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Schild's Ladder

by Greg Egan

3.93 · Rating Details · 2,163 Ratings · 144 Reviews

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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Best HARD SCIENCE FICTION of the 21st Century

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Community Reviews

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Jun 29, 2015 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Like other reviewers of this book, I enjoyed the in-depth quantum physics that is liberally sprinkled throughout the book. I have never read a work of fiction with so much technical detail.

But the technical detail is simply not enough to sustain a science fiction novel. I did not have any feelings about the characters. And, often, I did not even understand who the characters were. Were they beings with bodies? Or were they simulations? Or bodies that were shrunk to insect proportions? Or totally ...more

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Mar 17, 2009 Noah M. rated it it was amazing

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

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Apr 04, 2015 Jason rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, read-2015

4.5 Stars

Schild's Ladder is a master piece of hard science fiction and of the skill and style of Greg Egan. This is not an action packed futuristic romp that would make the perfect summer blockbuster movie. What it is, is an exemplary novel that showcases the brilliance of Greg Egan as a writer. In my experience, there really is no one that writes like this, basically putting physics text books in a fictional story format. Like all Egan's books, he takes factual physics and sends it through the ...more

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Apr 02, 2010 pax rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own-english, 2008, science-fiction, favs-and-recs, reread-since-2010, gender, lit-australia-nz, boston-sent-home, 2015

I will openly admit that "Schild's Ladder" is not for everyone, that to enjoy it fully you may need a degree in physics or maths. Egan has much more accessible books - and both his "Permutation City" and "Diaspora" are heartfelt recommendations. But "Schild's Ladder" is the one close to my heart. I re-read it over the last week and here it was, as good as I remembered. Perhaps even better.

And I suppose I will never ever understand why so many reviews say Egan's characters to be unbelievable. I d I will openly admit that "Schild's Ladder" is not for everyone, that to enjoy it fully you may need a degree in physics or maths. Egan has much more accessible books - and both his "Permutation City" and "Diaspora" are heartfelt recommendations. But "Schild's Ladder" is the one close to my heart. I re-read it over the last week and here it was, as good as I remembered. Perhaps even better.

And I suppose I will never ever understand why so many reviews say Egan's characters to be unbelievable. I don't read much hard sf - I'm a physicist (I would even say not a bad physicist) and getting the hard science wrong will easily put me off the book. It is much easier to forgive Zelazny or LeGuin (although there is nothing to forgive in "Dispossessed"; the physics there is perfectly coherent in itself and it tells of LeGuins mastery how she managed that without being a physicist herself, without explaining much, just conveying that sense of something that works; and her and thus Shaver's process of discovery in science is among the most believable I ever read - I am still appalled at Delaney's critique of this particular point, of wanting to push the writing into the trope-y description of the working of scientists, but that's a different story). But even more importantly, I am a character-driven reader. I need to believe in people and their motivation, to care for them, to enjoy (with exceptions, of course - this is not what I expect of Borges' short stories).

Egan's characters work for me. Perhaps they are off for others because they are not deeply wounded tragic heroes. Perhaps they are too tame - there are no sexual and emotional escapade's of Charles Stross's "Accelerando". I like this. Hell, I love this: Tchicaya trying to sort through his feelings (and old wounds) for Mariama, Yann, Rasmah. Yann's pranks. Discussion of consent. And laughter; so much laughter and jokes (this is very close to the mode of communication I prefer with people I will comfortable with, so yes, I may be slightly biased). And Yann. Yann! I haven't read such a wonderful character for ages.

And there are a ton of little tricks. Yann in Cass' story reads different from Yann in Tchicaya's. Not inconsistent, but Cass and Tchicaya are two very different people and Tchicaya is a traveler. How Schild's ladder is a metaphor for Tchicaya (and Mariama), but also how Tchicaya, when first explained the concept by his father, acknowledges it as a metaphor himself, [b]ut it was a methaphor filled with hope, moving this all one level deeper (higher?) into the meta.
[And yes, I know that this all does not make Greg Egan a Christa Wolf or a J.M. Coetzee, but I don't pick up his books expecting him to be. The same way I would not pick Pelevin and expect fantasy - some people do and are deeply disappointed.]
...more

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Jul 24, 2016 Edward rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, science-fiction, 2016

Everything I said in my review of Diaspora applies to Schild's Ladder as well.

