Monday, May 31, 2010

Spin Networks Applet - Greg Egan

"The applet below displays a small spin network, and computes the amplitudes it assigns to geometries with a range of curvatures. You can choose different network topologies from the menu at the top of the applet, or click anywhere else to see a new network with the same topology but a different set of spins labelling the edges."


4 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Spin/Spin.html

Decoherence Applet - Greg Egan

"The applet below allows you to perform three simulated experiments, which show how quantum behaviour is hidden when a system becomes entangled, but can be recovered by observations on the complete system. (These are not realistic experiments, but they serve as simple illustrations of the basic idea. Real experiments have been performed to verify these principles, mostly using photons.)"


4 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Decoherence/DecoherenceApplet.html

Spin Networks - Greg Egan

"Spin networks are states of quantum geometry in a theory of quantum gravity, discovered by Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli, which is the conceptual ancestor of the imaginary physics of Schild's Ladder."


4 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Spin/SN.html

Decoherence - Greg Egan

"The basic idea is this: a quantum system, A, in isolation, behaves in a characteristically quantum-mechanical fashion, exhibiting interference effects that reflect the phase difference between the various components of its state vector. For example, if A consists of an electron in a state that is a superposition of equal parts spin up and spin down, there will be measurements that can be performed on the electron that will be sensitive to the phase relationship between these two components. This is quite different from the classical notion of probability: there isn't merely a 50% chance for the electron's spin to be up or down; rather, both possibilities exist simultaneously, and the phase describes a relationship between them that would be meaningless if either was absent."


4 out of 5


http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Decoherence/Decoherence.html

Appearance of the Border - Greg Egan

"The border of the novo-vacuum is a sphere expanding at half the speed of light. Its apparent size in the sky is affected by the fact that when you look away from the closest point on the border, you're looking back further in time, and seeing it when it was smaller."


4 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Appearance/Appearance.html

Cordelia's Tour Applet - Greg Egan

"This applet will generate a view of the sky for an observer anywhere near, or inside, a black hole. By dragging the blue circle below the image, you can reposition the viewpoint relative to the hole; clicking on the distance slider takes the viewpoint straight to the point you click. You can also move by hitting the left or right arrow keys, with the shift key down for larger steps. (Before using the keyboard, you must first click somewhere within the grey control panel.)"


4 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Tour/TourApplet.html

Cordelia's Tour - Greg Egan

"The view from near, and inside, a black hole

Below are views at various distances from a black hole. These are wide-angle shots, each about 127° across (the same apparent width as a 4-metre object just 1 metre away). Distances are given in the “Schwarzschild r” coordinate — the circumference of a circle centred on the hole, divided by 2 π — and in units of “M”, which is a scale determined by the mass of the hole. For Chandrasekhar, a twelve solar-mass hole, M = 17.6 km. The event horizon lies at r = 2 M."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Tour/Tour.html

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Microphysics - Greg Egan

"In quantum mechanics, every particle has a phase: a kind of abstract vector which rotates like the hand of a clock, turning at a constant rate in the particle's reference frame. In flat spacetime, a straight worldline represents motion with a constant velocity, and any detour from this causes time dilation, shortening the time — and hence reducing the phase shift — that a particle experiences as it travels between two given points."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Micro/Micro.html

The Dust Theory FAQ - Greg Egan

"Why an FAQ?

Since Permutation City was published in 1994, many readers have raised the same issues with me, again and again. Although I have replied to these questions before — in discussion group posts, interviews, and individual email responses — I thought I'd finally put my thoughts on this all in one place. So, almost thirteen years later, here is a kind of self-interview on the most contentious aspects of the book.

Q1: In the novel, Paul Durham runs a Copy of himself out of temporal order, skipping its mental state forward in time by ten seconds and then computing the intervening states backwards. Surely leaping over ten seconds of time without computing the intervening states would be impossible?

A1: Yes, it would almost certainly be impossible to compute the state of a complex computer model of a human brain and body at time t=10 from its state at time t=0, without computing thousands of intermediate states. So why did I include these scenes? Because this seemed like the simplest way to dramatise the notion that the arrangement of the successive states of the Copy in time (or space) should not affect its subjective experience."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html

Kem's Results on Symmetry - Greg Egan

"In Chapter 20 of Incandescence, Kem stumbles upon an invaluable insight into the consequences of symmetry in curved geometry:
“I've been thinking about symmetries,” Kem said. “If you look at the relationship between the direction of a natural path and a motion of symmetry, it should be the same all along the path.”

What the Splinterites have discovered here is an incredibly beautiful and powerful result, which is known to us as Killing's theorem."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Symmetry/Symmetry.html

Deriving the Simplest Geometry - Greg Egan

"I
n Chapter 12 of Incandescence, the Splinterites succeed in deriving a possible geometry for the spacetime they inhabit. They come up with the simplest possible geometry that conforms to Zak's principle (that the sum of the three perpendicular “weights”, or tidal accelerations, is zero, after the effects of spin have been removed) while explaining the fact that the ratio of the garm-sard weight to the shomal-junub weight is less than the apparent historical value of three.

The spacetime geometry that they discover is what we would call the Schwarzschild spacetime, which is the geometry of the vacuum around any spherically symmetrical body whose spin and electrical charge are zero, such as a non-rotating black hole. In the novel there is a rough sketch of how they performed their calculations; this page gives the details. Nothing here will require prior knowledge of general relativity, and anyone should be able to get the gist of it, but you'll need a bit of high-school level algebra, trigonometry and calculus if you want to verify every calculation along the way."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Schwarzschild/Schwarzschild.html

Friday, May 28, 2010

Similar Author - Ted Chiang

See: http://tedchiang.blogspot.com


5 out of 5

Schema Poetics and Speculative Cosmology - Peter Stockwell

"There is a difficulty, though, with the detailed analysis of schema poetics in science fiction. If schemas within the sf universe are newly constructed, how are they instantiated in the first place? How does the reader know that particular schema headers are indeed headers of a schema that has never been encountered before? Again, this is handled in hard sf by stylistic means. Here is a typical example from Permutation City:
‘There’s a cellular automaton called TVC. After Turing, von Neumann and Chiang. Chiang completed it around twenty-ten; it’s a souped-up, more elegant version of von Neumann’s work from the nineteen fifties.’
Maria nodded uncertainly; she’d heard of all this, but it wasn’t her field. She did know that John von Neumann and his students had developed a two-dimensional cellular automaton, a simple universe in which you could embed an elaborate pattern of cells – a rather lego-like ‘machine’ – which acted as both a universal constructor and a universal computer. Given the right program – a string of cells to be interpreted as coded instructions rather than part of the machine – it could carry out any computation, and build anything at all. Including another copy of itself – which could build another copy, and so on. Little self-replicating toy computers could blossom into existence without end."

'Speculative cosmology is a sub-genre of science fiction that particularly focuses on the difficulties for the deployment of existing knowledge in reading. This article assesses the usefulness of competing models of world-monitoring in order to arrive at a usable framework for discussing the particular issues in science fictional reading. It is suggested that schema theory, while containing many flaws in general, nevertheless offers an appropriate degree of delicacy for the exploration of sf. Schema poetics - the application of the theory to the literary context - is used to discuss speculative cosmology, with a focus on the work of the Australian sf writer Greg Egan. The analysis investigates the connection between stylistic form and schema operation, and proposes an explanation of 'plausibility'. Specifically, sf tends to provide a readerly counterpart in the text, and thereby dramatizes schema refreshment as if it were mere schema accretion."

publication
Language and Literature - London

ISSN
0963-9470 electronic: 1461-7293

publisher
SAGE Publications

year - volume - issue - page
2003 - 12 - 3 - 252


4.5 out of 5

Iatrogenic Permutations: From Digital Genesis to the Artificial Other - Tama Leaver

"Discusses key issues concerning iatrogenic permutations from the artificial other to digital genesis. Examination of digital genesis from the perspectives of both embodied biological humans and their emergent digital counterparts; Taking digital existence and conscious software seriously and pushing logic consequences as far as possible; Implications on comparative literature studies."

Comparative Literature Studies; 2004, Vol. 41 Issue 3, p424-435, 12p


3.5 out of 5

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/comparative_literature_studies/v041/41.3leaver.html

Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan's "Permutation City" - Ross Farnell

A lengthy article.

"ABSTRACT
This paper argues that the combination of "hard" and "metaphysical" sf in Greg Egan's Permutation City provides a unique exploration of digital modes of being and immortality. His use of multiple paraspaces and subjective cosmologies challenges many assumptions regarding objectivity, the body, and identity, in a mediation of philosophy, theology, science, technology, and fantasy. The novel's spatio-temporal disruptions and the subjective fragmentation of digital topologies question what it is to be human, to be alive, and to be immortal. Juxtaposing AI Copies with evolved A-Life swarm-like entities, Egan explores the differences between these paradigms in the context of science fiction's quest to "live forever." Crossing the line between self-transformation and death, the Copies struggle against timeless time and trial by space, their panic bodies demonstrating ontological dislocation. Through abstraction, the Copies' non-bodies deny the most fundamental phenomenological experiences of corporeality, the viscer(e)al. Ultimately, they confirm that only the finite is bearable. The novel's A-Life reverse the logocentric (digital) gaze, removing the posthuman from center and exposing the Copies' hubris. Where the cybernetic posthuman falters, the non-human paradigms of A-Life adapt through enactive evolution to survive being immortal. Permutation City demonstrates how A-Life can offer sf a viable chance to narrate a true alien alterity divorced from Western metaphysical traditions, thus providing a valuable reflection on the human and the posthuman condition."


Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan's "Permutation City"
Ross Farnell
Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 69-91
Published by: SF-TH Inc


4.5 out of 5

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240849

Greg Egan - Gardner Dozois

From Supermen, Tales of the Posthuman Future:

"Looking back at the century that has just ended, it's obvious that Australian writer Greg Egan was one of the Big New Names to emerge in SF in the nineties, and is probably one of the most significant talents to enter the field in the last several decades. Already one of the most widely known of all Australian genre writers, Egan may well be the best new "hard science" writer to enter the field since Greg Bear, and he is still growing in range, power, and sophistication. In the last few years, he has become a frequent contributor to Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction, and has made sales as well as to Pulphouse, Analog, Aurealis, Eidolon, and elsewhere. Many of his stories have also appeared in various "Best of the Year" series, and he was on the Hugo Final Ballot in 1995 for his story "Cocoon," which won the Ditmar Award and the Asimov's Readers Award. His first novel Quarantine appeared in 1992; his second novel Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1994. He won the Hugo Award in 1999 for his novella "Oceanic." His other books include the novels Distress and Diaspora and three collections of his short fiction, Axiomatic, Luminous, and Our Lady of Chemobyl. His most recent book is a major new novel, Teranesia. He has a Web site at http://www.netspace.netau/^gregegan/.

