Split (1)

train · 2.09M rows

identifier stringlengths 1 43	dataset stringclasses 3 values	question stringclasses 4 values	rank int64 0 99	url stringlengths 14 1.88k	language stringclasses 1 value	title stringlengths 0 200	top_image stringlengths 0 125k	meta_img stringlengths 0 125k	images listlengths 0 18.2k	movies listlengths 0 484	keywords listlengths 0 0	meta_keywords listlengths 1 48.5k	tags null	authors listlengths 0 10	publish_date stringlengths 19 32 ⌀	meta_description stringlengths 0 258k	meta_lang stringclasses 68 values	meta_favicon stringlengths 0 20.2k	meta_site_name stringlengths 0 641	canonical_link stringlengths 9 1.88k ⌀	text stringlengths 0 100k
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	36	https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/incandescence-greg-egan-2008/	en	INCANDESCENCE – Greg Egan (2008)	https://schicksalgemeins…e-egan.jpg?w=799	https://schicksalgemeins…e-egan.jpg?w=799	[ "https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/incandescence-egan.jpg?w=990&h=180&crop=1", "https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/incandescence-egan.jpg?w=277&h=416", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/321a8ef36f2e2721219647d128ec89e13be5a54771899eb1f11fef56bf92603f?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/321a8ef36f2e2721219647d128ec89e13be5a54771899eb1f11fef56bf92603f?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/321a8ef36f2e2721219647d128ec89e13be5a54771899eb1f11fef56bf92603f?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/321a8ef36f2e2721219647d128ec89e13be5a54771899eb1f11fef56bf92603f?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4a9b4488584066bb9ee1babb122022799b6129acf5bcc94c56828e38ab72bc7e?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/07f2f81243e272d1b21870ec343e91211954a58011ea3acb594b8bc18f3e05ea?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/07f2f81243e272d1b21870ec343e91211954a58011ea3acb594b8bc18f3e05ea?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/07f2f81243e272d1b21870ec343e91211954a58011ea3acb594b8bc18f3e05ea?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/07f2f81243e272d1b21870ec343e91211954a58011ea3acb594b8bc18f3e05ea?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fe3adc9deb0480bdff58cb083b69fe052355c6a4a282fc4869d6a980f82b19e2?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fe3adc9deb0480bdff58cb083b69fe052355c6a4a282fc4869d6a980f82b19e2?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fe3adc9deb0480bdff58cb083b69fe052355c6a4a282fc4869d6a980f82b19e2?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b789064f0d54ca1209ee282cf26ba5520bf8282892ffab39ae3c9aac56b7b6b5?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/7d20d6d198ac75de815a9cd3ba275945ada580e83e6c39855a2f9ff3ad5bfc24?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/7d20d6d198ac75de815a9cd3ba275945ada580e83e6c39855a2f9ff3ad5bfc24?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4a9b4488584066bb9ee1babb122022799b6129acf5bcc94c56828e38ab72bc7e?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/c9aa2d1913abedf352aa9beff73465bf13af446f0a035788d96d8353b3762166?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ac32dc9ac064498af28a361752b38da8936d4c8c486e8f31d6145bcdc4db9fb5?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4a9b4488584066bb9ee1babb122022799b6129acf5bcc94c56828e38ab72bc7e?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4a9b4488584066bb9ee1babb122022799b6129acf5bcc94c56828e38ab72bc7e?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4a9b4488584066bb9ee1babb122022799b6129acf5bcc94c56828e38ab72bc7e?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8e7e4ccaba3d563bd70acb43562e549bc66fec52042034ef8bc3c83efc3e2c?s=48&d=https%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D48&r=G", "https://www.goodreads.com/images/badge/badge1.jpg", "https://schicksalgemeinschaft.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/tumblr.jpg", "https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/the-spear-cuts-through-water-jimenez.jpeg", "https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/i/rss/orange-small.png?m=1391188133i", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/392656716f4d7a9829ca94ce9826bd17acc641fe20a033387b9abe6c663e989c?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/392656716f4d7a9829ca94ce9826bd17acc641fe20a033387b9abe6c663e989c?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2021-06-14T00:00:00	"All I learnt in the void was that our best guess so far is certainly wrong." While not totally unfamiliar with Greg Egan - I've read the brilliant Schild's Ladder, and his early Quarantine - I did start Incandescence with the wrong expectations. The blurb of the British 2009 Gollancz paperback promises something akin to…	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/392656716f4d7a9829ca94ce9826bd17acc641fe20a033387b9abe6c663e989c?s=32	Weighing a pig doesn't fatten it.	https://schicksalgemeinschaft.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/incandescence-greg-egan-2008/	“All I learnt in the void was that our best guess so far is certainly wrong.” While not totally unfamiliar with Greg Egan – I’ve read the brilliant Schild’s Ladder, and his early Quarantine – I did start Incandescence with the wrong expectations. The blurb of the British 2009 Gollancz paperback promises something akin to space opera: “A million years from now, the galaxy is divided between the Amalgam, a vast, cooperative meta-civilisation, and the Aloof, the silent occupiers of the galactic core. The Aloof have long rejected all attempts by the Amalgam to enter their territory, but travellers intrepid enough can take a perilous ride as unencrypted data in their communications network, providing a short-cut across the galaxy’s central bulge. Rakesh has waited all his life for adventure to come calling. When he meets a traveller who claims she was woken by the Aloof mid-journey and shown a meteor full of traces of DNA, he accepts her challenge to hunt down the uncharted world from which the meteor came, deep in the Aloof’s territory. Roi and Zak live inside the Splinter, a translucent world of rock that swims in a sea of light they call the Incandescence. They live on the margins of a rigidly organised society, seeking to decipher the subtle clues that might reveal the true nature of the Splinter. In fact, their world is in danger of extinction, and as the evidence accumulates, Roi, Zak, and a growing band of recruits struggle to understand and take control of their fate. As Rakesh gradually uncovers the history of the lost DNA world, his search leads him to startling revelations about the Splinter – and the true nature and motives of the Aloof.” I’ve quoted it in full, because it is striking because of two things: Egan’s own rigorous ethics concerning book jackets (see my review of Schild’s Ladder for the full anecdote), and his scathing reply to a review of Incandescence by Adam Roberts in Strange Horizons. Let me try to explain, and provide my own review of sorts by doing so. While the blurb isn’t wrong, it does undersell one crucial thing about Incandescence: the nature of Roi and Zak’s deciphering of subtle clues. The book alternates every other chapter between Rakesh point of view, and the Splinter’s. Each viewpoint takes up about 50% of page time, so nearly half of the book deals with the deciphering. This deciphering half embodies the novel’s main idea: on Scalzi’s blog Egan wrote that the book “grew out of the notion that the theory of general relativity — widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement — could be discovered by a pre-industrial civilization with no steam engines, no electric lights, no radio transmitters, and absolutely no tradition of astronomy.” Big parts of Roi and Zak’s chapters are descriptions of and dialogue about physics experiments concerning gravity, motion and orbits, and your mileage may vary. That is to say: at times it was a bit too dry, long-winded and detailed for my tastes. Not that I don’t like science or non-fiction (on the contrary), but the subject matter and the way it was presented wasn’t fully for me. This is not to say I didn’t like the book, but it did alter my reading experience, and ultimately knocked off a star or 2 should I have to rate that reading experience – mind you, not the book per se. More on that later. It is all the more striking because of these two quotes by Egan, in his reaction to that review: “A few reviewers complained that they had trouble keeping straight the physical meanings of the Splinterites’ directions. This leaves me wondering if they’ve really never encountered a book before that benefits from being read with a pad of paper and a pen beside it, or whether they’re just so hung up on the idea that only non-fiction should be accompanied by note-taking and diagram-scribbling that it never even occurred to them to do this. I realise that some people do much of their reading with one hand on a strap in a crowded bus or train carriage, but books simply don’t come with a guarantee that they can be properly enjoyed under such conditions.” & “The mystery is why [Roberts] bought the ticket in the first place; a previous encounter with Schild’s Ladder should have warned off any but the most masochistic of science-haters.” While the review of Roberts is indeed self-serving and malicious – so much, that it put me off reading The Thing Itself () forever, a book I had serendipitously picked from my shelves after I finished Incandescence, unaware of the fact that its author had written a review of Egan’s book – I don’t fully buy the ticket theory, especially not as the blurb isn’t fully clear on what’s inside. I’ve read Schild’s Ladder myself, and while some of its science went over my head, I loved it. Incandescence is another affair, structurally, but also because much more of its page time deals with science, and more specifically gravity & motion. That’s something very specific, and more or less predictable too: fairly early on readers get the idea of where Roi and Zak are heading – even though they discover things in a totally different manner than we did, due to their different surroundings – and as such the scientific joy of this book is procedural. Still, the fact that it is a well-known theory takes some of the tension out of the story, and that’s a crucial difference with Schild’s Ladder. On the other hand, I have to say the overall story arc of the Splinter is interesting, and I liked its society and the changes it went through: the book is an interesting take on the development of the scientific (hive) mind, and the tensions between being an individual and being part of a group. While an important chunk of the novel was not what I expected, I absolutely loved Rakesh’s story: Egan’s posthumanist vision again delivers, and there are brilliant details scattered throughout the book – on technology, on the galaxy, on first contact ethics, on genetics and social engineering, on the importance of environmental context for heuristic endeavors. I also loved the double arcs of Incandescence combined: the way the two narratives tie up is wonderful – even if it is seemingly misunderstood by a fair number of readers. After a while, I began reading Roi and Zak’s parts without trying to understand the theoretical side of their arc – not even with a mental pad of paper and a pen – and from that moment on the book worked for me. The moment I cut my loses and decided the nuts and bolts of the discovery of general relativity didn’t really interest me, it became a joy to read on. I know I missed an important part of what Egan tried to do with this book, but I was too invested in the overall story to stop reading, and either way, I bought the damn ticket, so it’s my prerogative anyway. Ironically, all this could be considered fitting: boredom plays an interesting role in the story in two distinct ways, so the fact that I felt parts of the book were boring adds a meta-layer to that theme – all the more so because parts were boring partly because I was already familiar with general relativity, not unlike a citizen of the hyper-informed Amalgam. A strange hybrid then. I’d say 2 stars for one part of the reading experience, 4 stars for the other, and the full 5 stars for the concept. I’ve had a few novels of his on my TBR since I read Schild’s Ladder, and after finishing Incandescence I’ve yet again ordered more of Egan. () I’ve read the first 30 pages of THE THING ITSELF (2015), and that book seems to be structurally built on bullshit, in the Frankfurterian sense, not even once, but twice. That is all the more infuriating as it tries to give itself a veneer of seriousness by using Immanuel Kant – and whatever you think of him, at least he tried being consistent and honest. Two cases of bullshit? One: the Fermi paradox is not about being unable to perceive aliens because of Kant: it deals with aliens in the universe that is observable to us, not in the universe an sich. It’s obviously possible that there are aliens we cannot perceive because of a Kantian reason, but again, that’s not what the Fermi paradox is about – actually Egan’s Schild’s Ladder touches on alien aliens in a way that’s more interesting. Two, and more importantly: it is total bullshit that you could program A.I. to circumvent Kant: also an A.I. would have specific senses and conceptualizing frameworks, and as such no access to the Ding an sich – you’d need at least an infinite amount of different senses and frameworks to get around it, and that’s impossible. I also didn’t like the smug, poseur-ish narrative voice – but I acknowledge that could have changed as I understand some other chapters are written in other registers, etc. While I’m not claiming all this to be the definitive take on Adam Roberts‘ book, I’m having a hard time envisioning how Roberts wrote himself out of these two theoretical objections, and either way, while I was already annoyed after 15 pages, I wasn’t interested anymore after I read his Incandescence review. Consult the author index for my other reviews, or my favorite lists.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	61	https://monochrome.sutic.nu/2019/03/10/schilds-ladder-by-greg-egan.html	en	Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan	https://monochrome.sutic…by-greg-egan.jpg	https://monochrome.sutic…by-greg-egan.jpg	[ "https://monochrome.sutic.nu/2019/03/10/schilds-ladder-by-greg-egan.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Leo Sutic" ]	2019-03-10T00:00:00	A book that is less than the sum of its parts. Scientists create monster, scientists argue over monster, scientists solve the monster problem with science magic.	en	../../../favicon.png		null	Support Ukraine Much like Hugh Howey, Greg Egan is an author that I approach with caution. They are both capable of great writing, but they also have their limitations. For Howey it's his inability to turn his amazing vignettes into longer stories, and for Egan it's his basing the story on a scientific concept or idea that, while intriguing, can't carry a novel and doesn't deserve the prominence he gives it. Schild's Ladder is one of those. It's supposed to be the hardest of Egan's hard SF, with "hardness" being a measure of how close to known science the story heaves. Egan, however, is someone who uses and abuses computer science on the regular, and once your characters are immortal omniscient demigods, the fact that the fictional universe doesn't allow faster than light travel becomes a fig leaf over what is essentially science fantasy. The big idea in Schild's Ladder is that the universe at its lowest level is a graph , and it is explained completely by the fictional "Quantum Graph Theory" that is a true theory of everything , correctly describing how the universe works. This fictional theory, with its origin in the spin networks of quantum gravity, is at first glance reasonable. The story does make it off the starting line in good shape, and the first chapter or so ticks along nicely, albeit with some forgivable dashes of technobabble. Then, the first act ends with a catastrophe that is explained well from an in-universe perspective and leaves us with a rapidly expanding cosmic ball of death - a novo-vacuum - that devours anything it comes across. Then, it's not just the universe that runs into a new kind of vacuum. The idea of Quantum Graph Theory is a good one, but any fictional theory would have done just as well. The real version of QGT, Loop Quantum Gravity , is more complex - and the theory closest to QGT that I'm aware of is Stephen Wolfram's theories in A New Kind of Science which, to quote Cosma Shalizi, (...) must either conflict with special relativity (...), or conflict with quantum mechanics (...), or indeed both. It is a non-starter.[*] . Since the QGT can't provide a proper framework for the in-universe plot, it becomes a combination of a deus ex machina and a Big Dumb Object that is whatever the author needs to advance the plot. Here the whole "hard SF" angle falls flat - all those diagrams, and all the expositions of QGT are ultimately just fantasy. It gives us throwaway lines like: After a while, she spoke again. "Think of all the different dynamic laws that might make topological sense, in terms of the propagation of various kinds of particles that are defined as patterns embedded in a graph. I know that's horribly vague, but I don't think you'd want the version with added jargon." (...) "Now imagine each one is a quantum state vector in a big fat Hilbert space. All of them orthogonal to each other." — Schild's Ladder, location 2531 It's not that these sentences don't mean anything. It's just that they don't matter. It's very advanced technobabble, but could have been any kind of technobabble. I imagine these words make sense to the author, but wouldn't the equivalent explanation "the novo-vacuum is a combination of all possible universes" be better, with the mathematical argument relegated to endnotes? As it is, it's just bad writing. But then it gets worse - for the author, at least. The novo-vacuum is indescribable. Sophus said, "Because what lies behind the border is not another vacuum, another set of rules. It has no classical properties like that to discover." — Schild's Ladder, location 1785 But describe it Egan must, because you can't build your plot and your story around a reference point that can't even be described to your readers. What follows, is, from what I can understand, what Egan thought to be the non-scientific aspect of the story. Schild's Ladder is named after the mathematical method of maintaining the same direction while traveling through a warped space where "the same direction" can mean many things , and Egan uses this as a metaphor for our personalities: how do we remain true to ourselves while still changing as we must in order to live? In the novel, the catastrophe that is set up in the first act prompts two diametrically opposite reactions that form two camps: one wants to destroy the ball of death, the other wants to learn from it. Obviously both can't have their way - but can we compromise without selling out, or is the only way forward unilateral action? We never find out, because after having plodded along for a good number of pages, a second catastrophe pushes us into the final act - and we leave science behind for a trippy ending reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey . Here, Egan runs headlong into the problem outlined above: he must describe in an accessible way something that according to him is so alien as to be indescribable. Which he does, in a very 2001 kind of way. It's trippy, and it's passable - but it's fantasy, and almost completely decoupled from the previous expositions of QGT in the sense that besides a very insignificant exception you could have cut all the expositions and not missed anything. The sum of this is a story that can be summed up as "scientists create monster, scientists argue over monster, scientists solve the monster problem with science magic".
