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Schild's Ladder
Twenty thousand years into the future, an experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum that devours everything it comes in contact with. Now humans must confront this deadly expansion. Tchicaya, aboard a starship trawling the border of the vacuum, has allied himself with the Yielders-- those determined to study the vacuum while allowing it to grow unchecked. But when his fiery first love, Mariama, reenters his life on the side of the Preservationists-- those working to halt and destroy the vacuum-- Tchicaya finds himself struggling with an inner turmoil he has known since childhood.
However, in the center of the vacuum, something is developing that neither Tchicaya and the Yielders nor Mariama and the Preservationists could ever have imagined possible: life.
However, in the center of the vacuum, something is developing that neither Tchicaya and the Yielders nor Mariama and the Preservationists could ever have imagined possible: life.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Greg Egan
241 books2,444 followersGreg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 271 reviews
February 16, 2019
Sometimes, an SF novel will hit you in the gut and speak a little math at you and then scamper away, tittering at its cleverness.
Other times, an SF novel will not only hit you in the gut but hit you in the pride and nads and stand over you, asking you if you want some more. Maybe it'll call you Susan regardless of your sex.
After reading Schild's Ladder, I have to say this is one of those Other times.
I feel like I just read a hardcore Stephen Baxter novel that just had a massive overhaul on the math and the editor not only said, "there may be just a tad too much scalable extra-dimensional geometry, pre-assumptive quantum physics, and thoroughly alien human cultures" just before he (or she) threw up his (or her) hands and said... "Screw it. I'll check for grammar. The rest is all for a team of postdocs devoted to theoretical physics."
Does this mean I hated it?
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA hell no. I loved it. Every single mind-blowing second of it. Just because some of it went over my head didn't mean I didn't LOVE the imagery, the bleeding-edge creativity of having our characters LIVE in this nearly incomprehensible post-and-re-physical humanity.
Examples: whole societies based on checksumming yourself because you're all software. Interchangeability between getting a body and going back in the software. 20 thousand years of murderless living and whole societies giving into their darker natures by telling fibs to cryogenic travelers about just how the world has changed, unwilling to let them know that we've all moved on because we think it's funny. Or how so many of us have tailored truly exotic sex organs (either software or physical) to be compatible with our partners... literally ONLY compatible to our partners. :)
Fascinating? Yeah, but not half as fascinating as the actual plot-driver. Expanding space and life living at a hugely accelerated rate and at a VERY small quantum level. Is it out to destroy us? Should we destroy it? Preserve it? Study it? It's out to eat our populated centers, but WE MADE IT. Accidental life... and perhaps intelligent. :)
Very good stuff here. Definitely designed to draw out only your A-Game. No punches are thrown and no one is talked down to. You will either sink or swim. :)
What a pleasure!
Other times, an SF novel will not only hit you in the gut but hit you in the pride and nads and stand over you, asking you if you want some more. Maybe it'll call you Susan regardless of your sex.
After reading Schild's Ladder, I have to say this is one of those Other times.
I feel like I just read a hardcore Stephen Baxter novel that just had a massive overhaul on the math and the editor not only said, "there may be just a tad too much scalable extra-dimensional geometry, pre-assumptive quantum physics, and thoroughly alien human cultures" just before he (or she) threw up his (or her) hands and said... "Screw it. I'll check for grammar. The rest is all for a team of postdocs devoted to theoretical physics."
Does this mean I hated it?
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA hell no. I loved it. Every single mind-blowing second of it. Just because some of it went over my head didn't mean I didn't LOVE the imagery, the bleeding-edge creativity of having our characters LIVE in this nearly incomprehensible post-and-re-physical humanity.
Examples: whole societies based on checksumming yourself because you're all software. Interchangeability between getting a body and going back in the software. 20 thousand years of murderless living and whole societies giving into their darker natures by telling fibs to cryogenic travelers about just how the world has changed, unwilling to let them know that we've all moved on because we think it's funny. Or how so many of us have tailored truly exotic sex organs (either software or physical) to be compatible with our partners... literally ONLY compatible to our partners. :)
Fascinating? Yeah, but not half as fascinating as the actual plot-driver. Expanding space and life living at a hugely accelerated rate and at a VERY small quantum level. Is it out to destroy us? Should we destroy it? Preserve it? Study it? It's out to eat our populated centers, but WE MADE IT. Accidental life... and perhaps intelligent. :)
Very good stuff here. Definitely designed to draw out only your A-Game. No punches are thrown and no one is talked down to. You will either sink or swim. :)
What a pleasure!
January 26, 2019
I first started this one four years ago and put it on hold after a while; I was not prepared for such a work. However, every now and then I thought about it and I finally said to myself: its time had come. Now that I read it, I wonder why I have postponed it for so long… This is one of the best hard sci-fi books out there.
While I don’t pretend I fully understood it*, I found it beyond fascinating: the amazing worldbuilding, the huge scope, the mind-blowing concepts, everything I look for in sci-fi it’s here.
Premise: while testing the new Quantum Graph Theory (the far future term for Grand Unified Theory) something goes wrong and the novovaccum, instead of disappearing the moment it was created, is stable and growing, something nobody expected. The event would have been a great accomplishment; however this new universe is advancing at half the speed of light, swallowing everything in its path. People discovered that Sarumpaet’s laws** are not universal.
More than 600 years later, thousands of inhabited systems have been destroyed and refugees are seeking for safer systems, out of reach from the advancing novovaccum border.
Since this event, people divided themselves in two factions: the Yielders, who are trying to study it and find a way to penetrate this novovaccum in order to search and preserve the alien forms of life inside it (for they are certain they exist) and the Preservationists, who want to destroy it and protect the planetary systems and life as they know it.
Ultimately, a team formed between a Yielder (Tchicaya) and a Preservationist (Mariama) managed to find a way inside it and if they (and we) get a most extraordinary journey, which is mind-bending.
The honeycomb stretched on relentlessly; the Sarumpaet gained and lost ground. After eight hours of nominal ship time, they'd crossed a thousand cells. In near-side terms, they were a millimeter beneath the point where the border had last rested, and the chase had gone on for mere picoseconds. The Planck worms had spent more than two hours diversifying before they'd learned to penetrate these catacombs, but having found the basic trick they appeared to be unstoppable. So much for the strategy of burning away one vendek population and the predators trapped within it; that would have been like trying to cure a victim of bubonic plague by sterilizing a single pustule.
Tchicaya said, “If this goes on for a hundred kilometers, I'm going to lose my mind.”
This quest is not only in an almost incomprehensible for us universe at Planck scale; it is also a journey within oneself:
“That's it,” Tchicaya marveled. “We've done it.” A lattice of diagonals ran along the path, marking the way, carrying the arrow forward. No compass, no stars to steer by, but they'd found a way to copy the arrow faithfully from start to finish. “It's beautiful, isn't it?” his father said. “This is called Schild's ladder. All throughout geometry, all throughout physics, the same idea shows up in a thousand different guises. How do you carry something from here to there, and keep it the same? You move it step by step, keeping it parallel in the only way that makes sense. You climb Schild's ladder.”[…]
“There's one more thing you should see,” his father said. He drew a second path on the globe, joining the same two points but following a different route. “Try it again.”[…]
“I've made a mistake,” he said. He erased the second ladder, and repeated the construction. Again, the second copy of the arrow at the end of the path failed to match the first. “I don't understand,” Tchicaya complained. “What am I doing wrong?” “Nothing,” his father assured him. “This is what you should expect. There's always a way to carry the arrow forward, but it depends on the path you take.”
The worldbuilding is simply outstanding. Try imagining a fully functional universe at quantum level, with human avatars transformed in software and a ship as ‘big’ as a Planck unit. I think no other writer can take concepts like these and transform them into a story so mesmerizing and full of mouth-dropping ideas. This is an homage to the grace and elegance of math and physics.
“If some alien civilization had handed us Quantum Graph Theory on a stone tablet—out of the blue, in the eighteenth or nineteenth century—I might not feel the same way about it. But general relativity and quantum mechanics were among the most beautiful things the ancients created, and they're still the best practical approximations we have for most of the universe. QGT is their union.”
There are many more other concepts regarding future human’s biology, time, physics and these two universes but I think it’s worth to discover them for yourself. From my PoV this is a unique piece of hard sci-fi and a must read for all genre lovers.
It is simply stunning.
* I spent half a day on Egan’ site to read more about it and it helped: http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/SCHILD...
** for more details on Sarumpaet’s and graph theory, check this: https://www.nature.com/articles/35001...
While I don’t pretend I fully understood it*, I found it beyond fascinating: the amazing worldbuilding, the huge scope, the mind-blowing concepts, everything I look for in sci-fi it’s here.
Premise: while testing the new Quantum Graph Theory (the far future term for Grand Unified Theory) something goes wrong and the novovaccum, instead of disappearing the moment it was created, is stable and growing, something nobody expected. The event would have been a great accomplishment; however this new universe is advancing at half the speed of light, swallowing everything in its path. People discovered that Sarumpaet’s laws** are not universal.
More than 600 years later, thousands of inhabited systems have been destroyed and refugees are seeking for safer systems, out of reach from the advancing novovaccum border.
Since this event, people divided themselves in two factions: the Yielders, who are trying to study it and find a way to penetrate this novovaccum in order to search and preserve the alien forms of life inside it (for they are certain they exist) and the Preservationists, who want to destroy it and protect the planetary systems and life as they know it.
Ultimately, a team formed between a Yielder (Tchicaya) and a Preservationist (Mariama) managed to find a way inside it and if they (and we) get a most extraordinary journey, which is mind-bending.
The honeycomb stretched on relentlessly; the Sarumpaet gained and lost ground. After eight hours of nominal ship time, they'd crossed a thousand cells. In near-side terms, they were a millimeter beneath the point where the border had last rested, and the chase had gone on for mere picoseconds. The Planck worms had spent more than two hours diversifying before they'd learned to penetrate these catacombs, but having found the basic trick they appeared to be unstoppable. So much for the strategy of burning away one vendek population and the predators trapped within it; that would have been like trying to cure a victim of bubonic plague by sterilizing a single pustule.
Tchicaya said, “If this goes on for a hundred kilometers, I'm going to lose my mind.”
This quest is not only in an almost incomprehensible for us universe at Planck scale; it is also a journey within oneself:
“That's it,” Tchicaya marveled. “We've done it.” A lattice of diagonals ran along the path, marking the way, carrying the arrow forward. No compass, no stars to steer by, but they'd found a way to copy the arrow faithfully from start to finish. “It's beautiful, isn't it?” his father said. “This is called Schild's ladder. All throughout geometry, all throughout physics, the same idea shows up in a thousand different guises. How do you carry something from here to there, and keep it the same? You move it step by step, keeping it parallel in the only way that makes sense. You climb Schild's ladder.”[…]
“There's one more thing you should see,” his father said. He drew a second path on the globe, joining the same two points but following a different route. “Try it again.”[…]
“I've made a mistake,” he said. He erased the second ladder, and repeated the construction. Again, the second copy of the arrow at the end of the path failed to match the first. “I don't understand,” Tchicaya complained. “What am I doing wrong?” “Nothing,” his father assured him. “This is what you should expect. There's always a way to carry the arrow forward, but it depends on the path you take.”
The worldbuilding is simply outstanding. Try imagining a fully functional universe at quantum level, with human avatars transformed in software and a ship as ‘big’ as a Planck unit. I think no other writer can take concepts like these and transform them into a story so mesmerizing and full of mouth-dropping ideas. This is an homage to the grace and elegance of math and physics.