Almost any story by Egan would have served perfectly well for this anthology. In fact, with the possible exception of Brian Stableford, Egan has probably written more about the posthuman future than any other writer of the last decade— being one of the key players in shaping current ideas about that future— and there were more than a dozen possibilities to choose from, including stories such as "Learning to Be Me," "Dust," "Fidelity," "Reasons to be Cheerful," "The Planck Dive," "Tap," "Oceanic," and many others ("Wang's Carpets" would have been perfect, but I had already used it in another of these anthologies). In fact, if I'd had room here to include two stories by any one author (which I didn't have), Egan would have been the one.

I finally settled on the dazzlingly imaginative story that follows, as it takes us as deep into that posthuman future as anything that Egan has yet written, for a compelling study of old loyalties and new possibilities."


4.5 out of 5

A Plea To Save New Scientist - Greg Egan

"I wrote a letter to the magazine politely pointing out the relevant physics, but even in the event that this letter, or similar comments from other physics-literate readers are published, the underlying problem seems to be the editorial culture at the magazine that allows this kind of article to appear in the first place. Maybe it’s unrealistic to demand that every science writer who covers a physics story have a physics degree, but surely there’s some level of quality control that can be introduced, to ensure that claims that flatly contradict established and uncontroversial physical principles are either clearly flagged to the magazine’s readers as such, or (in cases of perpetual motion machines, magic anti-gravity devices, etc.) just not published at all."


5 out of 5

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/a_plea_to_save_new_scientist.html

Greg Egan - Brian Stableford

From his Historical dictionary of science fiction literature - Brian M. Stableford


3 out of 5

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=nzmIPZg5xicC&pg=PA71&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=164#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

Teranesia - Greg Egan

1999 Tiptree Award Longlist Nomination.


3 out of 5

Oceanic - Greg Egan

1998 Tiptree Award Longlist Nomination.


4 out of 5

Distress - Greg Egan

1996 Tiptree Award Longlist Nomination.


4.5 out of 5

Orbits and Tidal Accelerations - Greg Egan

"Suppose that a small body, such as a space station — too small to have a significant gravitational field of its own — is orbiting a planet in a perfectly circular orbit. Suppose that the space station has become “tidally locked” so that it always keeps the same face towards the body it's orbiting, just as the moon keeps the same face towards the Earth.

The centre of mass of the space station will move in a circle at a constant rate; anyone floating there will feel weightless, and will remain fixed relative to the walls around them. Now, suppose they place test particles a short distance away from the centre in various directions. If those particles are allowed to move freely, starting from rest (relative to the walls of the station), how will their motion look from within the station?"


5 out of 5

http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/INCANDESCENCE/Orbits/Orbits.html

Cocoon - Greg Egan

On the 1994 Tiptree Award short list.


4.5 out of 5

The Null Chamber - Greg Egan

"The Null Chamber is a cavern in the Splinter that contains a part of the Null Line, the line traced out by the orbit of the Splinter, where objects are perfectly weightless. Using the applet above, you can re-create the experiments that Zak and Roi conduct in the Null Chamber, and try out new ones of your own. The directions within the Splinter are:

garm = closer to the Hub (the unknown object that the Splinter orbits) / sard = further from the Hub;
rarb = the direction that the Splinter orbits / sharq = opposite the direction that the Splinter orbits;
shomal = above the plane of the orbit / junub = below the plane of the orbit."


4.5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/NullChamber/NullChamber.html

Biotech Bodies, Identity and Power in Works by Rebecca Ore, Pat Cadigan, Greg Egan and Greg Bear - Elisabeth Kraus

Mentioned in the bibliography of the Greenwood encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume 3.

Elisabeth Kraus. "Biotech Bodies, Identity and Power in Works by Rebecca Ore, Pat Cadigan, Greg Egan and Greg Bear .

Biotechnical and Medical Themes in Science Fiction, Thessaloniki, Greece: University Studio Press, 2002, 323-332.

Unseen.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=M_3kNDKhxIcC&pg=PA940&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=110#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

New boundaries in political science fiction - Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox

Contains some commentary on Distress.


Unseen (mostly).

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-8iD6iuO-iAC&pg=PA18&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=65#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

What is American?: new identities in U.S. culture - Walter Hölbling and Klaus Rieser-Wohlfarter

Commentary including Learning to be Me and Reasons To Be Cheerful.

Unseen.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_Tn7LqhWI7IC&pg=PA301&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=61#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

Dust Lust and Other Messages From the Quantum Wonderland - Brian Atteberry

An essay in :

Nanoculture: implications of the new technoscience By N. Katherine Hayles

And you can see some of it at Google Book Search


Unseen (mostly)

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cIk9GrYaZjQC&pg=RA1-PA168&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=53#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

Orthogonal - Greg Egan

From Google Book Search

Title Orthogonal
Author Greg Egan
Publisher Victor Gollancz Limited, 2011
ISBN 0575095113, 9780575095113
Length 420 pages

"In Yalda's universe, light has mass, no universal speed, and its creation generates energy; on Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting light into the dark night sky. And time is different: an astronaut might measure decades passing while visiting another star, only to return and find that just weeks have elapsed for her friends.On the farm where she lives, Yalda sees strange meteors that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed - and it soon becomes apparent that more of this ultra-fast material is appearing all the time, putting her world in terrible danger. An entire galaxy is about to collide with their own.There is one hope: a fleet sent straight towards the approaching galaxy, as fast as possible. Though it will feel like weeks back home, on board, millennia will pass before the collision, time enough to raise new generations, and time enough to find a way to stop the ultra-fast material.Either way, they have a chance to save everyone back on the home world."


Unseen.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=RQCxPwAACAAJ&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=47

Greg Egan - John Clute

From the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited with Peter Nicholls

"Australian writer who began publishing work of genre interest with his first novel, An Unusual Angle (1983), a fantasy, and whose first short stories were also fantasy. From the mid-1980s, however, he has increasingly concentrated on sharply written sf with an emphasis on BIOLOGY and CYBERNETICS, assembled in 2 collections, Axiomatic (coll 1995 UK) and Our Lady of Chernobyl (coll 1995); the best of them - tales like
"The Caress" (1990) and "Learning to Be Me" (1990) - raised considerable expectations for his first sf novel, Quarantine (1992 UK), which effectively, and literally, encapsules a near-future private-eye plot, of the sort familiar to readers of CYPERPUNK, within a solar system enclosed by a vast enigmatic Bubble. The unfoldings of the plot, and of its implications about human identity in a world (or worlds) controllable at the quantum level through COMPUTER-augmented brain functions, is extremely intricate; this multifacetedness also marks Permutation City (1994 UK), which searchingly examines the implications - in terms involving mathematics, computer science and cosmology - behind the construction of binding VIRTUAL REALITIES. GE has become a dauntingly successful investigator of the new worlds-microscopic and macrocosmic - with which sf increasingly finds itself required to daeal."


3.5 out of 5

Greg Egan - Don D'Ammassa

From the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction he edited :

"The Australian writer Greg Egan began his career with a surrealistic fantasy novel in 1982, but soon turned to science fiction. A steady stream of respectable stories appeared during the 1980s and early 1990s, and he twice won awards in his native Australia although he had not yet established a significant presence elsewhere. Quarantine (1992), his first SF novel, was impressive not so much for its plot as for its execution. Aliens have cut off human access to the stars, and the human race, turning inward, is plagued by violence and religious excesses.
Egan's second novel, Permutation City (1995), would make an even stronger statement. A kind of immortality has been achieved by copying individual personalities into a vast computer network, where they can live on in a shared virtual reality. Eventually some of those artificial personalities despair of their confined existence and seek to terminate themselves; but they are opposed by their originals, who see the recorded version of themselves as their only way to cheat death. Egan handled the theme intelligently and thoughtfully, and Permutation City is an intriguing and perhaps underrated novel.
Distress (1995) was an uneven thriller involving a new drug and a conference of scientific philosophers. It includes some wonderfully inventive speculation, but the plot is unevenly paced. With Diaspora (1997), Egan took up a theme similar to that of Permutation City. Humans have begun exploring the universe by creating various types of robots and computers equipped with minds of their own, and as these diverging forms of humanity propagate, they encounter an alien race whose existence triggers a major crisis. Egan's output of short stories slowed but did not stop as he turned to novels; indeed, the short stories became steadily better. ``The Mitochondrial Eve,'' ``Our Lady of Chernobyl,'' and ``Transition Dreams'' attracted considerable favorable atten­tion. His next novel, Teranesia (1999), was less successful, although the biological oddities of the setting, a remote island evolutionarily isolated from the rest of the world, similar to the Galápagos, are interesting. Schildt's Ladder (2002) is an ambitious space opera, similarly uneven, mixing imaginative scenes with routine melodrama. The best of Egan's short fiction can be found in Axiomatic (1995) and Luminous (1998)."


3.5 out of 5

Greg Egan - Janeen Webb

From the MUP Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Paul Collins.

"writes extrapolative fiction that is focused on a cluster of ideas central to the philosophy of science, particularly as it relates to quantum mechanics, biotechnology and the post-human condition.
Egan has published one fantasy novel and three science fiction novels. Quarantine (1992) and Permutation City (1994) won Ditmar awards for best Australian science fiction novel in 1993 and 1995; Distress (1995) won an Aurealis Award. Egan has also won Ditmar awards for best Australian short science fiction for 'Closer' (1992) in 1993 and 'Cocoon' (1994) in 1995.
Egan's early genre work includes An Unusual Angle (1983), a slightly stream-of-consciousness fantasy concerned with the moral and social responsibilities of film and television. This theme is evident in short stories such as 'Tangled Up' (1985), 'Mind Vampires' (1986). `Scatter My Ashes' (1988),'Neighbourhood Watch' (1986) and 'Beyond the Whistle Test' (1969).
Egan's background in computer programming for medical research is reflected in works concerned with interaction between the biological human and the computer. His post-human Australian futures feature the 'downloading' of the self, or its augmentation through 'neural modifications'. Short stories such. as 'Learning to be Me' (1990), 'Transition Dreams' (1993) and 'Chaff' (1993) explore these themes, which are extended in the novel Quarantine (1992), where bioengineering allows people to modify their mindsas they wish, through software 'mods'. Egan uses the common science fiction plot device of the private detective protagonist to explore this fictional sociery and to provide a platform for examination of the ethical implications of biomodific trion.
The title refers to the Bubble enclosure of our solar system by alien forces seeking to protect other life forms from human choice-based logic, which depletes the universe of its infinite possibilities.
In Pertuntation City (1994), which derives partly from the 1992 story 'Dust', Egan further extrapolates the post-human condition, exploring human consciousness, questioning the distinctions between self-transformation and death and postulating non-human evolution. The novel's thesis is that human minds can be downloaded into virtual environments where the resultant copies can exist forever as virtual people, provided the world's computer networks remain stable.
Permutation City is deliberately clever, with chapter headings that are anagrams of the title and of each other, and an opening poem constructed of anagrammatical permutations.Virtual characters in the Sanctuary act out endless permutations of their meta-lives until the virtual construct begins to collapse. The Lam,bertians, a non-human biological race created in a meta-construct, the Autoverse, evolve towards a different concept of reality that threatens their creators.
Distress (1995), which continues Egan's theme of human logic as contagion, is centred on Theories of Everything, further extending Egan's philosophical exploration of current scientific thought. The investigator protagonist, science journalist Andre'' Worth, provides the narrative links. Set in 2055, Distress portrays a future where questions of gender arc obsolete: available sexual options range from. gendered augmentation to complete physical and mental neutrality as 'neural asex'."