There are some really great ideas in this book. Egan loves to speculate many thousands of years into the future; to invent detailed new physics, and explore the theoretical possibilities of the universe. In this book he touches on some interesting philosophical as well as scientific ideas. I thought the metaphor of Schild's Ladder, as an analogue to the drift associated with life and change was quite interesting and ...more

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Jun 22, 2015 Liviu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: genre-sf

masterpiece of hard sf

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Mar 27, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, read-in-2011

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 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 times, with dramatic changes to our lifestyle that would be unimaginable to people mere hundreds of years ago, so extrapolating what life would be like for people twenty thousand years from now is not only tough to do convincingly, but also absolutely certain to look laughably naive in just a few years. Even Leonardo da Vinci couldn't have written about what the Internet would do to society, and to extend that out by a factor of dozens is mind boggling.

Nevertheless, it's always possible to give even the nerdiest science fiction (like the kind Greg Egan writes) some emotional hooks to present-day readers just by focusing on urges and issues that will always be resonant: sex, love, death, curiosity, and conflict. Schild's Ladder is set mainly of the aftermath of an accident at the future equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider. A false vacuum has been expanding throughout the universe at half the speed of light, wiping out ever-increasing numbers of the scattered human colonies. Tchicaya, the protagonist, is part of a research team divided into two groups: the Preservationists studying the false vacuum as one would study a serendipitous lab creation, and the Yielders dedicated to either halting or reversing the vacuum's expansion. Yet again Egan has peopled his book with nearly autistic computationally-augmented post-humans that don't care about the slow-motion destruction of the normal universe, since their future technology lets them float above the sphere of destruction to run experiments essentially forever.

The funny thing is that I honestly can't think of a way to improve Egan's handling of this slow-motion catastrophe; the world he's created is almost above criticism in terms of how its inhabitants would likely react. How would you write dialogue for millennia-old computer programs? So Tchicaya gets homesick, he spends most of the book thinking about an old girlfriend who showed up to the research station, gets involved in the factionalism on the station, even goes on a quest of sorts at the end, and it all seemed natural and relatable. It certainly made the hideous math easier to swallow, which gets progressively more ridiculous until the final section, where Tchicaya and his lady friend travel into the false vacuum world using physics magic. Egan himself has "only" a BS in Maths, but the book feels like a PhD thesis with walk-on characters at times. You will be really impressed that such abstruse material is presented as well as it is (you try writing a novel about quantum graph theory some time) which means you'll not only have a new respect for Egan, but also for the scientists who actually deal with this stuff in their research. Hopefully the team at the LHC is a little more careful than the team in this book though. ...more

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May 13, 2014 SciFi Kindle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Greg Egan’s hard SF is so steeped in mathematics, it needs its own sub-genre; Theorem Thriller? MathPunk? This story sets up the dilemma of an ongoing environmental disaster (caused by mathematics) that can only be confronted by the galaxy’s bravest mathematicians, because math. Even so, it’s wildly engrossing, because the stakes are so high, and because the society described has such compelling issues that arrive naturally due to their methods of interstellar transport. Fascinating scenarios ar Greg Egan’s hard SF is so steeped in mathematics, it needs its own sub-genre; Theorem Thriller? MathPunk? This story sets up the dilemma of an ongoing environmental disaster (caused by mathematics) that can only be confronted by the galaxy’s bravest mathematicians, because math. Even so, it’s wildly engrossing, because the stakes are so high, and because the society described has such compelling issues that arrive naturally due to their methods of interstellar transport. Fascinating scenarios arise from digitization of mind and body, then the return to analog flesh. In many other genre pieces, this is portrayed as a consequence-free vehicle for speeding plot advancements. Here, it cleaves societies into ‘travelers’ (those who undergo digitization for the sake of making interstellar journeys) and the planet-bound who stay behind, experiencing the long centuries that the travelers skip. When a child expresses his fear of losing himself and being replaced by some other ‘him’ during a journey, it’s hard to miss the metaphor for conventional estrangement. One doesn’t need light years of distance to make our divergent experiences separate us from those we love- you can’t step in the same stream twice.