“If some alien civilization had handed us Quantum Graph Theory on a stone tablet—out of the blue, in the eighteenth or nineteenth century—I might not feel the same way about it. But general relativity and quantum mechanics were among the most beautiful things the ancients created, and they're still the best practical approximations we have for most of the universe. QGT is their union.”
There are many more other concepts regarding future human’s biology, time, physics and these two universes but I think it’s worth to discover them for yourself. From my PoV this is a unique piece of hard sci-fi and a must read for all genre lovers.
It is simply stunning.
* I spent half a day on Egan’ site to read more about it and it helped: http://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/SCHILD...
** for more details on Sarumpaet’s and graph theory, check this: https://www.nature.com/articles/35001...
November 30, 2020
So this is my third Egan and everything I wrote in my first two reviews, Diaspora and Permutation City, remains true of this one. Seriously, I put a lot of love into both those reviews, so you should go read them if you’re interested.
But here’s a quick recap anyway. I consider Greg Egan the best science fiction writer alive today. He grounds his stories in real (or almost real) science and mathematics, yet they remain incredibly imaginative. An Egan work is an exceedingly rare, utterly beautiful combination of a child’s wonder and a scientist’s rigor. So when I go to my local Barnes and Noble and discover that they stock ZERO Egan books? It tells me that humanity has not yet reached childhood’s end. We’d rather read fairy tales and angsty social dramas.
Now, about Schild’s Ladder specifically: It’s a story in the mode of The Modern Prometheus (Frankenstein). A scientist makes a huge mistake because she doesn’t fully understand the forces she’s dealing with. This results in a monster. And must one become monstrous in order to survive the monster?
It’s not a huge spoiler here to say that the “monster” of Schild’s Ladder is vacuum decay. Chances are, you don’t know what that is. Here’s an analogy. Consider a half-filled bath tub. Float a small boat on the water, if you wish. Even if the boat swirls around, the water itself is stable, yes? If I splash the water, I may destroy the boat, but the water itself quickly restores to a stable state.
But suppose I take a hammer and smash a hole in the bottom of the tub! The water’s no longer stable and will begin draining through the hole, where it will achieve some new stability with whatever is down there.
Exchange the water for the energy of the universe, the little boat with normal matter, and the bathtub itself with vacuum and you now have a basic understanding of vacuum decay. It’s possible that our universe’s vacuum state is a false vacuum: it’s only locally stable. If something were to create a new vacuum which is even more stable, the energy of the universe would flow into this new state. In the process, the universe as we know it would be remade and all of us utterly destroyed. So, yeah, just about the worst disaster imaginable, and a nicely dramatic event around which to write a sci-fi story.
Overall, I liked Schild’s Ladder a lot. But I liked it a lot less than Diaspora or Permutation City. If you’re new to Egan, I very strongly recommend you go to one of those other first, probably Permutation City.
All of Egan’s books are hard sci-fi. And I do mean hard. I’m not a professional physicist or mathematician, but this year I decided to teach myself tensor calculus / differential geometry / general relativity. For fun. So I’m no stranger to difficult math or science concepts. Even so, there were parts of this book that I struggled with (to be fair, my QM-fu is relatively weak). While I found aspects of Diaspora and Permutation City challenging, I never felt like the hard math / science in them was gratuitous. It was always necessary to tell the story.
That wasn’t the case with Schild’s Ladder, at least not at my level of understanding. Sometimes, I felt confronted with unnecessarily technical details or descriptions. Take this passage for example:
I understand what’s going on here, but it’s a bit heavy (“flung off at a tangent”, “arc of rotation”, “dropping from the zenith in front of him”) for what really ought to be a simple description.
The book is rife with technical framing like this. Hell, even the title itself felt tacked-on.
Schild’s Ladder (the math term, not the book) deals with the concept of parallel transport. Parallelism is a relatively straight-forward notion for lines on a flat piece of paper: you can draw two lines and say they’re parallel if they have the same slope or if they “never intersect.” But parallelism is far messier when dealing with higher dimensions and curves. Hence the notion of parallel transport, a way to “move” a vector around a curved surface. Such mathematical machinery is necessary to deal with space-time as fourth-dimensional geometry.
Well, Schild’s Ladder is a technique to achieve parallel transport, and it’s a super cool idea that I hadn’t encountered before. I’m glad I learned it, but I don’t really understand what it has to do with the novel itself. Sure, Egan explains Schild’s Ladder within the context of a flashback, in which the main character is a child talking to his father, worrying about how he can be certain that he’s still “the same person” even as he ages. I get the idea, the metaphor, and the theme… but it’s pretty much out of the blue. And after it’s explained, it’s never again brought up.
That’s what I mean by the hard sci-fi concepts feeling much more gratuitous.
There’s also some pacing issues. There’s a very clear point in Schild’s Ladder when it transforms into Super Egan mode. Before that, yeah it was interesting. But after, it’s like OH MAN YES! I DON’T FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, BUT I LOVE IT ANYWAY.
That’s why I read Egan, for those moments of superhuman imagination.
I’m also a huge fan of the Egan milieu. It’s like how, hrm, like how when you pick up a Philip K. Dick you know to expect certain features of the setting: telepaths / empaths? Yep, pretty common. Precognition too. Sentient or AI appliances / doors / etc? Weirdly often. Mutants? Oh yeah. Invasive advertising? All the time! These aren’t core plot features, they’re often just there. Like PKD took it for granted those would be features of the future, or of HIS future, anyway.
Well Egan has a similar standard milieu. All three books I’ve read feature characters who were born and raised in purely digital form - who are often in contrast with those who purposefully choose to remain ‘embodied.’ Egan’s future sees math and science fluency as standard features of future humans. That’s a far cry from our current position. Right now, in the US, roughly 40% of adults are unable to answer simple math questions, like,
Suppose a liter of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a liter of cola, how much would you pay?
40%. Tragic. In Egan’s future, though, love letters are written in the language of theoretical mathematics. And basic societal problems like starvation or child labor or slavery? Non-existent. Extinct for so long they no longer even register.
It’s weird to say, given how his milieu is often set against the backdrop of galactic-scale disaster, but the Egan future is an optimistic one. It’s a future of more freedom, more knowledge, less suffering, a future in which human beings no longer need waste their energy and lives on trivial tasks like making sure they or their children don’t starve to death. Instead, we have the time and energy to confront the true wonders and mysteries of the universe, and to actualize our selves to their fullest potential. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, with the bottom 90% permanently and effortlessly satisfied.
That’s another reason why I'm such a fan of Egan. In contrast to the vast majority of fiction, his works offer a mature humanity, one not trapped in petty drama. I’ve grown sick, maybe even literally, of dealing with immature adults who have strong opinions supported only by strong ignorance, whose hearts drown in rage and greed and tribalism and respond only to drama. It’s nice to be free of it, even for a few brief moments, to see a plausible vision of human beings that resemble what we mean when we speak of the virtuous “humanity.”
Staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe, watching in slow motion the suicidal trajectory of a bullet aimed at the heart of human civilization, I need that. Even if I suspect they’ll never come true, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone in my dreams of a humanity that has finally managed to grow up.
But here’s a quick recap anyway. I consider Greg Egan the best science fiction writer alive today. He grounds his stories in real (or almost real) science and mathematics, yet they remain incredibly imaginative. An Egan work is an exceedingly rare, utterly beautiful combination of a child’s wonder and a scientist’s rigor. So when I go to my local Barnes and Noble and discover that they stock ZERO Egan books? It tells me that humanity has not yet reached childhood’s end. We’d rather read fairy tales and angsty social dramas.
Now, about Schild’s Ladder specifically: It’s a story in the mode of The Modern Prometheus (Frankenstein). A scientist makes a huge mistake because she doesn’t fully understand the forces she’s dealing with. This results in a monster. And must one become monstrous in order to survive the monster?
It’s not a huge spoiler here to say that the “monster” of Schild’s Ladder is vacuum decay. Chances are, you don’t know what that is. Here’s an analogy. Consider a half-filled bath tub. Float a small boat on the water, if you wish. Even if the boat swirls around, the water itself is stable, yes? If I splash the water, I may destroy the boat, but the water itself quickly restores to a stable state.
But suppose I take a hammer and smash a hole in the bottom of the tub! The water’s no longer stable and will begin draining through the hole, where it will achieve some new stability with whatever is down there.
Exchange the water for the energy of the universe, the little boat with normal matter, and the bathtub itself with vacuum and you now have a basic understanding of vacuum decay. It’s possible that our universe’s vacuum state is a false vacuum: it’s only locally stable. If something were to create a new vacuum which is even more stable, the energy of the universe would flow into this new state. In the process, the universe as we know it would be remade and all of us utterly destroyed. So, yeah, just about the worst disaster imaginable, and a nicely dramatic event around which to write a sci-fi story.
Overall, I liked Schild’s Ladder a lot. But I liked it a lot less than Diaspora or Permutation City. If you’re new to Egan, I very strongly recommend you go to one of those other first, probably Permutation City.
All of Egan’s books are hard sci-fi. And I do mean hard. I’m not a professional physicist or mathematician, but this year I decided to teach myself tensor calculus / differential geometry / general relativity. For fun. So I’m no stranger to difficult math or science concepts. Even so, there were parts of this book that I struggled with (to be fair, my QM-fu is relatively weak). While I found aspects of Diaspora and Permutation City challenging, I never felt like the hard math / science in them was gratuitous. It was always necessary to tell the story.
That wasn’t the case with Schild’s Ladder, at least not at my level of understanding. Sometimes, I felt confronted with unnecessarily technical details or descriptions. Take this passage for example:
The shuttle separated from the Rindler, sending Tchicaya’s stomach into free-fall. He watched the docking module retreat, knowing full well that he’d been flung off at a tangent, backward, but so viscerally convinced that he’d fallen straight down that the sight of the module - continuing along its arc of rotation, yet dropping from the zenith in front of him rather than disappearing behind his head - scrambled his sense of balance and direction completely.
I understand what’s going on here, but it’s a bit heavy (“flung off at a tangent”, “arc of rotation”, “dropping from the zenith in front of him”) for what really ought to be a simple description.
The book is rife with technical framing like this. Hell, even the title itself felt tacked-on.
Schild’s Ladder (the math term, not the book) deals with the concept of parallel transport. Parallelism is a relatively straight-forward notion for lines on a flat piece of paper: you can draw two lines and say they’re parallel if they have the same slope or if they “never intersect.” But parallelism is far messier when dealing with higher dimensions and curves. Hence the notion of parallel transport, a way to “move” a vector around a curved surface. Such mathematical machinery is necessary to deal with space-time as fourth-dimensional geometry.
Well, Schild’s Ladder is a technique to achieve parallel transport, and it’s a super cool idea that I hadn’t encountered before. I’m glad I learned it, but I don’t really understand what it has to do with the novel itself. Sure, Egan explains Schild’s Ladder within the context of a flashback, in which the main character is a child talking to his father, worrying about how he can be certain that he’s still “the same person” even as he ages. I get the idea, the metaphor, and the theme… but it’s pretty much out of the blue. And after it’s explained, it’s never again brought up.
That’s what I mean by the hard sci-fi concepts feeling much more gratuitous.
There’s also some pacing issues. There’s a very clear point in Schild’s Ladder when it transforms into Super Egan mode. Before that, yeah it was interesting. But after, it’s like OH MAN YES! I DON’T FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, BUT I LOVE IT ANYWAY.
