Subject: Review: Diaspora by Greg Egan

From: [email-masked]
Date: 06 Aug 2000 17:14:24 -0400

Diaspora by Greg Egan
	Review Copyright (c) 2000 Aaron M. Renn

Conclusion: Incomprehensible but Worth Reading

This is a science fiction novel that combines a number of elements that
should satisfy many an SF fan: advanced AI, galactic exploration, a vast
sweep of time and space, etc.  Indeed, there was a lot that I liked about
the novel.  However, it suffers from way too much pseudo-scientific
gobbledygook.  There's a quote at the front from the San Francisco
Examiner that says "One gets the feeling at times not of reading a novel,
but of witnessing an extended conversation Egan is having with himself on
topics ranging from biotechnology to particle physics to social theory."
Somehow I don't think that was meant to be a compliment.

The novel opens sometime near the end of the 21st century.  Humanity has
splintered into disembodied AI's living in cyberspace polises, some of
whom are uploaded humans; people who live in robot bodies; and those who
remain relatively human, termed fleshers.  I say relatively because most
of these humans have radically altered their genetic structure in some
way.  The theoretically impossible collapse of a nearby binary neutron
star system sends massive doses of radiation to Earth, severely harming
the biosphere.  This brings home to the non-fleshers that they too might
prove mortal.  So they decide to try spreading across the galaxy in an
attempt to improve survival chances, hence the title.

Right off the bat we're treated to an example of what's wrong with this
book, in the form on an extended description of how one of the polises
goes about constructing a new AI citizen.  This could be considered an
interesting bit of speculation to some fans, but to me it was just
superfluous.  This fascination with scientific speculation, as opposed to
the normal plot, character, setting etc of the mainstream novel, is one of
the biggest weaknesses of the genre, IMO, both from a fan and writer
perspective.  Every SF novel needs what I call its "SF premise," some bit
of speculation that informs the story or setting such that the book is SF
instead of a vanilla novel.  But taking this too far is, again IMO, a big
mistake.  Egan crosses this line into scientific speculation for its own
sake.

The description of AI replication is only the beginning.  I'd estimate
about 30% of the book is devoted to extremely dense, virtually
incomprehensible cosmological theories.  While I guess these are necessary
to advance the plot -- much of which revolves around trying to explain
things such as the neutron star system collapse that were theoretically
impossible under existing theories of the universe -- it really makes the
book difficult to follow.  I'll admit, I took to skimming the pages when
Egan went too deep into this stuff.  A) It isn't real, so it's not like
I'd really learn much B) the details aren't relevant to the story, and C)
you practically need a master's degree in physics to understand it, or at
least Egan perpetrated enough of a snow job to make you think you do.  It
sort of reminded me of a Dilbert cartoon: "You'd be a fool to ignore the
boolean anti-binary least squared approach!"  Yeah.

Another problem with the book was the fact that it just did not feel like
a unified narrative.  It has an "episodic" feel to it.  I was all prepared
to use that term when I saw on the inside cover a quote from Science
Fiction Weekly that likewise referred to it as "episodic," so I guess I'm
not the only one that felt Egan really didn't completely knit all of these
disjointed events into a smooth whole.

There was some good stuff too.  Egan threw in some descriptions of alien
life that were, strictly speaking, gratuitous but that added flavor to the
novel.  I found them much more interesting than the pure physics rambling,
perhaps because I could really understand it and because it didn't take up
huge numbers of pages.  While the description of how an AI was created in
a polis was bland, the first few experiences of the fetal AI in question
were interesting, and I thought the characters were generally well done.
As usual, Egan was rather economical with space.  Despite the scope of
this novel, it only ran to 400 pages.  I'm sure that once you grant Egan
the necessity of including his scientific theories, he didn't use a lot of
bloated prose to get them across.

Obviously people who are fans of pure scientific speculation are going to
love this book.  I like "hard SF" as much as the next guy, but I'm
obviously not into science for science's sake.  A little less pseudo-
science and a little more work on plot integration would have gone a long
way towards making me like this novel more.

BTW: I read a few other reviews that slammed the ending of this book.  I
disagree with them and rather liked the ending myself.

%A Egan, Greg
%T Diaspora
%I HarperPrism
%D 1999-11 (original publication 1998)
%G ISBN 0-06-105698-3
%P 403 pp.
%O mass market paperback, US$6.99

Reviewed on 2000-07-30

Aaron M. Renn ([email-masked]) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/