4 out of 5

Distress - Greg Egan

"author's note
Among many works which inspired me in the writing of this novel, I must single out Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg, Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said, and "Out of the Light, Back Into the Cave" by Andy Robertson (Interzone 65, November 1992). The excerpt from the poem Technoliberation is modeled on a passage from Aime Cesaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land."


4 out of 5

The teeth of the new cockatoo: mutation and trauma in Greg Egan's Teranesia - Chris Palmer

In

World weavers : globalization, science fiction, and the cybernetic revolution / edited by Wong Kin Yuen, Gary Westfahl and Amy Kit-sze Chan

Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press,
307 pages 2005 English


Unseen.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/25546757

Greg Egan - David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Introduction to the story Wang's Carpets, in The Hard SF Renaissance :-

"Greg Egan (born 1961) is the most prominent SF writer from Australia on the world stage. He has a degree in mathematics and has worked as a computer programmer, mostly in jobs supporting medical research. He remains socially isolated from the SF field — almost no one in the field has met him in person — and he has written a strongly worded attack on national identities in SF. He does not identify himself as an Australian SF writer, but as a writer of SF in the English language who happens to live in Australia. His Web site (www.netspace.net.au/˜gregegan) reprints several interviews that yield some further insight into Egan, perhaps the most interesting hard SF writer to emerge in the 1990s. He says, “I have a vision of a universe that we’re increasingly able to understand through science — and that includes understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we do the things we do. What drives me is the desire to explore both the details of this vision, for their own sake — things like quantum mechanics and cosmology, simply because they’re beautiful and elaborate and fascinating — but also the ways in which we can adapt to this situation, and use what we’re learning constructively.” And “I don’t think SF will ever be enough, but it’s the easiest place to start examining new technologies, a few decades (or centuries, sometimes) before anyone else is discussing them.”

His first novel (not SF) was published in 1983. His SF writing burst into prominence in 1990 along with several fine stories that focussed attention on his science fiction and launched his books. His SF novels to date are Quarantine (1992), Permutation City (1994), Distress (1995), Diaspora (1997), Teranesia (1999), and Schild’s Ladder (2001), a disaster novel on a cosmic scale. His short story collections are Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995), Axiomatic (1995), and Luminous (1999).

“Wang’s Carpets” first appeared in editor Greg Bear’s flagship SF anthology, New Legends (1995) (which, along with Far Futures [ed. Gregory Benford], was one of the two most ambitious and important original anthologies of the decade for hard SF). It is one of Egan’s finest stories to date. Though “Wang’s Carpets” is most memorable for the image of a naturally-occurring computer program in which exists virtual life, this is contrasted with a solipsistic transhumanity: nearly immortal post-humans who search the universe for non-human intelligence because their survival depends on finding that the universe is not just all about them. Identity and gender are changed at will; physical appearance is manifested at will. Their identities have become so fluid that they search for an Other to define themselves in opposition to.

Stories such as this seem far beyond the political issues of today, though Egan is not apolitical. Egan said, “When I write about the far future, I’m not interested in pretending that all our current problems — things like disease, poverty, war and racism — are going to be with us for the next ten thousand years. Human nature is a physical thing, and eventually we’ll transform it as much as we like. But those ‘temporary’ problems are still enormously important to us, right now. So, although I’ve written a couple of short stories since Diaspora which share the idea that in the long run we’ll find software the most convenient form — especially for space travel — I’m backing off now, and concentrating on the near future.”

There is a literary politics implicit in the subtext of “Wang’s Carpets”: The solipsism of what remains of humanity might be seen to stand in for the post-modern/post-structuralist lit-crit point of view that the world as we perceive it, and even science, is a symbolic construct of language; it’s contrasted here to the scientific stance that there is a real universe out there to which words must refer and which they can only in part represent — mathematics is the foundation of science. Being a hard SF writer, Egan of course comes down on the side of science."


4 out of 5

Subjective cosmology and the regime of computation : intermediation in Greg Egan's fiction - N. Katherine Hayles

My mother was a computer : digital subjects and literary texts / N. Katherine Hayles.
Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
290 pages 2005 English

Unseen.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/29754825

Greg Egan - Russell Blackford and Van Ikin and Sean McMullen

An article about this writer in: (Which is an incredibly expensive book, so I'll try and quote some later.

"Strange constellations : a history of Australian science fiction / Russell Blackford, Van Ikin, and Sean McMullen

Author
Blackford, Russell, 1954-
Subjects
Science fiction, Australian - History and criticism.
Contents
I. Australian Science Fiction to 1925. 1. Early Romances. 2. Utopian and Dystopian Works. 3. Novels of Racial Invasion
II. 1926-59: The Rise of Traditional Science Fiction in Australia. 4. 1926-39: Forerunners of Modern Australian Science Fiction. 5. 1940-59: Local Expansion. 6. A. Bertram Chandler. 7. Wynne Whiteford
III. 1960-74: International Recognition and the New Wave. 8. The 1960s. 9. The Early 1970s
IV. 1975-84: Small Presses and Growing Reputations. 10. Aussiecon and After. 11. Writers of the 1970s. 12. George Turner. 13. Damien Broderick. 14. The Early 1980s
V. 1985-98: Serious Recognition. 15. Aussiecon 2 and After. 16. Greg Egan. 17. Writers of the 1990s
Conclusion: Into the Unknown."


5 out of 5

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9216144?q=greg+egan&c=book

Greg Egan's Mathematical Stories - Phillip Leonard Keller

"One of the most exciting subgenres of science fiction are mathematical science fiction stories. The popularization of mathematics in the last decade has given this field new impetus. Unfortunately often the mathematics was only half-understood by the author and many times also quite trivial and so we were (and still are) treated ad nauseum with stories about the butterfly effect, and fractals and Mandelbrot sets pop up without point or reason. But when the author knows what he is writing about, mathematical sf stories can be very rewarding and indeed, some of the very best sf stories belong to this subgenre, for example "And he Built a Crooked House" by R.A. Heinlein, "Tangents", by Greg Bear or Neverness by David Zindell.
Often mathematical sf stories are written so that the plot revolves around a surprising mathematical property. They can be much fun but they are essentially gimmick stories. The most famous example is probably the already mentioned "And he Built a Crooked House". But the most successful stories are those where the mathematics is an integral part of a wider plot. Although I am no author I assume that these stories are much more difficult to write than the former. Famous examples are William F. Orr's "Euclid Alone" and Greg Bear's "Tangents".
The mathematical sf stories of Greg Egan belong to the very best yet written in this subgenre, ranging in topic from the moral dilemma of double blind testing in "Blood Sisters" to arcane properties of the Cantor set in "The Infinite Assassin". The mathematics is never the raison d'etre of the plot but rather an important part in the background."


4 out of 5

http://web.archive.org/web/20020105164948/www.sam.math.ethz.ch/~pkeller/Egan-MathStories.html

This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 232) - Greg Egan

A forum discussion :-

"Would it be correct to assume that the ordinary tangent vector p still
transforms in the usual way? In other words, suppose I'm living in a
2+1 dimensional universe, and there's a point particle with rest mass m
and hence energy-momentum vector in its rest frame of p=m e_0. If I
cross its world line with a certain relative velocity, there's an
element g of SO(2,1) which tells me how to map the particle's tangent
space to my own. Would I measure the particle's energy-momentum to be
p'=gp? (e.g. if I used the particle to do work in my own rest frame)
Would there still be no upper bound on the total energy, i.e. by making
our relative velocity close enough to c, I could measure the particle's
kinetic energy to be as high as I wished?"


5 out of 5

http://www.mathforum.com/kb/message.jspa?messageID=4734121&tstart=0

Looking awry at cyberpunk through antipodean eyes - Andrew Macrae

Title
Looking awry at cyberpunk through antipodean eyes /​ Andrew Macrae.
Author
Macrae, Andrew.
Published
[St. Lucia, Qld.], 1998.
Physical Description
157 p. ; 31 cm.
Subjects
Egan, Greg, 1961- -- Criticism and interpretation.
University of Queensland. Dept. of English -- Thesis -- MA.
Science fiction -- Australia.
Notes
Thesis (M.A.) - University of Queensland, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references.


Unseen.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/33156666?q=greg+egan&c=book

Thursday, May 27, 2010

An efficient algorithm for the Riemannian 10j symbols - Greg Egan and Dan Christensen

"The 10j symbol is a spin network that appears in the partition function for the Barrett-Crane model of Riemannian quantum gravity. Elementary methods of calculating the 10j symbol require order(j^9) or more operations and order(j^2) or more space, where j is the average spin. We present an algorithm that computes the 10j symbol using order(j^5) operations and order(j^2) space, and a variant that uses order(j^6) operations and a constant amount of space. An implementation has been made available on the web. Comments: 9 pages, 5 postscript figures. This is the version that is to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity. See also this http URL
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
Journal reference: Class.Quant.Grav. 19 (2002) 1185-1194"


5 out of 5

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110045

Wikipedia.sv - Greg Egan

Online Swedish encyclopedia entry.


Greg EganGreg Egan
Född 20 augusti 1961
Perth, Australien, Western Australia
Yrke Författare, f d programmerare
Nationalitet australiensisk
Verksam 1990-talet - fortfarande
Genrer Fantastisk litteratur
Ämnen Hård science fiction

Greg Egans webbsida Officiell webbplats


Greg Egan, född 20 augusti 1961 i Perth, är en australiensisk science fiction-författare och programmerare. Han är skoningslöst idédriven och skarpt kritisk till postmodernismen.