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	6	http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/the-clockwork-rocket-by-greg-egan/	en	The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan By Michael Levy	http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1597802271.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg	http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1597802271.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg	[ "http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/strangehorizons/images/sh-logo.jpg", "https://i0.wp.com/images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1597802271.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg?resize=139%2C210", "https://i0.wp.com/images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0575095121.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg?resize=139%2C210" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Michael Levy", "Mónika Rusvai", "H. Pueyo", "Sourav Roy", "B. Pladek", "T.D. Walker", "Paul Chuks", "Andy Sawyer", "Matt Holder", "Mark Granger" ]	2012-04-02T13:00:00+00:00	As a reviewer I have on more than one occasion used some variation on the phrase "This novel is not for everyone," and this is certainly the case for The Clockwork Rocket.	en	http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/strangehorizons/images/icons/apple-icon-57x57.png	Strange Horizons	http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/the-clockwork-rocket-by-greg-egan/	I'm what you might call a physics groupie. I hang out with physicists on a regular basis and I read the physics and astronomy articles in Science News first. I have to admit, though, that the last formal physics course I took was way back in high school, during the dark ages, when it was still possible to think of the atom as a miniature solar system. I mention this by way of admitting that I may not be the ideal reviewer for Greg Egan's fine new novel The Clockwork Rocket, the first volume in his Orthogonal series. I mean, forget about Clarke, forget about Clement, heck, forget about Robert L. Forward and Stephen Baxter; this is real hard science fiction, multiple diagrams, equations and all. Egan doesn't just play with the net up, to quote Gregory Benford; he teaches you the physics of tennis while he's at it. The Clockwork Rocket takes place in a different universe than ours, one with decidedly different physics. To quote Egan's website, it is a Riemannian universe, one described by "geometries that we'd normally think of as kinds of space, whether flat or curved, where all the dimensions are treated as fundamentally the same. In contrast, in the Lorentzian space-time of our own universe, one of the dimensions, time, is singled out for special treatment." If you want to know exactly how the physics of a Riemannian universe might work, Egan spells it out in detail in the text, on his website, and in appendices at the back of the book. More immediately to the point, however, the novel concerns a group of alien scientists, who live in the Riemannian universe that Egan has created and who must figure out the relevant physics for themselves in order to preserve their species from extinction. Egan doesn't immediately announce what he's doing at the beginning of the book, although the jacket copy gives away some of the more spectacular differences between his universe and ours. This is, for example, a universe where light does not have one speed and the stars in the sky all have multicolored trails because the various spectra reach the viewer over a period of years. It is a universe where "the creation of light is accompanied by the creation of kinetic energy," rendering all matter inherently less stable; a person who works too hard at physical labor may quite literally burst into flame and a meteor strike on a large planet could turn it into a second sun. It is also a universe where a spaceship traveling at near light speed can, from the viewpoint of several generations of crewmembers, return to its home planet hundreds of years after it was launched, though only a few years will have passed for those who stayed behind. Egan has extrapolated dozens of other large and small differences between our Lorentzian universe and his Riemannian one, concerning everything from how life might evolve and metabolize raw materials, to how a rocket engine would work, to how two materials in close proximity might wear on each other, all given this radically different physics. The story concerns an intelligent alien species who are in some ways very different from us, but in other ways quite similar. Protean in form, they are able to sprout arms and legs in a variety of different combinations as needed. With training, they can learn to produce images, even writing on their bodies and absorbing those images from each other through close contact. They have two sexes, but the female of the species reproduces by splitting into four parts, essentially dying as a person to produce offspring. Children tend to be born in paired couples who then go on to reproduce together themselves, but it occasionally happens that an odd number of children are born or one of a pair dies. The resulting solo is often considered strange, a sort of pervert, and is pressured to pair up with another solo of the opposite sex. Women are larger and stronger, but men of necessity do the bulk of both the long-term planning and the childcare. In a sense, although nearly every woman's life is cut short by reproduction, it's mostly just men who die. As one might imagine, the existence of hollin, a medication that can defer women's reproduction almost indefinitely, is controversial, considered quite literally a life saver by women who want more out of existence than just reproduction, but viewed as something akin to blasphemy by (generally) male conservatives. Given the form of reproduction Egan has postulated, hollin is a necessary element in the text for a variety of plot-driven reasons, but the sometimes violent male reaction against it also signals the author's concern with our society’s current debate over abortion and birth control. This in turn serves as an avenue of engagement with the text for the audience; even creatures as strange as these have concerns that parallel our own, both literally and emotionally. As the book opens, society is in the throes of an industrial revolution. A variety of purely mechanical, clockwork technologies have been created, but there is nothing comparable to workable electricity. Yalda, Egan's protagonist, is a solo, and worse yet a solo female with no interest in reproduction, who'd rather discover how machines work than farm. Her father, a relatively enlightened sort, encourages her to go to school where she blossoms, despite gaining a reputation as an oddball, and is eventually sent on to university. There she finds a complex and exciting world of new ideas and changing customs, not to mention some very real danger. Yalda, who remains somewhat naïve and unworldly, is taken under her wing by an older scientist who is herself a solo, and she is introduced to other well-educated women at the proto-feminist Solo Club. Although it is illegal, these women take hollin to prolong their life spans by staving off spontaneous asexual reproduction, which can occur under crowded urban conditions. Solos are the subject of considerable prejudice and when the son of a civic leader attacks Yalda she is imprisoned and tortured for fighting back. Radicalized by this experience, Yalda studies hard, develops her own revolutionary theory of rotational physics, resists attacks on her work by hidebound colleagues, and finally gains a university teaching position and the respect of a new generation of scientists. Her growing concern, however, is with the Hurtlers, fast moving meteors which have begun to speed through the solar system in increasing numbers, and which, Yalda realizes, herald an impending catastrophe for her world. The daring plan that Yalda and other scientists come up with to buy the time with which to find a solution to this problem is to build a giant rocket that can approach the speed of red light, the slowest form of light in the universe. They will return home only a few years later, from their world's perspective, but generations will have passed on the ship, during which the crew may invent the science to save their world. As a reviewer I have on more than one occasion used some variation on the phrase "This novel is not for everyone," and this is certainly the case for The Clockwork Rocket. It's hard to imagine any other writer in our field feeling comfortable stopping his or her narrative periodically, heck, frequently, for physics lectures, and this may derail readers whose sense of wonder isn't satisfied by such things. When Egan does this, however, the story takes on some of the feel of a Platonic dialogue, with Socrates deducing a wide range of brilliant ideas and the other characters periodically answering back, "Well, so it would seem," or "This cannot be disputed." In some ways Egan's method is reminiscent of the clumsy infodumps found in science fiction of the Gernsback era, but there's a key difference here. Unlike the typical Gernsback-era writer, Egan knows exactly what he's doing. The characters who lectured on and on in the early Amazing stories are mostly telling each other what they already know in the most clumsy manner imaginable. Their purpose, transparently, is to let the reader in on some super-scientific idea of the author's, but they're invariably talking nonsense. Egan's characters, however, given the scientific premise that underpins the novel, appear to make sense, though what they're saying may be hard to follow. In fact they come very close, I think, to recreating the kind of dialogues that actually occur between brilliant scientists. One can imagine Einstein conversing with his students in this manner as they walk the tree-lined sidewalks of Princeton, changing the world as they go. Yes, these scientific discussions stop the action of the story dead in its tracks and they violate all traditional rules of good narrative, but, if you can follow the science, even a little bit, even though it’s not real, oh my! Many science fiction writers have used the generation starship trope, so many that at least one scholarly book has been published on the subject. The hollowed-out asteroid as generation ship is also nothing new, but I doubt that anyone has ever attempted to launch what is essentially a hollowed-out asteroid (actually in this case an entire mountain) from the surface of a planet. In our universe such a thing would be entirely impossible, of course, but Egan's Riemannian physics makes it feasible. Egan also devotes a great deal of space to describing how his starship might be constructed, again including technical details, but also paying attention to the practical needs of his crew, needs that are in some ways identical to but in other ways differ significantly from our own. This detail exemplifies one of The Clockwork Rocket's greatest strengths. On one level we have all of the sophisticated and abstract scientific data describing Yalda's universe and its many (from our point of view) oddities, but on another level, we have a great deal of attention paid to more visceral matters. What kind of closed environment will allow aliens with their particular nutritional needs to produce enough food to survive? How exactly will they limit reproduction on board the starship? How do you run a sophisticated machine with millions, perhaps billions of cogs and springs, but no practical understanding of electricity (and, yes, we have a small steampunk vibe going here too, though it's less than you might expect). In The Clockwork Rocket Greg Egan has brought together a number of science fiction’s standard tropes—the depiction of a truly alien species, the creation of a universe with physics different from our own, the bildungsroman of a genius inventor, a race to avoid the end of the world, and a generation starship—in a way that is both novel and satisfying. The physics is decidedly heavy and the dozens of diagrams and equations will be off-putting to some readers, but others, I'm sure, will find them endlessly engaging and I can easily imagine the development of a blog or two devoted to arguing over their intricacies. Beyond the science, however, as is often the case with Egan's best work, this is also a gripping and, I suppose the appropriate word is "human" story. We come to care deeply about Yalda, an ugly duckling who, if she never becomes a swan, nonetheless triumphs beyond all expectations. We also care about her friends, her society and, indeed, her entire fascinating, down the rabbit hole Riemannian universe. Book two of Orthogonal will presumably be dominated by the generation starship trope, but Egan has done the ground work necessary to set up any number of engaging variations on the scientific discoveries he's already revealed and surely still more surprises are in store. I don’t know whether or not I'll be able to handle the physics, but I do look forward to them.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	49	https://www.facebook.com/bestsciencefictionbooks/posts/greg-egan-australian-b-1961-is-the-author-for-the-book-club-this-month-of-june-2/978161833749053/	en	Greg Egan (Australian, b....	https://scontent.xx.fbcd…QEmQ&oe=66A70DDB	https://scontent.xx.fbcd…QEmQ&oe=66A70DDB	[]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Greg Egan (Australian, b. 1961) is the author for the book club this month of June, 2024, over at Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club. Which books have...	de	https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yT/r/aGT3gskzWBf.ico		https://www.facebook.com/bestsciencefictionbooks/posts/greg-egan-australian-b-1961-is-the-author-for-the-book-club-this-month-of-june-2/978161833749053/
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	6	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City	en	Permutation City	https://images-na.ssl-im…1300i/156784.jpg	https://images-na.ssl-im…1300i/156784.jpg	[ "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/siteheaderbannerimages/1717004244i/409.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1287341300i/156784.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1287341300i/156784.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1375595103i/32699._UY200_CR50,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1484863606i/17744555._UX200_CR0,15,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1349239948i/2457095.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1471272726i/20018751.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1471272726i/20018752._SY540_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1471272726i/20018753.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1442491692i/1713956.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1507465969i/20498957._UY200_CR38,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1505195595i/23385697._UX200_CR0,37,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1693992123i/34692030._SX540_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1569291263i/28192716._SX540_.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1253027634i/88797.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1588320656i/78485297._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1674981019i/35134713._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1399048696i/1444651._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1438789125i/45632570._UY200_CR51,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1658888239i/1639329._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1509134810i/24294473.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1255829968i/1971718._CR0,34,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1508811508i/4213258._UY200_CR91,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1452041473i/9456990._UX200_CR0,24,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1605312701i/16160897._UY200_CR30,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1549089580i/27003963.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1549090240i/27004002.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1664218720i/3082950._UX200_CR0,3,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1548377232i/147289._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1510365058i/16803629._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1501820241i/13125862._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1223286787i/1594816.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1647409711i/105024683._UX200_CR0,5,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1306470229i/1108056.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1671218405i/70535152._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1531262120i/6382468._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1362603036i/8178894._UX200_CR0,24,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1620166783i/6001033._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1567431388i/102160775._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1587041256i/38117634._UY200_CR100,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1453168336i/30063589._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-apple_app_store@2x.png", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-google_play_store@2x.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Greg Egan" ]	null	Read 834 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. The story of a man with a vision—immortality: for those who can afford it is found in cybe…	en	/favicon.ico	Goodreads	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City	April 28, 2021 Fractious Fakes What happens when your virtual clone hates your guts? Well apparently “Panic. Regret. Analysis. Acceptance” in that order. “People reacted badly to waking up as Copies.” Well, yeah of course. It’s a bit like finding out your girlfriend is really a transgender biker - a mixture of fearful awe and fascinated interest. From a literary point of view, Egan has done something both awesome and interesting: he’s created a sort of reverse allegory. Instead of language taking on an alternative meaning from its literal referents, he has people taking on the literal qualities of language - vocabulary, grammar, and effects. You aren’t what you eat but what can be said about you, and programmed, in Permutation City. The key to Egan’s intention, I think, is in his protagonist’s muttering of a secret password, “Abulafia.” This is a reference to a medieval Kabbalist who, as Kabbalists are wont to do, turned everything into language in order to disorient those who use it -people in other words - and, paradoxically, thereby to free language-users from the insidious power of the language which is actually using them (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). The device of using a virtual reality ‘Copy’ within a virtual reality world - “urine and feces production optional” - is something Abulafia would have grasped immediately as obvious and necessary given the availability of the technology. This is Tohu, the Shattering of the Vessels through which the original unity of the universe is broken into fragments, both physical and spiritual. Tohu happens psychically as well for individuals. That is, bits of the Self are strewn about creation in a most unsatisfactory and unhappy state. These spiritual bits can become quite unruly in their condition of fragmented isolation. They are desperate to end their loneliness by re-integrating with the original whole. This is Tikkun, a sort of reconstruction of psychic pieces into a new entity. Paradoxically, of course, such a ‘rebirth’ also involves the ‘death’ of the fragmented Selves. If anything were to impede this process, an aberrant techno-savvy Kabbalist for example, there is an interesting story to be told. And Egan tells the story masterfully. I can only marvel at how he finds his inspiration for a high-tech tale in an ancient wisdom like Kabbalah, and then proceeds to out-Kabbalah even the Kabbalists with his creativity. June 17, 2017 I don't read a lot of hard sf because my understanding of science is rudimentary at best, but I do tend to enjoy it when I read one that do not go too far over my head. I feel I only need to understand the basic plot and the characters' motivation, the whys if not the hows of it. If those conditions are met then my patchy understanding of the scientific details is not too much of an impediment and the bits that get through to me tend to be quite fascinating. So it is with Permutation City which had me hooked from Chapter One which takes place inside a computer (no, not the plastic casing!) and is told from the point of view of a simulated personality, a software version of the protagonist. The opening scene where this simulated man "wakes up" and feel an unbearable disconnection from reality is like nothing I have ever read before. The story of this book is based on the author's "dust theory" which posits that: "There is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics, and that all mathematically possible structures exist, among them our physics and therefore our spacetime." (Wikipedia) If I understand this theory correctly it means that there is no difference between a simulated person (called a "Copy" in this book) constructed from mathematics and the original flesh and blood person. To experiment on or delete such a person would be cruel and unethical, not to mention absolutely beastly. Virtual Reality as portrayed in this book is actually a layer of reality where actions tend to have consequences which are just as "real" to the people in this environment. Without going into the synopsis this book is essentially about what constitute reality, an examination of the nature of the consciousness, and the implication and psychological impact of digitization of personalities for the original people and the "Copies". This cover nicely depicts the virtual city. The sf trope of digitizing or simulating personalities utilized so well in Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon is done even better here. For me the sticking point of this trope is that I do not believe that the digital version of myself would really be me regardless of the accuracy of the backup, if I am dead and gone the digital replacement would bring me back to life. There is no "right answer" to this question, it depends on your personal belief. However, the issue is very well explored here: "To me, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to be imitated by a computer after my death is just … farcical. I’m not an eccentric millionaire, I don’t want to spend my money – or yours – building some kind of … talking monument to my ego. I still have a sense of proportion." ‘I do believe that Copies are intelligent. I just wouldn’t say that they are – or they aren’t – ‘‘the same person as’’ the person they were based on. There’s no right or wrong answer to that; it’s a question of semantics, not a question of truth. " "Being scanned wouldn't make me feel any better about dying. Whatever a Copy of me might think, if one was ever run.’ ... and much later on in book: "Copies, like funerals, were for the benefit of the survivors" Poor bloke is being digitized (or something) There are also many brilliant other concepts in this book. How time can be slowed down in the virtual world (the word "cyberspace" suddenly seems a bit quaint) so that the time in reality just whizzes by. There are "slow clubs" and slums for "Copies" of less well to do people who can not afford the expense of running their virtual counterparts in or near real time. Also the launching of an entirely new virtual universe. What ultimately makes this book worthwhile for me though is that it is about people and the "effects of technology on the human condition". This may be the first sf book that seriously consider the philosophical implications of what the author calls "conscious software". I am always fascinated by the theme of how technology can change what it means to be human, and in order to explore this theme properly the characters need to be well developed and believable. If they were just flat devices to service the plot it would render the theme completely ineffective. Egan did a very good job with characterization here, few of the characters are actually likable but they have their own virtues and flaws. As usual much of the science is beyond me and the book is completely devoid of humor (not a necessity but always a bonus in serious novels). but the book has given me plenty to ponder in the wee hours which is a great alternative to getting up to get ready for work. Definitely a worthwhile and fascinating read. 4.5 stars _____________________________ Related interview with author. Excellent Jo Walton's review of this book. Cool French cover • The only other Greg Egan book I read is Diaspora, I can recommend it but with some reservations. Please refer to my Diaspora review for more details. January 14, 2019 The Book of Greg 1. And the LORD said, lo, for now seest thou through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now knowest thou in part; but then shalt thou know even as also I am known. 2. And Greg said, come on God. Stop tantalising me with all this mystical bullshit and givest Thou me the straight dope. Please? 3. And the LORD said, okay Greg, since thou askest so nicely: thy world is but a cellular automaton, here, let me give unto thee these stone tablets, on which I have graven all the rules. Good stuff isn't it? 4. And Greg said, that's very interesting God, but I can tell there's more to it. Like, what be the meta-universe in which thou hast implemented the cellular automaton? Cause I know it's there. 5. And the LORD said, verily art thou a smart cookie Greg, I can hide nothing from thee. Okay, I admit it. Thy cellular automaton is embedded in this abstract machine which extends a design originated by my servant John von Neumann, here's how it works, and it will function for all eternity, glory be to My name, amen. Now wilt thou stop asking annoying questions? 