Diaspora

A Novel

mass market paperback, 403 pages

English language

Published Nov. 29, 1999 by Eos.

ISBN:
978-0-06-105798-4
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4 stars (4 reviews)

9 editions

reviewed Diaspora by Greg Egan

Very creative hard scifi

4 stars

A good but demanding read with great concepts for science fiction, but at times it does feel like the author tied several great short stories into one trench coat novel. Mind you, that's not a bad thing, just something to consider.

The first chapter can be seen as its own small and can be read on the authors blog, which i highly recommend! It sets the tone of the story pretty well by introducing a level of "techno-babble" that will be present at other parts of the book. You have the choice to read it and attempt to fully comprehend it or skim through it with the necessary understanding to catch the intent. If you want to understand the techno-babble or broaden your understanding, the author even supplies visual guides and very short explanations on his website, easily findable from the link for the first chapter. www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html

SciFi can't get harder than this

No rating

I've seen it described as "diamond-hard SciFi", it might even be an understatement. It starts off being confusingly abstract. After ~15% it gets more coherent, slightly more corporeal, though never entirely so.

Even through its abstract and detached universe, it revolves around modern issues of reality, subjectivity of perception and even memetic reality bubbles.

There's a lot to get from this, provided you can keep your mind clear enough to absorb the weirdness of it all.

Review of 'Diaspora' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I'd like to write hard sci-fi, but Greg Egan has set the bar so unbelievably high...

Diaspora is simply brilliant. Starting from the birth of an artificial mind, it blossoms into a breathtaking tale of cosmology, peril, exploration, discovery and meditation on what it means to be sentient. These are recurring themes in his work, but the sheer Matryoshka doll -like scale of Diaspora is awe-inspiring unlike anything else.

Subjects

  • Science Fiction - General
  • Fiction
  • Fiction - Science Fiction
  • Science Fiction