Egan specialiserar sig på hård science fiction berättelser med matematik- och kvantmystikteman, inklusivemedvetandets natur. Andra teman omfattar genetics, simulerad verklighet, posthumanism, sexualitet, artificiell intelligens och rationell metafysisk naturalism överlägsenhet över religion. Han är en vinnare och ytterligare trefaldigt nominerad av Hugopriset. Han har även vunnit John W Campbell Memorial Award för bästa roman. Några av hans tidiga noveller bjuder på starka inslag av övernaturlig skräck, medan hans mer populära science fiction gjort honom känd för att ta upp komplexa och högtekniska ämnen som ny fysik och epistemologi på ett grundligt sätt.

Egan's noveller har publicerats i en mängd genremagasin, mer regelbundet i Interzone och Asimov's Science Fiction.

Egan har en kandidatexamen i matematik från University of Western Australia och är för närvarande bosatt i Perth. Han har engagerat sig för behandlingen av flyktingar i Australien.

Egan är vegetarian och i övrigt en mycket tillbakadragen författare[1], han deltar inte i science fiction-kongresser[2] och signerar inte böcker.Innehåll [göm]
1 Bibliografi
1.1 Romaner
1.2 Samlingar
1.3 Noveller
1.3.1 Berättelser samlade i Axiomatic
1.3.2 Berättelser samlade i Luminous
2 Noter och referenser

Bibliografi [redigera]

Egan behandlar frågor om vår osäkra framtid som: Om man kopierar ett medvetande, hur skiljer man kopian från originalet (om det då finns någon skillnad)? Om en medicin har biverkningen att den "förhindrar" homosexualitet, bör den då få användas? Om man kan köpa nanomaskiner som förändrar ens etiska ställningstaganden, ska man använda den möjligheten?
Romaner [redigera]
An Unusual Angle (1983), ISBN 0-909106-11-8 (ej science fiction)
Quarantine (1992), ISBN 0-7126-9870-1
Permutation City (1994), ISBN 1-85798-174-X
Distress (1995), ISBN 1-85798-286-X
Diaspora (1997), ISBN 1-85798-438-2
Teranesia (1999), ISBN 0-575-06854-X
Schild's Ladder (2002), ISBN 0-575-07068-4
Incandescence (2008), Night Shade Books (US) och Gollancz (UK))[1]
Samlingar [redigera]
Axiomatic (1995), ISBN 1-85798-281-9
Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995), ISBN 0-646-23230-4
Luminous (1998), ISBN 1-85798-551-6
Oceanic and Other Stories (2000), ISBN 4-15-011337-8
Reasons to Be Cheerful and Other Stories (2003), ISBN 4-15-011451-X
Noveller [redigera]
Berättelser samlade i Axiomatic [redigera]
"The Infinite Assassin"
"The Hundred Light-Year Diary"
"Eugene"
"The Caress"
"Blood Sisters"
"Axiomatic"
"The Safe-Deposit Box"
"Seeing"
"A Kidnapping"
"Learning to Be Me"
"The Moat"
"The Walk"
"The Cutie"
"Into Darkness"
"Appropriate Love"
"The Moral Virologist"
"Closer"
"Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies"'
Berättelser samlade i Luminous [redigera]
"Chaff"
"Mitochondrial Eve"
"Luminous"
"Mister Volition"
"Cocoon"
"Transition Dreams"
"Silver Fire"
"Reasons to Be Cheerful"
"Our Lady of Chernobyl"
"The Planck Dive"
Noter och referenser [redigera]
^ Science Fiction Book Club
^ Intervjuer


3.5 out of 5

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 215) - Greg Egan

Discussion about the Klein's Quartic Curve Application.


4 out of 5

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1109879

Hammer Blows to the Ego: Greg Egan's Rational Materialism - Russell Blackford

Hammer Blows to the Ego: Greg Egan’s Rational Materialism, (ar) Nova Express Spr/Sum 2000

Unseen.

Mathematical Fiction - Alex Kasman

A list of Egan's work that falls under this subject :


4 out of 5

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/search.php?go=yes&author=Greg%20Egan&orderby=title

White Holes are time-reversed black holes? - Greg Egan

A forum discussion :-

"Hawking radiation is not, and never has been, the "dominant model"
for "powerful emission sources in the universe"."


5 out of 5


http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.physics.research/2006-08/msg00250.html

Relativistic vector addition/subtraction of velocities - Greg Egan

A forum discussion.


5 out of 5

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=149137

Greg Egan - Russell Blackford

A Companion to Science Fiction

Published Online: 26 Nov 2007

Editor(s): David Seed

Print ISBN: 9781405112185 Online ISBN: 9780470997055


"In 1983, Australian author Greg Egan (1961–) commenced his career as a science fiction writer with the publication of his first short story, “Artifact.” Through the 1 980s, he produced a body of work – one novel, and a total of eight short stories – that showed talent and literary promise, combining exceptionally lucid, deceptively simple prose with bizarre storylines that frequently crossed into metafiction or surrealism. This work gained him reprints in major Year’s Best anthologies in the fantasy and horror fields. However, he gave the impression of being only a marginal SF writer whose strongest interests were in cinema, horror, and experimental forms of narrative. He appeared likely to have a respectable, but relatively modest, career in the SF genre.
Then, at the start of the 1 990s, that changed completely. He altered the subject matter of his work, pursued new thematic concerns, and adapted his flexible and essentially sound literary style to new purposes. From this time on, Egan’s work presents extraordinary situations with relentless verisimilitude; its realism of narrative technique places it within the main SF tradition.
This changed approach opened commercial markets, and Egan’s published writing became far more prolific. Such was the intellectual intensity and scientific rigor of the stories and novels that he produced in the 1 990s, and the sense it created of a writer positioned at the genre’s cutting edge, that Damien Broderick was able write with some plausibility that Egan had become “perhaps the most important SF writer in the world” (Broderick 1998: 50)."


http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/summary/117348500/SUMMARY?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0



5 out of 5

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=HO_z5WFKwpoC&pg=PR7&dq=greg+egan&lr=&cd=175#v=onepage&q=greg%20egan&f=false

Sydney Morning Herald - Greg Egan

"The case of Cornelia Rau demonstrates an extraordinary level of inhumanity and incompetence.

No detention centre in Australia is equipped to care for mentally ill detainees, yet in the case of Ms Rau and many others, Baxter is constantly misused in this way.

Ms Rau was plainly psychotic and chronically distressed. She deserved professional psychiatric care from the start, whatever her nationality.

The Department of Immigration says it went to "great lengths" to establish Ms Rau's identity, but apparently it failed to contact the missing persons registry in more than one state. Sadly, many people have been detained for a great deal longer than 10 months on equally flimsy grounds.

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Having built a $40 million high-security detention centre, the department sees everyone it gets its hands on as a suitable detainee. Until that culture changes, these abuses will continue.

Greg Egan, Tuart Hill (WA), February 6."


5 out of 5

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Letters/Common-decency-lost-in-the-name-of-security/2005/02/06/1107625061605.html

The Age - Greg Egan

"As a refugee advocate who has been in contact with dozens of detainees for the past 2½ years, I don't doubt the assertion by Labor's new immigration spokesman, Laurie Ferguson, that a proportion of asylum seekers make false claims (The Age, 28/10). In any system where there's a benefit, some claims will be false, and this is true for everything from Centrelink to specialists rorting Medicare.

What I also don't doubt, though, is that dozens of people have been detained for four, five and six years who have been entirely honest and deserving in their asylum claims but have suffered from poor decision-making.

I do not advocate that asylum claims are not checked. I advocate that they are checked competently, with all the care required to ensure that no genuine claimants have their lives ruined by a bad decision. In recent months, more than 60 long-term detainees have been found to be refugees. Whatever cost the Australian community has borne because some false refugee claims have succeeded, there has been far greater damage done to long-term detainees whose claims are genuine.

If the quality of immigration decisions was improved, the numbers of false claims accepted and genuine claims refused would be reduced.

Greg Egan, Tuart Hill, WA"

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/28/1098667906181.html?from=storylhs

Comment - Greg Egan

"Russell, did you see the bizarre article in the Weekend Australian a few weeks back, blaming "Darwinism" for school massacres?

I just roll my eyes and give up when journalists are so vacuous. You don't get anyone alleging that a detailed understanding of the physical processes behind hurricanes and earthquakes is tantamount to advocating human actions that cause similar mass casualties -- nobody blames meteorologists or seismologists for the nuclear arms race. But gosh, why not? By claiming that a tragedy like Haiti was just the product of natural forces, surely seismologists are dehumanising us and creating a chilling, materialistic culture of death."


4.5 out of 5

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/02/sydney-morning-herald-article-on-global.html

Distress - Greg Egan

""Arthur C. Clarke had suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic—referring to a possible encounter with an alien civilization—but if a science journalist had one responsibility above all else, it [is] to keep Clarke’s Law from applying to human technology in human eyes.""


4 out of 5

http://www.geoff-hart.com/articles/2000/notdumb.htm

The Demon's Passage - Greg Egan

"Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist."


4.5 out of 5

http://www2b.abc.net.au/mediawatch/forum/newposts/1/topic1237.shtm

Chroniques sur les nouvelles de Greg Egan - Christophe Fetat

A lengthy overview in French.


4.5 out of 5

http://muet-comme-un-carpe-diem.over-blog.com/categorie-11024183.html

Fantascienza Bibliography - Greg Egan

More Italian bibliography.


3.5 out of 5

http://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/A0300.htm#1744

Bibliographica - Greg Egan

An Italian bibliography.


3 out of 5

http://www.intercom.publinet.it/egan.html

Fantascienza - Eganiana

An Italian profile of the author.


4 out of 5

http://www.fantascienza.com/delos/delos66/eganprofilo.html

La Tinozza - Greg Egan

Online story which is the Italian version of The Vat.


4 out of 5

http://www.intercom.publinet.it/T.html

Il Virologo Morale - Greg Egan

Online Italian version of The Moral Virologist.


3.5 out of 5

http://www.intercom.publinet.it/Viro.htm

Wikipedia.fr - Greg Egan

French online encyclopedia entry.

Greg Egan
Aller à : Navigation, rechercherGreg Egan
Nom de naissance Gregory Mark Egan
Activité(s) romancier, nouvelliste
Naissance 20 août 1961 (48 ans)
Perth, Australie
Langue d'écriture anglais australien
Mouvement(s) Hard science-fiction
Genre(s) roman, nouvelle
Distinctions Prix Hugo
Prix Campbell
Prix Locus
Ditmar Award
Œuvres principales
Isolation
La Cité des permutants


Gregory Mark Egan est un écrivain de science-fiction australien, né le 20 août 1961, spécialisé en hard science-fiction.Sommaire [masquer]
1 Biographie
2 Hard science-fiction
3 Œuvres
3.1 Romans
3.2 Nouvelles
3.3 Recueils de nouvelles
4 Bibliographie
5 Liens externes

Biographie [modifier]

Greg Egan est un écrivain discret, et les informations biographiques à son sujet sont peu nombreuses.