6. And Greg said, not so fast God. Where did Thy von Neumann machine come from, eh? I strongly suspect that Thou art no more than a hacky, poorly implemented simulated person Who cobbled all this together, am I right? And as for the idea that it is going to persist for all eternity, makest Thou not me to laugh, alleluia. 7. And the LORD was covered in confusion, and mumbled, I am what I am, for fuck's sake stop prying into My background, we should never have got started on this. Go on, writest thou a science-fiction novel about it if thou likest, see if I care. 8. And Greg said, okay God, I might just do that. 9. Here endeth the Book of Greg, but misseth thou not the sequel. June 9, 2020 THIS is why I read SF. THIS is the sense of wonder I’m looking for in a SF story. Forget everything you read about virtual reality, artificial life & consciousness - nothing compares to the concepts and the worldbuilding in this book. This is ultimate postcyberpunk ever. Written 26 years ago and it’s still ahead of times; the most stunning mélange between VR, chemistry, biology, philosophy, and math. I’m still in awe. Read December 18, 2023 Wow! Artificial intelligence, biochemistry, physics, mathematics – Greg Egan has it all going here. A multidimensional, fast-paced adventure where we're never quite sure if men or women are their flesh-and-blood selves or copies created in a computer simulation. In order not to give away too much of the unfolding zip, zappy action, I'll make an immediate cut to a batch of snapshots: Holy Doppelgänger, Batman! - Paul Durham wakes up as a Copy of himself within an extremely convincing virtual world of his own creation. It's all so real! “Hypothetical light rays were being traced backwards from individual rod and cone cells on his simulated retinas, and projected out into the virtual environment to determine exactly what needed to be computed: a lot of detail near the center of his vision, much less towards the periphery.” Paul can hardly believe his own experience. Paul sent a number of willing subjects into a virtual world but after only about fifteen minutes they all freaked out and terminated themselves. But Paul is determined to continue the experiment, which means he'll dialogue again and again via computer with his flesh-and-blood self in the real world, enough exchanges to test his limits of sanity. Hey, wait a minute! What if he as a Copy has bouts of his previous insanity? Hang in there, Paul. No reason to get too upset. After all, it would only be virtual insanity. Let There Be Virtual Light - Maria Deluca is an Autoverse junkie. “The Autoverse was a 'toy' universe, a computer model which obeyed its own simplified 'laws of physics' – laws far easier to deal with mathematically than the equations of real-world quantum mechanics.” With her strong background in biology and chemistry and physics, Maria has a hard time pulling herself away from her keyboard; after all, there's so many levels of possibility she can work with, things like hunting down mutose molecules and invoking Maxwell's Demon and asking it to find one for her. Hey, Maria. What if someone paid you a huge pile of cash to create your own version of the Autoverse, one that could eventually support intelligent life? Once created, human copies could be sent to inhabit your creation. In that way, we Earthlings could not only simulate first contact with an alien species but those human copies could achieve immortality. Greg Egan challenges us to fire up our brain cells as we explore the consequences of such an Autoverse universe. To Replicate Or Not To Replicate - Thomas Riemann is a wealthy banker and would dearly love to become immortal. However, Thomas feels a ton of guilt having committed a grisly murder, so weighty and so dark the guilt has become a huge part of his personal identity. Now, since Copies are created by a sophisticated computer program, Thomas could have a copy of himself made where that part of his past could be removed. But, once removed, Thomas wonders if he would be the same person or a different person. With Thomas' case, Greg Egan raises a provocative question: If we were given the chance to live for many years in a virtual reality, would we opt to modify ourselves in any way? As I see it, some of the possibilities: a facility to read and write and speak foreign languages (for example, read Plato in the original Greek and Tolstoy in Russian), have an extraordinary talent in a particular field like mathematics or Jungian psychology, alter our background if we were the victim of child abuse, an ability to meditate like a Zen monk...the possibilities are endless. Virtual Reality Gone Wild – Peer is a Copy living in an alternate reality. Kate, Peer's girlfriend, treats him to a night on the town. “At the Cabaret Andalou, the musicians presented as living saxophones and guitars, songs were visible, tangible, psychotropic radiation blasting from the mouths of the singers – and on a good night, a strong enough sense of camaraderie, telepathy, synergy, could by the mutual consent of the crowd take over, melting away (for a moment) all personal barriers, mental and mock-physical, reconstructing with the memories, perceptions and emotions of all the people it had been.” And it continues. Kate helped Peer redesign his apartment, “transforming it from a photorealist concrete box into a system of perceptions which could be stable, or responsive, as he wished. Once, before sleep, he'd wrapped the structure around himself like a sleeping bag, shrinking and softening it until the kitchen cradled his head and the other rooms draped his body. He'd changed the topology so that every window looked in through another window, every wall abutted another wall; the whole thing closed in on itself in every direction, finite but borderless, universe-as-womb.” All of the above is taken from the first third of the novel. From here on out, Greg Egan's imagination combined with permutations of science and math swirl to breathtaking heights. And there's the second part of the book where Paul and Maria take a journey to...for each reader to discover. Actually, as a non-science liberal arts type, I should be given a medal for making it to the last page. There's loads of technical detail to satisfy the scientists in the crowd yearning for the science of science fiction, but even if your background is not computers, math, and science, Permutation City makes for a most rewarding read. Thanks, Greg! Australian author Greg Egan, born 1961 - Greg takes pride in not having any photos of himself available on the web. This photo is the way I picture the outstanding SF novelist writing at his computer. November 15, 2014 This was my first introduction to Greg Egan and it blew my mind. Permutation City was the first book I ever read that made me say, 'Wow, that's a really interesting argument.' Other books made me think, 'huh, maybe we will have jet blaster space rays in the future.' but this one presents a serious and troubling philosophical argument. Permutation City isn't as fast paced or as idea dense as some of his other works but the ideas are much bigger and more provocative. Egan is often criticized for lacking literary virtues like character development and deep complex psychological interaction. I don't deny that this isn't high literature but I think the criticism is misplaced. Egan doesn't write about emotional soap operas, if that's what I wanted I would just go out and talk to real people, but he writes about ideas. I think his charachters are quite believeable but they just aren't the focus of the show. In Permutation City Egan draws out some of the consequences of strong AI, in particular the hypothesis that any system which implements the same computation as the human brain would have the same experiences. Egan argues that the notion of a computation is sufficently broad (undefined?) that if we take this idea seriously we have to accept that almost any situation we can imagine experiencing is being experienced by someone. One might view this as a fiction analog of Chalmer's view that a computational theory of the mind will entail pan-psychism (more or less). If you like philosophy and can handle abstract arguments that make mincemeet of common sense (but aren't absurd) you will like this book. If you want an emotional soap opera or you stop listening as soon as people talk about abstract things like math or philosophy don't even bother reading the blurb on the back. May 3, 2023 Ultra hardcore extreme sci-fi for the true futurism lunatics or the ones who dare to become one. Hard sci fi overkill If you´re searching for a real challenge, try Egan, he will blow your mind and make you despair confronted with the complexity of his work. These are the same few topics sci fi tends to throw at its readers, a bit varying depending on the subgenre, the optimistic or pessimistic tone, utopic or dystopic setting, how much tech and real science is included, if there is a social factor, are some of the main differences, but this is different. Humanities included Because it gives the philosophical implications a place next to the immense technical detail and knowledge the author throws at one while consuming this amazing work like a good, but very strong single malt whiskey that should just be enjoyed if one can handle the strength and taste. That´s why most readers will never find happiness with this one, because that´s hard science fiction multiplied with deep thoughts, as if some genre authors such as Stephenson and Reynolds weren´t already difficult enough to enter for readers used to less complex and confusing plot interferences, which will possibly let Egan stay a kind of indie underdog special tip, except for masochistic readers of course. Would a downgrade have made sense? I´ve had the thought what would have happened if some of my favorite, not well known authors wouldn´t have written in their unique style, but tried to sell their souls by removing the too heavy, anti mainstream elements, instead stayed with some rest of their original intents, but focused on the mainstream market instead. Or would have written different editions, the close to unreadable one for the geeks and nerds and a softened, normal reader edition who aren´t so bonkers with their special eccentric interests. Don´t be too intimidated To be clear, there is no kind of snobbery involved here, I just don´t want to get people involved in genres they very possibly won´t be able to enjoy because they are too specific and special and, worst case, afterward say that I was the troll you posted the book and positively talked about it, no no. Digs deeper than most authors I am really into nonfiction, wiki walks, and hard sci fi, but his 2 or 3, not sure anymore, novels I´ve read really felt like satisfying work, one gets so much out of it, asks oneself as a sci-fi addict why one didn´t have the different points of view on such a well known topic before, is just left in awe and ecstasy after having spent some time with this outstanding works. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... August 24, 2023 2/10 en 2005. El Sr Egan es matemático, programador y uno de los representantes más destacados de la actual CF dura. Por mi tipo de formación universitaria me debiera de gustar. Como la CF dura, en general, me gusta, pues me debiera de gustar. Pues bien, esta novela me parece un coñazo. ¿Filosofía, metafísica, ciudades virtuales...? Todo vuestro, gracias. P.D: para pegarme, pedid cita. Hay cola. May 12, 2021 Two things jarringly wrong with this book. The first involves an unfortunate plot choice wherein a male character invents something extremely technologically advanced (and far-fetched), and he hires a female coder to help him make it a reality. Once his big idea is revealed to her, she is skeptical and finds his concept absurd and impossible. Then, of course, he turns out to be correct, and her resistance is revealed to have been empty. It seems like Egan had very little concern about gender in this context because what it amounts to is a whole lotta mansplainin' throughout the story. Call it a side-effect of his story-telling that Egan seems to have been oblivious to, but it's a big negative in the way many aspects of the story are communicated. Egan has positioned the female character in the role of the reader. She's the doubter, just like we are the doubters...because the premise is so farfetched. And yet she is overcome just as we readers...are supposed to be overcome by Egan's argument. This woman has become little more than a rhetorical device. A strawman if you will to be proven shortsighted. The second aspect of this story that bothered me...was the entire absurd premise itself. Unlike the female character whose disbelief was falsified by the author's fictional plot (like putting "God" into a story just to prove God is real), I was unconvinced. Egan has an impressive grasp of technological and scientific language. In his first novel in this sequence (not a series), called Quarantine, which I reviewed here (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Egan did an amazing job taking seriously the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum theory and envisioning potential repercussions of what it would mean if this theory were accurate. In this book, Egan takes seriously the idea of digitizing consciousness. And frankly, I found it utterly ridiculous. He twists up so many convoluted knots that relate to the idea of digitized consciousness becoming real that it does nothing but demonstrate how farcical such a belief is. Reading such an elaborate story all about the repercussion of digitized consciousness struck me as a hell of a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Those systems in computer science that are called "artificial intelligence" are truly nothing like actual intelligence. They are nothing more than task-based code that gets better at doing its task by optimization. There is zero related to actual consciousness or the ability to not just do something but understand what it's doing. Machine "learning" isn't really learning, it's simply optimizing of variables. I have never read a convincing argument for the possibility of artificial intelligence, which is essentially the same as digitizing human consciousness. I think it's a big misunderstanding to believe that a) something fluid can be made digital--that somehow a "snapshot" of the brain at any given moment would capture its total functionality, and b) something physical (the meat of the brain, the physicality of the neurons and their connections) can be digitized. And so as a result, this whole book felt just like a lot of wasted effort. One side-effect to note about digitizing consciousness: if consciousness could be turned into code then you would be (for sure) eliminating free will. Once something becomes a series of commands, it can no longer make decisions other than reading the next step in its code. The system can be run backward and forwards, and the decision tree would never change because code always makes the same decisions as it optimizes. In support of my skepticism of artificial intelligence, I'm going to paste a portion of an interesting article published this month in Salon magazine. Artificial intelligence research may have just hit a dead end -- here's why Thomas Nail, Salon, May 01, 2021 Philip K. Dick's iconic 1968 sci-fi novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" posed an intriguing question in its title: would an intelligent robot dream? In the 53 years since publication, artificial intelligence research has matured significantly. And yet, despite Dick being prophetic about technology in other ways, the question posed in the title is not something AI researchers are that interested in; no one is trying to invent an android that dreams of electric sheep. Why? Mainly, it's that most artificial intelligence researchers and scientists are busy trying to design "intelligent" software programmed to do specific tasks. There is no time for daydreaming. Or is there? What if reason and logic are not the source of intelligence, but its product? What if the source of intelligence is more akin to dreaming and play? Recent research into the "neuroscience of spontaneous fluctuations" points in this direction. If true, it would be a paradigm shift in our understanding of human consciousness. It would also mean that just about all artificial intelligence research is heading in the wrong direction. The quest for artificial intelligence grew out of the modern science of computation, started by the English mathematician Alan Turing and the Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann 65 years ago. Since then, there have been many approaches to studying artificial intelligence. Yet all approaches have one thing in common: they treat intelligence computationally, i.e., like a computer with input and output of information. Scientists have also tried modeling artificial intelligence on the neural networks of human brains. These artificial neural networks use "deep-learning" techniques and "big data" to approach and occasionally surpass particular human abilities, like playing chess, go, poker, or recognizing faces. But these models also treat the brain like a computer as do many neuroscientists. But is this the right idea for designing intelligence? The present state of artificial intelligence is limited to what those in the field call "narrow AI." Narrow AI excels at accomplishing specific tasks in a closed system where all possibilities are known. It is not creative and typically breaks down when confronted with novel situations. On the other hand, researchers define "general AI" as the innovative transfer of knowledge from one problem to another. So far, this is what AI has failed to achieve and what many in the field believe to be only an extremely distant possibility. Most AI researchers are even less optimistic about the possibility of a so-called "superintelligent AI" that would become more intelligent than humans due to a hypothetical "intelligence explosion." Does the brain transmit and receive binary information like a computer? Or, do we think of it this way because, since antiquity, humans have always used their latest technology as a metaphor for describing our brains? There are certainly some ways that the computer-brain metaphor makes sense. We can undoubtedly assign a binary number to a neuron that has either fired "1" or not "0." We can even measure the electrochemical thresholds needed for individual neurons to fire. In theory, a neural map of this information should give us the causal path or "code" for any given brain event. But experimentally, it does not. For starters, this is because neurons do not have fixed voltages for their logic gates like transistors that can determine what will activate "1" or not activate "0" in a given neuron. Decades of neuroscience have experimentally proven that neurons can change their function and firing thresholds, unlike transistors or binary information. It's called "neuroplasticity," and computers do not have it. Computers also do not have equivalents of chemicals called "neuromodulators" that flow between neurons and alter their firing activity, efficiency, and connectivity. These brain chemicals allow neurons to affect one another without firing. This violates the binary logic of "either/or" and means that most brain activity occurs between an activated and nonactivated state. Furthermore, the cause and pattern of neuron firing are subject to what neuroscientists call "spontaneous fluctuations." Spontaneous fluctuations are neuronal activities that occur in the brain even when no external stimulus or mental behavior correlates to them. These fluctuations make up an astounding 95% of brain activity while conscious thought occupies the remaining 5%. In this way, cognitive fluctuations are like the dark matter or "junk" DNA of the brain. They make up the biggest part of what's happening but remain mysterious. Neuroscientists have known about these unpredictable fluctuations in electrical brain activity since the 1930s, but have not known what to make of them. Typically, scientists have preferred to focus on brain activity that responds to external stimuli and triggers a mental state or physical behavior. They "average out" the rest of the "noise" from the data. However, precisely because of these fluctuations, there is no universal activation level in neurons that we can call "1." Neurons are constantly firing, but, for the most part, we don't know why. What might be the source of these spontaneous fluctuations? Recent studies in the neuroscience of spontaneous thought suggest that these fluctuations may be related to internal neural mechanics, heart and stomach activity, and tiny physical movements in response to the world. Other experiments have demonstrated that neuronal firing creates electromagnetic fields strong enough to affect and perturb how neighboring neurons may fire. The brain gets even wilder when we zoom in. Since electrochemical thresholds activate neurons, a single proton could, in principle, be the difference that causes a neuron to fire. If a proton spontaneously jumped out of its atomic bonds, in what physicists call "quantum tunneling," this could cause a cascade of sudden neuron activity. So even at the tiniest measurable level, the neuron's physical structure has a non-binary indeterminacy. Computer transistors have the same problem. The smaller manufacturers make electronics, the smaller the transistor gets, and the more frequently electrons will spontaneously quantum tunnel through the thinner barriers producing errors. This is why computer engineers, just like many neuroscientists, go to great lengths to filter out "background noise" and "stray" electrical fields from their binary signal. This is a big difference between computers and brains. For computers, spontaneous fluctuations create errors that crash the system, while for our brains, it's a built-in feature. What if these anomalous fluctuations are at the heart of human intelligence, creativity, and consciousness? This is precisely what neuroscientists such as Georg Northoff, Robin Carhart-Harris, and Stanislas Dehaene are showing. They argue that consciousness is an emergent property born from the nested frequencies of synchronized spontaneous fluctuations. Applying this theory, neuroscientists can even tell whether someone is conscious or not just by looking at their brain waves. AI has been modeling itself on neuroscience for decades, but can it follow this new direction? Stanislas Dehaene, for instance, considers the computer model of intelligence "deeply wrong," in part because "spontaneous activity is one of the most frequently overlooked features" of it. Unlike computers, "neurons not only tolerate noise but even amplify it" to help generate novel solutions to complex problems. "Just as an avalanche is a probabilistic event, not a certain one, the cascade of brain activity that eventually leads to conscious perception is not fully deterministic: the very same stimulus may at times be perceived and at others remain undetected. What makes the difference? Unpredictable fluctuations in neuronal firing sometimes fit with the incoming stimulus, and sometimes fight against it." Accordingly, Dehaene believes that AI would require something akin to synchronized spontaneous fluctuations to be conscious. Johnjoe McFadden, a Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, speculates that spontaneous electromagnetic fluctuations might even have been an evolutionary advantage to help closely packed neurons generate and synchronize novel adaptive behaviors. "Without EM field interactions, AI will remain forever dumb and non-conscious." The German neuroscientist Georg Northoff argues that a "conscious…artificial creature would need to show spatiotemporal mechanisms such as… the nestedness and expansion" of spontaneous fluctuations. Relatedly, Colin Hales, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Melbourne, has observed how strange it is that AI scientists have not yet tried to create an artificial brain in the same way other scientists have made artificial hearts. Instead, AI researchers have created theoretical models of neuron patterns without their corresponding physics. It is as if instead of building airplanes, AI researchers are designing flight simulators that never leave the ground. If contemporary neuroscience is correct, AI cannot be a computer with input and output of binary information. Like the human brain, 95% of its activity would have to be "nested" spontaneous fluctuations akin to our unconscious, wandering, and dreaming minds. Goal-directed and instrumental behaviors would be a tiny fraction of its developed form. If we looked at its electroencephalogram (EEG), it would have to have similar "signatures of consciousness" to what Dehaene has experimentally shown to be necessary. Why would we expect consciousness to exist independently of the signatures that define our own? Yet, that is what AI research is doing. AI would also likely need to make use of the quantum and electrodynamic perturbations that scientists are presently filtering out. Spontaneous fluctuations come from the physical material of embedded consciousness. There is no such thing as matter-independent intelligence. Therefore, to have conscious intelligence, scientists would have to integrate AI in a material body that was sensitive and non-deterministically responsive to its anatomy and the world. Its intrinsic fluctuations would collide with those of the world like the diffracting ripples made by pebbles thrown in a pond. In this way, it could learn through experience like all other forms of intelligence without pre-programmed commands. Experimental research confirms that dreams help consolidate memories and facilitate learning. Dreaming is also a state of exceptionally playful and freely associated cognitive fluctuations. If this is true, why should we expect human-level intelligence to emerge without dreams? This is why newborns dream twice as much as adults. In my view, there will be no progress toward human-level AI until researchers stop trying to design computational slaves for capitalism and start taking the genuine source of