Diaspora
Ratings44
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings44
Average rating3.6
In 2975, the orphan Yatima is grown from a randomly mutated digital mind seed in the conceptory of Konishi polis. Yatima explores the Coalition of Polises, the network of computers where most life in the solar system now resides, and joins a friend, Inoshiro, to borrow an abandoned robot body and meet a thriving community of “fleshers” in the enclave of Atlanta. Twenty-one years later, news arrives from a lunar observatory: gravitational waves from Lac G-1, a nearby pair of neutron stars, show that the Earth is about to be bathed in a gamma-ray flash created by the stars’ collision — an event that was not expected to take place for seven million years. Yatima and Inoshiro return to Atlanta to try to warn the fleshers, but meet suspicion and disbelief. Some lives are saved, but the Earth is ravaged. In the aftermath of the disaster, the survivors resolve to discover the cause of the neutron stars’ premature collision, and they launch a thousand polises into interstellar space in search of answers. This diaspora eventually reaches a planet subtly transformed to encode a message from an older group of travellers: a greater danger than Lac G-1 is imminent, and the only escape route leads beyond the visible universe.
Reviews with the most likes.
“If you love hard sci-fi and mathematics or quantum physics, then you'll probably love this book”
“Diaspora is the story of Yatima — a polis being created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed”
If this description excites you, go for it. This book made up of only technical made up “mumbo jumbo”. No literary value.
Read 1:05 / 10:00 10%
I understood like 10% of the science terms and explanations of techno-babble but boy was it an enjoyable book. I had not read anything by Egan before but this has made me start looking into other books by him.
Particle physics and multi-dimensional maths aren't what I'm looking for in my science fiction, and I felt very lost a bunch of times. But even then, it still managed to tell a fine story, once I got used to the idea that every other chapter would go way over my head, and all I could hope for was to get the general idea and what it meant for the overall quest the characters were on.
This seems like it was a fun book for Greg Egan to write, but for me it was a painfully boring read. Ultimately i'm less interested in the nuts and bolts of Egan's sci-fi conceits than the psychological impact they have on the characters. Egan's previous works achieve a good balance between high concept sci-fi and psychological drama, but this novel ended up devolving largely into long winded math, particle physics and biochemistry lectures that i had no patience for. From the plot descriptions of Egan's later works I suspect this trend gets even worse over time. Still highly recommend his early stuff.
Books
7 booksIf you enjoyed this book, then our algorithm says you may also enjoy these.