That’s why I read Egan, for those moments of superhuman imagination.
I’m also a huge fan of the Egan milieu. It’s like how, hrm, like how when you pick up a Philip K. Dick you know to expect certain features of the setting: telepaths / empaths? Yep, pretty common. Precognition too. Sentient or AI appliances / doors / etc? Weirdly often. Mutants? Oh yeah. Invasive advertising? All the time! These aren’t core plot features, they’re often just there. Like PKD took it for granted those would be features of the future, or of HIS future, anyway.
Well Egan has a similar standard milieu. All three books I’ve read feature characters who were born and raised in purely digital form - who are often in contrast with those who purposefully choose to remain ‘embodied.’ Egan’s future sees math and science fluency as standard features of future humans. That’s a far cry from our current position. Right now, in the US, roughly 40% of adults are unable to answer simple math questions, like,
Suppose a liter of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a liter of cola, how much would you pay?
40%. Tragic. In Egan’s future, though, love letters are written in the language of theoretical mathematics. And basic societal problems like starvation or child labor or slavery? Non-existent. Extinct for so long they no longer even register.
It’s weird to say, given how his milieu is often set against the backdrop of galactic-scale disaster, but the Egan future is an optimistic one. It’s a future of more freedom, more knowledge, less suffering, a future in which human beings no longer need waste their energy and lives on trivial tasks like making sure they or their children don’t starve to death. Instead, we have the time and energy to confront the true wonders and mysteries of the universe, and to actualize our selves to their fullest potential. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, with the bottom 90% permanently and effortlessly satisfied.
That’s another reason why I'm such a fan of Egan. In contrast to the vast majority of fiction, his works offer a mature humanity, one not trapped in petty drama. I’ve grown sick, maybe even literally, of dealing with immature adults who have strong opinions supported only by strong ignorance, whose hearts drown in rage and greed and tribalism and respond only to drama. It’s nice to be free of it, even for a few brief moments, to see a plausible vision of human beings that resemble what we mean when we speak of the virtuous “humanity.”
Staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe, watching in slow motion the suicidal trajectory of a bullet aimed at the heart of human civilization, I need that. Even if I suspect they’ll never come true, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone in my dreams of a humanity that has finally managed to grow up.
August 26, 2015
Like other reviewers of this book, I enjoyed the in-depth quantum physics that is liberally sprinkled throughout the book. I have never read a work of fiction with so much technical detail.
But the technical detail is simply not enough to sustain a science fiction novel. I did not have any feelings about the characters. And, often, I did not even understand who the characters were. Were they beings with bodies? Or were they simulations? Or bodies that were shrunk to insect proportions? Or totally without bodies? I suspect that there were characters that fit all of these descriptions, but it was not easy keeping track.
There is very little action in this book, except that some beings were on a quest to understand, and possibly to stop, the expansion of a universe into ours, one containing a set of physical laws that were different from ours.
While you might call this "hard science fiction", you could also call it "imaginative fantasy". The description of the trajectory (flight? tunneling? what?) through the other universe was very similar to some fantasy novels like A Voyage to Arcturus. The story takes place far in the future, when technology was so advanced that people could do just about anything. To me, that isn't really science fiction, it is more like fantasy.
I cannot recommend this book to science fiction fans as an enjoyable read. It did not engage me, and often confused me.
But the technical detail is simply not enough to sustain a science fiction novel. I did not have any feelings about the characters. And, often, I did not even understand who the characters were. Were they beings with bodies? Or were they simulations? Or bodies that were shrunk to insect proportions? Or totally without bodies? I suspect that there were characters that fit all of these descriptions, but it was not easy keeping track.
There is very little action in this book, except that some beings were on a quest to understand, and possibly to stop, the expansion of a universe into ours, one containing a set of physical laws that were different from ours.
While you might call this "hard science fiction", you could also call it "imaginative fantasy". The description of the trajectory (flight? tunneling? what?) through the other universe was very similar to some fantasy novels like A Voyage to Arcturus. The story takes place far in the future, when technology was so advanced that people could do just about anything. To me, that isn't really science fiction, it is more like fantasy.
I cannot recommend this book to science fiction fans as an enjoyable read. It did not engage me, and often confused me.
March 20, 2009
This was by far Greg Egan's most cohesive and coherent novel that I've read so far. I will issue a warning: Quite a few chunks of this book read as lectures on quantum mechanics and quantum loop gravity. It's all interesting, and is coherent in the abstract if you're paying close attention, but it is dense as hell. Certainly Greg Egan is not an author for everyone.
His characters are still pretty lifeless. Some of the parts that are supposed to be quasi-romantic come off as cold and unfeeling. He does, however, have very interesting ideas about the future of sexuality. Greg Egan loves to have malleable gender and morphing genitals in his stories. The future is a bright place for people who feel that penis/vagina intercourse is just too old fashioned for them.
Basic plot: While testing a part of Quantum Graph Theory (the futuristic Grand Unified Theory) Cass inadvertently creates a new space-time. This new universe is expanding and subsuming our own. The rest of the book is a struggle between two factions. The Yielders, who believe that within this new universe is the salvation of a stagnant humanity, and the Preservationists, who want to save our own universe at any cost.
Action is infrequent, but intellectual banter is constant. Even romance must be reduced to its sub-atomic components through conversational dissection. Once again, not a novel for everyone.
But if you like Greg Egan, and I do, this is definitely one of his strongest works.
His characters are still pretty lifeless. Some of the parts that are supposed to be quasi-romantic come off as cold and unfeeling. He does, however, have very interesting ideas about the future of sexuality. Greg Egan loves to have malleable gender and morphing genitals in his stories. The future is a bright place for people who feel that penis/vagina intercourse is just too old fashioned for them.
Basic plot: While testing a part of Quantum Graph Theory (the futuristic Grand Unified Theory) Cass inadvertently creates a new space-time. This new universe is expanding and subsuming our own. The rest of the book is a struggle between two factions. The Yielders, who believe that within this new universe is the salvation of a stagnant humanity, and the Preservationists, who want to save our own universe at any cost.
Action is infrequent, but intellectual banter is constant. Even romance must be reduced to its sub-atomic components through conversational dissection. Once again, not a novel for everyone.
But if you like Greg Egan, and I do, this is definitely one of his strongest works.
April 6, 2015
4.5 Stars
Schild's Ladder is a master piece of hard science fiction and of the skill and style of Greg Egan. This is not an action packed futuristic romp that would make the perfect summer blockbuster movie. What it is, is an exemplary novel that showcases the brilliance of Greg Egan as a writer. In my experience, there really is no one that writes like this, basically putting physics text books in a fictional story format. Like all Egan's books, he takes factual physics and sends it through the grinder coming up with complex and insightful ideas.
Schild's Ladder is a book about conversations between people trying to both explain the physics and the mathematics and also deduce where to go next. We the reader almost take part in these exchanges of words and are able to come to an understanding of what they are discussing. If these intellectual discretions are not your cup of tea, than this book will not be right for you.
Egan takes a simple plot line...Scientists create an accidental explosion that creates a new space time that proceeds to devour our space at half the speed of light, with no end in sight. And then he gives us all of the science, the experiments, the debates, and the possible outcomes as our protagonists try to save our universe from being subsumed by the new one.
Brilliant science and mathematics make up for the flat characters. They are all forgettable. The pacing is good and the conclusion is quite satisfying. I am a huge Greg Egan fan and this is an excellent book. Fans of hard science will like the text book lessons, others might not.
Schild's Ladder is a master piece of hard science fiction and of the skill and style of Greg Egan. This is not an action packed futuristic romp that would make the perfect summer blockbuster movie. What it is, is an exemplary novel that showcases the brilliance of Greg Egan as a writer. In my experience, there really is no one that writes like this, basically putting physics text books in a fictional story format. Like all Egan's books, he takes factual physics and sends it through the grinder coming up with complex and insightful ideas.
Schild's Ladder is a book about conversations between people trying to both explain the physics and the mathematics and also deduce where to go next. We the reader almost take part in these exchanges of words and are able to come to an understanding of what they are discussing. If these intellectual discretions are not your cup of tea, than this book will not be right for you.
Egan takes a simple plot line...Scientists create an accidental explosion that creates a new space time that proceeds to devour our space at half the speed of light, with no end in sight. And then he gives us all of the science, the experiments, the debates, and the possible outcomes as our protagonists try to save our universe from being subsumed by the new one.
Brilliant science and mathematics make up for the flat characters. They are all forgettable. The pacing is good and the conclusion is quite satisfying. I am a huge Greg Egan fan and this is an excellent book. Fans of hard science will like the text book lessons, others might not.
September 3, 2018
I will openly admit that "Schild's Ladder" is not for everyone, that to enjoy it fully you may need a degree in physics or maths. Egan has much more accessible books - and both his "Permutation City" and "Diaspora" are heartfelt recommendations. But "Schild's Ladder" is the one close to my heart. I re-read it over the last week and here it was, as good as I remembered. Perhaps even better.
And I suppose I will never ever understand why so many reviews say Egan's characters to be unbelievable. Even though I'm a dedicated science fiction fan, I don't read much hard sf, preferring the social science and feminist books - I'm a physicist (I would even say not a bad physicist) and getting the hard science wrong will easily put me off the book. It is much easier to forgive Zelazny or LeGuin (although there is nothing to forgive in "Dispossessed"; the physics there is perfectly coherent in itself and it tells of LeGuins mastery how she managed that without being a physicist herself, without explaining much, just conveying that sense of something that works; and her and thus Shaver's process of discovery in science is among the most believable I ever read - I am still appalled at Delaney's critique of this particular point, of wanting to push the writing into the trope-y description of the working of scientists, but that's a different story). But even more importantly, I am a character-driven reader. I need to believe in people and their motivation, to care for them, to enjoy (with exceptions, of course - this is not what I expect of Borges' short stories).
Egan's characters work for me. Perhaps they are off for others because they are not deeply wounded tragic heroes. Perhaps they are too tame - there are no sexual and emotional escapade's of Charles Stross's "Accelerando". I like this. Hell, I love this: Tchicaya trying to sort through his feelings (and old wounds) for Mariama, Yann, Rasmah. Yann's pranks. Discussion of consent. And laughter; so much laughter and jokes (this is very close to the mode of communication I prefer with people I will comfortable with, so yes, I may be slightly biased). And Yann. Yann! I haven't read such a wonderful character for ages.
And there are a ton of little tricks. Yann in Cass' story reads different from Yann in Tchicaya's. Not inconsistent, but Cass and Tchicaya are two very different people and Tchicaya is a traveler. How Schild's ladder is a metaphor for Tchicaya (and Mariama), but also how Tchicaya, when first explained the concept by his father, acknowledges it as a metaphor himself, [b]ut it was a methaphor filled with hope, moving this all one level deeper (higher?) into the meta.
[And yes, I know that this all does not make Greg Egan a Christa Wolf or a J.M. Coetzee, but I don't pick up his books expecting him to be. The same way I would not pick Pelevin and expect fantasy - some people do and are deeply disappointed.]
And I suppose I will never ever understand why so many reviews say Egan's characters to be unbelievable. Even though I'm a dedicated science fiction fan, I don't read much hard sf, preferring the social science and feminist books - I'm a physicist (I would even say not a bad physicist) and getting the hard science wrong will easily put me off the book. It is much easier to forgive Zelazny or LeGuin (although there is nothing to forgive in "Dispossessed"; the physics there is perfectly coherent in itself and it tells of LeGuins mastery how she managed that without being a physicist herself, without explaining much, just conveying that sense of something that works; and her and thus Shaver's process of discovery in science is among the most believable I ever read - I am still appalled at Delaney's critique of this particular point, of wanting to push the writing into the trope-y description of the working of scientists, but that's a different story). But even more importantly, I am a character-driven reader. I need to believe in people and their motivation, to care for them, to enjoy (with exceptions, of course - this is not what I expect of Borges' short stories).