intelligence seriously: fluctuating electric sheep. February 14, 2017 I should probably have read Egan's bio before buying this: "Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology." I rarely read SF and soon realised I might be out of my depth with this novel. It’s incredibly cerebral, consisting of more science than story as if Egan was more concerned in establishing the credibility of his vision of a world where humans clone themselves electronically and live in virtual worlds to computer programmers and quantum theory boffins than make any kind of appeal to people like me who simply want a good story! Often dialogue consisted of one character (taking on the role of the author) explaining to a less well informed character (the reader) how the science or technology worked and I found this method very wooden. Often the very long-winded technical details of what was going on went completely over my head. There was also a lack of human warmth or even interest in the novel. At times it read more like a manual than a novel. The story only really begins in the last fifty pages and finally, when I was hooked, the novel ended! Against that was the undoubted brilliance and breadth of Egan’s ideas which certainly provided much food for thought. I’d suggest though that this is only likely to appeal to hardcore SF buffs who demand any vision of the future be scientifically and technologically justified in painstaking detail. May 7, 2018 How do you define 'science fiction'? From a quote from an interview with sci-fi author Ted Chiang: “Sometimes, people who read my work tell me, ‘I like it, but it’s not really science fiction, is it?’” he says. “And I always feel like, no, actually, my work is exactly science fiction.” After Star Wars forever made the genre synonymous with what Chiang calls “adventure stories dressed up with lasers,” people forgot that science fiction includes the word “science” for a reason: It is supposed to be largely about exploring the boundaries of knowledge, he says. “All the things I do in my work — engaging in thought experiments, investigating philosophical questions — those are all things that science fiction does.” Here’s one from an interview with Ray Bradbury: Science fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. Using these as my definition of science fiction, I can say without qualification that Greg Egan is the greatest science fiction author I’ve ever read. I consider that an objective assessment. The ideas about which he writes are outstandingly imaginative, yet never seem impossible. That differential is why I consider him objectively the greatest. Because, sure, I've read science fiction with more outlandish ideas, and I've read science fiction that did a better job of convincing me of the possibility of its plot and setting. But I've never read (and I doubt such exists) science fiction with SUCH outlandish ideas that nevertheless still seemed possible. I'm tempted to say, "It's pure magic." But, well, it's not magic. It's science fiction. Alas, as I wrote in Diaspora, Greg Egan is not for everyone. To truly appreciate what he’s accomplished in his writing, you need to be familiar with some physics and metaphysics. This is because Egan's books look at some theory or idea in physics and ask, "What does it mean?" His books attempt to pull back the Wizard's curtain and see what's there. Here’s an example from classical physics: Newton’s law of gravitation is expressed with the equation F = Gm1m2 / r^2 while Coulomb’s law (of electrostatics) is F = kc1c2 / r^2. Two fundamental forces (gravity and electromagnetism) that are otherwise quite different have such similar equations! When I encountered this in my first physics class, it blew my mind. Surely such a coincidence suggests some underlying unity to the universe? If we think of physics as “the music of the celestial spheres” then such commonalities suggest there’s some invisible celestial composer, God or otherwise, giving it order. This explains in part why physicists are so hell-bent on creating a ‘unified theory of everything.’ Unity feels like truth. However, the most interesting ideas – the ones that Greg Egan explores – arise from more modern physics, such as quantum mechanics and relativity. So let's talk about a theory that assuredly influenced Egan's writing of Permutation City: Quantum Electrodynamic's 'Sum-over-possibilities' approach. Suppose I want to know whether some particle which starts at A will end up at point B and what path it will take. In classical physics, I can say yes or no depending on some relatively simple maths. But in quantum mechanics, at best I can tell you the probability of it happening. One of the ways I can calculate this probability is to look at ALL the possible ways A can get from B. There are infinite ways to do so, yeah? Mr. Electron can go straight from A to B. Or he can take make a pit-stop at the ice-cream-photon stand at point C to eat some mint chocolate chip photon-cream. Or he can take a little vacation 2.5 million light years away in Andromeda before going to point B. Now obviously that latter one is VERY out of the way, so it’s very unlikely so it doesn’t contribute much to my answer. BUT I DO NEED IT. Now with calculus (the math of infinities), we can do this calculation. Since particles (and even larger molecules) behave as waves, these various possible paths interfere with each other and parts of them cancel out. What remains is the actual path the particle ends up taking. Which is just, wow, kinda awesome, yeah? Paths the particle COULD have taken – but didn’t – interfere with other such paths not-taken to arrive at the actual path??? WTF? For reals? Apparently. When you realize this, when you realize these bizarre mathematical abstractions end up accurately predicting real world physical phenomenon, it doesn’t seem so outlandish to say, well, maybe there really are INFINITE other physical universes for all these other paths, including the one where our particle Mr. Electron really does travel to Andromeda, and maybe all these infinite universes influence each other in some way. Could there then be some meta-universe or at least some metaphysical rules that must be obeyed in these inter-universe interactions? What might this meta-universe be like then? What might those metaphysical rules be? This is what Greg Egan does. He takes these metaphysical ideas and asks, “Okay suppose this were true. Suppose there really were infinite universes. How would people discover the truth? And what effect would that discovery have on them? And how do I write this so it sounds actually plausible?” That is a Greg Egan novel, in a nutshell. And I can give you Permutation City in a nutshell too: it’s primarily about a man named Paul, who traps a Copy of himself in the virtual world in order to undertake some consciousness experiments. It asks the question, "Suppose every possible logically coherent permutation of reality actually did exist. How would someone find this out? And, finding it out, what would they do with this knowledge?" What follows is a compelling exploration of consciousness, religion, posthumanism, immortality, and, yes, the science and math behind some of these ideas. That’s where we encounter a second problem in reading Greg Egan. The first problem, to summarize, is that if you don't know any higher-level physics or mathematics, you probably haven't done any of these metaphysical thought experiments yourself, so you're not gonna geek out as much that someone actually bothered to turn them into a story. The second is this: Greg Egan writes hard science fiction. This isn't without reason. To people like myself and Egan, ideas aren’t compelling if they don’t have some basis in reality. Without such a basis, he might as well just write, “Yeah okay inside every electron, there’s a micro-universe in which talking unicorns poop rainbows at each other in an epic battle to reign as the supreme unicorn of the micro-universe, but it turns out these rainbows are actually the origin of conscious thought inside our brains. So really consciousness is the result of unicorns defecating rainbows.” Not really satisfying, huh? The math and science Greg Egan invokes in his writing are necessary language to communicate his ideas in a compelling manner. They are as necessary as the rules of English. If I write, “ef9uafojfk appleapple app le;;;; BANANA!” I’m not really communicating anything worthwhile am I? But, again, that’s the genius of Greg Egan. He communicates ideas that could easily seem as outlandish and stupid and nonsensical as “appleapple app le;;;; BANANA!” but by bothering to give them a foundation in science & mathematics, he grants them an elegant verisimilitude. His stories seem real. And that which is real is usually more beautiful than that which is not. All of this is not to suggest that Egan’s books are totally impenetrable without a PhD in Quantum Physics. While Egan is certainly unapologetic in his invocation of hard science & math, he ultimately keeps his focus on the humanity of his ideas. For example, in the world in Permutation City, there exist virtual ‘copies’ of sometimes dead (and sometimes still living) human beings. He shows the legal issues involved. Does a Copy have the same rights as an organic human being? There's several poignant interactions between one of the main characters and her mother, who is resistant to the idea of becoming an immortal Copy even when faced with her death. So, the humanity isn't lost in a swarm of technical details, as sometimes happens with science fiction. In conclusion, if it isn’t clear, I think EVERY serious book-reader, especially every sci-fi reader, should at least attempt an Egan novel. If it turns out you can’t handle the hard science aspects, fine. Either go educate yourself on them (as I did when required in both Permutation City & Diaspora) or don’t and at least say you give it a fair shake. June 7, 2014 This is a tough book to evaluate. The characters are two dimensional exposition machines, the prose is largely utilitarian, and even the plot is pretty flimsy. Further, the conceit at the heart of the novel and the fulcrum for all of the action is a theory (the so-called "dust theory") that is ridiculous balderdash (and, if taken seriously, basically an excuse for moral heinousness). However, the book is also an amazingly thoughtful rumination on the philosophical and psychological issues that would arise with translating our consciousness onto a computer substrate. Egan evaluates the challenges that would arise if you were able to copy yourself, personality, memories, and all, into a virtual world in a computer, and how that copy would interact with your original meat version, how the copy would adapt to the limits of its new environment, and what the legal and moral obligations would be in interacting with such copies. It's like a really interesting essay on the Singularity with a fine lace of silly plot frippery around the edges. Further, Egan was incredibly prescient on a number of points writing in the early to mid 90s (among other ideas, cloud computing, markets for computing cycles, etc.), and the book has aged pretty well. This is probably not my first choice for books about mind uploading, but it's a pretty interesting take and worth the read for anyone interested in the subject. Also, it totally affected my dreams the whole time I was reading it, which is always a good sign. July 30, 2018 What starts and ends as a basic search for immortality as data, as in uploading perfect copies of yourself to cheat death indefinitely, makes this 1994 novel a rather focused utopian novel. Not that things are all rosy, of course, but that it's the search for utopia, or heaven on earth, that drives the characters here. Distinctions get very hazy between real and real. When the universe is math and math is the universe, a perfect copy as data will have no real difference with everything we have. Change some basic laws, add new elements, ramp up your perceptions or slow them way down. It doesn't really matter. Create a universe that is self-evolving, have it compete with itself and all the parts within it, run a simulation of Life, and turn Darwinism and Game Theory upon data elements. It's smart. It's evolution in data. And when you can live thousands of years working out all the kinks in your programming in a few eyeblinks in that boring other reality, why not go all the way and live forever for real, speeding up and slowing down within the actual universe, give yourself robot waldos, meet new neighbors... or aliens... and generally play god? We're already the running software platform in our own universe, after all. Matter doesn't really exist anyway. We're running on an encoded holographic universe. This novel just flips the concept in a mirror and spells out what we might need to do to survive. Sure, we've seen this concept done many times now, but look at the date here. It's ALSO been done before, but few have gone as far or all out as Greg Egan. The denizens of Permutation City seem to be doing it right. Yes, there's a good story and good characters, too, but in its heart, this is definitely a utopian novel. :) I really miss those. June 5, 2016 Permutation City: Bursting with ideas about artificial life, virtual realities, digital consciousness, etc Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Permutation City (1994) won the John W. Campbell Award and is probably Greg Egan’s best-known book. It is a very dense, in-depth examination of digital vs.physical consciousness, computer simulations of complex biological systems, virtual reality constructs, and multi-dimensional quantum universes. Yeah, pretty intimidating stuff. In fact, it was so over my head the first time I gave up in defeat. Then it started to bother me - such mind-boggling ideas were worth another attempt. So I listened to the book again and…I think I got some of it. The final third of the book is still beyond my comprehension, but the first two thirds present two carefully-described ideas that are worth examining - Dust Theory and the TVC universe. Piqued your interest? If so, read on. Permutation City details attempts in the mid-21st century to create an artificial universe based in the Autoverse, a computer-generated environment where digital copies of wealthy people can enjoy a limited form of immortality in virtual reality. Most books would be content to go with that, but Egan is just getting started. Mysterious entrepreneur Paul Durham is pitching to aging millionaires a far-superior and more secure version of the Autoverse, and also hires solo programmer Maria to create a digital simulation of the early conditions on Earth that gave rise to life. He is stingy with the details, but Maria needs the money to help her ailing mother, so she signs on. The only way for Paul to test the quality of the digital copies of his clients’ consciousnesses is to try it on himself. But each time he makes a copy, they choose to terminate themselves almost immediately. After numerous tries, he decides to remove their bailout option, forcing a copy of himself to remain “alive” and cooperate with him to further the project. This bears a superficial resemblance to Robert J. Sawyer’s The Terminal Experiment, but that book took the cheap Michael Crichton techno-thriller route, whereas Permutation City is exponentially more intelligent and ambitious. During his experiments with his digital copy, he discovers that even if he rearranges the chronological order of distinct slices of the copies’ consciousness, his copy still experiences events in an internally-consistent way that defies expectation. There’s no was for me to explain it, other than to quote the text: Now he was…dust. To an outside observer, these ten seconds had been ground up into ten thousand uncorrelated moments and scattered throughout real time - and in model time, the outside world had suffered an equivalent fate. Yet the pattern of his awareness remained perfectly intact: somehow he found himself, “assembled himself” from these scrambled fragments. He’d been taken apart like a jigsaw puzzle - but his dissection and shuffling were transparent to him. Somehow - on their own terms - the pieces remained connected. Imagine a universe entirely without structure, without shape, without connections. A cloud of microscopic events, like fragments of space-time … except that there is no space or time. What characterizes one point in space, for one instant? Just the values of the fundamental particle fields, just a handful of numbers. Now, take away all notions of position, arrangement, order, and what’s left? A cloud of random numbers. But if the pattern that is me could pick itself out from all the other events taking place on this planet, why shouldn’t the pattern we think of as ‘the universe’ assemble itself, find itself, in exactly the same way? If I can piece together my own coherent space and time from data scattered so widely that it might as well be part of some giant cloud of random numbers, then what makes you think that you’re not doing the very same thing? Is your mind completely blown at this point? I had to read this through these passages several times, attempting to process them. Only by transcribing this was I able to grasp the idea. It may be completely outlandish, but I give Egan kudos for sheer daring. It is a variant of quantum mechanics, but goes a full step beyond that by postulating that the universe can and does take shape from pure randomness each and every moment of our subjective existence. What was he taking when he came up with that? I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen that in hard SF of the time, as this was written back in 1994. He labels this bizarre concept Dust Theory, and this forms the foundations for an even more dazzling idea, that of the Turing-von Neumann-Chiang (TVC) universe. Again, this is subject matter enough for another book itself. The only way to explain this is to quote Egan again at length: There’s a cellular automaton called TVC. After Turing, von Neumann and Chiang. Chiang’s version was N-dimensional. That leaves plenty of room for data within easy reach. In two dimensions, the original von Neumann machine had to reach further and further - and wait longer and longer - for each successive bit of data. In a six-dimensional TVC automaton, you can have a three-dimensional grid of computers, which keeps on growing indefinitely - each with its own three-dimensional memory, which can also grow without bound. And when the simulated TVC universe being run on the physical computer is suddenly shut down, the best explanation for what I’ve witnessed will be a continuation of that universe - an extension made out of dust. Maria could almost see it: a vast lattice of computers, a seed of order in a sea of random noise, extending itself from moment to moment by sheer force of internal logic, “accreting” the necessary building blocks from the chaos of non-space-time by the very act of defining space and time. By this point Egan had either excited computer science and quantum physics geeks into paroxysms of pure ecstasy, or driven liberal arts majors running screaming in the other direction. Initially I just couldn’t get it, but after transcribing it, I find it makes some sense if you accept the initial assumptions (a big if, of course). But believe it or not, this is still the halfway point of Permutation City, and things get EVEN MORE MIND-BOGGLING as it proceeds. The question arises of whether the TVC universe is infinite or will collapse from entropy as most theorists expect of our own universe. Paul Durham’s answer is: The TVC universe will never collapse. Never. A hundred billion years, a hundred trillion; it makes no difference, it will always be expanding. Entropy is not a problem. Actually, ‘expanding’ is the wrong word; the TVC universe grows like a crystal, it doesn’t stretch like a balloon. Think about it. Stretching ordinary space increases entropy; everything becomes more spread out, more disordered. Building more of a TVC cellular automaton just gives you more room for data, more computing power, more order. Ordinary matter would eventually decay, but these computers aren’t made out of matter. There’s nothing in the cellular automaton’s rules to prevent them from lasting forever. Durham’s universe - being made of the same “dust” as the real one, merely rearranged itself. The rearrangement was in time as well as space; Durham’s universe could take a point of space-time from just before the Big Crunch, and follow it with another from ten million years BC. And even if there was only a limited amount of “dust” to work with, there was no reason why it couldn’t be reused in different combinations, again and again. The fate of the TVC automaton would only have to make internal sense - and the thing would have no reason, ever, to come to an end. In Part Two, the story jumps forward in time, to after the TVC universe, now commonly known as Elysium, has been created and six thousand years have passed internally. Moreover, the artificial life that Maria set the initial conditions of, called Autobacterium Lamberti, has gone through billions of years of virtual evolution using the unlimited computing power of the TVC universe, resulting in an entirely new intelligent species. They are insect-like, group-minded, and increasingly inquisitive about their world. However, they are unaware of the creators, humanity, or that their world was created by artificially. As they start to investigate the founding principles of their world, Paul Durham and Maria become concerned that their experiments will threaten the fundamental principals of the TVC universe, due to a very byzantine thought process that suggests, to the best of my understanding, that it is the understanding of a given universe and its physical laws and properties that determine those laws and properties. So as the Lambertians begin to examine their world more closely, they are undermining the laws set in the Garden-of-Eden configuration. Here are some excerpts: I think the TVC rules are being undermined - or subsumed into something larger. Do you know why I chose the Autoverse in the first place - instead of real-world physics? Less computation. Easier to seed with life. No nuclear processes. No explanation for the origin of the elements. I thought: in the unlikely event that the planet yielded intelligent life, they’d still only be able to make sense of themselves on our terms. It never occurred to me that they might miss the laws that we know are laws, and circumvent the whole problem. They haven’t settled on any kind of theory, yet. They might still come up with a cellular automaton model - complete with the need for a creator. We can’t shut them down. I think that proves that they’re already affecting Elysium. If they successfully explain their origins in a way which contradicts the Autoverse rules, then that may distort the TVC rules. Perhaps only in the region where the Autoverse is run - or perhaps everywhere. And if the TVC rules are pulled out from under us… What a fascinating question - what happens when the artificial life you’ve created starts to investigate its own origins? Will it guess correctly? Or make up its own explanations, religious or otherwise. Flipping the perspective from the created to the creator is just one of the many mind-expanding ideas that Egan seems to have in endless supply. The end of the book involves Paul and Maria’s efforts to make contact with the Lambertians and convince them that they are indeed creations of humans, and that they should believe in our universe’s laws in order to maintain them. It was pretty difficult to follow this part, even after two listens, but if you could understand Dust Theory and the TVC universe, then perhaps this will make sense to you as well. My mind was somewhat overwhelmed by this point, but I can’t say for sure if it’s the fault the writer so much as my own ability to understand. While many books may have more entertaining characters or plots, Permutation City is one of the most ambitious explorations of digital consciousness, artificial life, and the fundamental assumptions behind our quantum universe that I have ever encountered. It’s not an easy read, but it will expand your mind. Notes on the Audible version: Just as he was for Quarantine, narrator Adam Epstein really is hopeless, especially his atrocious Australian, German, Italian, Russian, and Chinese accents. It would be one thing to do all those accents in the most stereotyped and insulting way possible, but he somehow manages to switch accents for the SAME CHARACTER mid-dialogue. It’s like a painful sketch on Saturday Night Live. Sometimes I was reduced to tears of laughter hearing how awful they were. It makes me wonder if he modeled his accents on the bad guys in action movies. He also regularly mispronounced words. Of the many cringe-worthy mistakes he made in this book, I laughed the most at his misreading of “causal structure” as “casual structure”. However, it’s not surprising that his audiobooks are just $1.99 each, but it’s really a disfavor to Greg Egan’s work. In the end, I would probably appreciate Permutation City much more if I had read the Kindle version (which is only $2.99). I still might not fully understand it, but at least I can do better accents. February 2, 2019 Is reality computable, and the Church-Turing-Thesis applicable only to formal models of computation, or to physical reality too ? As the human mind is a sophisticated information processing piece of biological machinery, what would happen if we managed to create a "software" copy of our minds (bearing in mind the limitations imposed by the no-cloning theorem): would it still be "us" ? Would it suffice for the generation of subjective experiences that the computational processes of a human brain can be structurally replicated in suitably fine-grained detail ? Is the "sense of self" an illusion, and "haecceity" just a philosophical construct with no real correspondence to the reality of the individual mind ? What is the relationship between memory and individuality ? Is there anything to reality more than the patterns that inform it ? Is reality just information structured according to complex patterns ? Would we be able to tell if we live in a computer simulation ? To what extent could you change or remove some of your memories (for example, some of your bad experiences) while still being "you" ? Is immortality a bliss or an eternal punishment, and what would be the meaning of life in such extreme circumstances ? Many such philosophical questions are asked in this visionary, brilliant, hallucinatory universe, developed by the author in a crescendo of mind-blowing conceptual creations, embedded in a nested "Matryoshka dolls" structure. It is not recursion gone mad, but it occasionally gets quite close to it. This is "The Matrix" and "Blade Runner" with steroids. Sometimes asking too much suspension of disbelief, but overall a uniquely brilliant piece of hard science fiction, this is a strange and riveting book, delivering some moments of pure, highly ingenious creativity. Not for the faint-hearted, but still highly recommended; just do not forget to wear your seat-belts - we are dealing here with the Roger Penrose of Science Fiction. 