The future society Egan paints is a bit too homogeneously enlightened for me, and while there is conflict, it is of a very academic type. All people seem to respect the same wide definition of personhood, and have evacuated entire worlds found to possess native life, no matter how single-celled or primitive. There seems to be no currency or economics, as humanity has entered a post-scarcity era, but the slow-motion drama unfolding with the expanding environmental disaster (The ‘Mimosa’ incident) begins to test this universal civility.

As in other Egan stories, the pace and scale really accelerate in the final chapters, forcing the reader to give up trying to follow the science and just go with the action. The reward is high, however, and the epic scales to these final settings really do amaze. Here, we are taken not to cosmic distances and epochs, but in the exact opposite direction, down to the briefest and tiniest Planck-length vistas. Throughout, I was identifying strongly with the protagonist, Tchicaya, although very little of his thoughts or life is revealed outside of the Mimosa problem at hand. Even considering, I found it difficult to put down, and will look forward to reflecting on Egan’s vision. ...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Anna rated it really liked it

I never expected a hard SF book to be so sensitive. In my opinion, the main plot was more like an excuse to introduce us in the mentality and culture (can we call it culture?) of the people. I liked the description of their personalities and their reactions and small details about their lives; that made the book for me. I was partially interested by the plot, but like I expected, I didn't understand almost anything from the physics part.

"Precum dezradacinarea unui mult iubit si sedentar stramos I never expected a hard SF book to be so sensitive. In my opinion, the main plot was more like an excuse to introduce us in the mentality and culture (can we call it culture?) of the people. I liked the description of their personalities and their reactions and small details about their lives; that made the book for me. I was partially interested by the plot, but like I expected, I didn't understand almost anything from the physics part.

"Precum dezradacinarea unui mult iubit si sedentar stramos prin intermediul caruia o familie risipita ramanea in contact, exodul oamenilor de pe Pamant si distrugerea solului acelei planete aveau sa cresteze inimile chiar si celor mai cosmopoliti calatori."
"Niciodata nu pierduse sincronizarea cu cineva; nu isi putea imagina genul acela de separare lipsita de punti."
"Acorporalii ce fac in loc de asta? Cand eram copil, obisnuiam sa imi imaginez ca voi toti aveti corpuri simulate. Sexul ar fi fost la fel precum cel intrupat, dar ar fi existat in plus nenumarate luminite colorate si extaz cosmic."
"Nici chiar anacronautii nu-si asolizeaza navele pe oameni, explica el. Au totusi instrumente."
"Pentru mai bine de nouasprezece mii de ani in descendentii oamenilor nu existase nimic care sa aduca cu dimorfismul sexual. Cu exceptii locale banale, ca varsta exacta a maturitatii sexuale si perioada de latenta intre atractie si potenta, el si iubitul lui intrupau o conditie universala: amandoi erau, simplu, oameni. Nu ramasesera alte categorii carora le-ar fi putut apartine."
"- De ce voi, intrupati indolenti, n-ati transformat intreaga galaxie in ciocolata?
- Da-ne timp."
"Toti se plang de legile fizicii, dar nimeni nu face nimic in privinta lor."
"Ar trebui sa fim capabili sa ne adaptam. Daca oceanul inainteaza cativa metri, te retragi. Daca inainteaza cativa kilometri, construiesti un dig. Daca inainteaza cateva mii de kilometri... inveti sa locuiesti in ambarcatiuni."
"- Trebuie sa vina un moment cand speranta sa se transforme in ceva mai tangibil.
- Mierea sau cenusa."
"- Exact asta obisnuia sa spuna maica-mea despre calatori. Ca ratacesc de la o planeta la alta , pana ce nu-si mai pot reaminti propriile nume.
- Suna romantic, nu? Nu este de mirare ca nu ai putut rezista." ...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Christopher McKitterick rated it liked it · review of another edition