Egan's characters work for me. Perhaps they are off for others because they are not deeply wounded tragic heroes. Perhaps they are too tame - there are no sexual and emotional escapade's of Charles Stross's "Accelerando". I like this. Hell, I love this: Tchicaya trying to sort through his feelings (and old wounds) for Mariama, Yann, Rasmah. Yann's pranks. Discussion of consent. And laughter; so much laughter and jokes (this is very close to the mode of communication I prefer with people I will comfortable with, so yes, I may be slightly biased). And Yann. Yann! I haven't read such a wonderful character for ages.
And there are a ton of little tricks. Yann in Cass' story reads different from Yann in Tchicaya's. Not inconsistent, but Cass and Tchicaya are two very different people and Tchicaya is a traveler. How Schild's ladder is a metaphor for Tchicaya (and Mariama), but also how Tchicaya, when first explained the concept by his father, acknowledges it as a metaphor himself, [b]ut it was a methaphor filled with hope, moving this all one level deeper (higher?) into the meta.
[And yes, I know that this all does not make Greg Egan a Christa Wolf or a J.M. Coetzee, but I don't pick up his books expecting him to be. The same way I would not pick Pelevin and expect fantasy - some people do and are deeply disappointed.]
November 8, 2019
This is at times the largest and at other times the smallest science fiction novel I've read. The first half spans galaxies and is so far in the future it is at times incomprehensible to someone like me with a rudimentary grasp of the math and physics but the second half shrinks to an almost Fantastic Voyage-like extended chase scene that adds a little excitement to the sense-of-wonder revelations of the beginning. There's politics in here, far-future-sexual-identity stuff, and the technology Egan speculates on is at times so breathtaking I was reminded of the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And don't ask me how plausible any of this is because I'll just shrug my shoulders and/or start babbling incoherently. Egan does a great job keeping the reader interested in the story as the pacing is pretty swift and the layman's terms analogies and attempts at helping the reader keep up with the technical side is very much appreciated and keeps it from straying to purely esoteric realms. I set out reading this because I wanted something that would be challenging, and believe me it was, but I was also equally entertained.
April 10, 2017
Everything I said in my review of
Diaspora
applies to Schild's Ladder as well.
There are some really great ideas in this book. Egan loves to speculate many thousands of years into the future; to invent detailed new physics, and explore the theoretical possibilities of the universe. In this book he touches on some interesting philosophical as well as scientific ideas. I thought the metaphor of Schild's Ladder, as an analogue to the drift associated with life and change was quite interesting and effective.
If only the writing were better. I don't mean the dense, abstruse, jargonistic descriptions of systems and worlds and physics and mathematics - these are challenging but tolerable. What I can't stand is the way the story is told almost exclusively through endless tracts of dialogue, so much of which is just flat and clearly expositional, and which always seems to return to banal points of romance and sex. The shallowness of the characters, and the ways in which they interact and relate to one another are just so childish and trite, it's impossible to take the actual story seriously.
This book does have a few moments of legitimately profound insight - I really wish it were more coherent as literature.
There are some really great ideas in this book. Egan loves to speculate many thousands of years into the future; to invent detailed new physics, and explore the theoretical possibilities of the universe. In this book he touches on some interesting philosophical as well as scientific ideas. I thought the metaphor of Schild's Ladder, as an analogue to the drift associated with life and change was quite interesting and effective.
If only the writing were better. I don't mean the dense, abstruse, jargonistic descriptions of systems and worlds and physics and mathematics - these are challenging but tolerable. What I can't stand is the way the story is told almost exclusively through endless tracts of dialogue, so much of which is just flat and clearly expositional, and which always seems to return to banal points of romance and sex. The shallowness of the characters, and the ways in which they interact and relate to one another are just so childish and trite, it's impossible to take the actual story seriously.
This book does have a few moments of legitimately profound insight - I really wish it were more coherent as literature.
October 3, 2015
masterpiece of hard sf
July 28, 2014
Greg Egan’s hard SF is so steeped in mathematics, it needs its own sub-genre; Theorem Thriller? MathPunk? This story sets up the dilemma of an ongoing environmental disaster (caused by mathematics) that can only be confronted by the galaxy’s bravest mathematicians, because math. Even so, it’s wildly engrossing, because the stakes are so high, and because the society described has such compelling issues that arrive naturally due to their methods of interstellar transport. Fascinating scenarios arise from digitization of mind and body, then the return to analog flesh. In many other genre pieces, this is portrayed as a consequence-free vehicle for speeding plot advancements. Here, it cleaves societies into ‘travelers’ (those who undergo digitization for the sake of making interstellar journeys) and the planet-bound who stay behind, experiencing the long centuries that the travelers skip. When a child expresses his fear of losing himself and being replaced by some other ‘him’ during a journey, it’s hard to miss the metaphor for conventional estrangement. One doesn’t need light years of distance to make our divergent experiences separate us from those we love- you can’t step in the same stream twice.
The future society Egan paints is a bit too homogeneously enlightened for me, and while there is conflict, it is of a very academic type. All people seem to respect the same wide definition of personhood, and have evacuated entire worlds found to possess native life, no matter how single-celled or primitive. There seems to be no currency or economics, as humanity has entered a post-scarcity era, but the slow-motion drama unfolding with the expanding environmental disaster (The ‘Mimosa’ incident) begins to test this universal civility.
As in other Egan stories, the pace and scale really accelerate in the final chapters, forcing the reader to give up trying to follow the science and just go with the action. The reward is high, however, and the epic scales to these final settings really do amaze. Here, we are taken not to cosmic distances and epochs, but in the exact opposite direction, down to the briefest and tiniest Planck-length vistas. Throughout, I was identifying strongly with the protagonist, Tchicaya, although very little of his thoughts or life is revealed outside of the Mimosa problem at hand. Even considering, I found it difficult to put down, and will look forward to reflecting on Egan’s vision.
The future society Egan paints is a bit too homogeneously enlightened for me, and while there is conflict, it is of a very academic type. All people seem to respect the same wide definition of personhood, and have evacuated entire worlds found to possess native life, no matter how single-celled or primitive. There seems to be no currency or economics, as humanity has entered a post-scarcity era, but the slow-motion drama unfolding with the expanding environmental disaster (The ‘Mimosa’ incident) begins to test this universal civility.
As in other Egan stories, the pace and scale really accelerate in the final chapters, forcing the reader to give up trying to follow the science and just go with the action. The reward is high, however, and the epic scales to these final settings really do amaze. Here, we are taken not to cosmic distances and epochs, but in the exact opposite direction, down to the briefest and tiniest Planck-length vistas. Throughout, I was identifying strongly with the protagonist, Tchicaya, although very little of his thoughts or life is revealed outside of the Mimosa problem at hand. Even considering, I found it difficult to put down, and will look forward to reflecting on Egan’s vision.
September 27, 2010
I really, really wanted to like Egan's Schild's Ladder, because - wow - now THAT's hard SF! This book is so physics-crunchy that it'll scrape your gums raw. So I slogged through the physics (not a quick read), listened to the characters argue physics (because you can't really care about any of them), and finished without really feeling it is a better book than some of the others. It's certainly full of fascinating science and SFnal issues, such as humanity having moved beyond sexual dimorphism; or the entire planet's population which intentionally drops into super-slowtime so their intrepid explorer will return to all his old friends; and the very core of the novel is that the universe is going to be devoured by an experiment gone awry… but it'll take billions of years for it to threaten most people. The only reason the characters care is that they're essentially immortal. Try that in your New Yorker story!
These things make the novel sound full of invention (it is) and exciting (sorry). Events occur in the characters' lives - things which should really matter to us (like, say, death) - but they never made me really care. It's a brilliant SF novel, but I need people I can care about and action that goes beyond intellectual debate.
These things make the novel sound full of invention (it is) and exciting (sorry). Events occur in the characters' lives - things which should really matter to us (like, say, death) - but they never made me really care. It's a brilliant SF novel, but I need people I can care about and action that goes beyond intellectual debate.
September 24, 2021
3.5 Stars
I was itching to read some incredibly dense and confusing science fiction so I am happy to report that Greg Egan delivered. Admittedly, quite a bit of the theory went over my head, but what I did understand, I enjoyed quite a bit. I was happy to find that the book actually had a story to follow, but the plot and characters felt like a secondary thought to the science. I would definitely try more by this author.
I was itching to read some incredibly dense and confusing science fiction so I am happy to report that Greg Egan delivered. Admittedly, quite a bit of the theory went over my head, but what I did understand, I enjoyed quite a bit. I was happy to find that the book actually had a story to follow, but the plot and characters felt like a secondary thought to the science. I would definitely try more by this author.
May 7, 2021
Greg Egan’s 2002 hard-sf novel Schild’s Ladder is a thinly charactered story, stretched over the top of some complex speculations on physics.
Ever since the beginning of the 20th century, physicists have worked towards a grand unification theory (GUT) for what are thought to be the four fundamental forces, as part of a much sought-after Theory of Everything (TOE). But a particularly tough nut to crack is gravity, and some theories of quantum gravity has been proposed. The most popular GUT at this time seems to be string theory and M-theory, and a rival theory of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). Egan has read some Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli (proponents of LQG), and created his own fictional TOE, which he calls Quantum Graph Theory. It seems to behave at its lowest levels like a geometrically richer version of John Horton Conway’s Game of Life.
In the book, the first three chapters make up Part 1 – in which an experimentalist named Cass transmits an electronic clone of herself to a system named Mimosa. The Mimosans have set up a space which has special rules of coherence within Quantum Graph Theory. Unfortunately, it spins out of control and becomes an expanding region of space, in which an alternate physics novo-vacuum prevails, gobbling up other star systems at half the speed of light.
Part 2 is 600 years later, and set on board a forward platform within normal space, just on the outskirts of the 300 light-year frontier of novo-vacuum. Tchicaya transmits his clone onto the station, is canted into an available generic body, to participate in the investigations. He finds that the scientists are segregating into rival Yielders (want to keep retreating from the advancing front) and Preservationists (want to destroy the novo-vacuum). When a way is found to penetrate the front, the conflict is brought to a head, as both factions take action in line with their own agendas.
I have a small background in physics, but still found it difficult to distinguish between experimentally established science, theoretically proposed scientific speculations, and the literary speculations of Egan himself. I suppose you could read it all as merely word candy, but I think Egan is more serious about it than that. The story itself involves characters whose purpose is mostly just to provide a vantage point from which to view Egan’s created universe. They have little backstory, and are often projected clones whose death or other destiny is secondary. There is an SF trope like that, with a lot less speculative physics, derogatorily called “big dumb object” stories – the classic example being Arthur Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. The appeal of this novel will be limited to a very slim audience. Maybe someday I will be smart enough to appreciate it more.
Ever since the beginning of the 20th century, physicists have worked towards a grand unification theory (GUT) for what are thought to be the four fundamental forces, as part of a much sought-after Theory of Everything (TOE). But a particularly tough nut to crack is gravity, and some theories of quantum gravity has been proposed. The most popular GUT at this time seems to be string theory and M-theory, and a rival theory of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). Egan has read some Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli (proponents of LQG), and created his own fictional TOE, which he calls Quantum Graph Theory. It seems to behave at its lowest levels like a geometrically richer version of John Horton Conway’s Game of Life.
