Incandescence Kindle Edition

Impressive gamble, this. Make over half the book a blow-by-blow description of a non-human, non-technology society (ArkMakers) working out the laws of physics in a literal vacuum, orbiting a neutron star (they communicate by drumming). And then use non-standard words for the most common concepts, like up/down, ahead/behind, warm/cold. I know that some readers liked this, and I tried hard to stick with it, but increasingly found myself scrolling forward.

Sentient populations elsewhere have moved to a post-human, or should I say post-body, way of life. One can exist as software, or pop out of the computer into a body. None of which is explained. Want to visit a world 8,000 LY away? No problem -- just email yourself there and grab a body on arrival. Obviously, they are not relying on Microsoft products. People can live a really, really long time doing this. So, who cares?

More than half the book focuses on the ArkMakers and their science projects in mind-numbing detail. I mean, at the level of launching a smooth stone and carefully noting its trajectory to see if it is straight or curved. Will they be saved? Will they be brought into the disk (of the Milky Way) and its society? Will the beings trying to help them be allowed back into the disk (this was up in the air)? We don't know because the book just stops. It doesn't really end, because there is no ending; it just stops. Clearly, once the physics and engineering project was over, the author saw no more story there. And there is no sequel that I could find. There are a few stories set in the Incandescence universe but none seem to be related.

I demand a story in my novels. Watching technological primitives slowly discover the laws of physics is not really a story. Well, it is, but it is a long, disguised physics lesson basically intended to demonstrate the author's premise that a pre-technology society could discover the laws of physics and even quantum physics without telescopes and other sophisticated equipment, given the right environment. I and many other readers found it less than involving and it doesn't get better, because the science gets more complex the further in we go.

3 stars because it is Greg Egan.

Egan would have us believe that in a galaxy full of immortals with near-infinite power, none are plotting, none are rogue, there are no conflicts, and there is no security on the network even on hacked interfaces with an unknown civilization controlling the bulge of the galaxy which refuses to make contact. It turns out the Aloof may indeed have pulled a fast one, created an artificial person at the interface, but nothing comes of it other than a little worry, and indeed artificial persons abound.

Where does this lead? To a very disappointing end. After trudging through a dull first half and finally getting a bit interested, if only to see where the author was headed with the two story tracks, they don't intersect as expected and neither has much of the feel of a resolution.

The author skips almost to the end of time to envision 3 utopian civilizations: the Amalgum in the galaxy's disc, the Aloof in the central bulge, and the descendents of the Arkbuilders who had at one time a very high tech but not interstellar travel. It reprises with a different conclusion Clark's The Star, and weakly reprises without the conflict Asimov's Nightfall. Egan does not seem willing to write about normal human emotions or to think that drama and conflict and the ingredients of a story generally might exist in the far future. For him there is either the communistic pursuit of useful daily labor, without boredom or ambition, or the pursuit of knowledge. However, he writes this book about a time when the acquisition of knowledge is complete and that motivation is frustrated. Not only is that a problem for one of the main characters, Rakesh, but it turns out the entire bulge (the Aloof) simply doesn't interact with anyone because there is nothing new for them in it. They are sleepwalking.

To Egan, immortality is having a backup which can be activated in case you don't return from a 20,000 year journey. There is an ethical issue with running a simulation which is sufficiently detailed that it might actually "feel" something. And human consciousness can be shrunk to a sub-millimeter sized avatar with no problem at all. He can't envision any civilization that is not a utopia, completely free of politics, corporations, anything but personal whim it seems.

All this might provide an interesting backdrop for a story, if a story were present. Certainly HG Wells had no trouble making up stories in this kind of backdrop. Egan interleaves two story tracks. One is that of Rakesh who decides to go looking for some apparently lost DNA-based life in the bulge, apparently but not overtly at the invitation of the Aloof (they don't really talk to anyone, but allow traffic through their networks). Travel is by copying ones self as information and modulating it on a gamma ray beam. It takes no time for the traveler, but for the rest of the universe thousands of years go by. Egan does not address the issue of whether the copied traveler is really the same person at all.

The other is that of Roi and friends, small genetically engineered crab-like people engineered to live in a vacuum on a rock in the accretion disk of a neutron star or black hole. One of them becomes curious about the pattern of weights and mostly without being able to see outside their rock, they reason out the properties of curved space-time gravity-as-geometry, as in General Relativity. At the end Egan has the gall to recommend the most complex and unfriendly text ever written on the subject. Not any of the many more accessible introductions.

I conclude that Egan is not quite human, and cannot write a story of interest to humans. I was very let down. He just quit writing abruptly where I was expecting a conclusion. Usually I do not give a one-star review if I willingly finish a book. This one was headed toward 3 stars until I turned the page and there was the afterword, with the silly textbook recommendation. I felt like I had already read the textbook (I mean Egan's novelistic textbook, not MTW, which incidentally I have read and in parts it is more entertaining than Egan, despite being obtuse) and was waiting for a story. This is not a novel at all. Just two long intertwined essays from a bored physicist with no human interests.

I like Egan's books. This is an original plot set in the far, far future and removed to a different part of the galaxy, involving another species and their awakening to critical thought. For the most part I enjoyed the novelty and the development, and he did a brilliant job with several aspects off the future technology. Two warnings though: 1) Greg really delves into descriptions of the geometry problems and math the creatures are developing and after awhile it really becomes too much and tedious, and 2) there are two parallel plotlines in the book, but it is totally unclear how they relate to one another or tie up at any point. In fact, they don't - I re-read whole portions of the book to see if I missed it but could not find any alignment (e.g. the central characters in one plotline are aided by or inherit/learn something from the characters in the 2nd plotline). If it's there it is so subtle I did not get it at all, hence the missing 5th star.