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

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May 18, 2011 Derek rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf

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

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Sep 30, 2013 Andreea rated it really liked it

Well, how can I put it? I am not into physics that much (I only studied quantum physics in the 12th grade, which is the last year in highschool in here), so reading about future possible developments in quantum physics is a bit too much for me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book for its general description of the human society, which gave me a feeling of Wow!..have never tought so far (people functioning with procs and mediators, to actually allow you interacting with anyone and anything), I would ...more

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Jan 29, 2014 Miriam rated it liked it

This book had me wrapped around its little finger with all of its SCIENCEing. Dense and lengthy, full of mathyness which I'm not super into but was very on board with during the course, also moleculeyness which I'm definitely into. Even the back cover noted that I would be impressed by how well the story moved along given all the SCIENCEing - and I was. I was alternately interested and frustrated with the author's examination of the changing nature of human relationships, given greatly expanded ...more

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Mar 13, 2011 Peter added it · review of another edition

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

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May 27, 2011 Takenari rated it it was amazing

I caught up with this book in 2010 and it was a revelation. I like Greg Egan and have read most of his books and stories. Bought this back in 2006 but was reluctant to give it a try since I'd read all his previous novels in Japanese translation and the physics was taxing even so. I now find this one of his most sustained efforts to date. In my mind this should become the next Avatar if it can be made into a movie. It has everything: aliens, romance, action, terrorists and mind-boggling new world ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 Jaime rated it it was amazing

Lleno de ideas ingeniosas, física exótica y un emocionante conflicto. Greg Egan es un tesoro de la ciencia ficción.

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Jan 01, 2016 Danielle rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

(SOME SPOILERS! But not major.)

I have so many thoughts on this book. It was an absolutely fascinating read, but the entire book was basically a love fest of Existentialism, unabashedly and condescendingly so. From a definition from allaboutphilosophy.org, they define Existentialism as "the notion that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature. "

This is it.
That's the book.

So if you are in for it, let me explain:

Greg Egan has created an incr ...more

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May 30, 2010 Nick Black rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Nick by: Twitch

Shelves: likely-reread, snap-crackle-pop-science

---
reread 2015-02-16. this book is insane. with the surge of general interest in identity politics in recent years, i think a lot more people ought read this. it would blow some minds. egan is a madman.
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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 ---
reread 2015-02-16. this book is insane. with the surge of general interest in identity politics in recent years, i think a lot more people ought read this. it would blow some minds. egan is a madman.
---

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 mainly to sit around afterwards and congratulate myself on how fucking smart I am, and because I've spent all afternoon rereading the papers of mad German computer scientist/physicist Jürgen Schmidhuber and some Freeman Dyson and am feeling the old digital physics monkey on my back (I still think I might one day reinvest myself in said field, once I've set supercomputer design on its head). We'll see how it goes; I'm not a big scifi fan by any means.

Funny reviews on Amazon:

"Not great literature in the classic sense, but there's a lot of intriguing speculation here. The would-be reader should be warned, though: you will not fully appreciate this book unless you've made significant progress toward a degree in physics or a related field! (You could also get away with just reading a lot of pop science, provided you've read enough to be familiar with ideas like decoherence and superselection.) This truly is the hardest SF I've read."

"Woosh. That was the sound of this book going right over my head.
I love hard sci-fi, don't get me wrong. I've read plenty of layman's books on quantum physics and consider myself reasonably well-informed on science in general. Still, large chunks of "Schild's Ladder" were basically gibberish to me, and the book was actually somewhat of a chore to get through. I haven't had that experience in a long time."

hehe, we'll see! Manny, I'm kind of surprised you haven't tackled Egan... ...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Flying_Monkey rated it it was ok

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 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 become meaningless but who nevertheless maintain emotional lives.

Unfortunately this mixture is just too generous with the 'scientific' ingredients, and too sparing with the 'fictional' elements. In fact, except for an all too short flight beyond the border of the 'novo-vacuum', the artificially-created and rapidly expanding new universe which threatens the survival of our own, and a few episodes of personal backstory and momentary action, the book appears to consist entirely of characters talking about scientific theory. And whilst the speculation is interesting it simply does not engage emotionally with the reader.