Il est né en 1961 à Perth en Australie. Diplômé de mathématiques de la University of Western Australia, il publie son premier roman, An unusual angle en 1983 et écrit tout d'abord quelques nouvelles d'horreur avant de se tourner entièrement vers la science-fiction. Dans les années 1990, il publie ainsi une série de nouvelles qui explorent les problématiques de la nature, de la conscience et de sa possible virtualisation.

Après la publication de Schild’s ladder en 2002, il abandonne l'écriture quelques années et s'engage dans l'aide aux réfugiés en Australie.
Hard science-fiction [modifier]

Les œuvres d'Egan reposent presque toujours sur des connaissances en physique, en biologie et en informatique. Il s'inspire ainsi de théories scientifiques complexes, comme l'étalement quantique (Isolation), les machines autoréplicantes de Von Neumann (La Cité des permutants), la théorie de la grande unification (L'Énigme de l'univers) ou la théorie de l'évolution (Téranésie), dont il se sert à la fois comme base romanesque et comme trame de spéculations philosophiques.
Œuvres [modifier]

Les dates de référence utilisées sont les dates de publication originale. L'ordre suivi est celui donné par l'auteur. Les références aux traductions françaises sont données s'il y a lieu.
Romans [modifier]
An Unusual Angle, Norstrilia Press, Melbourne, 1983 (ISBN 0-909106-11-8) (non traduit)
The Flight of Sirius, 1985 (inédit)
The Subjective Cosmology Cycle
Quarantine, Century/Legend, London, 1992 (ISBN 0-7126-9870-1)
Isolation, Denoël, Lunes d'encre, 2000, traduit par Francis Lustman et Quarante-deux (ISBN 2-207-24993-X)
Isolation, Le Livre de poche, 2003, traduit par Francis Lustman et Quarante-deux (ISBN 2-253-07250-8)
Permutation City, Orion/Millennium, London, 1994 (ISBN 1-85798-174-X)
La Cité des permutants, Robert Laffont / Ailleurs et Demain, Paris, 1996, traduit par Bernard Sigaud (ISBN 2-221-08177-3)
La Cité des permutants, Le Livre de poche, 2000, traduit par Bernard Sigaud (ISBN 2-253-07224-9)
Distress, Orion/Millennium, London, 1995 (ISBN 1-85798-286-X)
L'Énigme de l'univers, Robert Laffont / Ailleurs et Demain, Paris, 1997, traduit par Bernard Sigaud (ISBN 2-221-08439-X)
L'Énigme de l'univers, Le Livre de poche, 2001, traduit par Bernard Sigaud (ISBN 2-253-07233-8)
Diaspora, Orion/Millennium, London, 1997, (ISBN 1-85798-438-2)
Teranesia, Orion/Gollancz, London, 1999 (ISBN 0-575-06854-X)
Téranésie, Robert Laffont / Ailleurs et Demain, Paris, 2001, traduit par Pierre-Paul Durastanti (ISBN 2-221-09378-X)
Téranésie, Le Livre de poche, 2006, traduit par Pierre-Paul Durastanti (ISBN 2-253-11481-2)
Schild's Ladder, Orion/Gollancz, London, 2002 (ISBN 0-575-07068-4)
Incandescence, 2008
Nouvelles [modifier]
[Dérouler]
Liste des nouvelles de Greg Egan

Recueils de nouvelles [modifier]
Axiomatic, Orion/Millennium, London, 1995, ISBN 1-85798-281-9
Axiomatique, Cyberdreams 1997
Axiomatique, Le Bélial 2006
Our Lady of Chernobyl, MirrorDanse, Sydney, 1995, ISBN 0-646-23230-4
Notre Dame de Tchernobyl, Pézilla-la-rivière, DLM • collection CyberDreams, traduction Sylvie Denis et Francis Valéry, 1996, ISBN 2-87795-086-7
Luminous, Orion/Millennium, London, 1998, ISBN 1-85798-551-6
Radieux, Le Bélial, traduction française Sylvie Denis et Francis Valéry, novembre 2007, ISBN 2-84344-082-3
Oceanic and Other Stories, Hayakawa, Tokyo, 2000
Océanique, Le Bélial, novembre 2009, ISBN 978-2843440946
Reasons to be Cheerful and Other Stories, Hayakawa, Tokyo, 2003
Singleton and Other Stories, Hayakawa, Tokyo, 2006
Dark Integers and Other Stories, Subterranean Press, Burton, 2008, ISBN 1-59606-155-3
Bibliographie [modifier]
Denis Labbé, « Greg Egan ou la Philosophie de la science », Bifrost 45, janvier 2007
Alain Sprauel, « Bibliographie des œuvres de fiction de Greg Egan », in Axiomatique (recueil), Le Bélial, 2006
Liens externes [modifier]
(en) site officiel
(en) Bibliographie exhaustive (site de l'auteur)
(en) Textes en ligne (site de l'auteur)
(en) Posts de Egan relatifs à ses écrits sur rec.arts.sf.written (Google Groups)
Biographie et bibliographie complète de l'auteur


4 out of 5

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Wikipedia.nl - Greg Egan

Dutch encyclopedia entry:

Greg Egan

Greg Egan (20 augustus 1961) is een Australisch sciencefictionschrijver en computerprogrammeur. Hij woont in Perth en heeft wiskunde gestudeerd aan de universiteit van West-Australië.

Egan specialiseert in harde sciencefiction met wiskundige en metafysische thema's, waaronder de fundamenten van bewustzijn. Ook behandelt hij thema's als genetica, gesimuleerde realiteit, geestoverbrenging (bijvoorbeeld naar een computer) en kunstmatige intelligentie. Zijn verhalen hebben regelmatig een bovengemiddeld hoog gehalte aan wetenschap.

Egan won in 1995 de John W. Campbell Memorial Award met Permutation City. Met de novelle Oceanic won hij in 1998 de Hugo Award en de Locus Award in 1999. In hetzelfde jaar kreeg hij de Locus voor de novelette The Planck Dive en in 2000 voor Border Guards.
[bewerken]
Bibliografie

Subjective Cosmology Cycle
Quarantine (1992)
Permutation City (1994)
Distress (1995)

Overige romans
An Unusual Angle (1983)
Diaspora (1997)
Teranesia (1999)
Schild's Ladder (|2002)
Incandescence (2008)

Verzamelbundels
Axiomatic (1995)
Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995)
Luminous (1998)
Dark Integers (2008)
Oceanic (2009)
Crystal Nights (2009)
[bewerken]
Externe links
(en) Officiële website
(en) ...meer externe links in de Open Directory


3 out of 5

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Sci Phi Show Greg Egan Overview - Matt Arnold

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

There's also an mp3 at : http://thesciphishow.com/audio/tsps40.mp3

Greg Egan Overview


From The Sci Phi Show podcast. MP3 link (21 minutes 59 seconds)
A photo used to be here, with a caption saying it “reportedly” depicted Greg Egan. I acquired it from a German webpage about him. It was actually a photo of a different person of the same name, and I have taken it down. To my knowledge, there are no available photographs of the author. I infer that is probably by his choice, and I respect that.

This episode will be a general survey of many of the works and themes of my favorite science fiction author, Greg Egan. His fiction exemplifies a crunchy technological coating with a chewy philosophical center. The mysterious Mr. Egan lives a famously reclusive life in Perth, Australia. He never comes to science fiction conventions to promote his work, and his fans don’t even know what he looks like. Another author, Karl Schroeder, once humorously speculated that this might be because Mr. Egan is secretly an artificial intelligence.

That certainly would explain why his speculations are so rigorously within the bounds of existing cutting-edge science. If you encounter paragraphs of extremely crunchy math and speculative physics in his novels, and find that you aren’t enjoying that passage, please, don’t let that stop you. Just skim forward past the passage if you have to, and you’ll still be rewarded by the story. His imagination has been described as a quadruple-decker ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, and another ice cream sundae balanced upside-down on top of that.

One of his major themes is an intense fear and loathing of postmodern relativism. In the mid-to-late 21st century he depicts, protests and acts of violence against science are common, academics, literature, and art have been destroyed from within, and new-age holistic confidence games are so prevalent that they actually cast down real medicine and cost lives. The stories “Silver Fire” and “Mitochondrial Eve” best exemplify this.

Egan’s novel Distress is my favorite. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone invent a whole new cosmology of the beginning of the existence of reality. I’m not referring to an easily-imagined fantasy mythology. Egan actually makes it seem plausible. Distress also includes a radical rethinking of gender, psychology, politics, and what it means to be “human” and “healthy”, the two most dangerous words.

Permutation City: Ten Million People On A Chip is a novel about new universes. Here’s the back cover text:
The good news is that you have just awakened into eternal life. You’re going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly..


The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a copy that knows it is a copy..

The good news is that there is a way out. By law, every copy has the option of terminating itself and waking up to normal flesh-and-blood life again. The bailout is on the utilities menu. You pull it down.

The bad news is that it doesn’t work. Someone has blocked the bailout option. And you know who did it. You did. The other you. The real you. The one that wants to keep you here forever.

Permutation City explores more thoroughly another of Egan’s major themes. If you simulate a person perfectly in a computer, right down to the last subatomic particle, is that simulation a person? Philosophically, if they can’t tell the difference, and by talking to them, we can’t tell the difference in them, how is that any less than what we already are?

These are uncomfortable questions which make for very tense plots. Viewers of the new “Battlestar Galactica” TV series are already familiar with these questions, but that show shies away from making viewers uncomfortable with mind-bending ideas. Egan has no such compunction. Do some mental calisthenics before Egan stretches byzantine ideas through the iris of your mind’s eye.

The novel Diaspora might be the culmination of that. This is a work about the expansion of a digital posthumanity and their backup copies throughout the galaxy and into virtual reality universes. Groups in Diaspora with different ideologies get to share their own private virtual reality universe in which to run the software of their minds however they wish. Or they send software copies of their minds to sleep for centuries on a chip traveling just under the speed of light, and rebuild themselves physical bodies on a star system all their own. Some groups believe it’s only moral to stay in flesh. Some believe it’s wrong to run multiple copies of their minds. Others occasionally leave virtual realities to inhabit robots as missionaries to try to persuade the fleshers not to let themselves die of old age. Others are solipsists, who treat the physical reality as if it doesn’t exist. There are countless other ideological variations. Each chapter of Diaspora has enough satisfaction to stand as its own story. In fact, chapter eight, “Wang’s Carpets”, has been printed that way.