4 stars. April 28, 2021 I recently read Neal Stephenson's 2019 novel Fall, or Dodge in Hell concerning the economics and politics of the creation of a cybernetic synthetic world, and the lives of characters after they move into it. I wish I had read Greg Egan’s Permutation City instead. It predates Fall by 25 years, and yet is more current, more insightful, and more cerebrally engaging. Don’t be like me; read Permutation City first. Greg Egan is an Australian hard science fiction writer, whose stories often involve mathematics, physics, biology, and ontology themes such as the nature of consciousness. Permutation City (1994) was one of his earliest published novels, and sometimes numbered as second in his Subjective Cosmology series. The others are Quarantine (1992) and Distress (1995), both worth reading, but truly they are each completely stand-alone, and related only thematically. Parts of Permutation City were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust.” The novel won the John W. Campbell Award and Ditmar Award in 1995. The plot follows the lives of several people in a near future reality where the Earth is ravaged by the effects of overdevelopment, and humans live in a globalized culture and economy. Vast amounts of computing resources are available, sufficient to host virtual reality worlds for copies of dead or dying wealthy individuals, and bottom-up cellular automaton worlds. The four perspective characters are Paul, an insurance salesman and immortal virtual life visionary, Maria, a software engineer he hires to build the simulation for his speculative supercomputer, Thomas, a wealthy customer of Paul’s with a sordid secret in his past, and Peer and Kate, lovers who illicitly stow away in the simulated world, living in threaded bits of unused processing capability throughout the program. “Dust Theory” holds that all potential universes, even those formed by tracing cause-and-effect non-sequentially through particles existing for other universes, do exist. I found the concepts to be nearly as challenging as in non-fiction reading of science and/or philosophy. One chapter I had to read twice (Chapter 17) and ponder before proceeding. The chapter starts with dialog AFTER Paul has just finished explaining the complex topology of his story line to Maria, weaving together the alternating 2045 and 2050 threads for the first time. I coin the phrase anti-infodump – it is the absence of a conceptual infodump where one would have been useful. Readers must infer the infodump contents on their own. It has been a long time since I described one of my reads as “mind-blowing,” but this one deserves it. Highly recommended. July 23, 2017 There's a running joke throughout Greg Egan's 1994 Permutation City that neatly encapsulates both all the good things and all the bad things about the book in general. Namely, a TV show has recently been created in their day-after-tomorrow world that was specifically designed to sell the just-invented concept of virtual reality to the mouth-breathing masses, a show that's been deliberately dumbed down to make it more palpable to the slack-jawed yokels, in which crazy fantastical things are always happening within a virtual space that doesn't even begin to conform to reality, which for anyone familiar with this period in sci-fi history is very, very clearly Egan poking fun of the other cyberpunk novels of those early-'90s years that got a lot more famous than his, like William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. But in the actual virtual reality that all the smart, rich people in Egan's universe actually do inhabit, the ultimate goal is for the virtual world to match the boring real world as exactly as possible, and the most excited anyone ever gets is when their avatars count out loud from one to ten to check the lag between their time and our own. (Or to quote The Simpsons: "Perfectly level flying is the supreme challenge of the scale model pilot!") That says everything you need to know about about Egan as an author, a "hard" science-fiction writer who is also a working mathematics doctorate holder in his day job, and who has built an award-winning and cultishly popular career writing speculative novels that stick as closely to real science as humanly possible. I think that's great, I want there to be no mistake, and I'm glad that these kinds of books exist for all those science-oriented readers who get frustrated by the "soft" sci-fi books that tend to be the big bestsellers of the genre and have much more of an impact on the general culture. (If you ever want to cause an aneurysm in a hard sci-fi fan, ask them for their opinion on Star Wars.) But that said, hard sci-fi is generally not really my cup of tea -- in fact, I doubt I would've ever read this unless it had been recommended by a new friend of mine in Chicago, fellow hard sci-fi author Jeremy John -- and as a result I found Permutation City to be only a bit above mediocre, with a central premise revolving around quantum mechanics and multidimensional consciousness that might as well have been freaking Hogwarts, as little as I could keep up with the high-level real science being bandied about. Unfortunately for hard sci-fi authors, most of us are never going to consider it a thrilling climax when a group of scientists flip a switch, stare at some dots on a computer screen, perform some calculations, then excitedly declare, "It worked! It worked!," which is why hard sci-fi is fated to always exist on the cultish outskirts of genre literature. And despite his publisher's best efforts to "sex up" this story, through the cyberpunk-looking cover art and a tagline that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot ("Ten Million People On A Chip!"), Permutation City falls squarely into hard sci-fi territory, making it easy to see why his "dumbed-down" '90s colleagues like Gibson and Stephenson are now well-loved mainstream figures while Egan is still barely known beyond his core fan base of Larry-Niven-loving convention veterans. It should all be kept in mind before picking up a copy yourself. February 23, 2020 I am sure I am not the first one to think or say this but I am not smart enough for Greg Egan. I got a lot out of the book, some great thoughts about what you would do if you realized (suddenly or otherwise) that you were a virtual person, cloned off of a real person and the only control you had over your life was when to end it. Some other great thoughts about that same virtual environment, expanding it and playing god or not playing god depending on how you want to interpret how the simulation was created. In the end there were too many details, all very much thought out, about everything. The story really got lost and although I love my hard science, apparently I really need a story to go along with it. February 26, 2022 Humanity through the lens of virtual copies. Sequences on self forgiveness, being alive, cross species influencing, and selective mind editing make this so much more than a great story. Egan teaches and expands the mind all while telling an amazing yarn. April 21, 2014 Rereading this book 15 years later reminds me why I still bother reading Egan's books, despite very lukewarm experiences like his more recent Zendegi. Why hasn't this been reprinted? (update: super cheap Kindle edition available, you lucky reader you!) This book crackles and hums with ideas that are not just brilliant within their own context, but ask deep questions about our existence. The extrapolation of these ideas is solid and well meshed with the unique and intriguing plot. Egan is at the top of his form here, banging out compelling world building characterizations in a couple of pages as he introduces side characters to build the number of perspectives for the unfolding of his vision. My one caveat is that it might take a certain level of a certain kind of intelligence to understand the central conceit of the novel. By the same token, if you can grok it, I predict you will just love it to pieces, because hard pressed to find anything this profound, engaging and well written with that lovely sci-fi adventure flavor anywhere. For me the conflict driving the last quarter of the novel and the justifications for some of the actions of the characters are a bit less solid than the majority of the book, but it too picks up steam after a shaky start. The last section feels slightly tacked on after a solid but perhaps not entirely salutary ending of the main portion of the narrative. Highly recommended if you have encountered any of his other work and liked it at all-- IMNSHO this is his best. By the way, this is an entirely stand-alone book which has nothing in common with the other books in the "subjective cosmology cycle" except a portion of an author's career. October 24, 2023 I have this awesome string of random bits that I'm hiding in my pocket. It is a magical fairy land with dragons and wizards and lots of attractive princesses that need saving. What do you mean that's just pocket lint? It's all information! I can interpret it however I want. There's so much pocket lint in the world surely some of it is actually Narnia. In my pocket lint universe I am an immortal god! My name is only spoken in awed pocket lint whispers. What do you mean pocket lint immortal god Me has nothing to do with the Me that you've known for the last three hundred pages? We've got the same name. We look the same. Sometimes we say the same things! The premise of this book made no sense. That's fine in the abstract. There are plenty of books worth reading that make no sense. But this is a Greg Egan book, so the real point of it is the idea, which as I may have mentioned, makes no sense. Go read his collection Axiomatic instead. January 22, 2021 As with most anything that Egan has written, this is all about the ideas. If that isn't sufficient, then you'll probably not find this to be sufficiently enjoyable. The central idea, Dust Theory, can't be reasonably described as anything other than insane, and almost every character treats it as such. Readers who are dismissive and/or contemptuous of it and the other ideas in the story may find this book a tough and unproductive slog. Although there are a few viewpoint characters they're all still about their own ideas. This is a novel in two parts, which in effect reads like a novel followed by a novella. The first part is entirely self-contained, but if you read only that, then it becomes an entirely different work, which is interesting by itself. As a result, it'd be possible to read the second part by itself as well, but that would be ridiculous. Based on the reviews I read, a significant number of people would've preferred that entire novel was written in the style of the second part, but I disagree. The book begins with existential computation experiments and then goes to organic chemistry simulations, so after you've read those you'll have a general idea what rest of the book will be like. You may find that you'll enjoy that more than it sounds like. The only way to know for sure is to try it out, maybe more than once if it doesn't work the first time. There are philosophical and religious arguments, though sometimes the difference between them can be difficult to tell, despite Egan being a professed atheist. Each character has their own arguments for how life ought to be lived and what matters in it. I found myself agreeing with some and entirely rejecting others, but enjoyed reading about them regardless of how I felt about the arguments. Our current year, 2021, is catching up to some technological mentions in the book, which perhaps is only to be expected with technological optimism. The 2020 mention has come and gone and next is the 2024 mention of "ran a fully conscious copy of himself in a crude Virtual Reality" which doesn't seem likely. Most of the book takes place in the mid 2040s and early 2050s. When those years come, I wonder if the book will be looked upon as quaint like those from mid-20th century often are. The years are merely anchors for the ideas of an age. It's difficult to express what specifically I enjoyed. Maybe it's simply that the book describes going through the process of an insane idea that has to be taken on faith step-by-step. Once I settled into reading it, I was completely absorbed. Permutation City will remain among the top novels that I enjoyed reading this year. September 27, 2017 PERMUTATION CITY is a complex and at times challenging read that is well worth persevering through. First published in 1994, it reads as relevant today as any modern day tech-fi, if not perhaps more so, encompassing a deep cogitation of reality and it's endless boundaries elevated by technology and re-rationalizing what it means to simply 'be'. PERMUTATION CITY will make you think and read harder - and that's a good thing. The story is multifaceted, taking the reader on a journey through the possibilities of alternate life, and exploring the inventive use of sophisticated technology, while also delving deep into the human psyche to question it's very existence in both biological and artificial terms. Author Greg Egan, doesn't limit the novel's pretense to text-book design and pure futuristic academic study, there is a deeply rooted human element that binds these theories to match the complex topical nature of PERMUTATION CITY. For readers wanting something more than a quick escape into a fictional landscape, PERMUTATION CITY is just the thing - it's a book that will resonate for a long time to come. Review first appeared on my blog: http://justaguywholikes2read.blogspot... November 14, 2018 Siamo nel 2050, più o meno, la Terra è popolata anche da Copie. La tecnologia è così avanzata da poter, addirittura, copiare i pensieri, l'intero cervello scansionato per... Permutation city, etichettato come romanzo cyberpunk: mi pare riduttivo. Egan esplora la cosmologia, sonda la creazione dell'universo e le sue implicazioni filosofiche. Sonda le origini dell'universo, esplora la chimica degli elementi, la matematica applicata a tutto ciò che ci circonda. L'informatica, la scienza cardine di questo romanzo visionario, elemento fondamentale per ogni racconto cyberpunk, viene utilizzata da Egan, in un modo che mai avevo letto. Autore incredibile Egan, è riuscito a creare una storia dall'immensa fantasia, inesauribile direi, ma con implicazioni sociali, filosofiche, ambientali, così tangibili. Non un libro semplice da leggere, anzi direi a tratti molto complesso, per argomentazioni e scrittura. Le prime 60-70 pagine, le ho lette a singhiozzo, rileggendo alcuni passaggi, ma poi sono entrato in un mondo sbalorditivo! Lettura appassionante, scrittura evocativa... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSrnn... August 10, 2018 отличная книга. единственный недостаток (да и тот с большой натяжкой) — это спорная, на мой взгляд, степень визуализированности цифрового пространства, от которого слегка веет чувством, что относительно скоро после выхода этой книги выйдет и «Матрица». но даже эта мелкая придирка теряет смысл в последней четверти повествования. в остальном всё блестяще и поразительно современно. постоянный аукцион вычислительных мощностей, к примеру, — это, кажется, ровно то, о чём прямо сейчас мечтают производители консолей. много внимательного, вдумчивого обоснования того, как могли бы работать всяческие интересные штуки и где на самом деле возникли бы трудности. ну и финал. вот уж воистину Gainax Ending! действие развивается экспоненциально — чем ближе к развязке, тем чаще меняется тема произведения. и особенно круто, что концовке удаётся остаться очень человечной — хотя, казалось бы, все эти вопросы книга уже сто раз прожевала. а всё равно — по эмоциям тоже бьёт. не только уму даёт, но и сердцу. в общем, отличная книга. September 21, 2013 This is the second Greg Egan novel I've read, after Distress. Both books follow the same rough template: a (relative) everyman protagonist encounters a person or group of people with bizarre metaphysical beliefs about science, and is initially skeptical until some startling event vindicates those beliefs. Both of these books are very pure instances of conceptual science fiction; the philosophical and scientific ideas are the meat of the book, not just convenient setup for the plot. Permutation City is actually a lot "purer" than Distress in this sense -- pure to the point that I had a hard time maintaining interest. At least Distress had something like a plot, and something like a central conflict, and something like a sense of suspense. For at least 80% of its duration Permutation City has none of that, and relies for its momentum on the reader's curiosity about where Egan will take the concepts next. That wasn't enough for me, not (I think) out of any lack of interest in science and philosophy, but because the arguments Egan presents for his ideas aren't very convincing. Unfortunately, I don't think they could be without devoting much more space to them, which would make the book so "pure" it would almost be de facto nonfiction. For an example of the effect I imagine this book is meant to have upon its reader, take a look at this wonderful sentence from Cosma Shalizi's review: Imagine Philip K. Dick channeling Marvin Minsky channeling Bertrand Russell channeling Leibniz with a few hundred micrograms of LSD tossed in at some point in the chain --- imagine a novel which can use the phrase "the economy of ontology," not just without grinning or blushing, but perfectly convincingly --- and you'll have some idea of what Permutation City is like. Note that three of the four writers Shalizi mentions are non-fiction writers, and the one exception (Dick) is a highly conceptual SF writer. But of course Permutation City is a work of fiction, and it's not going to be able to devote long stretches of text to clarifying small points or handling counterarguments, the way Russell or Leibniz might. If the central idea starts to seem shaky to you, you're pretty much lost, because Egan spends most of his time elaborating it rather than justifying -- the former is much easier to integrate with fiction than the latter, after all. Which is pretty much what happened to me. I guess the concepts in Permutation City aren't really much more implausible than those in Distress, but at least the concepts in Distress just kind of appeared from offstage with no pretext of justification. In Permutation City a lot of the story is about people discovering and exploring the concepts -- they don't just get dumped on the reader from nowhere -- which means it runs into problems when it becomes clear that Egan's justifications aren't really philosophy-grade, nonfiction-grade justifications. I can believe pretty much anything if the author tells me to, but the characters can't, and what is presented as a fascinating story of discovery seemed more to me like people coming up with absurd guesses that happened to be confirmed because the author arranged it that way. Specifically, I had a hard time understanding what role causal relations were supposed to play in Durham's "dust hypothesis." It seems like there's clearly a connection between the causal structure of real physics and the nature of the "patterns" Durham talks about -- that's why, when a Copy is shut off, its pattern has to find a continuation that's actually consistent with it, rather than just any old continuation. (It's also why the patterns in a living person/Copy are continuous and don't suddenly veer off into something unrelated to the person's mind -- there's the causal structure of the body and brain creating a link.) So when Durham gets the idea from the dust theory from the fact that his consciousness can connect states separated in space and time, why doesn't he note that in every case the states are causally connected, and thus that the "connections" aren't necessarily miraculous or metaphysical at all -- there's always a purely physical connection, specified by the computers simulating him, between the states? Of course Durham's idea solidifies when the world keeps generating convenient "explanations" whenever he gets shut off, which is harder evidence, I guess, but seems to run into anthropic principle worries (isn't it a priori likely that even if most Copies just become non-conscious when shut off, there might still be some long "chains" like Durham?). February 14, 2016 Dull metaphysical nonsense. Also, 70% could have been axed. May 20, 2017 Im not the biggest hard scifi fan but thought I'd give this a go. I have loved most of Egans short stories. However this was too much Science for me and not enough plot. Some parts just dragged a little too much for me.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	50	https://www.josharcher.uk/blog/diaspora-greg-egan-book-review/	en	Diaspora by Greg Egan - a review	https://www.josharcher.u…a-book-cover.jpg	https://www.josharcher.u…a-book-cover.jpg	[ "https://www.josharcher.uk/static/icons/header-image.png", "https://www.josharcher.uk/static/img/2018/03/diaspora-book-cover.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Josh Archer" ]	null	A review of the science-fiction novel 'Diaspora' by Greg Egan. Not the ordinary style of review, but a review nonetheless.	en	/apple-icon-57x57.png	Josh Archer	https://www.josharcher.uk/blog/diaspora-greg-egan-book-review/	Diaspora by Greg Egan is probably the most intense science-fiction book I've ever read. Intense in the way it brings highly detailed and technically difficult concepts and theories from the edges (and beyond) of current physics and presents them at length to the reader. It's no surprise to me to see a large number of reviews for this book are mostly polarised into two camps; namely 'best book ever' and 'what the hell was that about?' Personally, I lean towards the 'best book ever' camp, but not as forcefully as some! I enjoyed it and that is what matters. This is a tough book for sure though. Even the opening chapters on the birth of a new digital mind will leave many people grasping around for just what on earth Egan is going on about. To some, this has become an elitist badge of honour - those 'getting it' becoming reassured in their intellect and looking down on those that fail to see the joy in reading page after page of detail on the various processes and developments that go into creating new digital life. I wonder how some of those delighting in their own excellence at being able to understand Egan's depth would fair with Mrs Dalloway or The Return of the Native? Perhaps the shoe would be on the other foot... Anyway, it's not for me to say what people should and shouldn't enjoy and so this 'review' won't try to impress you with pity quotes and overeager attempts at grandiose statement. Instead, I'll just share with you how I managed to actually read this book. Learning to read difficult books So here comes the big secret - write stuff down. Amazing huh? "What incredible insight!" I hear you quip. Well, try it. Honestly, write down items about the novel as you are going along. Write down places mentioned, characters name and descriptions, objects described, lifeforms, races, machines, concepts and more. Keep track of it all and come back to it when you see something mentioned and realise you've forgotten the detail of what it was or how it worked. I've provided my notes on Diaspora below so you can get a sense of what I mean. But the reality is, just keep notes, maybe in Evernote, maybe in a physical notebook, maybe in a plain text file or whatever. The details don't matter as long as it suits you and the way you like to read. Tracking the plot The next thing you should do is track the plot of the book. As well as writing down the detail, keeping a brief overview of the plot as is develops means you can come back to your own notes should you go a few weeks between putting the book down and picking it up again. We're not all blessed with stable routines or time to sit and concentrate on difficult books for pleasure. So tracking the plot in your own words is the key to actually getting through to that all important last page. How much detail? As much or as little as you like. And you don't need to be consistent or keep things well formatted or even use whole sentences. Just do what gives you the info you need so that when you need to look back at your notes there's enough detail there to remind you about that particular thing. Same with the plot, sometimes you'll want to be more detailed as there might be more going on or maybe more intricate detail that you want to remember. Other times there will be no point putting much more than 'they went to X'. The idea is to keep relevant notes that are easy for you to make and useful for you to refer to, not an essay designed to be used by others. My notes on Diaspora by Greg Egan So here are my notes then. I spent a fair while tidying them up to make presentable as I didn't really care what they looked like when using them to help read. After all, they were neat enough for me to understand and that was all that mattered. Feel free to change the format and make something that works for you, but I can't recommend strongly enough that you write whilst you read. Try it, it'll change the way you feel about reading!