There are some superb moments within the book though: as usual Egan is adept at describing the dislocation brought about by altered dimension - at the start the scientist Cass is reduced (rather grumpily) to a few millimetres in height in order to save space at the Mimosa experimental station; there are also some sparklingly clever angles shown on the problems of movement within the Novo Vacuum whose natural laws are entirely alien to our own.

In addition one of the most engaging sequences concerns the infiltration and sabotage of the project to study the Novo-vacuum by 'anachronauts', reactionary humans who refuse the benefits of artificially-enhanced intelligence and so on. The sequence is particularly effective as it involves a fight in spacesuits outside the research station, a scene that could have been taken from the Golden Age of SF, and now itself anachronistic within contemporary science fiction - making the anachronauts appear doubly out-of-place. The explosives disguised as pot-plants only add to the effective combination of farce and menace in this section of the book.

However the moments of great writing only highlight the steady, even dull, temper of the majority of the book. Schild's Ladder is simply too much science and not enough fiction. ...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Jason rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Asaro mudmen

Shelves: fiction, sf, aliens, science-physics, science, trans-humanism

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

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Oct 23, 2016 Jose Solis rated it really liked it

Shelves: hard-sf

Excelente novela de CF dura. Miles de años en el futuro, la humanidad experimenta con la estructura geométrica del vacío a escalas cuánticas. Y se encuentran algunas de las entidades mas extrañas e incomprensibles que se hayan visto en la ciencia ficción.
A pesar de que la ciencia en la historia es sumamente abstracta y complicada (llena de términos especializados de la (ficticia) Teoría de Grafos Cuánticos), el autor Greg Egan tiene la suficiente habilidad como escritor para hacer accesible la ...more

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Feb 04, 2009 Donna rated it it was ok

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

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Aug 14, 2009 Jimbo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: physics/maths geeks

Shelves: sci-fi, fiction, own, favorites

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.

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Mar 23, 2010 Dennis rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

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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Apr 11, 2010 Michael rated it it was ok

Shelves: hard-sf

Egan took a great concept and made it into a dull and impenetrable story. It's sad. I like the other Egan books I've read. I feel as though this book, in the hands of another hard SF author (Stephen Baxter for instance), would have sung.

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May 27, 2017 Strong Extraordinary Dreams rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi, should_not_have_finished

OK, Diaspora is a GREAT book, and since then this is my sixth, and last, Greg Egan book.

Schild's Ladder is just not told well. The idea is huge, but yet again Mr Egan just does not have any story telling skills. AT ALL.

The Greg Egan equation is: if (book's ideas' hugeness) > (pain of badly told story) then it works. Other than Diaspora, I have never found the Greg Egan equation to be satisfied.

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May 09, 2017 Jai rated it really liked it

One of the most beautiful stories that you might need a background in quantum physics to understand.

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Jun 28, 2008 Karen rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. JUNE 28, 2008
I grabbed this book because it was on the shelf next to the DIASPORA book and because someone swore to me online that Greg Egan was the Best. Writer. Ever. I am reading DIASPORA mostly to test my memory and to see if it actually is the book I've been trying to recollect. I didn't even read the book jacket for this one. It's kinda interesting to be in the position of knowing almost nothing about a story before starting it.

JULY 6
This book is so already much better than DIASPORA, but I JUNE 28, 2008
I grabbed this book because it was on the shelf next to the DIASPORA book and because someone swore to me online that Greg Egan was the Best. Writer. Ever. I am reading DIASPORA mostly to test my memory and to see if it actually is the book I've been trying to recollect. I didn't even read the book jacket for this one. It's kinda interesting to be in the position of knowing almost nothing about a story before starting it.

JULY 6
This book is so already much better than DIASPORA, but I've really only read the preface. Still, there's an actual character who is reacting to events in a reasonable amount of time, and who actually feels emotions and regrets. The science hasn't taken over the story yet. Plus it's funny to think of what it would be like to shrink your body to two millimeters in order to make traveling easier!