In the book, the first three chapters make up Part 1 – in which an experimentalist named Cass transmits an electronic clone of herself to a system named Mimosa. The Mimosans have set up a space which has special rules of coherence within Quantum Graph Theory. Unfortunately, it spins out of control and becomes an expanding region of space, in which an alternate physics novo-vacuum prevails, gobbling up other star systems at half the speed of light.
Part 2 is 600 years later, and set on board a forward platform within normal space, just on the outskirts of the 300 light-year frontier of novo-vacuum. Tchicaya transmits his clone onto the station, is canted into an available generic body, to participate in the investigations. He finds that the scientists are segregating into rival Yielders (want to keep retreating from the advancing front) and Preservationists (want to destroy the novo-vacuum). When a way is found to penetrate the front, the conflict is brought to a head, as both factions take action in line with their own agendas.
I have a small background in physics, but still found it difficult to distinguish between experimentally established science, theoretically proposed scientific speculations, and the literary speculations of Egan himself. I suppose you could read it all as merely word candy, but I think Egan is more serious about it than that. The story itself involves characters whose purpose is mostly just to provide a vantage point from which to view Egan’s created universe. They have little backstory, and are often projected clones whose death or other destiny is secondary. There is an SF trope like that, with a lot less speculative physics, derogatorily called “big dumb object” stories – the classic example being Arthur Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. The appeal of this novel will be limited to a very slim audience. Maybe someday I will be smart enough to appreciate it more.
January 20, 2021
It's the far future. Humanity has spread across the stars. Individuals' consciousnesses no longer reside in the meat of the brain, but in quantum machines embedded in their skulls. Bodies, as we know them, have been superseded by endlessly reconfigurable, and recyclable, biomatter. Humans are essentially immortal. They travel the explored reaches of the galaxy at the speed of light; construct elaborately delicate experimental apparatus in the remotest fringes of interstellar space; and conduct experiments to create new pocket universes by monkeying with the graphs with underlie the existence of all matter and energy, releasing multi-civilisation-ending existential threats in the process. And they argue about science. Boy, do they argue about science.
Schild's Ladder is roughly three-quarters scientists arguing in rooms and/or spaceships, and one-quarter 2nd-year mathematics lecture about a fictitious structure of quantum graphs that underlies the standard model. It is a testament to Egan's craft that he renders the former gripping and emotive, and the latter practically lyric poetry.
This is definitely not a book for all. If you struggle with exposition-heavy hard sci-fi, then it is for you to look elsewhere. If you're unfazed by same and you love some mind-bending speculation about a reality that is truly alien, then Schild's Ladder is definitely worth a look.
Schild's Ladder is roughly three-quarters scientists arguing in rooms and/or spaceships, and one-quarter 2nd-year mathematics lecture about a fictitious structure of quantum graphs that underlies the standard model. It is a testament to Egan's craft that he renders the former gripping and emotive, and the latter practically lyric poetry.
This is definitely not a book for all. If you struggle with exposition-heavy hard sci-fi, then it is for you to look elsewhere. If you're unfazed by same and you love some mind-bending speculation about a reality that is truly alien, then Schild's Ladder is definitely worth a look.
March 18, 2022
I cannot say that I have understood everything, of course not, but I do hope that I have comprehended the great evocative power of this novel. I think the author has imagined a lot of mathematical/scientific concepts to build this amazing novel (to understand us, like Yoon Ha Lee does later in Ninefox Gambit). That is, I have the impression that he goes well beyond the limits of mathematics known today. Despite this, and the fact that we can consider Greg Egan as a math nerd, another wonderful aspect of his novels is that he always has in mind human (or rather, transhuman) nature: in situations far in the future, where humanity has multiple forms and mediums (natural, synthetic or computerized), he is always able to show us the aspects that make us human.
I am sorry but I think this is his last great novel that can be enjoyed by non-scientists like me. As I understand it, what comes next is more of an intellectual exercise/game than a science fiction to amaze the readers who appreciate a good story above the purely scientific aspects. At least this was my impression -and someone will correct me if I am wrong, I will be glad to know- when I gave up the reading of his next published novel "The Clockwork Rocket".
However, in this case, without a doubt, I think I can recommend Schild's Ladder as one of the wonders that this author has contributed to the science fiction genre.
I am sorry but I think this is his last great novel that can be enjoyed by non-scientists like me. As I understand it, what comes next is more of an intellectual exercise/game than a science fiction to amaze the readers who appreciate a good story above the purely scientific aspects. At least this was my impression -and someone will correct me if I am wrong, I will be glad to know- when I gave up the reading of his next published novel "The Clockwork Rocket".
However, in this case, without a doubt, I think I can recommend Schild's Ladder as one of the wonders that this author has contributed to the science fiction genre.
July 9, 2016
After they finish Schild's Ladder, I think most people will remember two main things about it: first, the characters are all really weird and don't react to things quite like normal people do. Second, it's full of math, to the point where it's almost unreadable in parts. So, another Greg Egan book! Point 1 was more interesting for me: a big challenge for books that are set tens of thousands of years in the future is that they're often really hard to relate to. We already live in exponential times, with dramatic changes to our lifestyle that would be unimaginable to people mere hundreds of years ago, so extrapolating what life would be like for people twenty thousand years from now is not only tough to do convincingly, but also absolutely certain to look laughably naive in just a few years. Even Leonardo da Vinci couldn't have written about what the Internet would do to society, and to extend that out by a factor of dozens is mind boggling.
Nevertheless, it's always possible to give even the nerdiest science fiction (like the kind Greg Egan writes) some emotional hooks to present-day readers just by focusing on urges and issues that will always be resonant: sex, love, death, curiosity, and conflict. Schild's Ladder is set mainly of the aftermath of an accident at the future equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider. A false vacuum has been expanding throughout the universe at half the speed of light, wiping out ever-increasing numbers of the scattered human colonies. Tchicaya, the protagonist, is part of a research team divided into two groups: the Preservationists studying the false vacuum as one would study a serendipitous lab creation, and the Yielders dedicated to either halting or reversing the vacuum's expansion. Yet again Egan has peopled his book with nearly autistic computationally-augmented post-humans that don't care about the slow-motion destruction of the normal universe, since their future technology lets them float above the sphere of destruction to run experiments essentially forever.
The funny thing is that I honestly can't think of a way to improve Egan's handling of this slow-motion catastrophe; the world he's created is almost above criticism in terms of how its inhabitants would likely react. How would you write dialogue for millennia-old computer programs? So Tchicaya gets homesick, he spends most of the book thinking about an old girlfriend who showed up to the research station, gets involved in the factionalism on the station, even goes on a quest of sorts at the end, and it all seemed natural and relatable. It certainly made the hideous math easier to swallow, which gets progressively more ridiculous until the final section, where Tchicaya and his lady friend travel into the false vacuum world using physics magic. Egan himself has "only" a BS in Maths, but the book feels like a PhD thesis with walk-on characters at times. You will be really impressed that such abstruse material is presented as well as it is (you try writing a novel about quantum graph theory some time) which means you'll not only have a new respect for Egan, but also for the scientists who actually deal with this stuff in their research. Hopefully the team at the LHC is a little more careful than the team in this book though.
Nevertheless, it's always possible to give even the nerdiest science fiction (like the kind Greg Egan writes) some emotional hooks to present-day readers just by focusing on urges and issues that will always be resonant: sex, love, death, curiosity, and conflict. Schild's Ladder is set mainly of the aftermath of an accident at the future equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider. A false vacuum has been expanding throughout the universe at half the speed of light, wiping out ever-increasing numbers of the scattered human colonies. Tchicaya, the protagonist, is part of a research team divided into two groups: the Preservationists studying the false vacuum as one would study a serendipitous lab creation, and the Yielders dedicated to either halting or reversing the vacuum's expansion. Yet again Egan has peopled his book with nearly autistic computationally-augmented post-humans that don't care about the slow-motion destruction of the normal universe, since their future technology lets them float above the sphere of destruction to run experiments essentially forever.
The funny thing is that I honestly can't think of a way to improve Egan's handling of this slow-motion catastrophe; the world he's created is almost above criticism in terms of how its inhabitants would likely react. How would you write dialogue for millennia-old computer programs? So Tchicaya gets homesick, he spends most of the book thinking about an old girlfriend who showed up to the research station, gets involved in the factionalism on the station, even goes on a quest of sorts at the end, and it all seemed natural and relatable. It certainly made the hideous math easier to swallow, which gets progressively more ridiculous until the final section, where Tchicaya and his lady friend travel into the false vacuum world using physics magic. Egan himself has "only" a BS in Maths, but the book feels like a PhD thesis with walk-on characters at times. You will be really impressed that such abstruse material is presented as well as it is (you try writing a novel about quantum graph theory some time) which means you'll not only have a new respect for Egan, but also for the scientists who actually deal with this stuff in their research. Hopefully the team at the LHC is a little more careful than the team in this book though.
April 22, 2020
(...)
I used to think the Culture of Iain M. Banks represented the creative pinnacle of imagining a transhumanist future, but consider that position revised: it seems Egan has picked up the baton a long time ago.
(...)
Read the full review on Weighing A Pig
I used to think the Culture of Iain M. Banks represented the creative pinnacle of imagining a transhumanist future, but consider that position revised: it seems Egan has picked up the baton a long time ago.
(...)
Read the full review on Weighing A Pig
September 14, 2016
Lleno de ideas ingeniosas, física exótica y un emocionante conflicto. Greg Egan es un tesoro de la ciencia ficción.
January 31, 2016
(SOME SPOILERS! But not major.)
I have so many thoughts on this book. It was an absolutely fascinating read, but the entire book was basically a love fest of Existentialism, unabashedly and condescendingly so. From a definition from allaboutphilosophy.org, they define Existentialism as "the notion that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature. "
This is it.
That's the book.
So if you are in for it, let me explain:
Greg Egan has created an increasingly complex and fascinating futuristic world, something I've never read or experienced before from any book, tv series, or movie. This is what drew me into his writing in the first place. He is able to extrapolate from quantum physics (both proven and theoretical) a vividly complex human society that even after reading the book, I *still* don't fully understand. His work is extremely dense, not only with science and math, but with his own original culture and lingo, that never is fully explained. He kind of just assumes that the reader will just *get* or infer what he is talking about. Now, I consider myself to be an intelligent individual, but unless you are a science or math mega-nerd, I seriously question whether anyone *actually* understands his work. And even then, the stuff he wants you to infer, I wonder if *anyone even can*? I've read that this book has been dubbed "the hardest science fiction book ever." And that is most certainly true. There is nothing overly substantial or concrete in his world that you can hold on to and grasp, nothing that you can relate to, which both frustrated and fascinated. I think, though, in many ways this is fitting because of what he is seeking to do.