In addition to the novels, here are two stories available on Fictionwise.com. I like “Reasons To Be Cheerful”. The synopsis of this idea is: If you suffer brain damage, which parts could you replace with computational prosthetic and still be you?

Another story is “Cocoon”: What if tomorrow someone discovers a way to ensure that embryos grow heterosexual brains? Would that be anti-gay?

Here are some Greg Egan stories which are free online at the author’s website. The story “Border Guards” contains a view of death from the perspective of a civilization that hasn’t had anyone die in centuries.

I highly recommend “Oceanic”. In this short novella, a scientist on another planet discovers a biological basis for his religion. There is another noteworthy thing dropped into the background setting of the story, without being relevant to the main plot thread. That is the unique biological engineering that his species appears to have undergone to promote gender equality. This is a family podcast, so I won’t describe it, but it’s quite imaginative. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking.

My favorite free story, for strictly personal reasons, is “Oracle”. What if Alan Turing, the Father of Computers, had survived, and met C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia? Despite the pseudonyms used in “Oracle”, it’s clear the story is about these historical figures. For those as familiar as I am with the science fiction writings of C.S. Lewis, such as the Out of the Silent Planet trilogy in which he pillories the modern world, or The Great Divorce, describing Lewis’ vibrant and attractive speculations on the afterlife, the ending of “Oracle” has a powerful emotional resonance. In addition to being free online, “Oracle” was printed in Galileo’s Children: Tales of Science and Superstition.

In “The Planck Dive”, a posthuman poet joins a colony of software minds diving into a black hole. The poet does this in an attempt to give their scientific experiment “meaning” by describing it with mythopoeic archetypes. During the story another character attempts to refute him by saying about mythopoeic archetypes,
They’re the product of a few chance attractors in Flesher neurophysiology. Whenever a more complex or subtle story was disseminated through an oral culture, it would eventually degenerate into an archetypal narrative. Once writing was invented, they were only ever created deliberately by Fleshers who failed to understand what they were. If all of antiquities’ greatest statues had been dropped into a glacier, they would have been reduced to a predictable spectrum of spheroidal pebbles by now. That does not make the spheroidal pebble the pinnacle of the art form. What you’ve created is not only devoid of truth, it’s devoid of aesthetic merit!


Doubtless that character was speaking for the author in saying that, because it’s as good a summary as any of Greg Egan’s way of writing. Imbuing his stories with beauty, enjoyment and inspiration does not require contradicting the laws of science in his fiction, or introducing any supernatural element. His visions manage to fit within that window of future possibility which science has not yet disproven. This has settled for me the worries about the conflict between truth and beauty, which were expressed by the poet John Keats and his contemporaries. Keats wrote about science in his poem “Lamia”, in 1820:
Do not all charms fly


At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

We know her woof, her texture; she is given

In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine–

Unweave a rainbow…

Compare the posthumanist works of Greg Egan, when you’ve read them, to the imagination of C.S. Lewis. Lewis gave us amazing visions of God’s heaven, in which we could run up waterfalls, change bodies, and live happy for centuries. What impresses me about the posthuman worlds of Greg Egan is that in a world where none of his characters can violate the speed of light, and there isn’t any god that can violate the speed of light either, this rigorously dispassionate and objective universe still contains so much possibility, and so much to live for. He demonstrates the poet Keats was wrong: there is no shortage of wonder in the real world. We can hope for all of these things without abandoning rational materialism. The world of science and technology reveal the real-life universe to be a bigger and better place than any tribal holy book ever even considered.

It’s rare to find strongly articulated intellectual philosophies about the meaning of life and the human condition– or in this case, the posthuman condition– combined so seamlessly with strong talents at prose, characterization, plot and setting. Greg Egan could be the most brilliant visionary of our time, tuned into the meaning of life as it is, and as it could be.


4.5 out of 5

http://nemorathwald.com/sf/greg-egan-overview

Deutschen Nationalbibliothek - Greg Egan

Their holdings of his work.


3.5 out 5

https://portal.d-nb.de/opac.htm?query=Woe%3D11365491X&method=simpleSearch

Fictionfantasy - Greg Egan

A German bibliography.


4 out of 5

http://www.fictionfantasy.de/greg-egan

Distress - Greg Egan

Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign Novel, 2000.


4.5 out of 5

Wikipedia.de - Greg Egan

Greg Egan

Greg Egan (* 20. August 1961 in Perth, Australien) ist ein australischer Fantasy- und Science-Fiction-Schriftsteller. Zu Beginn seiner Karriere schrieb er hauptsächlich Fantasy-Kurzgeschichten, wandte sich später jedoch mehr und mehr der Science Fiction zu, wobei er einen Schwerpunkt auf Biologie legte.[1] Er ist unter anderem Locus- und Kurd-Laßwitz-PreisträgerInhaltsverzeichnis [Verbergen]
1 Leben
2 Werk
2.1 Romane
2.2 Sammlungen
2.3 Kurzgeschichten
3 Preise
4 Literatur
5 Weblinks
6 Einzelnachweise

Leben [Bearbeiten]

Greg Egan wurde am 20. August 1961 in Perth, Australien, geboren. Er studierte Mathematik an der University of Western Australia und erhielt hierin einen Bachelor of Science. Bis 1992 arbeitete er hauptberuflich als Programmierer. 1983 veröffentlichte er seinen ersten Roman An Unusual Angle, der von ihm selbst als Jugendsünde betrachtet wird. Seit seinem schriftstellerischen Durchbruch 1991 mit Quarantine (dt. Quarantäne) arbeitet er hauptberuflich als Autor.
Werk [Bearbeiten]

Viele von Egans Romanen und Kurzgeschichten behandeln komplexe wissenschaftliche Zusammenhänge einer nicht sehr weit entfernten Zukunft. Typische Themen sind virtuelle Welten, künstliche Intelligenz oder biotechnologische Veränderungen, insbesondere auch des Menschen. Egan zeigt hier ein für Schriftsteller überdurchschnittliches Fachwissen in vielen naturwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen. Ein wiederkehrendes Motiv seiner Romane ist die Übertragung des menschlichen Bewusstseins von einem biologischen Körper in einen Computer, wo dieses seine Existenz in einer virtuellen Realität zeitlich unbegrenzt fortsetzen kann, wobei die möglichen Folgen für das Individuum diskutiert werden. Egan gehört damit zu den Autoren, die sich stark mit dem Posthumanismus auseinandersetzen.

Egans Werke wurden vielfach mit Preisen ausgezeichnet, unter anderem 1998 mit dem Hugo Award für seine Novelle Oceanic (Ozeanisch) und 2000 mit dem Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis für den Roman Distress (Qual). Greg Egan ist insbesondere in Australien und Japan äußerst erfolgreich.
Romane [Bearbeiten]
An Unusual Angle, 1983
Quarantine, 1992
Quarantäne, übersetzt von Jürgen Martin, Bastei Lübbe, 1993, ISBN 3-404-24174-6
Permutation City, 1994
Cyber-City, übersetzt von Axel Merz und Jürgen Martin, Bastei-Lübbe, 1995, ISBN 3-404-24200-9
Distress, 1995
Qual, übersetzt von Bernhard Kempen, Heyne, 1999, ISBN 3-453-15643-9
Diaspora, 1997
Diaspora, übersetzt von Bernhard Kempen, Heyne, 2000, ISBN 3-453-16181-5
Teranesia, 1999
Teranesia, übersetzt von Bernhard Kempen, Heyne, 2001, ISBN 3-453-17927-7
Schild's Ladder, 2002
Incandescence, 2008
Sammlungen [Bearbeiten]
Axiomatic, 1995
Our Lady of Chernobyl, 1995
Luminous, 1998
Oceanic and Other Stories, 2000
Reasons to be Cheerful and Other Stories, 2003
Singleton and Other Stories, 2006
Kurzgeschichten [Bearbeiten]
Artifact, 1983
The Way She Smiles, The Things She Says, 1985
Tangled Up, 1985
Mind Vampires, 1986/87
Neighbourhood Watch, 1986/87
Scatter My Ashes, 1988
The Cutie, 1989
Beyond the Whistle Test, 1989
The Caress, 1990 (Die Liebkosung)
Eugene, 1990
Learning to Be Me, 1990 (Der andere in meinem Kopf)
The Safe-Deposit Box, 1990
The Extra, 1990
Axiomatic, 1990 (Axiomatisch)
The Moral Virologist, 1990
The Vat, 1990
Blood Sisters, 1991 (Blutsschwestern)
In Numbers, 1991
The Moat, 1991
The Infinite Assassin, 1991
The Demon's Passage, 1991
Appropriate Love, 1991 (Wahre Liebe)
Fidelity, 1991
Into Darkness, 1992
The Hundred Light-Year Diary, 1992
Before, 1992
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies, 1992
Worthless, 1992
Closer, 1992
Reification Highway, 1992 (Vergegenständlichungstour)
The Walk, 1992
Transition Dreams, 1993
Chaff, 1993
Our Lady of Chernobyl, 1994
Cocoon, 1994
Mitochondrial Eve, 1995
Seeing, 1995
A Kidnapping, 1995
Wang's Carpets, 1995
Luminous, 1995 (Lichtborn)
Mister Volition, 1995
TAP, 1995
Silver Fire, 1995
Reasons to Be Cheerful, 1997 (Gute Gründe, fröhlich zu sein)
Yeyuka, 1997
The Planck Dive, 1998 (Der Planck-Sprung)
Oceanic, 1998 (Ozeanisch)
Border Guards, 1999
Only Connect, 2000
Oracle, 2000 (Orakel)
Singleton, 2002
Riding the Crocodile, 2005
Preise [Bearbeiten]
Locus Award
1999 in der Kategorie Erzählung für Oceanic
1999 in der Kategorie Kurzroman für The Planck Dive
2000in der Kategorie Kurzroman für Border Guards
Campbell Memorial Award in der Kategorie Roman für den Roman Cyber City im Jahr 1995
Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis in der Kategorie internationaler Roman für Qual im Jahr 2000
Ditmar Award in der Kategorie Langform für Quarantäne und Cyber City im Jahr 1993
Greg Egan gewann verschiedene weitere Ditmar Awards, lehnte es aber mehrmals ab, diese entgegenzunehmen.
Aurealis Award
1996 in der Kategorie SF-Roman für Qual
2000 in der Kategorie SF-Roman für Teranesia
Seiun Award[2]
2001 für seine Kurzgeschichte Oceanic
2002 für seine Anthologie Reasons to be Cheerful
2003 für seine Kurzgeschichte Luminous
2005 für seinen Roman Qual
2006 für seinen Roman Diaspora
Literatur [Bearbeiten]
Dietmar Dath: Axiomatisches Erzählen. Greg Egan, Ted Chiang und die Diegesis der Mathesis in der Science Fiction der Jahrtausendwende. In: Thomas P. Weber (Hrsg.): Science & Fiction II. Leben auf anderen Sternen. Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 2004. S. 229–253.
Michael K. Iwoleit: Update des Menschen. Trends in Greg Egans Kurzgeschichtenwerk. In: Das Science Fiction Jahr 2002, hrsg. von Wolfgang Jeschke, München 2002, ISBN 3-453-19674-0, S. 513-538.
Weblinks [Bearbeiten]
Literatur von und über Greg Egan im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Greg Egan's offizielle Homepage
Greg Egan auf fictionfantasy.de
Subjektive Kosmologie - Ein Interview mit Greg Egan
Einzelnachweise [Bearbeiten]
↑ John Clute/Peter Nichols, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. St. Martin's Press, New York 1993, ISBN 1-85723-124-4, Eintrag über Greg Egan
↑ The Locus Indes to SF Awards (englisch). locusmag.com. Abgerufen am 27. April 2009.


