as our univ...more
The only downside for me was that he essentially turned an entirely new universe — one that not only did not run on the same laws of Physics as our univ...more
1 like · like · see review
I enjoyed this book and its mind-challenging premises, but I was disappointed by the sudden, inconclusive answer. Maybe a Hamiltonian three thousand page continuation would be extreme, but I could easily see the book extended with another hundred pages.
Quantum mechanical theorems and abstract mathematics explained in such a way the poetry is not sufficient to describe. This book is more of an 'experience' then a 'good read'. Greg Egan is the Shakespeare of quantum rich hard sci-fi.
Amazing. Sometimes a little difficult to wrap my head around (not an astrophysics major), but these books teem with ideas about embodiment, gender, history, and the existence of life. I will definitely be reading this again.
This was a real cerebral read. Way way in the future where all sorts of things were possible. How about backing yourself up so that when you meet an untimely demise you can be recreated back to your old self. All sort of enhancements mean you can live pretty much forever. Sex is only for recreation and you have to grow the necessary bits when you are with the other person.
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Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
More about Greg Egan...
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
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“My earliest memories are of CP4 — that's a Kähler manifold that looks locally like a vector space with four complex directions, though the global topology's quite different. But I didn't really grow up there; I was moved around a lot when I was young, to keep my perceptions flexible. I only used to spend time in anything remotely like this" — he motioned at the surrounding more-or-less-Euclidean space — for certain special kinds of physics problems. And even most Newtonian mechanics is easier to grasp in a symplectic manifold; having a separate visible coordinate for the position and momentum of every degree of freedom makes things much clearer than when you cram everything together in a single three-dimensional space.”
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