JULY 8
There's a real story. It's so much more interesting to read than DIASPORA because of it. Now, it's a shallow story and it still only serves to feature the vacuum problem (which I don't fully understand), but the characters are talking about how real life is affected by these theoretical scientific advances. For example: Are you a bad parent if you abandon your children before they turn one hundred, if the average life span is, well, infinite? Is a culture still a culture if all the people move all the buildings and set up the same town on another planet? What should the ethics of settling on a planet with native life be?

Whether or not those kinds of physics and biological questions fascinate you is a matter of taste. If you don't care about them, you may not like the book because the characters aren't that three-dimensional and the story isn't that compelling. But at least I've learned that the author is capable of writing science fiction according to the generally accepted rules of what fiction is. Up to page 100, anyway.

JULY 9
Yeah, the book was OK. We did stay with the characters until the very end, and there was some redemption of a character, but it did turn into a travelogue of a place that isn't possible for a brain that functions in three spatial dimensions to visualize. So these two characters were floating around in it talking to each other about it and mostly doing nothing. I still am happy that the conventions of "story" were followed, but I'm not really happy with this author. Sure he brings up interesting ideas, but in passing. He's not interested in the things I am interested in. He likes to write and write and write about what X-theory IS, but I like to read about what X-theory does to people and how I would react if I were faced with this scenario.

Now I will relieve you of the need to read the book by giving you some main themes to think about. All the author does is identify them; his characters and plot don't develop them, so if I'm still thinking about them later it's all because I am wondering about what I would do and not if I agree with what his characters did, because they really did nothing:

Can we ever really know science for sure?
Are all sentient species equal or does technological advancement matter?
Does the human experience require mortality? Does it require a physical body?
Are humans evolving away from sexual dimorphism?
Is culture a place or a people?
Is a family with twenty generations living at once still a family?
Should scientists be punished for their dangerous mistakes? ...more

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Feb 27, 2017 Sharmin rated it liked it

If you come across the statement – Schild’s Ladder is the hardest Hard Sci-Fi novel ever written – rest assured, it’s no hyperbole. Pardon me while I go hunting for all my screws, that just … fell off.

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Jun 18, 2014 Klerik rated it liked it

I think I liked this book, but I'm really not sure. On one hand, it has a lot going for it. It's set in that more or less coherent Egan far-future universe with quantum singleton processors and whatnot, and basically revolves around a group of physicists trying to understand the novo-vacuum, which is a novel vacuum structure which is rapidly expanding and consuming the known universe.

Put like that it sounds kind of bad, but seeing as the universe is large and technology amazing, it's also a pre I think I liked this book, but I'm really not sure. On one hand, it has a lot going for it. It's set in that more or less coherent Egan far-future universe with quantum singleton processors and whatnot, and basically revolves around a group of physicists trying to understand the novo-vacuum, which is a novel vacuum structure which is rapidly expanding and consuming the known universe.

Put like that it sounds kind of bad, but seeing as the universe is large and technology amazing, it's also a pretty interesting piece of physics. The novel details the conflict between the Preservationists, who want to preserve the universe as-is and ideally beat back the novo-vacuum, and the Yielders, who'd rather adapt to life in the novo-vacuum or at least keep it around for study.

(***From here on out, there will be spoilers.***)
(view spoiler)

The weaknesses of the plot aside, there is a lot to like in this book. The view it suggests of human sexuality is pretty interesting, and its discussions of travel almost surprisingly relatable. While the dialogue sometimes meanders into pure discussion of physics, and the characters aren't all that strongly defined at times, some of the conversations paint a believable picture of a hugely interesting world.

All in all, it's not a bad book. While there is plenty of cool stuff to think about, I felt the story lacked a sense of direction, particularly towards the end. I had fun with the book while it lasted, but though it has a lot going for it, it's not Egan's best work. ...more

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About Greg Egan

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

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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.” — 3 likes

“It was a rigorous result in information theory that once you could learn in a sufficiently flexible manner – something humanity had achieved in the Bronze Age – the only limits you faced were speed and storage; any other structural changes were just a matter of style.” — 3 likes

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