4 out of 5

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Ficituni 6 Dosar Greg Egan - Horia Nicola Ursu

Article from a Romanian magazine.


3 out of 5

http://www.fictiuni.p5net.ro/Dosar6.htm

Wikipedia.ro - Greg Egan

Greg Egan
De la Wikipedia, enciclopedia liberă
Aveţi mesaje noi (comparaţie cu versiunea precedentă).

Greg Egan (n. 20 august 1961 la Perth) este un scriitor austalian de science fiction . A obţinut un Bachelor of Science în matematică la University of Western Australia şi a lucrat până în 1992 ca programator.Cuprins [ascunde]
1 Bibliografie
1.1 Romane
1.2 Culegeri de povestiri
2 Legâturi externe

[modifică]
Bibliografie
[modifică]
Romane
1983: An Unusual Angle
1992: Quarantine
ro. 1996: Editura Teora, Carantina ( Traducere Mihai-Dan Pavelescu )
ro. 2007: Editura Nemira, ISBN 978-973-569-957-4
1994: Permutation City
1995: Distress
ro. 1997: Editura Teora, Distres ( Traducere Mihai-Dan Pavelescu )
1997: Diaspora
1999: Teranesia
2002: Schild's Ladder
[modifică]
Culegeri de povestiri
1995: Axiomatic
ro. 1998: Editura Teora, Axiomatic ( Traducere Mihai-Dan Pavelescu şi Florin Pitea )
1995: Our Lady of Chernobyl
1998: Luminous
ro. 2000: Editura Teora, Luminescent ( Traducere Mihai-Dan Pavelescu )
2000: Oceanic and Other Stories
[modifică]
Legâturi externe
- Site oficial (O parte din povestiri sunt disponibile online)
Pagina revistei Ficţiuni
Cosmologie subiectivă - Un interviu cu Greg Egan


http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Subjektive Kosmologie Interview mit - Greg Egan

In German:

"Frage: Beginnen wir mit Ihrem neuesten auf deutsch erschienenen Roman Diaspora (Diaspora • 1997), der in einer Zukunftswelt spielt, die sich erheblich von unserer Gegenwart unterscheidet. Was wollten Sie mit diesem Werk demonstrieren oder aussagen?

Antwort: In erster Linie wollte ich mit Diaspora eine Zukunft entwerfen, in der ein Zweig unserer Nachkommen in Computern lebt, und ich wollte diese Welt durch die Augen eines Insiders zeigen, der all dies völlig normal findet. In meinem früheren Roman CyberCity fangen die Menschen gerade erst an, Kopien ihres Geistes herzustellen, die als Software laufen, was für sie noch sehr schwierig und traumatisch ist, doch am Anfang von Diaspora gibt es eine komplette Zivilisation, die bereits neunhundert Jahre in dieser Form existiert hat. Ich wollte also keine gegenwärtige Perspektive einnehmen und diese Idee als zutiefst beunruhigend darstellen, sondern als völlig selbstverständlich, so daß ich mit den Möglichkeiten spielen konnte - ohne daß die Personen alle fünf Minuten in eine existentielle Krise verfallen, weil sie »nur als Software« vorhanden sind. Ich wollte es als völlig normal erscheinen lassen, als Software zu leben, und als sehr seltsam und beengend, über irgendeine Art von Körper zu verfügen - oder gar über einen organischen."


3 out of 5

http://www.epilog.de/PersData/E/Egan_Greg_1961/Interview_AC36.htm

Wikipedia.hu - Greg Egan

Greg Egan [szerkesztés]Megtekintett lap (+/-)


A Wikipédiából, a szabad enciklopédiából.

Greg Egan ausztrál science fiction-író.Tartalomjegyzék [elrejtés]
1 Élete
2 Művei
2.1 Regények
2.2 Novellagyűjtemények
2.3 Novellák
3 Külső hivatkozások

Élete [szerkesztés]

1961. augusztus 20-án született Perthben. Az University of Western Australia hallgatójaként BSc fokozatú diplomát szerzett matematikából, majd egy darabig számítógép-programozóként dolgozott. 1992 óta minden idejét az írásnak szenteli. Jelenleg is Perthben él.

Greg Egant a hard science fiction egyik legkövetkezetesebb képviselőjeként tartják számon. Témái között szerepel a kvantummechanika, a matematika, a genetika, a transzhumanizmus, a mesterséges intelligencia, a tudatátvitel, élőlények (köztük emberek) lemásolása, a szimulált valóság, valamint a tudomány (racionalitás) és a metafizika kapcsolata.

Óceánmély (Oceanic) című kisregénye Hugo- és Locus-díjat nyert, a Permutation City című regénye pedig John W. Campbell Emlékdíjat.

Egan nem vesz részt science fiction konvenciókon, és nem dedikálja a műveit.

Magyarul a Karantén című regénye, valamint több novellája jelent meg.
Művei [szerkesztés]
Regények [szerkesztés]
An Unusual Angle (1983) (nem sci-fi)
Quarantine (Karantén) (1992)
Permutation City (1994)
Distress (1995)
Diaspora (1997)
Teranesia (1999)
Schild's Ladder (2002)
Incandescence (2008)
Novellagyűjtemények [szerkesztés]
Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995)
Axiomatic (1995)
Luminous (1998)
Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008)
Oceanic (2009)
Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009)
Novellák [szerkesztés]
Artifact (1983)
Tangled Up (1985)
The Way She Smiles, the Things She Says (1985)
Mind Vampires (1986)
Neighbourhood Watch (1986)
Scatter My Ashes (1988)
The Cutie (A kis aranyos) (1989)
Beyond the Whistle Test (1989)
The Extra (Az extra) (1990)
The Caress (Az ölelés) (1990)
Eugene (Eugene) (1990)
The Moral Virologist (Az erkölcsös víruskutató) (1990)
The Safe-Deposit Box (A páncélkazetta) (1990)
The Vat (1990)
Learning to Be Me (Hogy önmagam lehessek) (1990)
Axiomatic (Axiomatikus) (1990)
The Moat (1991)
Fidelity (1991)
Appropriate Love (Házastársi szeretet) (1991)
Blood Sisters (Vérszerződés) (1991)
The Demons Passage (1991)
In Numbers (1991)
The Infinite Assassin (A végtelen gyilkos) (1991)
Dust (1992)
Worthless (1992)
Before (1992)
The Hundred Light-Year Diary (A száz fényéves napló) (1992)
Reification Highway (1992)
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (Bizonytalan pályák a hazugságok terében) (1992)
Closer (Egyre közelebb) (1992)
Into Darkness (Rohanás a sötétségbe) (1992)
The Walk (A séta) (1992)
Transition Dreams (Átmeneti álmok) (1993)
Chaff (Pelyva a szélben) (1993)
Cocoon (Burok) (1994)
Our Lady of Chernobyl (Csernobili Miasszonyunk) (1994)
A Kidnapping (Emberrablás) (1995)
Seeing (A látó) (1995)
Wang's Carpets (1995)
Mitochondrial Eve (1995)
Luminous (1995)
Mister Volition (Az Akarat Ura) (1995)
Tap (1995)
Silver Fire (1995)
Orphanogenesis (1997)
Yeyuka (1997)
Reasons to Be Cheerful (1997)
The Planck Dive (1998)
Oceanic (Óceánmély) (1998)
Border Guards (1999)
Oracle (2000)
Singleton (2002)
Riding the Crocodile (2006)
Induction (2007)
Glory (2007)
Dark Integers (2007)
Steve Fever (2007)
Crystal Nights (2008)
Lost Continent (2008)
Hot Rock (2009)
Külső hivatkozások [szerkesztés]
Greg Egan honlapja
Online művei
Interjúk
Greg Egan az Internet Speculative Fiction Database-en
Kategóriák: Ausztrál írók | Ausztrál sci-fi szerzők


http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Wikipedia.cs - Greg Egan

Greg Egan

Greg Egan (20. srpna 1961, Perth, Západní Austrálie) je australský programátor a autor hard sci-fi. Při psaní se drží původního záměru sci-fi a píše o současné vědě a jejich důsledcích pro život člověka. Na University of Western Australia získal bakalářský titul (BCs.) z matematiky. Jeho knihy nepatří mezi klasické „dějové knihy“ a nepatří mezi čtenářsky jednoduché. Věnuje se v nich hlavně tématům jako například Teorie všeho, virtuální osobnosti (scany lidské duše) a jejich „životu“, implantátům v mozku apod.Obsah [skrýt]
1 Díla, která vyšla v češtině
1.1 Romány
1.2 Sbírky povídek
1.3 Povídky
1.3.1 Povídky vyšlé ve sbírce Axiomat
1.3.2 Ostatní povídky
2 Ocenění
3 Související články
4 Externí odkazy