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	3	4	https://www.supersummary.com/the-last-book-in-the-universe/summary/	en	The Last Book In The Universe Summary and Study Guide	https://supersummary.com…-share-cover.png	https://supersummary.com…-share-cover.png	[ "https://www.supersummary.com/logo.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-last-book-in-the-universe.png&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/sparkles-icon.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/sparkles-icon.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fblurred-text.png&w=1920&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Ffreak-the-mighty.webp&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fmax-the-mighty.webp&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-mostly-true-adventures-of-homer-p-figg.png&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fthe-young-man-and-the-sea.png&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fwildfire.png&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/super-summary-logo-sg-cover.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fguide-covers-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthumb%2Fzane-and-the-hurricane.webp&w=3840&q=75 3840w", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Ficon_moneyback_guarantee.png&w=256&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Ficon_moneyback_guarantee.png&w=384&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/_next/image/?url=%2Fbadge_braintree.png&w=256&q=75 1x, /_next/image/?url=%2Fbadge_braintree.png&w=640&q=75 2x", "https://www.supersummary.com/supersummary-logo.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/badge-apple-app-store-light-mode.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/badge-google-play-store-light-mode.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/facebook-logo.svg", "https://www.supersummary.com/facebook-logo.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “The Last Book In The Universe” by Rodman Philbrick. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.	en	/favicon.ico/favicon-32x32.png	SuperSummary	https://www.supersummary.com/the-last-book-in-the-universe/summary/	Overview Rodman Philbrick’s The Last Book in the Universe, originally published in 2000, is a young adult novel geared toward children ages 8 to 12. It depicts a dystopian future where “normals” (genetically-unaltered humans) live in the Urb, a place of filth and unrest, while “proovs” (genetically improved people) live in Eden, a place of joy and happiness. This has been the status quo ever since the Big Shake, the environmental disaster that marked the region’s split in quality of life. Epileptic teenager Spaz has lived on his own in a small part of Billy Bizmo’s “latch,” or territory, ever since his foster father, Charly, kicked him out due to fear associated with his epileptic fits. The narrative opens with an explanation of mind probes, or needles that slide directly into the user’s brain to provide entertainment. An important commodity in his society, Spaz cannot use probes himself because of his condition; along with his seizures, this sets him apart as an outsider. Spaz is recording an eyewitness account of the events leading up to when Billy’s henchmen, the Bully Bangers, “went to wheel the Ryter," an old man (or “gummy”) who was writing the last book in the universe before he died, "for his sins” (10). Spaz works for Billy, stealing items back from people who owe the latchboss, and in return, he is given housing under Billy’s surveillance and protection. Spaz is tasked with the job of stealing from Ryter, a poor elderly man who lives in a “stackbox” near the Pipes, an old system of waterworks in the city that has been neglected since the Big Shake. In order to navigate the stackbox, he gains the help of a 5-year-old orphan he calls Little Face. Spaz is shocked to find that not only is Ryter expecting him, but the old man is willing to part with all of his belongings except for the pages he is writing for his book. On a shortcut home through the Maximall, an old trading center that is a shell of what it once was, Spaz interacts with Lanaya, a young, beautiful female proov handing out edibles. When he returns to his home in the Crypt, Billy warns him about mixing with proovs, saying it always leads to trouble. He has three laws, as the leader of the latch: always believe Billy, always obey Billy, and always speak true to Billy. Spaz conceals the Ryter’s book from Billy and begins a camaraderie with the older man based on recollecting memories—something those who have used probes can no longer do. One night, he is approached by a runner who tells him his sister, Bean, is dying. He asks Billy for permission to visit her and his family, but Billy forbids him from leaving the latch. When Spaz leaves, he is followed across the border by Ryter and Little Face, and they use the Pipes to navigate between the latches. In the first foreign latch, the trio encounter the Monkey Boys, henchmen of the latchboss Mongo the Magnificent. They have become more like animals than human, as a result of the deterioration of their leader’s mental and physical wellbeing, due to being stuck in an endlessly “looping” (78) probe for over a year. Mongo is happier living as a proov in the probe than as a boss in the Urb; his condition has become so unstable that if he were to be removed from the probe, his heart would stop. Ryter and the others encourage his second in command, a tek (Technical Security Guard) named Gorm, to assume the role of latchboss. In return, the newly-appointed Great Gorm will set all prisoners free in the latch and allow the trio safe passage into the neighboring territory. They are escorted to the border. When they reach the end of the Pipe into the next latch, they find a riot underway, with everything being burned. Things are worse off in this latch than they were in Mongo’s territory. Amidst the rioters, the trio discover Lanaya about to be swamped along with her takvee (Tactical Urban Vehicle). After saving her, she offers to drive them to Bean; she is sympathetic to Spaz’s story. They use the takvee to access an area known as the Zone where active landmines can be avoided via the vehicle’s intelligence. Crossing into Bean’s latch, Vandals on jetbikes led by Lotti Getts, the latchboss, swarm them. Lotti questions Lanaya’s claim as a trader, saying there has been a probe runner in her latch, which is unique in that mind probes are forbidden because of the known damage they can do to users’ brains. She recognizes Spaz immediately, and if she had been waiting for them, she grants them safe passage to Bean if they remove the probe runner from the latch. Unfortunately, the request is a setup designed to distract her nemesis, Vida Bleek, and his Furies, who are scheming to take over the latch. Vida Bleek is killed and Lotti Getts remains in power. Finally arriving at Spaz’s former home, the quartet discover an incredibly weakened Bean, sick with leukemia, or “the blood sickness” (47), which has returned from her childhood. After one evening together, Bean slides into a coma; Lanaya resolves to bring Bean and her friends to Eden to try to find a cure for her there. With some hesitation, her foster parents Charly and Kay agree, and Lotti gives them safe passage to the Zone. Going through the Barrier, Ryter and Spaz are in awe of the blue sky and green grass. Spaz previously believed that the sky was gray and the ground was concrete. Many things are new to Spaz in Eden, including seeing hills and live fish. Lanaya brings them to her home, which is more like a palace, and introduces them to her “contributors,” or parents, Jin and Bree. Lanaya is revealed to be a future Master of Eden, meaning she has been genetically engineered to be a leader and thus has special privileges even amongst proovs. They are able to stabilize Bean in her current condition, but any reversal of her condition will involve placing a request with the Authority to take Bean to the Primary Laboratory, or Prime. Most of the lab is populated by med-teks, or medical technicians, who can only solve minor problems among proovs since genetic improvements have eradicated most diseases from Eden. The Authority reveals they do not have any data on the old cures, including chemotherapy and radiation, but they may be able to administer gene therapy to replace her blood cells. Three days later, Bean wakes up and starts to improve; Jin teaches them how to play chess, and Bree resolves to adopt Little Face. They all decide to stay with Lanaya and her family in Eden. A week later, while exploring outside in the grass and the orchard, a skyvee approaches with two enforcers to bring them to the Stadium to stand trial for having broken the law that forbids normals in Eden. They are placed in body-cuffs; thousands of proovs sit on a hill while the seven Masters assemble on a platform to listen to Lanaya’s story. Lanaya states her case, including information regarding the theory that probes are manufactured in Eden and sent into the Urb to keep the status quo. She also points out 12-year-old Bean’s ability to beat Jin at his own game of chess, but the crowd still votes that Bean, Ryter, and Spaz be returned to the Urb. The Masters concur, saying things may change in the future, but for now the rule stands in Eden. Before they can say goodbye to Little Face, Lanaya, or her parents, they are sent back to the Urb. Bean is dropped with Charly and Kay, and Spaz is left with Ryter in his stackbox. A mob of jetbikes wake Spaz. The latch is burning, and the jetbikes are forming a mob to find someone to blame for the deactivation of the probes, which has happened overnight. Ryter knows he’ll be the scapegoat and encourages Spaz to keep his book safe and to write the rest himself. The mob grabs him and sends him to the wheel. Billy Bizmo arrives in time to save Spaz, announcing he is Spaz’s real father. The Bangers attach ropes to Ryter and drag him from the wheels of their jetbikes until he is dead. Spaz has a seizure, and when he wakes he is alone in the street and the mob has moved on. He returns to his home in the Crypt; Billy tries to forge a relationship with him, but Spaz rebukes him. Spaz begins voice-writing his own story and becomes known as the Ryter himself. He receives word from Lanaya that Little Face is all right and that the future will be theirs.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	1	https://oikofuge.com/egan-dichronauts/	en	Greg Egan: Dichronauts	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…=458%2C600&ssl=1	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…=458%2C600&ssl=1	[ "https://oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/headerlogo12.jpg", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dichronauts.jpg?resize=229%2C300&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/chimney.jpg?resize=166%2C200&ssl=1", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c9d28a26a662046c69a50d03a36874ed?s=34&d=mm&r=g", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2017-04-05T11:00:36+00:00	A review of Greg Egan's science fiction novel set in a spacetime different from our own	en	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…it=32%2C32&ssl=1	The Oikofuge	https://oikofuge.com/egan-dichronauts/	Geometry might well kill them in the end, but only a rigorous understanding of its principles could make their situation intelligible, let alone survivable. That quote comes from Part 4 of this novel, but it encapsulates what’s intriguing and (at least potentially) frustrating about the story—it’s about spacetime geometry. I’ve written about Greg Egan before, when I reviewed his Orthogonal trilogy. Egan has always written about big ideas, and pushed farther into mathematical physics than most of his contemporaries. In the Orthogonal series, his novels were set in a universe in which the time dimension has exactly the same geometrical properties as the spatial dimensions. This is in contrast to our own universe, in which the time axis of spacetime works differently from the space axes, creating a non-Euclidean, hyperbolic geometry which underlies the counter-intuitive physics embodied in special relativity. In a way, Dichronauts represents a companion volume to the Orthogonal novels—having asked what the world would look like if time worked the same way as space, Egan now flips the problem over and considers a universe in which one of the spatial dimensions is timelike. His new universe’s spacetime therefore has two axes with timelike geometric properties—the time axis itself, and one of the space dimensions. Hence the title of the novel, which isn’t actually explained in the book—fashioned after the pattern of aeronauts and astronauts, its Greek roots give it the meaning “sailors in two times”. In our universe, the hyperbolic relationships appear when a space coordinate is plotted against the time coordinate—so they show up when position changes over time; if an object has velocity, in other words. An example of that hyperbolic relationship is that, no matter how hard you accelerate, you can never exceed the speed of light, only approach it asymptotically. In the Dichronauts universe, the same relationships also appear if you plot a normal space coordinate against the timelike space coordinate. That is, when you change position along one space axis relative to position along the other axis—with rotation, in other words. So in the Dichronauts universe, it is impossible to rotate an object from north to east—no matter how hard you try, you can only approach northeast asymptotically, and never rotate any farther. And the spacetime distortions caused by the hyperbolic coordinate system (which in our universe show up as changes in length and clock rates when travelling close to light speed) appear as changes in the shape of rotated objects—as they approach a 45º rotation angle, they grow asymptotically towards infinite length and zero thickness. Egan talks the reader through some of this material in an Afterword, which can be read with advantage before starting the story, because it contains no real spoilers. And (as with Orthogonal) there is a great deal more background information, including mathematical detail, on Egan’s website. There, he also explains how light cannot travel within a cone surrounding the timelike space axis. It turns out that self-gravitating objects in this sort of spacetime collapse to form hyperboloids rather than spheres, with the symmetry axis of the hyperboloid aligned along the timelike space axis. So Egan’s alien protagonists inhabit a region near the equator of a huge hyperboloid world orbited by a tiny hyperboloid sun—it’s shown in the cover illustration at the head of this post. Egan’s aliens live in a world where they can’t see to the north or south; where they can’t turn around but have to walk forwards or backwards in the east-west direction, or “sidle” to the north or south; and where a fall to the north or south can trap them into a runaway lengthening of their bodies as they topple towards a 45º angle with the ground. The restrictions and opportunities afforded by such an environment are worked out in loving detail—doors can only face west or east, for instance, and must pivot upwards, keeping their plane of rotation entirely within the spacelike axes of the world. Again as in Orthogonal, Egan gives his aliens one truly alien characteristic, and otherwise portrays them as essentially amiable and thoughtful humans. It’s a plan that previously worked well for Hal Clement—trying to tell an engaging story set in a totally alien environment is hard enough, without stirring in an alien culture and alien thought processes, too. Egan’s alien protagonists are bipartite beings—a large, roughly humanoid creature with eyes, orientated in the east-west direction, called a Walker; and a small, blind, intelligent, commensal organism called a Sider, that is threaded through the Walker’s skull in the north-south direction, and which “sees” in those lightless directions using echolocation. The two share sensory information and thoughts through a nerve linkage. The Walker and Sider who are Egan’s composite point-of-view character bicker cheerfully and engagingly throughout the novel, like a long-married couple. The main plot driver is the Migration—because of the changing position of their sun, the planet’s inhabitants are forced to move their towns and farms endlessly southwards.* Egan’s story follow the Surveyors, who search ahead in order to plan the migration route. This lets him gradually expand the picture of his strange world and its inhabitants. And when the Surveyors encounter an apparently impassable barrier, the story takes an unexpected twist. I enjoyed this one very much—in large part because the characters and problems become very engaging as the story progresses, but also because I just liked messing around with the maths. I do think Egan skipped rather lightly over some problems with the physical environment he builds—zeroes and infinities are never too far away. For instance, two objects that are aligned northeast-southwest or southeast-northwest in his world will have a separation of precisely zero, no matter how far they are separated along the north-south and east-west axes. But they will also have zero thickness measured at those 45º angles, no matter how wide they are north-south and east-west, so they shouldn’t collide—the world just seems to go a little indeterminate at those special limiting angles. And it’s not clear what actually happens to a vertical object that falls to the south or north. It gets longer as it topples, certainly, but it shouldn’t be able to get closer to the ground than a 45º tilt. Egan refers to this situation a couple of times but doesn’t get into detail. I think what he envisages happening is that the endlessly lengthening and thinning object breaks up into sections under the differential torque of gravity (like a toppling factory chimney), and then the broken sections fall vertically to the ground with minimal farther rotation. But these tilted segments should then start to undergo their own asymptotic lengthening … And I do think there may be a problem with this novel if you’re not a special-relativity junkie, like me. While the odd spacetime of Orthogonal was only an occasional intrusion in the narrative, which could be skimmed over, the counterintuitive spacetime distortion in Dichronauts is front-and-centre, influencing plot and the characters’ behaviour on every page. It may simply be too weird an environment for a reader who doesn’t enjoy playing with maths a little. So the question is: when I described those exotic spacetime axes, did you perk up and want more detail? Maybe feel the need for a graph? In that case, take a look at Egan’s website, and then go and buy the book. * Remarkably, and I’m sure coincidentally, Egan’s is not the first novel to describe a society obliged to migrate continuously over the surface of a planet with hyperbolic geometry. Christopher Priest’s 1974 novel Inverted World did the same thing, expanding on a 1973 short story with the same title. But Priest’s planet was a different shape from Egan’s (a pseudosphere), and Egan’s makes actual mathematical sense, whereas Priest’s probably falls into the category of “a cool idea I’d rather not have to justify”. (The ending of Priest’s novel was deeply unsatisfactory for those of us who’d been on the edges of our seats waiting for an explanation.)