So, in his world, human beings are basically immortal because they are no longer bound by bodies (or brains), but can become "acorporeal" at a whim through the use of the quantum computer (Qusps) in their heads, which stores their conciousness. They have back-ups of themselves, which get updated regularly so if they happen to "die" in whatever body they were in at the time, they can just go back to their backup conciousness and get a new body. There conciousness can also take on the superposition state of quantum physics (this is where things get WEIRD), so in other words, their conciousness can exist in multiple states at once, they can make multiple choices at once. So, for example, the characters can clone themselves with their acorporeal conciousness into taking multiple avenues of existence, so they can do things like, witness "real-time" results of quantum mechanical effects. I'm trying to figure out how to better explain this for it to make more sense, but I really don't *know* how it makes sense, but the reason I'm pointing this out is to show how Egan has created an immortal humanity that is entirely a *free agent* that *exists* and is defined by nothing other than the choices that sole individual makes. This is pure Existentialism in practice, in full glory. For we can further define it by:
"In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth." (allaboutphilosophy.org)
Because humanity is this way in Egan's world, they spend centuries upon centuries upon centuries traveling the galaxy, experiencing impossible things, all manner of things, whatever they *literally* want, getting married, having children, transforming their bodies from male to female at a whim, leaving said spouse/children if they get bored (basically), regrowing and reshaping aspects of themselves as they go, *finding themselves* *defining themselves*, but only being held to that definition because it is what *they* want, not what any outside influence dictates. Pure Self. Pure Conciousness. Pure Existence.
Now the main character of this book is Tchicaya, who I guess could be considered a theoretical physicist, but his main function of the story is that he is a Yielder, the group of scientists who uphold to studying and *not* destroying this giant vacuum-void that is consuming the whole universe, vs Preservationists, who also want to study it, but find a way to end it. (This whole vacuum was accidently created at the beginning of the story by the scientist, Cass, and is the main dilemma of this story.) So, we are seeing eveything through Tchicaya's experience, and we get flashbacks into his childhood which relate to current events, as he is on this quest to discovering what exactly this vacuum is, and if it has the potential to contain entirely new kinds of physics. The journey he ends up experiencing through the vacuum of this void is actually just a metaphor for Tchicaya's own existential journey. . . and finding inner peace, I guess.
So, in one of the flashbacks as a child, Tchicaya apparently has problems with the notion of his changing as he gets older (of going through different bodies/experiences), so his father sits him down and describes to him a mathematical conundrum. He tells his son to draw an arrow moving completely parallel with itself across an arbitrary chosen path, without using any external methods of reference. This is math, so I really didn't understand it, but essentially, what happens, through the use of using diagonals with itself, you can move the arrow completely parallel along a path. *This is Schild's Ladder.* (Actually based on a real method introduced by some guy named Alfred Schild). What the father was essentially showing his son was that no matter how much he changed, he could remain authentic to the self by basing his changes on self-referential data. Tchicaya would only change the amount *he* wanted to change and what only *he* was comfortable with. Tchicaya could "remain parallel" with himself all throughout his journey of life. And once again, let us look into Existentialism and what it has to say on Authenticity:
"Authentic existence involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and then live in accordance with this self. What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as "one" acts or as "one's genes" or any other essence requires. The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one's freedom." (Wikipedia).
So, you can see the pattern that is being created here. This book is basically a play by play of this philosophy.
Though I find this philosophy highly erroneous, I could have loved this book even still, if Egan hadn't portrayed it in such a condescending and demoralizing tone. There were a few times where the characters go on little mini-rants or trains of conversation that have NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS HAPPENING, just so he can drive his point harder. This is done through the use of sexuality, where characters spend a lot of the time having sex with one another, in which the said persons' bodies change specifically for the other, just to SHOW that they aren't bound by the medieval notions of "gender". Tchicaya even tells this whole, irrelevant-to-the-plot story (as if we didn't *get* the point already), showing how backwards and ridiculous earth people of yesteryear where with their silly notions of sexuality, gender, and even religion. Yet even if sexuality was the strongest theme, Egan shows condesension in other ways as well. At one point in the story, some rabid, zombie scientists try to stop the good and pure scientists by blowing up the research ship, and these rabid scientists, who are portrayed as obvious monsters, are people who denied their Qusps and were living solely through their own brains (hence they became...zombies??). As if brain-living individuals could only ever be mindless, backwards, anti-science, anti-knowledge, murderous thugs!
These are just the main examples, but Egan's tone is clear. He believes this existential society he created is the most advanced and lauded of societies, and should be considered superior absolutely, and he is going to make sure you *know it*.
Ugh.
Despite this grave annoyance, however, there is still much I greatly admire about this work, and much that has inspired me. I admire that he is able to incorporate physics with philosophy in such an unique and innovative fashion, and that he is able to create this highly conceptual, highly abstact world and somehow make it seem entirely legitimate (even if you don't even understand it!). It also made science seem like this ethereal and beautiful process, and I found myself enthralled by things I barely was retaining as I was reading. And the climax of the book, while obnoxious from Tchicaya's self-journey standpoint, was conceptually explosive, fascinating the imagination. I won't give it away, but needless to say, I binge-read about half of this book in one evening. I would describe it as being truly psychedelic in so many ways.
Anyway, so if you have made it this far in my long-winded review, those are my thoughts, and here I leave them for you to judge. Greg Egan is an exceptional science fiction writer, top of his class, and there was so much about this book that really resonated with me, (which is why I gave it 4 stars) but if you want to read really great sci fi, but have it told from a more earnestly intellectual standpoint that engages you like an equal without the condescension, stick with Isaac Asmiov or Arthur C. Clarke. ;-)
I have so many thoughts on this book. It was an absolutely fascinating read, but the entire book was basically a love fest of Existentialism, unabashedly and condescendingly so. From a definition from allaboutphilosophy.org, they define Existentialism as "the notion that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature. "
This is it.
That's the book.
So if you are in for it, let me explain:
Greg Egan has created an increasingly complex and fascinating futuristic world, something I've never read or experienced before from any book, tv series, or movie. This is what drew me into his writing in the first place. He is able to extrapolate from quantum physics (both proven and theoretical) a vividly complex human society that even after reading the book, I *still* don't fully understand. His work is extremely dense, not only with science and math, but with his own original culture and lingo, that never is fully explained. He kind of just assumes that the reader will just *get* or infer what he is talking about. Now, I consider myself to be an intelligent individual, but unless you are a science or math mega-nerd, I seriously question whether anyone *actually* understands his work. And even then, the stuff he wants you to infer, I wonder if *anyone even can*? I've read that this book has been dubbed "the hardest science fiction book ever." And that is most certainly true. There is nothing overly substantial or concrete in his world that you can hold on to and grasp, nothing that you can relate to, which both frustrated and fascinated. I think, though, in many ways this is fitting because of what he is seeking to do.
So, in his world, human beings are basically immortal because they are no longer bound by bodies (or brains), but can become "acorporeal" at a whim through the use of the quantum computer (Qusps) in their heads, which stores their conciousness. They have back-ups of themselves, which get updated regularly so if they happen to "die" in whatever body they were in at the time, they can just go back to their backup conciousness and get a new body. There conciousness can also take on the superposition state of quantum physics (this is where things get WEIRD), so in other words, their conciousness can exist in multiple states at once, they can make multiple choices at once. So, for example, the characters can clone themselves with their acorporeal conciousness into taking multiple avenues of existence, so they can do things like, witness "real-time" results of quantum mechanical effects. I'm trying to figure out how to better explain this for it to make more sense, but I really don't *know* how it makes sense, but the reason I'm pointing this out is to show how Egan has created an immortal humanity that is entirely a *free agent* that *exists* and is defined by nothing other than the choices that sole individual makes. This is pure Existentialism in practice, in full glory. For we can further define it by:
"In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth." (allaboutphilosophy.org)
Because humanity is this way in Egan's world, they spend centuries upon centuries upon centuries traveling the galaxy, experiencing impossible things, all manner of things, whatever they *literally* want, getting married, having children, transforming their bodies from male to female at a whim, leaving said spouse/children if they get bored (basically), regrowing and reshaping aspects of themselves as they go, *finding themselves* *defining themselves*, but only being held to that definition because it is what *they* want, not what any outside influence dictates. Pure Self. Pure Conciousness. Pure Existence.
Now the main character of this book is Tchicaya, who I guess could be considered a theoretical physicist, but his main function of the story is that he is a Yielder, the group of scientists who uphold to studying and *not* destroying this giant vacuum-void that is consuming the whole universe, vs Preservationists, who also want to study it, but find a way to end it. (This whole vacuum was accidently created at the beginning of the story by the scientist, Cass, and is the main dilemma of this story.) So, we are seeing eveything through Tchicaya's experience, and we get flashbacks into his childhood which relate to current events, as he is on this quest to discovering what exactly this vacuum is, and if it has the potential to contain entirely new kinds of physics. The journey he ends up experiencing through the vacuum of this void is actually just a metaphor for Tchicaya's own existential journey. . . and finding inner peace, I guess.
So, in one of the flashbacks as a child, Tchicaya apparently has problems with the notion of his changing as he gets older (of going through different bodies/experiences), so his father sits him down and describes to him a mathematical conundrum. He tells his son to draw an arrow moving completely parallel with itself across an arbitrary chosen path, without using any external methods of reference. This is math, so I really didn't understand it, but essentially, what happens, through the use of using diagonals with itself, you can move the arrow completely parallel along a path. *This is Schild's Ladder.* (Actually based on a real method introduced by some guy named Alfred Schild). What the father was essentially showing his son was that no matter how much he changed, he could remain authentic to the self by basing his changes on self-referential data. Tchicaya would only change the amount *he* wanted to change and what only *he* was comfortable with. Tchicaya could "remain parallel" with himself all throughout his journey of life. And once again, let us look into Existentialism and what it has to say on Authenticity:
"Authentic existence involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and then live in accordance with this self. What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as "one" acts or as "one's genes" or any other essence requires. The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one's freedom." (Wikipedia).
So, you can see the pattern that is being created here. This book is basically a play by play of this philosophy.
Though I find this philosophy highly erroneous, I could have loved this book even still, if Egan hadn't portrayed it in such a condescending and demoralizing tone. There were a few times where the characters go on little mini-rants or trains of conversation that have NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS HAPPENING, just so he can drive his point harder. This is done through the use of sexuality, where characters spend a lot of the time having sex with one another, in which the said persons' bodies change specifically for the other, just to SHOW that they aren't bound by the medieval notions of "gender". Tchicaya even tells this whole, irrelevant-to-the-plot story (as if we didn't *get* the point already), showing how backwards and ridiculous earth people of yesteryear where with their silly notions of sexuality, gender, and even religion. Yet even if sexuality was the strongest theme, Egan shows condesension in other ways as well. At one point in the story, some rabid, zombie scientists try to stop the good and pure scientists by blowing up the research ship, and these rabid scientists, who are portrayed as obvious monsters, are people who denied their Qusps and were living solely through their own brains (hence they became...zombies??). As if brain-living individuals could only ever be mindless, backwards, anti-science, anti-knowledge, murderous thugs!
These are just the main examples, but Egan's tone is clear. He believes this existential society he created is the most advanced and lauded of societies, and should be considered superior absolutely, and he is going to make sure you *know it*.
Ugh.
Despite this grave annoyance, however, there is still much I greatly admire about this work, and much that has inspired me. I admire that he is able to incorporate physics with philosophy in such an unique and innovative fashion, and that he is able to create this highly conceptual, highly abstact world and somehow make it seem entirely legitimate (even if you don't even understand it!). It also made science seem like this ethereal and beautiful process, and I found myself enthralled by things I barely was retaining as I was reading. And the climax of the book, while obnoxious from Tchicaya's self-journey standpoint, was conceptually explosive, fascinating the imagination. I won't give it away, but needless to say, I binge-read about half of this book in one evening. I would describe it as being truly psychedelic in so many ways.