[editovat]
Díla, která vyšla v češtině
[editovat]
Romány
Karanténa - Quarantine, ISBN 80-7174-449-2, Návrat, Brno 2002. Přeložil Petr Kotrle.
Město permutací - Permutation City, ISBN 80-7174-502-2, Návrat, 2002. Přeložil Petr Kotrle.
Úzkost - Distress, ISBN 80-7174-594-4, Návrat, 2004. Přeložil Petr Kotrle.
Diaspora - Diaspora, ISBN 80-7174-607-X, Návrat, 2005. Přeložil Petr Kotrle.
[editovat]
Sbírky povídek
Axiomat - Axiomatic, vydalo nakladatelstní af167, Brno 1998, ISBN 80-85384-29-9.
[editovat]
Povídky
[editovat]
Povídky vyšlé ve sbírce Axiomat
Věčný atentátník (The Infinite Assassin)
Deník sta světelných let (The Hundred-Light-Year Diary)
Laskání (The Caress)
Axiomat (Axiomatic)
Bezpečností schránka (The Safe-Deposit Box)
Vidění (Seeing)
Únos (A Kidnapping)
Učím se být sám sebou (Learning to Be Me)
Vycházka (The walk)
Do tmy ('Into Darkness')
Láska jak má být (Appropriate Love)
Morální virolog (The Moral Virologist)
Blíž (Closer)
Nestabilní dráhy v prostoru lží (Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies)
[editovat]
Ostatní povídky
Děti oceánu (Oceanic), Ikarie, listopad 1999, Petr Kotrle
TEP (TAP), Ikarie, říjen 2003, Petr Kotrle
Světelný (Luminous), Science Fiction 1995, sestavil Gardner Dozois; Netopejr, 1997, Ina Leckie
Wangovy koberce (Wang's Carpets), Science Fiction 1995, edited by Gardner Dozois; Netopejr, 1997, Ina Leckie
Plevy ve větru (Chaff), Ikarie, April 1996, Eva Hauserová
Prach (Dust), Ikarie, prosinec 2000, Petr Kotrle
Vzhůru do temnoty (Into darkness), Ikarie, February 1997, Blanka Vykoukalová, vyšlo také jako povídka Do tmy ve sbírce Axiomat (překlad Petr Kotrl)
Za vodním příkopem (Moat), To nejlepší ze science fiction: Druhá reprezentativní ročenka, sestavil Gardner Dozois; ABR, 1995, Václav Mikolášek
Pokrevní sestry (Blood sisters), To nejlepší ze science fiction: Druhá reprezentativní ročenka, sestavil Gardner Dozois; ABR, 1995, Václav Mikolášek
Učím se být sebou (Learning to Be Me), To nejlepší ze science fiction: První reprezentativní ročenka, sestavil Gardner Dozois; Studio dobré nálady, 1993, Jiří Emmer, vyšlo také jako Učím se být sám sebou ve sbírce Axiomat
Laskání (The Caress), Ikarie, červen 1993, Petr Kotrle
[editovat]
Ocenění
Permutation City (Město permutací): John W. Campbell Memorial Award, 1995
Oceanic: Hugo Award, Locus Award, Asimov's Readers Award, 1998
[editovat]
Související články
Australská literatura
Seznam australských spisovatelů
[editovat]
Externí odkazy

Seznam děl
v databázi Národní knihovny ČR, jejichž autorem nebo tématem je
Greg Egan
scifiworld.cz (životopis, interview)
domovská stránka Grega Egana
Axiomat: ikarie.cz
Město permutací: anotace vydavatele, scieceworld.cz
Karanténa: anotace vydavatele
Úzkost: anotace vydavatele

Tento biografický článek je příliš stručný nebo neobsahuje důležité informace.
Pomozte Wikipedii tím, že jej vhodně rozšíříte.



4 out of 5

http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Wikipedia.pl - Greg Egan

Greg Egan
[edytuj]

Greg Egan (ur. 20 sierpnia 1961 w Perth) – australijski programista i pisarz science fiction.

Egan tworzy tzw. hard science fiction. Jego książki poruszają tematy takie jak matematyka, czy ontologia kwantowa, a także natura świadomości, genetyka, symulacja rzeczywistości, transfer umysłu, ludzka seksualność i sztuczna inteligencja. Jest zdobywcą nagrody Hugo oraz nagrody Campbella.

Egan posiada tytuł licencjata z matematyki, zdobyty na Uniwersytecie Zachodniej Australii. Obecnie żyje w Perth.
Powieści wydane w Polsce [edytuj]
Kwarantanna (Quarantine, 1992)
Miasto Permutacji (Permutation city, 1994)
Stan wyczerpania (Distress, 1995)
Teranezja (Teranesia, 1999)
Nagrody [edytuj]
Miasto Permutacji: Nagroda Campbella
Oceanic: Nagroda Hugo, Locus Award
Linki zewnętrzne [edytuj]
Strona oficjalna


3 out of 5

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Foundations 4: Quantum Mechanics - Greg Egan

"T
he first three articles in this series dealt with special and general relativity, the two great twentieth-century theories of the geometry of spacetime and its relationship with matter and energy. This article will describe the ideas behind a second, simultaneous revolution in physics, one that has had even more profound philosophical and technological consequences: quantum mechanics.


The Birth of Quantum Mechanics

I
n the second half of the nineteenth century, the Newtonian description of the dynamics of material objects was supplemented by an equally successful theory encompassing all of electrostatics, magnetism and optics. The physicist James Clerk Maxwell brought together a number of disparate laws that had been found to govern quite specific phenomena — such as the force between two motionless electric charges — into a unified description of an electromagnetic field. Light, and most other forms of radiation, were seen to consist of oscillations in this field, or electromagnetic waves. This confirmation of the wave-like nature of light made sense of many long-standing observations, including the phenomenon of interference: if you allow light of a single wavelength to travel through two adjacent narrow slits in a barrier and then recombine on a screen, it produces patterns of dark and light stripes. Since the difference in the time it takes for light waves from the two slits to reach the screen varies from place to place, the waves shift in and out of phase with each other, resulting in varying degrees of constructive interference (where the contributions to the field from both slits point in the same direction), and destructive interference (where they point in opposite directions).



Newtonian dynamics and Maxwellian electrodynamics cut a wide swath through the scientific problems of the day. However, by the end of the nineteenth century a number of serious discrepancies had been found between experimental results and predictions based on these two theories. Newtonian physics was soon to be superseded by special relativity, but the most glaring problems had nothing to do with the motion of objects at high velocities, so the explanation had to lie in another direction entirely."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/04/found04.html

Foundations 3: Black Holes - Greg Egan

"The previous article in this series began building the framework of ideas needed for general relativity by describing the geometry of manifolds — mathematical spaces without any notion of distance or angle — and then showing how it was possible to add a metric that defined these things in a very general way. The idea of parallel transport of a vector was introduced: moving along any path, you can carry a kind of “reference copy” of a vector from your starting point with you. A path is called a geodesic if it continues to follow the parallel-transported copy of its initial direction, never swerving away from its original bearing. Parallel transport of a vector around a closed loop can produce a reference copy back at the starting point that fails to match the original vector, and this effect is used to quantify the curvature of space (or spacetime), via the Riemann curvature tensor.

Einstein's equation links the curvature of spacetime with the presence of matter and energy. We haven't quite said all that we need to about curvature, but this article will begin by attacking the other side of the equation. This will give us some insight into why the equation takes the form it does, before we reach the final goal: examining one solution of the equation, the Schwarzschild solution, which describes a black hole.


Mass

If we want to quantify the amount of matter and energy in a region of spacetime, a good place to start is the idea of mass. According to Newtonian physics, when we weigh an object we're measuring the gravitational force that the Earth exerts upon it, and this force is taken to be proportional to the object's mass. Mass is usually defined quite differently, though, through the property of inertia: in the absence of complications like friction, when you apply a certain force to an object its rate of acceleration will be inversely proportional to its mass. Imagine pushing two items of furniture on frictionless pallets across a level surface; even though you're not opposing gravity, the same push will accelerate a 100-kilogram sofa half as much as a 50-kilogram bookcase."


5 out of 5

"The previous article in this series began building the framework of ideas needed for general relativity by describing the geometry of manifolds — mathematical spaces without any notion of distance or angle — and then showing how it was possible to add a metric that defined these things in a very general way. The idea of parallel transport of a vector was introduced: moving along any path, you can carry a kind of “reference copy” of a vector from your starting point with you. A path is called a geodesic if it continues to follow the parallel-transported copy of its initial direction, never swerving away from its original bearing. Parallel transport of a vector around a closed loop can produce a reference copy back at the starting point that fails to match the original vector, and this effect is used to quantify the curvature of space (or spacetime), via the Riemann curvature tensor.

Einstein's equation links the curvature of spacetime with the presence of matter and energy. We haven't quite said all that we need to about curvature, but this article will begin by attacking the other side of the equation. This will give us some insight into why the equation takes the form it does, before we reach the final goal: examining one solution of the equation, the Schwarzschild solution, which describes a black hole.


Mass

If we want to quantify the amount of matter and energy in a region of spacetime, a good place to start is the idea of mass. According to Newtonian physics, when we weigh an object we're measuring the gravitational force that the Earth exerts upon it, and this force is taken to be proportional to the object's mass. Mass is usually defined quite differently, though, through the property of inertia: in the absence of complications like friction, when you apply a certain force to an object its rate of acceleration will be inversely proportional to its mass. Imagine pushing two items of furniture on frictionless pallets across a level surface; even though you're not opposing gravity, the same push will accelerate a 100-kilogram sofa half as much as a 50-kilogram bookcase."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/03/found03.html

Foundations 2: From Special To General - Greg Egan

"T
he first article in this series described some of the ways in which the geometry of spacetime affects travellers moving (relative to their destinations, or each other) at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. By generalising from the Euclidean metric, which captures such familiar aspects of geometry as Pythagoras's Theorem, to the Minkowskian metric suggested by the fact that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for everyone, we analysed the “rotated” view of spacetime that two observers in relative motion have with respect to each other, and derived formulas for time dilation, Doppler shift and aberration.

This article and the next will build the framework needed to provide a similar account of the strange effects that have been predicted to take place in the vicinity of a black hole. To do this, we need to generalise yet again: from flat geometry, to curved.


Gravity as Spacetime Curvature

T
he basic premise of general relativity is simple: the correct way to account for the acceleration of objects due to gravity is to consider spacetime to be curved in the presence of matter and energy. How does curvature explain acceleration? If two explorers set off from different points on the Earth's equator, and both head north, their paths will grow steadily closer together, despite the fact that they started out in the same direction. In spacetime, if two nearby stars start out being motionless with respect to each other, their world lines will draw closer together, despite the fact that those world lines were initially pointing in the same direction. We could say that the force of gravity is pulling the stars together … but we don't say there's a “force” acting on the explorers, do we? Of course, the two-dimensional surface of the Earth is a visibly curved object embedded in a larger (and more or less flat) space, but we have no reason to believe that spacetime is embedded in anything larger. Rather, general relativity assumes that whatever gives rise to spacetime geometry in the first place is tied up with the presence of matter and energy in such a way that the resulting geometry is sometimes curved."


5 out of 5

http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/02/found02.html