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	66	https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/reviewing/review-incandescence-by-greg-egan/	en	Review: Incandescence, by Greg Egan	https://simonpetrie.word…nceegan-copy.jpg	https://simonpetrie.word…nceegan-copy.jpg	[ "https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/incandescenceegan-copy.jpg?w=195&h=300", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2016-07-07T20:41:10+00:00	(Gollancz, 978-0-575-081635) (Review first appeared in ASIM 36, August 2008) Second books, like second albums and second dates, can be problematic in a way that the first example often avoids. It’s a question of expectations, which are much more focussed the second time around: one has an idea of what to expect. But because one…	en	https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico	Simon Petrie	https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/reviewing/review-incandescence-by-greg-egan/	(Gollancz, 978-0-575-081635) (Review first appeared in ASIM 36, August 2008) Second books, like second albums and second dates, can be problematic in a way that the first example often avoids. It’s a question of expectations, which are much more focussed the second time around: one has an idea of what to expect. But because one is extrapolating from only a single precedent, the interaction between participants can be more – let’s face it – awkward than was the case, first time round. Now Incandescence is not Greg Egan’s second book, far from it. It is, I believe, his ninth. But it is the second book by Egan which I’ve read (the other is Schild’s Ladder), and so I approached Incandescence with some sense of Egan’s measure as a writer, and a reasonable (or unreasonable) baggage of preconceptions. I’d enjoyed Schild’s Ladder, and I had every reason to anticipate enjoyment of Egan’s new book also: he’s got that awkward second book out of his system, several years ago; he obviously knows what he’s doing. But comparing Incandescence to its predecessor is not, I think, a fair approach. The new book is not Son of Schild’s Ladder, nor Return to Schild’s Ladder, nor Schild’s Ladder: The Next Generation. Incandescence is a wholly distinct new work, with no connection whatever to the earlier book. That said, it’s still natural on some level to look for commonalities, and of course there are some. Both are infused with Egan’s passionate interest in the physics and mathematics that describe the strangeness of our universe, and with a belief that anything is possible unless expressly forbidden by the laws of nature. Both explore environments so extreme that it’s almost impossible to realistically imagine them with the mind’s eye, though it certainly helps to borrow Egan’s eyes … Greg Egan has established a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost practitioners of hard science fiction, and Incandescence will do that reputation no harm. It’s a steady, scrupulously evoked story of far-future survival and exploration, and if it opens with less of an obvious and compelling hook than its predecessor, it nonetheless does a very good job of drawing the reader in to an almost unimaginably alien and hostile environment. If I have a criticism of Incandescence (and I suppose, really, that I do), it is that the tone of the work is somewhat flat, with no particular regard given to dramatic tension. This is, on one hand, laudable, in the sense that Egan has not peppered the plot with contrived incidents and crises for the sake of artificially heightened drama; rather, he’s restrained the scope of the story to explore the problems which devolve naturally from the dilemma in which he’s placed his protagonists. It’s a style which appeals to the intellect, provided the reader has a taste for the rigours and wonders of hard SF, but it is likely to leave unsatisfied those seeking the visceral rewards of an action-packed space opera novel. The story itself concerns a quest by Rakesh, a human-descended member of the Amalgam, who journeys deep into the normally sacrosanct Galactic-bulge territory of the rival Aloof consortium of civilisations, on a search to find the homeworld of a previously-unsuspected line of DNA-based organisms. Rakesh is accompanied on his travels by Parantham, a fellow Amalgamist (but one whose origins appear entirely synthetic, rather than an offshoot of any of the Galaxy’s eleven known biological streams), and the action is divided between their efforts and those, in alternate chapters, of the centimetre-tall arthropodal beings Zak and Roi, inhabitants of the mysterious and translucent Splinter. I found the Splinter chapters, in particular, to be slow-moving at the start, and it is only very gradually that it becomes apparent the Splinter, in the incrementally unfolding revelation of its perilous situation, is in fact the principal driving force of the novel. Can Zak and Roi convince the Splinter’s many other inhabitants that they are all in mortal danger, and rally enough assistance to help find a means of escaping their environment’s predicament? Will Rakesh’s expedition reach them before it is too late? I’m not telling … The story features the usual Egan hallmarks: the evident passion for cutting-edge science (and the flair for communicating complex concepts in language so plain and clear you wish he’d turn his hand to a textbook or two), the innate plausibility of his sometimes extreme constructs, and the levelheaded extrapolation of societal trends many millennia into the future. Nonetheless, I have some misgivings about the book’s approachability, less on the basis of its scientific content than on Egan’s choice of alien crab-like creatures as the principal characters with which to attempt to engage reader empathy. In my experience, perseverance through several chapters was necessary before I was able to invest in concern at Zak’s and Roi’s fate. If you’re a repeat reader of Egan’s work, the sometime bizarreness of his protagonists’ body-shapes and sizes will likely be something with which you’re already familiar (and able to make allowances for), but readers who haven’t previously encountered Egan’s far-future visions may require some reassurance that the journey is worth it. I would say that the payoff is subtle, perhaps even muted, but it is there.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	3	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan	en	Greg Egan	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2001-11-07T22:08:44+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan	Australian science fiction author and mathematician Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961)[1] is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Locus Award. Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Western Australia.[2][3][4] He published his first work in 1983.[5] He 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 uploading, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism to religion. He often deals with complex technical material, like new physics and epistemology. He is a Hugo Award winner (with eight other works shortlisted for the Hugos) and has also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.[6] His early stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror. Egan's short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including regular appearances in Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction. In 2002, Egan co-authored two papers about Riemannian 10j symbols, spin networks appearing in Riemannian quantum gravity, together with John Baez and Dan Christensen. Spin networks also play a central role in his novel Schild's Ladder released the same year. In 2014, Egan conjectured a generalization of the Grace–Danielsson inequality about the relation of the radii of two spheres and the distance of their respective centres to fit a simplex between them to also hold in higher dimensions, which later became known as the Egan conjecture. A proof of the inequality being sufficient was published by him in 2014 under a blog post of John Baez. They were lost due to a rearrangement of the website, but the central parts were copied into the original blog post. Further comments by Greg Egan on 16 April 2018 concern the search for a generalized conjecture involving ellipsoids.[7] A proof of the inequality also being necessary was published by Sergei Drozdov on 16 October 2023 on ArXiv.[8] In 2018, Egan described a construction of superpermutations, thus giving an upper bound to their minimum length. On 27 February 2019, using ideas developed by Robin Houston and others, Egan produced a superpermutation of seven symbols of length 5906, breaking previous records.[9][10] As of 2015, Egan lives in Perth. He is a vegetarian[2][11] and an atheist.[12] Egan does not attend science fiction conventions,[13] does not sign books, and has stated that he appears in no photographs on the web,[14] though both SF fan sites and Google Search have at times mistakenly represented photos of other people with the same name as those of the writer.[15] Permutation City: John W. Campbell Memorial Award (1995)[6] Oceanic: Hugo Award, Locus Award, Asimov's Readers' Award (1999)[6] Distress: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis as Best Foreign Fiction (2000) Egan's work has won the Japanese Seiun Award for best translated fiction seven times.[6] Teranesia was named the winner of the 2000 Ditmar Award for best novel, but Egan declined the award.[6] An Unusual Angle (1983), ISBN 0-909106-12-6 Quarantine (1992), ISBN 0-7126-9870-1 Permutation City (1994), ISBN 1-85798-174-X Distress (1995), ISBN 1-85798-286-X Diaspora (1997), ISBN 1-85798-438-2 Teranesia (1999), ISBN 0-575-06854-X Schild's Ladder (2002), ISBN 0-575-07068-4 Incandescence (2008), ISBN 978-1-59780-128-7 Zendegi (2010), ISBN 978-1-59780-174-4 Dichronauts (2017), ISBN 978-1597808927 Perihelion Summer (2019), ISBN 978-1-250-31378-2 The Book of All Skies (2021), ISBN 978-1-922240-38-5 Scale (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-44-6 Morphotrophic (2024), ISBN 978-1-922240-51-4 Main article: Orthogonal (series) The Clockwork Rocket (2011), ISBN 978-1-59780-227-7 The Eternal Flame (2012), ISBN 978-1-59780-293-2 The Arrows of Time (2013), ISBN 978-0-575-10576-8 Axiomatic (1995), ISBN 1-85798-281-9 Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995), ISBN 0-646-23230-4 Luminous (1998), ISBN 1-85798-551-6 Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008), ISBN 978-1-59606-155-2 Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009), ISBN 978-1-59606-240-5 Oceanic (2009), ISBN 978-0-575-08652-4 The Best of Greg Egan (2019), ISBN 978-1-59606-942-8 Instantiation (2020), ISBN 978-1-922240-39-2 Sleep and The Soul (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-47-7 Phoresis and Other Journeys (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-50-7 Diaspora: "Orphanogenesis" in Interzone issue 123, September 1997[41] An Efficient Algorithm for the Riemannian 10j Symbols by Dan Christensen and Greg Egan[42] Asymptotics of 10j Symbols by John Baez, Dan Christensen and Greg Egan[43] Conic-Helical Orbits of Planets around Binary Stars do not Exist by Greg Egan[44] The production of a short film inspired by the story "Axiomatic" commenced in 2015,[45] and the film was released online in October 2017.[46]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	3	8	https://crosscountryreading.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/review-and-summary-the-last-book-in-the-universe/	en	Review and Summary: The Last Book in the Universe	https://crosscountryread…ookbieimage1.jpg	https://crosscountryread…ookbieimage1.jpg	[ "https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/headers/books.jpg", "https://crosscountryreading.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lastbookbieimage1.jpg?w=102&h=150", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/acb23d86a5fcc49fe1df23a2c3aa39fa9ec13d23a67077888d0dfd49417b3f0f?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3934442ed705084ce569ea566290b1e1e957cee7171a0763dbfe7d77623b7bf8?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/935590acd619ebd1ba0e9ba7817b531fb0f11b026dbefc910056271c31c47bbf?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Fred Reads" ]	2013-05-05T00:00:00	Title: The Last Book in the Universe Author: Rodman Philbrick Publisher: The Blue Sky Press, 2000 Genre: Teen Fiction This story, I have to admit, was not what I thought it was going to be like. I can’t decide if it was better or worse than my immediate expectations. Either way, it was good,…	en	https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico	crosscountryreading	https://crosscountryreading.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/review-and-summary-the-last-book-in-the-universe/	Title: The Last Book in the Universe Author: Rodman Philbrick Publisher: The Blue Sky Press, 2000 Genre: Teen Fiction This story, I have to admit, was not what I thought it was going to be like. I can’t decide if it was better or worse than my immediate expectations. Either way, it was good, and it was definitely a book that I was excited about finishing. In a creepy, depressing land called the Urb, a teenage kid called Spaz lives with the Bully Bangers, the gang that controls Spaz’s home area of the Urb. The “Spaz” part of his name (we never learn his real name) comes from the fact that he can’t probe. Mind probe, that is. You see, our divulged main character lives during a post-apocalypse time after something called the big shake. It was a terrible earthquake, destroying nearly everything in sight. Fortunately, some humans survived and started a new civilization. Unfortunately, that civilization was terrible, and the land was conquered by anarchy and brute force, instead of strategy and decent government. Gangs rule the land, except for in Eden, an area which is only inhabited by genetically perfected humans called proovs. Mind probes are needles developed by years of introspection and science so harmful to your mind it’s almost like sunbathing in ultraviolet light. They create an experience that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re actually in the movie you’re watching. It’s like a TV you stick in your brain. Spaz, however, cannot use mind probes because he has something backtimers call “epilepsy.” If he uses a mind probe, he has a wicked seizure, and lights out – that’s all folks. He meets an old dude named Ryter and they soon go on an adventure to rescue Spaz’s adoptive little sister, Bean, who is in another section of the Urb and dying. They meet a proov along the way named Lanaya who unexpectedly helps them in lots of random ways. Although Lanaya at first thinks that Spaz is about as attractive as a gargoyle because she is genetically “improved” (the cat’s pajamas is a metaphor that comes to mind) she soon becomes his friend and helps him rescue Bean. Bean, however, is terribly sick and in danger of dying, so Lanaya agrees to take her to Eden where the rest of the “normals” learn that she’s not just any proov – she’s literally a princess destined to become the heir of a position more luxurious than a deluxe yacht. Although Bean is eventually healed, they soon face the fact that Eden has a boycott on normal residents and have to leave. There is a surprising, yet wholly deserved ending that lets you know, as strange as it sounds, that Spaz is the last book in the universe. The style of this book, I have to say, was not terribly unique. It was, however, similar to The Hunger Games – creepy, yet inspiring. The name didn’t really seem to fit in the beginning, but in the end it’s completely obvious. This is one of those stories where the main character tells the story. A few other incredibly successful books this are Junie B. Jones (although the genre is not similar) and The Hunger Games. I would recommend this book to kids ages 12 and up. Posted by: Fred Reads
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	31	https://locusmag.com/2012/03/roundtable-on-greg-egan/	en	Roundtable on Greg Egan	https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg	https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg	[ "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Topper-align-left5b.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Topper-for-Mobile6rainbow.jpg", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Topper-Subscribe-Ad-for-Mobile7.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/righttopcap09_200NEW-606.gif", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9fcf725325a3d2a6be693374dc23769b?s=74&d=mm&r=g", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/231adb0811b8089ba46ebd8ceade8a76?s=74&d=mm&r=g", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/51d78b206b316224db1482ef9c3865d6?s=74&d=mm&r=g", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3f212010310968ff5172501f596754bc?s=74&d=mm&r=g", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/762coverx650-499x648.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/newsletter-button.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/locus-7-60x90.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/locus-9-60x90.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/locus-3-60x90.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FrankRPaul-60x90.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/aira-festival-60x90.jpeg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/blacklivesmatter1-2.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/merch-ad-1.png", "http://www.locusmag.com/2014/Ads/legalthanks.jpg", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/birdie.gif", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Facebook_icon.svg/2000px-Facebook_icon.svg.png", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Patreon_logo.svg.png", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/instagram.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Red-White-and-Black-Modern-Rough-Animated-Subscribe-Youtube-Channel-Outro-Video-2-300x169.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "science fiction", "fantasy", "magazine", "book review", "author interview", "news" ]	null	[]	2012-03-04T22:33:11+00:00	The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news, reviews, and author interviews	en	https://locusmag.com/wp-…usRocketLogo.jpg	Locus Online	https://locusmag.com/2012/03/roundtable-on-greg-egan/	Welcome to another single-author focused edition of the Locus Roundtable. This time Greg Egan is in the spotlight, as I egregiously abuse my position by wrangling some very kind individuals into talking about my personal current obsession. Participating in this discussion are Gardner Dozois, whose early championing of Egan’s short fiction helped to make him one of the more influential sf authors of the 1990s; Kathleen Ann Goonan, author of the Nanotech Quartet of stories as well as In War Times and This Shared Dream; Russell Letson, long-time reviewer for Locus; and Paul Graham Raven, owner of Futurismic and short story author. As always, this discussion is broken up into multiple pages for ease of reading. If you’d like to read it all on a single page, select ‘View All’ from the drop down menu above. If you don’t see the drop down menu, please click here. Karen Burnham I’d like to start by asking how you first encountered Egan’s writing–either short fiction or novels. Kathleen Ann Goonan I first heard of Greg Egan at a Readercon in the early nineties. I was in a writer’s group called the Vicious Circle, which included (at that time) Ted White, Steve Brown, Dave Bishoff, and several other writers. I’d written a few reviews for Steve’s Science Fiction Eye, including a review of Karen Joy Fowler’s Sarah Canary. At Readercon, Steve told me he was very excited about Quarantine by a new author, Greg Egan. He asked me to review it. If you know Steve, you know how passionate he can be about writers and writing, and that went double for Egan. I don’t recall whether he gave me a manuscript or an actual book, but after reading it, I was completely hooked and wrote this review. I subsequently reviewed Permutation City for SF Eye. I’ve always been interested in philosophy. In college, I took more philosophy classes than English classes, and discovered shortly before graduation that I more than qualified for a degree in Philosophy; I lacked only one intro class to seal the deal in the eyes of Virginia Tech. But I was in a hurry to graduate and didn’t want to delay another quarter just for that. A degree in philosophy seemed even less useful than a degree in English, and I was eager to move on to my master’s course at the Washington Montessori Institute so that I could begin to earn a living. When I read Egan, I was fascinated by the way he transmuted all of the philosophical issues that so engaged me into fiction. That was my introduction to Greg Egan’s work. Russell Letson My first encounters with Egan came via his short work, starting in 1991 with two stories in the eighth Dozois Year’s Best anthologies: “Learning to Be Me” and “The Caress.” I compared him to Silverberg (the former) and Dick (the latter). Gardner included Egan stories in the 1993, 1994, and 1995 volumes–“Dust,” “Chaff,” and “Cocoon.” What appealed to me in these was that he combined intense philosophical speculation about identity and the nature of personhood with (in the latter two) PI/thriller plot machineries. Quarantine, Permutation City, and Distress showed up in quick succession (in the US market anyway)–I reviewed them over a fourteen-month stretch. I found in all three the same qualities and topics that appealed to me in the short work, cranked up by the widening of scope that the novel permits–if the stories are intense, the novels are relentless. Permutation City in particular is true to its title, pursuing various implications of its initial givens and questions about the nature of identity or personhood, right out to where the reader almost wants to cry “Enough!” Except the ride has been so riveting that, like a kid who is been tossed and spun by a grown-up, Enough! turns into Again! Paul Graham Raven I was late to Egan, too, as with most things; his was a name that cropped up quite often as a comparison touchstone in Interzone when I first started getting it (2003 or so?), and it seemed that everyone who was writing the stuff I was most interested in at the time was working in a similar “big ideas” sphere. So when I found a paperback of Diaspora in the local second-hand book shop, I knew the name could be trusted… took it home, and had the top of my head wrenched clean off! That little novel goes way beyond what’s supposed to be possible (or readable!) with non/post-human characters, and at the time I was very much interested in who was pushing the boundaries in sf, and how far they could be pushed. Well, Egan was clearly pushing them, and it didn’t look like he was done pushing, either, so I’ve done what I could to keep listening ever since… Karen Burnham I was in a similar situation to Paul. I had just started reading Locus in 2002 when Schild’s Ladder came out. Gary and Russell’s reviews sold me on the book, and when I read it I ran out and reviewed it myself. (Not, unfortunately, my best written review ever. Rather more enthusiasm than skill at that point.) I’d never read anything like it–I appreciated both the mind-blowing hard sf, the post-human future, and the satirical bits. Since then I’ve gone on to read most of his work. For a long time Diaspora was my favorite, and nowadays I can’t say which is my favorite between Distress and Diaspora. However it seems like Permutation City may be the book that has the most longevity–I see it referenced over time more than the others. Time will tell. Kathleen Ann Goonan I had a similar reaction. I continue to be amazed by how good Egan is at leading me, at least, among trails and over bridges that seem plausible, with fascinating views along the way, until I arrive at the always-stunning result of the edifice of reason I’ve been climbing and find myself just blown away. I think that Zendegi, which I had my students read for the science fiction novel class I taught last fall, is one of the least radical of Egan’s work (at least it seemed so to me). I’m pretty sure that all the students were intimately aware of all of the issues raised in the novel, including the question of what makes us human, definitions of consciousness, and whether a conscious AI might be plausible in the near-future. Some good papers, discussions, and exam answers emerged. Gardner Dozois I first noticed Greg Egan’s work in Interzone, where he’d published a couple of stories such as “Scatter My Ashes” that I suppose would have to be called technohorror. When he first started sending stories to me at Asimov’s–and, as I recall, he sent a number at once–there were both SF stories and horror stories in the batch; I encouraged him to send more SF, and indicated that I wasn’t particularly interested in the horror. His early stories also tended to be short and sketchy–he’s have a great new idea in them, but wouldn’t do much with it fictionally (the early stories of Charles Stross were similar); all they would really have going for them was the idea. Later, whether because of my encouraging him in that direction, or just because of his natural evolution as a writer that would have happened anyway, he began adding plots, human problems, evocative writing, and increasingly complex human characters (same with Stross). For me, one of his best stories is “Oceanic,” which balances all the elements in a very successful way, the human characterization and the lyricism as well as the scientific speculation–it reminded me strongly of a harder-edged Le Guin, in fact, which you couldn’t have said about his early SF stories like “The Caress,” which were much more post-cyberpunkish.