Anyway, so if you have made it this far in my long-winded review, those are my thoughts, and here I leave them for you to judge. Greg Egan is an exceptional science fiction writer, top of his class, and there was so much about this book that really resonated with me, (which is why I gave it 4 stars) but if you want to read really great sci fi, but have it told from a more earnestly intellectual standpoint that engages you like an equal without the condescension, stick with Isaac Asmiov or Arthur C. Clarke. ;-)
December 8, 2020
3.9/5 (But not recommended).
There's Hard Science Fiction, and then there's Greg Egan Hard. I had never heard of the honorable Mr Egan before a friend spoke to me of him many oscillations ago, some time in late 2018. This friend I here mention had never failed me with book recommendations (science fiction ones in particular), and so I, with some hesitation, took the plunge.
This is what I mean by Greg Egan Hard:
And:
Mr Greg is, as you can see, a serious man. I have to mention that I read 20% of this book back in 2018, and only read the rest of it in December of 2020. Evidently, Schild's Ladder was too hard for me to climb at the time. I did give up on all forms of reading for over a year, though, so I'm not sure I can blame this book.
It was hard to read. The first 25% aren't the greatest I've come across. I was confused at various parts of the book; either not knowing what was happening, or just being lost in the weird world where this story takes place. I struggled with some of the science; both the real and the imaginary, and I commend Mr Egan over his unique world-building. Between the highly-advanced "classical" (in the physical sense) world, the quirky digital, and the vast, mind-boggling quantum universe, I could almost feel the goo in my brain struggling to keep up.
So, you've come this far, and you still have no idea what this book is about. I will pretend this was intentional—I'm merely giving you an idea of how you'll feel reading the book. Schild's Ladder, the book, gets its name from Schild's ladder, the mathematical concept. The latter ladder is a "first order method for approximating parallel transport of a vector along a curve using only affinely parametrized geodesics". I understand as much of that as you do.
This story is set 20,000 years into the future, where humans no longer have a need for physical bodies, and are therefore not constrained by space or time. They can travel vast distances as streams of data, and can choose to either live in a body or in the digital realm. Dr Cass, a scientist, stumbles upon a curious theoretical discovery that challenges everything she and her fellow physicists know about the laws of the universe.
In testing these findings, the scientists inadvertently create a novo-vacuum; a new kind of vacuum that expands in all directions at half the speed of light, devouring everything in sight. And that's where the story begins. How will people deal with a threat they do not understand? Is it a threat at all? And what of the planets, worlds, and cultures that have been or are at risk of being annihilated? Also, how do digital bodies have sex? These are all important questions, each addressed in the book.
While this was a great read for me (I draw plenty of joy out of things I don't understand), I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's not prepared to be frustrated, bored, annoyed, and puzzled at least a hundred times over. I suppose that makes it both an excellent and a terrible book—a superposition of sorts. Will you measure it? :)
Quantum tidbits:
There's Hard Science Fiction, and then there's Greg Egan Hard. I had never heard of the honorable Mr Egan before a friend spoke to me of him many oscillations ago, some time in late 2018. This friend I here mention had never failed me with book recommendations (science fiction ones in particular), and so I, with some hesitation, took the plunge.
This is what I mean by Greg Egan Hard:
"Now imagine a new set of vectors that consist of equal amounts of all these dynamic-law vectors, and that are all orthogonal to each other. These vectors represent definite values of a variable that's complementary to the law vectors. Branco calls them law-momenta--which is a bit sloppy, because they're not true Lagrangian conjugates, but never mind."
And:
The amounts of the original vectors you combined were just a series of complex numbers that moved around a circle in the complex plane; to get different vectors, all orthogonal to each other, you just moved around the circle at different rates.
Mr Greg is, as you can see, a serious man. I have to mention that I read 20% of this book back in 2018, and only read the rest of it in December of 2020. Evidently, Schild's Ladder was too hard for me to climb at the time. I did give up on all forms of reading for over a year, though, so I'm not sure I can blame this book.
It was hard to read. The first 25% aren't the greatest I've come across. I was confused at various parts of the book; either not knowing what was happening, or just being lost in the weird world where this story takes place. I struggled with some of the science; both the real and the imaginary, and I commend Mr Egan over his unique world-building. Between the highly-advanced "classical" (in the physical sense) world, the quirky digital, and the vast, mind-boggling quantum universe, I could almost feel the goo in my brain struggling to keep up.
So, you've come this far, and you still have no idea what this book is about. I will pretend this was intentional—I'm merely giving you an idea of how you'll feel reading the book. Schild's Ladder, the book, gets its name from Schild's ladder, the mathematical concept. The latter ladder is a "first order method for approximating parallel transport of a vector along a curve using only affinely parametrized geodesics". I understand as much of that as you do.
This story is set 20,000 years into the future, where humans no longer have a need for physical bodies, and are therefore not constrained by space or time. They can travel vast distances as streams of data, and can choose to either live in a body or in the digital realm. Dr Cass, a scientist, stumbles upon a curious theoretical discovery that challenges everything she and her fellow physicists know about the laws of the universe.
In testing these findings, the scientists inadvertently create a novo-vacuum; a new kind of vacuum that expands in all directions at half the speed of light, devouring everything in sight. And that's where the story begins. How will people deal with a threat they do not understand? Is it a threat at all? And what of the planets, worlds, and cultures that have been or are at risk of being annihilated? Also, how do digital bodies have sex? These are all important questions, each addressed in the book.
While this was a great read for me (I draw plenty of joy out of things I don't understand), I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's not prepared to be frustrated, bored, annoyed, and puzzled at least a hundred times over. I suppose that makes it both an excellent and a terrible book—a superposition of sorts. Will you measure it? :)
Quantum tidbits:
“At the Planck scale, that was no small achievement; a tightrope-walker who managed to circumnavigate the Earth a few billion times before toppling to the ground might be described as having similarly imperfect balance.”
“I think everyone lives in at least two time scales: one of them fast and immediate, and too detailed to retain in anything but outline; the other slow enough to be absorbed completely. We think our memory has no gaps, we think we carry our entire past inside us, because we’re accustomed to looking back and seeing only sketches and highlights. But we all experience more than we remember.”
“There's nothing worse than a label to cement people's loyalties.”
“You'll never stop changing, but that doesn't mean you have to drift in the wind. Every day, you can take the person you've been, and the new things you've witnessed, and make your own, honest choice as to who you should become. Whatever happens, you can always be true to yourself. But don't expect to end up with the same inner compass as anyone else. Not unless they started beside you, and climbed beside you every step of the way.”
“You didn't need gates and barbed wire to make a prison. Familiarity could pin you to the ground, far more efficiently.”
“But when you have a malleable mental structure, intensifying pleasure for its own sake is a very uninteresting cul-de-sac. We worked that out a long time ago." "Fair enough. But what do you do instead?" Yann sat up and leaned against the side of the bed.” .. [Cut so I don't spoil this too much ;)]
September 3, 2016
I never expected a hard SF book to be so sensitive. In my opinion, the main plot was more like an excuse to introduce us in the mentality and culture (can we call it culture?) of the people. I liked the description of their personalities and their reactions and small details about their lives; that made the book for me. I was partially interested by the plot, but like I expected, I didn't understand almost anything from the physics part.
"Precum dezradacinarea unui mult iubit si sedentar stramos prin intermediul caruia o familie risipita ramanea in contact, exodul oamenilor de pe Pamant si distrugerea solului acelei planete aveau sa cresteze inimile chiar si celor mai cosmopoliti calatori."
"Niciodata nu pierduse sincronizarea cu cineva; nu isi putea imagina genul acela de separare lipsita de punti."
"Acorporalii ce fac in loc de asta? Cand eram copil, obisnuiam sa imi imaginez ca voi toti aveti corpuri simulate. Sexul ar fi fost la fel precum cel intrupat, dar ar fi existat in plus nenumarate luminite colorate si extaz cosmic."
"Nici chiar anacronautii nu-si asolizeaza navele pe oameni, explica el. Au totusi instrumente."
"Pentru mai bine de nouasprezece mii de ani in descendentii oamenilor nu existase nimic care sa aduca cu dimorfismul sexual. Cu exceptii locale banale, ca varsta exacta a maturitatii sexuale si perioada de latenta intre atractie si potenta, el si iubitul lui intrupau o conditie universala: amandoi erau, simplu, oameni. Nu ramasesera alte categorii carora le-ar fi putut apartine."
"- De ce voi, intrupati indolenti, n-ati transformat intreaga galaxie in ciocolata?
- Da-ne timp."
"Toti se plang de legile fizicii, dar nimeni nu face nimic in privinta lor."
"Ar trebui sa fim capabili sa ne adaptam. Daca oceanul inainteaza cativa metri, te retragi. Daca inainteaza cativa kilometri, construiesti un dig. Daca inainteaza cateva mii de kilometri... inveti sa locuiesti in ambarcatiuni."
"- Trebuie sa vina un moment cand speranta sa se transforme in ceva mai tangibil.
- Mierea sau cenusa."
"- Exact asta obisnuia sa spuna maica-mea despre calatori. Ca ratacesc de la o planeta la alta , pana ce nu-si mai pot reaminti propriile nume.
- Suna romantic, nu? Nu este de mirare ca nu ai putut rezista."
"Precum dezradacinarea unui mult iubit si sedentar stramos prin intermediul caruia o familie risipita ramanea in contact, exodul oamenilor de pe Pamant si distrugerea solului acelei planete aveau sa cresteze inimile chiar si celor mai cosmopoliti calatori."
"Niciodata nu pierduse sincronizarea cu cineva; nu isi putea imagina genul acela de separare lipsita de punti."
"Acorporalii ce fac in loc de asta? Cand eram copil, obisnuiam sa imi imaginez ca voi toti aveti corpuri simulate. Sexul ar fi fost la fel precum cel intrupat, dar ar fi existat in plus nenumarate luminite colorate si extaz cosmic."
"Nici chiar anacronautii nu-si asolizeaza navele pe oameni, explica el. Au totusi instrumente."
"Pentru mai bine de nouasprezece mii de ani in descendentii oamenilor nu existase nimic care sa aduca cu dimorfismul sexual. Cu exceptii locale banale, ca varsta exacta a maturitatii sexuale si perioada de latenta intre atractie si potenta, el si iubitul lui intrupau o conditie universala: amandoi erau, simplu, oameni. Nu ramasesera alte categorii carora le-ar fi putut apartine."
"- De ce voi, intrupati indolenti, n-ati transformat intreaga galaxie in ciocolata?
- Da-ne timp."
"Toti se plang de legile fizicii, dar nimeni nu face nimic in privinta lor."
"Ar trebui sa fim capabili sa ne adaptam. Daca oceanul inainteaza cativa metri, te retragi. Daca inainteaza cativa kilometri, construiesti un dig. Daca inainteaza cateva mii de kilometri... inveti sa locuiesti in ambarcatiuni."
"- Trebuie sa vina un moment cand speranta sa se transforme in ceva mai tangibil.
- Mierea sau cenusa."
"- Exact asta obisnuia sa spuna maica-mea despre calatori. Ca ratacesc de la o planeta la alta , pana ce nu-si mai pot reaminti propriile nume.
- Suna romantic, nu? Nu este de mirare ca nu ai putut rezista."
October 20, 2017
Siamo nel futuro, molto lontano, la Terra e gli umani sono Storia antica, Preistoria. Ora, nel futuro, ci sono gli incorporei, ci sono i Viaggiatori spaziali, ci sono i "corpi" da utilizzare, c'è il "Gioiello": tecnologia avanzatissima...
Alcuni scienziati stanno mettendo a punto qualcosa che rivoluzionerà tutta la fisica conosciuta, perchè utilizza leggi diverse dalla materia ordinaria: il "neo-vuoto". Ma cosa succederà?
Secondo libro di Egan che leggo dopo "La terra moltiplicata", lettura che mi aveva sbalordito. Questo, "La scala di Schild", conferma il fatto che Egan sia uno scrittore molto interessante, ma anche difficile (non necessariamente un fattore negativo, anzi), c'è molta fisica, matematica applicata all'astrofisica, c'è anche molta biologia e chimica, ma c'è anche molta riflessione filosofica e morale, relazioni sociali, amore e politica. Insomma c'è molto e ben amalgamato, però bisogna leggerlo con molta attenzione, ma quanto è affascinante ciò che scrive? Devo ammettere di aver riletto alcune parti ed altre di non averle comprese appieno, ma va bene così. Mi sono lasciato cullare dal suo stile narrativo, come già avevo fatto con "La terra moltiplicata".
"Se c'è qualcosa di cui sono certo, è che comprendere com'è fatto il mondo reale, come funziona il cervello umano, da cosa sorgono la morale, le emozioni, le decisioni, è essenziale per poter prendere qualunque tipo di posizione che, nel lungo periodo, abbia senso. E se per questo vuol dire essere chiamato 'meccanicista', pazienza."
Alcuni scienziati stanno mettendo a punto qualcosa che rivoluzionerà tutta la fisica conosciuta, perchè utilizza leggi diverse dalla materia ordinaria: il "neo-vuoto". Ma cosa succederà?
Secondo libro di Egan che leggo dopo "La terra moltiplicata", lettura che mi aveva sbalordito. Questo, "La scala di Schild", conferma il fatto che Egan sia uno scrittore molto interessante, ma anche difficile (non necessariamente un fattore negativo, anzi), c'è molta fisica, matematica applicata all'astrofisica, c'è anche molta biologia e chimica, ma c'è anche molta riflessione filosofica e morale, relazioni sociali, amore e politica. Insomma c'è molto e ben amalgamato, però bisogna leggerlo con molta attenzione, ma quanto è affascinante ciò che scrive? Devo ammettere di aver riletto alcune parti ed altre di non averle comprese appieno, ma va bene così. Mi sono lasciato cullare dal suo stile narrativo, come già avevo fatto con "La terra moltiplicata".
"Se c'è qualcosa di cui sono certo, è che comprendere com'è fatto il mondo reale, come funziona il cervello umano, da cosa sorgono la morale, le emozioni, le decisioni, è essenziale per poter prendere qualunque tipo di posizione che, nel lungo periodo, abbia senso. E se per questo vuol dire essere chiamato 'meccanicista', pazienza."
March 12, 2012
I run hot and cold for Greg Egan. When he's good he's great, and when he's not he's a chore. I have to admit that it's entirely possible that whether I think he's good or not is entirely related to my ability to understand (or at least to think I understand) what he's talking about. This is possibly the hardest SF I've ever read - and I loved it!
The only downside for me was that he essentially turned an entirely new universe — one that not only did not run on the same laws of Physics as our universe, but apparently didn't even have a single set of physical laws — into the Game of Life. I guess we could never really understand such a universe, but it seemed too simplistic.
The only downside for me was that he essentially turned an entirely new universe — one that not only did not run on the same laws of Physics as our universe, but apparently didn't even have a single set of physical laws — into the Game of Life. I guess we could never really understand such a universe, but it seemed too simplistic.
May 30, 2018
One of the hardest science fiction works out there and yet only occasionally did I get lost in the advanced quantum mechanics and speculative theories that this story is based upon. Characters are relatable and humourous even though they are very far removed from the humanity of today. The worldbuilding is expansive and fun. I think these are all testaments to the quality of Egan's writing when he takes such situations that are barely within human understanding and makes them not only plausible and believable but interesting and intriguing alongside providing good dynamics and subtleties and commentary.
I listened to this on audible and the performance is very good, though I did listen to most of it at 2x speed.
My only complaint is that the ending comes sooner than I wished it would, and that I think there's still a lot of interesting things to explore. It feels as though it ends after the highest point of action is resolved but I still wanted to see how the story went on just that little bit further beyond the events depicted, though I won't stray into spoilers.
Definitely recommended to anyone who likes hard science fiction stories.
I listened to this on audible and the performance is very good, though I did listen to most of it at 2x speed.
My only complaint is that the ending comes sooner than I wished it would, and that I think there's still a lot of interesting things to explore. It feels as though it ends after the highest point of action is resolved but I still wanted to see how the story went on just that little bit further beyond the events depicted, though I won't stray into spoilers.
Definitely recommended to anyone who likes hard science fiction stories.
August 5, 2019
Incomprehensibila in cea mai mare parte.
O fi vina autorului, o fi vina traducatorului, o fi vina mea si a cunostintelor mele limitate de fizica?
O fi vina autorului, o fi vina traducatorului, o fi vina mea si a cunostintelor mele limitate de fizica?
February 17, 2015
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reread 2015-02-16. this book is insane. with the surge of general interest in identity politics in recent years, i think a lot more people ought read this. it would blow some minds. egan is a madman.
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pretty interesting! i'm not sure how i feel about this -- i don't read much sci-fi, so elements of the style were quite grating. also, what was up with the liquidgoo on the warehouse roof? i loved a few of the lines, though: "nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting, except perhaps an original theorem." also, gotta love the reference to Thorne+Wheeler's Gravitation at the end.
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Supposedly "the hardest science fiction ever written," I'll freely admit that I'm reading this mainly to sit around afterwards and congratulate myself on how fucking smart I am, and because I've spent all afternoon rereading the papers of mad German computer scientist/physicist Jürgen Schmidhuber and some Freeman Dyson and am feeling the old digital physics monkey on my back (I still think I might one day reinvest myself in said field, once I've set supercomputer design on its head). We'll see how it goes; I'm not a big scifi fan by any means.
Funny reviews on Amazon:
"Not great literature in the classic sense, but there's a lot of intriguing speculation here. The would-be reader should be warned, though: you will not fully appreciate this book unless you've made significant progress toward a degree in physics or a related field! (You could also get away with just reading a lot of pop science, provided you've read enough to be familiar with ideas like decoherence and superselection.) This truly is the hardest SF I've read."
"Woosh. That was the sound of this book going right over my head.
I love hard sci-fi, don't get me wrong. I've read plenty of layman's books on quantum physics and consider myself reasonably well-informed on science in general. Still, large chunks of "Schild's Ladder" were basically gibberish to me, and the book was actually somewhat of a chore to get through. I haven't had that experience in a long time."
hehe, we'll see! Manny, I'm kind of surprised you haven't tackled Egan...
reread 2015-02-16. this book is insane. with the surge of general interest in identity politics in recent years, i think a lot more people ought read this. it would blow some minds. egan is a madman.
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pretty interesting! i'm not sure how i feel about this -- i don't read much sci-fi, so elements of the style were quite grating. also, what was up with the liquidgoo on the warehouse roof? i loved a few of the lines, though: "nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting, except perhaps an original theorem." also, gotta love the reference to Thorne+Wheeler's Gravitation at the end.
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Supposedly "the hardest science fiction ever written," I'll freely admit that I'm reading this mainly to sit around afterwards and congratulate myself on how fucking smart I am, and because I've spent all afternoon rereading the papers of mad German computer scientist/physicist Jürgen Schmidhuber and some Freeman Dyson and am feeling the old digital physics monkey on my back (I still think I might one day reinvest myself in said field, once I've set supercomputer design on its head). We'll see how it goes; I'm not a big scifi fan by any means.
Funny reviews on Amazon:
"Not great literature in the classic sense, but there's a lot of intriguing speculation here. The would-be reader should be warned, though: you will not fully appreciate this book unless you've made significant progress toward a degree in physics or a related field! (You could also get away with just reading a lot of pop science, provided you've read enough to be familiar with ideas like decoherence and superselection.) This truly is the hardest SF I've read."
"Woosh. That was the sound of this book going right over my head.
I love hard sci-fi, don't get me wrong. I've read plenty of layman's books on quantum physics and consider myself reasonably well-informed on science in general. Still, large chunks of "Schild's Ladder" were basically gibberish to me, and the book was actually somewhat of a chore to get through. I haven't had that experience in a long time."
hehe, we'll see! Manny, I'm kind of surprised you haven't tackled Egan...
November 25, 2013
Well, how can I put it? I am not into physics that much (I only studied quantum physics in the 12th grade, which is the last year in highschool in here), so reading about future possible developments in quantum physics is a bit too much for me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book for its general description of the human society, which gave me a feeling of Wow!..have never tought so far (people functioning with procs and mediators, to actually allow you interacting with anyone and anything), I would have been very curious to give me a deeper analysis on how the first humans reaching the "immortality" would have coped with "local deaths", just to remember that you died and now again you are alive...why would they still have wanted to have children? No one was a god, as all of them were? I know I would have liked reading about it, about the first "immortals" and how they manage not to lose their humanity... Still nice to see that we will not lose our sense of humour :). And, oh, another interesting aspect was how a couple would work by applying the lock and key principle in enzymes theory. Nice! (I am being a bit ironic), but I have to admit it looks very possible under the circumstances, as the number of possibilities would have increased exponentially.
I enjoyed also the last part, the journey in the vendeki world, the funny encounter with Cass....yeah it was quite a twist, although kind of expecting that, in a way.... :).
Oh, and yes, I agree that our knowledge is not universally valid and still there are major things we still do not know about appearance of life (how "things" decided to become animated), generally valid physics principles which in time become just a particular case of something much larger than the human mind was able to conceive at some moment in time...
I enjoyed also the last part, the journey in the vendeki world, the funny encounter with Cass....yeah it was quite a twist, although kind of expecting that, in a way.... :).
Oh, and yes, I agree that our knowledge is not universally valid and still there are major things we still do not know about appearance of life (how "things" decided to become animated), generally valid physics principles which in time become just a particular case of something much larger than the human mind was able to conceive at some moment in time...
July 20, 2015
This book had me wrapped around its little finger with all of its SCIENCEing. Dense and lengthy, full of mathyness which I'm not super into but was very on board with during the course, also moleculeyness which I'm definitely into. Even the back cover noted that I would be impressed by how well the story moved along given all the SCIENCEing - and I was. I was alternately interested and frustrated with the author's examination of the changing nature of human relationships, given greatly expanded human life time scales and territory available. Everyone was still too human? Or were they? I didn't really understand what the main character had to do with the plot of the book, besides being the main character. I was not super fond of him, nor particularly interested in him. Most of the characters actually, were a bit dimly wrought, in favor of the way-bright quantum graphs stuff. How to be the same person I've always been is often on my mind. This provided me with an expansion to that notion.
Read
March 13, 2011Egan's best to date: This is an excellent book. Egan manages to sustain a gripping and surprising plot without a single identifiable villain; instead we have sympathetic characters with opposing views on how to deal with the threat of the novo-vacuum. Yes, there ARE characters - they're just different to the standard SF stand-ins. Egan's prose is as efficient and polished as ever, and there are some lovely images. The science is at times formidable - this particular full-time scientist struggled with the "big idea" behing the quantum nature of the novo-vacuum, despite reading countless books on QM and Theories of Everything. But it doesn't really matter; the basic flow of the story carries the reader on anyway. In short, this has the mind-blowing ideas of Diaspora, but they're harnessed to a proper plot, and the characters are as engaging as those in Teranesia. Jolly good!
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