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	27	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/tag/greg-egan/	en	Brainfluff	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=200&ts=1721845309	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=200&ts=1721845309	[ "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/friday-face-off-new.jpg?w=652&h=135", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts2.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts3.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts0.gif?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/emperorofthefireflies.jpg?w=174&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/mirandaandcaliban.jpg?w=198&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/afteratlas.jpg?w=192&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/luna-wolf-moon.jpg?w=197&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/wintertide.jpg?w=198&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/theforevercourt.jpg?w=196&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/scavengeralliance.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/coldwelcome.jpg?w=194&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/theloststeersman.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/heirtothenorth.jpg?w=188&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/seaofrust.jpg?w=196&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/thelastdogonearth.jpg?w=191&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/empireofdust.jpg?w=225&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/thewizardsofonce.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/whirligig.jpg?w=187&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gnomon.jpg?w=195&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/fritillary-bee-on-rudbeckia1.jpg?w=652&h=502", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/100_5474.jpg?w=141&h=188", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/100_5487.jpg?w=186&h=140", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts.jpg?w=100&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/thefallenkingdom1.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/slouchwitch.jpg?w=100&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/theforeverwatch.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/childrenoftime.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/fledgling.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/marrow.jpg?w=92&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/the-long-way-666x1024.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/foreigner.jpg?w=93&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/footfall.jpg?w=105&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/norcrystaltears.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/embassytown.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/foreigner.jpg?w=93&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/footfall.jpg?w=105&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/norcrystaltears.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/embassytown.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eternalflame.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/wake-of.jpg?w=141&h=217", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/doomsday.jpg?w=156&h=241", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1world.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/clockwork.jpg?w=133&h=197", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/glassgod.jpg?w=130&h=206", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/half-forgotten-song.jpg?w=160&h=240", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/darkeden.jpg?w=120&h=188", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/redknight.jpg?w=154&h=234", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/sister.jpg?w=140&h=221", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/advent.jpg?w=138&h=211", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/kindofvanishing.jpg?w=153&h=231", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/madscientistsdaughter.jpg?w=171&h=259", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/reason-i-jump.jpg?w=159&h=242", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/among-others1.jpg?w=156&h=244", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/clockworkrocket.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/picky-eaters-1-ebook-final-cover-1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/flame-and-blame-ebook4.png?w=185", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/mantivore-dreams2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/mantivore-prey-final-ebook.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/mantivore-warrior-cover-art-lo-res1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-roos-plus-spaceship-3.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-dying-for-space-ebook-plus-spaceship.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/sjh-breathing-space-ebook-plus-space-station-2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sunblinded-box-set-cover.jpg?w=2000", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/netted-hi-res.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/netgalley-reviewer-badge.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/eighty_percent_feedback_ratio_120.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/infinitydreamsaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/bunny-hop.gif", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/liebster-award1.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/champions-awards.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dragonaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/real-neat-blog-award.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/versitle-blogger1.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/sunshine.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2019-07-19T18:18:21+00:00	Posts about Greg Egan written by sjhigbee	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=32	Brainfluff	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/tag/greg-egan/	Last year was yet another bumper year for reading, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. As usual, I’ll list the ones that stood out for me – and we’re not talking a top ten. I completed 174 books last year, but won’t go into too much detail in this article about my overall 2017 reading experience, as today it’s all about those that gave me the tingle factor. Most will have received a perfect ten on my scoring system, however there will be a couple that didn’t. The reason they are here is because that after I’d finished reading and writing about them, they didn’t go away, but continued to linger in my thoughts. So here they are, in no particular order:- Emperor of the Fireflies – Book 2 of the Tide Dragons series by Sarah Ash This godpunk duology set within the Japanese pantheon centres around a beautiful, dark-edged myth. Ash’s lyrical prose and deft handling of this tale has stayed with me throughout the year, despite having read it last January. See my review here. Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey I absolutely fell in love with this haunting retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. While I enjoyed and admired Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed – another strong contender – this one stole my heart. The ending gave me goosebumps, while making me weep. That doesn’t happen very often. See my review here. After Atlas – Book 2 of the Planetfall series by Emma Newman While I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, Planetfall, this one blew me away. The characterisation, the horrible situation the protagonist finds himself in – it all got under my skin to the extent that I woke my husband up as I yelled in shock at a particular point in the book. I can’t wait to see where Newman goes next with this amazing series. See my review here. Wolf Moon – Book 2 of the Luna duology by Ian McDonald This depiction of an existence on the Moon where rampant capitalism holds sway hasn’t left me alone since I read this one. McDonald has called it ‘A game of domes’ and he certainly has nailed the deadly powerplays the main families indulge in with his reference to George R.R. Martin’s epic. I keep thinking about that ending… See my review here. Winter Tide – Book 1 of the Innesmouth Legacy by Ruthanna Emrys This book was a delightful surprise – I had no idea the writing would pull me into this version of Lovecraft’s monstrous world, with a strong, sympathetic protagonist who is one of the few survivors of the attack on Innesmouth years ago. I loved it and am very much looking forward to reading more in this fantastic series. See my review here. The Forever Court – Book 2 of The Knights of the Borrowed Dark trilogy by Dave Rudden I enjoyed the first book in this series, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, finding Rudden’s punchy prose style both enjoyable and memorable. But this sequel builds on the first with an engrossing adventure and some amazing characters. It’s far too good to leave just for the children. See my review here. Scavenger Alliance – Book 1 of the Exodus series by Janet Edwards I have thoroughly enjoyed all Edwards’ books – but this managed to nock up the stakes to a point I could not put it down until I’d finished reading it. I have rules about never reading or watching TV until after 5.30 pm – otherwise I’d never get anything done. I broke that rule for this book. See my review here. Cold Welcome – Book 1 of Vatta’s Peace by Elizabeth Moon This is a new spinoff series by a much-loved author which I was delighted to read – even better, it was a storming adventure that proved to be an engrossing page-turner. I remembered all over again why I love reading this author. See my review here. Dichronauts by Greg Egan No one writes different aliens as well as Greg Egan – and I loved this adventure. I’m very much hoping it turns into a series as I would love to spend more time following the fortunes of these amazing creatures. See my review here. The Lost Steersman – Book 3 of The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein This is a series I read longer ago than I care to recall – and when I saw it had appeared in Kindle, I snapped it up and reread it, something I hardly ever do. My instincts were spot on – I have thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this engrossing world and following Rowena’s adventures in this smart, cleverly written fantasy/science fiction mashup. This is the particular story that has stayed with me, though the other books in the series are just as good. See my review here. Heir to the North – Book 1 of Malessar’s Curse by Steven Poore This epic fantasy got under my skin and into my heart in a way that doesn’t often happen with this genre. I loved the clever, clever twist at the end and one of the treats in 2018 is to tuck into the sequel, The High King’s Vengeance. See my review here. Sea of Rust by Robert C. Cargill This was another amazing book that came out of the blue – I’d not read anything by this author before and was delighted by this post-apocalyptic world peopled by robots who are starting to wear out and fail. With no factories or warehouses full of spare parts anymore, the only option is to harvest those parts from other robots. See my review here. The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian J. Walker I’ve read a number of apocalyptic tales during the year, however in this version Walker triumphantly succeeds in giving us a dog’s version of a complete collapse in law and order. And the chilling results of what happens when that order is reimposed by the wrong people. See my review here. Empire of Dust – Book 1 of the Psi-Tech novels by Jacey Beford This epic science fiction adventure stood out because of the flawed protagonist and the gritty depiction of establishing a colony. I really enjoyed the world and the fact that love clearly doesn’t cure all. I’m looking forward to reading more from this talented author. See my review here. The Wizards of Once – Book 1 of The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell After her marvellous series How To Train Your Dragon, I was interested to see how she would follow it up. The writing is more lyrical, the underlying poignancy is more pronounced. My elderly Kindle didn’t like the illustrations throughout this book and part of my Christmas money is going on buying a print version of this book. Not for the grandchildren – for me. See my review here. Whirligig: Keeping the Promise – Book 1 of Shire’s Union by Richard Buxton I have to declare an interest – Richard is a former student and I had read some extracts from a very early draft. However that did not prepare me for the excellence of the writing, where this historical adventure finds two young English people from the same small village ending up in America during the Civil War. They are both caught in quite different ways and this story just kept on delivering in terms of plot twists and tension. See my review here. Gnomon by Nick Harkaway This doorstopper is extraordinary. Don’t ask me what the storyline is – other than recalling there are five main protagonists with very different and vivid voices, it’s too complicated to recall. What I do remember is that very early on I took the decision to slow right down and savour this book as reads like this don’t come along all that often. It took me 10 days to get through this one and I recall feeling sad when it came to the end. See my review here. To pare the list down to this required setting aside other books that still hurt to leave out – the likes of Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett, Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts, The Invisible Library books by Genevieve Cogman and The Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews all missed making this list by a whisker. If you force to me to choose just one of these books, I’ll probably never forgive you, but it would have to be After Atlas. What were your outstanding reads of the year? This is part of the weekly meme over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where book bloggers can share the books and blogs they have written. Last Sunday was my birthday party – held by my marvellous mother and it gave a great excuse to provide a gathering of the clan. It was a wonderful occasion with a purple theme (to match my new hair colour) and rounded off the now regular ritual of the family rounders game. Once again, we were very fortunate with the weather which was warm and sunny – ideal for a party in the garden. During the week, I’ve been enjoying Wimbledon – I’ve loved watching it since I was a teenager who played tennis for the school – and found the current heatwave a joy. It has brought back so many happy memories of other hot summers years ago. On Tuesday, my sister and I attended a talk on the history of watches at Worthing Library given by one of my writing group buddies, Geoff Alnutt – aka The Speechpainter. He covered the history of watchmaking in the last century by focusing on ten iconic wrist watches in a fascinating and informative presentation. On the way home, we stopped off to walk along the seafront and up the riverside walk in Littlehampton to admire the stunning sunset, reflected in the pond-smooth sea and river. A magical end to a lovely evening… This week-end, Oscar is staying with us, after phoning me up to tell me that he had grade As for every subject in his report – including for trying, being polite and working hard, as well as for being academically clever. My sister came over for a meal last night and we plan to have breakfast together at a local café and then walk along the beach before it becomes too crowded. This week I have read: Dichronauts by Greg Egan Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. Theo, in turn, relies on Seth for mobility, and for ordinary vision looking forwards and backwards. Like everyone else in their world, they are symbionts, depending on each other to survive. In the universe containing Seth’s world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dark cone” to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate as far as north-north-east is every bit as impossible as accelerating to the speed of light. Every living thing in Seth’s world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun’s shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates. Cities are being constantly disassembled at one edge and rebuilt at the other, with surveyors mapping safe routes ahead. But when Seth and Theo join an expedition to the edge of the habitable zone, they discover a terrifying threat This is another amazing hard science fiction offering from one of the most inventive, imaginative writers who has ever penned a futuristic story. But you really need to visit Greg Egan’s website to get a real sense of the rules that run this particular world. The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May Aileana Kameron, resurrected by ancient fae magic, returns to the world she once knew with no memory of her past and with dangerous powers she struggles to control. Desperate to break the curse that pits two factions of the fae against each other in a struggle that will decide the fate of the human and fae worlds, her only hope is hidden in an ancient book guarded by the legendary Morrigan, a faery of immense power and cruelty. To save the world and the people she loves, Aileana must learn to harness her dark new powers even as they are slowly destroying her. A gripping read that brings this engrossing YA fantasy/steampunk mash-up series to a triumphantly successful conclusion. This series is one of my favourites of the year so far. Slouch Witch – Book 1 of The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic series by Helen Harper Let’s get one thing straight – Ivy Wilde is not a heroine. In fact, she’s probably the last witch in the world who you’d call if you needed a magical helping hand, regardless of her actual abilities. If it were down to Ivy, she’d spend all day every day on her sofa where she could watch TV, munch junk food and talk to her feline familiar to her heart’s content. However, when a bureaucratic disaster ends up with Ivy as the victim of a case of mistaken identity, she’s yanked very unwillingly into Arcane Branch, the investigative department of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Her problems are quadrupled when a valuable object is stolen right from under the Order’s noses. It doesn’t exactly help that she’s been magically bound to Adeptus Exemptus Raphael Winter. He might have piercing sapphire eyes and a body which a cover model would be proud of but, as far as Ivy’s concerned, he’s a walking advertisement for the joyless perils of too much witch-work. And if he makes her go to the gym again, she’s definitely going to turn him into a frog. Himself tracked this one down – and once he’d read it, immediately commanded I do the same. He’s right. It’s sharp, funny and original with an excellent world and strong magic structure. I’m delighted to report that the sequel is being released any day now. My posts last week: Sunday Post – 2nd July 2017 NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of Eleventh Hour – Book 8 of the Kit Marlowe series by M.J. Trow Teaser Tuesday featuring The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of Sungrazer – Book 2 of the Outriders series by Jay Posey Shoot for the Moon Challenge 2017 – June Roundup Friday Face-off – All that is gold does not glitter featuring Making Money – Book 36 of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May Interesting/outstanding blogs and articles that have caught my attention during the last week, in no particular order: Happy Belated Birthday Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone https://coffeeandcatsblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/happy-belated-birthday-harry-potter-and-the-philosophers-stone/ This is a lovely article celebrates the publication of this genre-changing series – and charts the impact it had on one particular family On the Science of Bibliosmia: That Enticing Book Smell https://interestingliterature.com/2017/07/07/on-the-science-of-bibliosmia-that-enticing-book-smell/ A fascinating look at the history of our relationship with books – other than reading them… On Writing – food for thought http://earthianhivemind.net/2017/07/07/writing-food-thought/ There are lots of quotes on writing, but these two that Steph has selected are particularly apt and useful. When Book Covers Fail Characters https://kristentwardowski.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/when-book-covers-fail-book-characters/ I’m fascinated by this subject – as anyone who has read my weekly Friday Face-off will know and Kristen has some interesting things to say about it. 3 Reasons Why I Love Doing Research http://melfka.com/archives/2353 An excellent article on one of the tasks all writers have to tackle – and Joanna’s love of it. Thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to visit, like and comment on my site and may you have a great week. I have a particular weakness for space operas. It’s an abiding disappointment that I’ll never make it into space – but at least I can do so vicariously with the magic of books. And these are a handful of my favourites in no particular order… The Forever Watch by David Ramirez The Noah: a city-sized ship, four hundred years into an epic voyage to another planet. In a world where deeds, and even thoughts, cannot be kept secret, a man is murdered; his body so ruined that his identity must be established from DNA evidence. Within hours, all trace of the crime is swept away, hidden as though it never happened. Hana Dempsey, a mid-level bureaucrat genetically modified to use the Noah’s telepathic internet, begins to investigate. Her search for the truth will uncover the impossible: a serial killer who has been operating on board for a lifetime… if not longer. And behind the killer lies a conspiracy centuries in the making. Generational ship science fiction provides an ideal backdrop for any kind of drama, given that it is the ultimate closed system. And because it is also entirely imaginary, it means an author can add/tweak all sorts of details designed to ramp up the tension and increase the sense of claustrophobia… So does Ramirez take full advantage of this scenario? Oh yes. This is an extraordinary tale – and the final twist took my breath away. Read the rest of my review here. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky And this is another gem that makes extensive use of the generational ship device… The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age – a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But guarding it is its creator, Dr Avrana Kern with a lethal array of weaponry, determined to fight off these refugees. For she has prepared this pristine world seeded with a very special nanovirus for a number of monkey species to be uplifted into what human beings should have turned into – instead of the battling, acquisitive creatures who destroyed Earth… Kern’s plans go awry and the species that actually becomes uplifted isn’t Kern’s monkeys, at all. In a tale of unintended consequences, it would have only taken a couple of tweaks for this to morph into a Douglas-Adams type farce. But it doesn’t, as the ship’s desperate plight becomes ever sharper and the species continues to evolve into something unintended and formidable. I love the wit and finesse with which Tchaikovsky handles this sub-genre and turns it into something original and enjoyable. Read the rest of my review here. Fledgeling – a New Liaden novel by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee Having trumpeted this post as being all about space operas, I’m now giving you a book where there is hardly any space ship action – but that is because it is the start of a long-running series, which deserves to read in the correct order. Delgado is a Safe World. That means the population is monitored – for its own good – and behaviour dangerous to society is quickly corrected. Delgado is also the home of one of the galaxy’s premier institutions of higher learning, producing both impeccable research and scholars of flair and genius. On Safe Delgado, then, Theo Waitley, daughter of Professor Kamele Waitley, latest in a long line of Waitley scholars, is “physically challenged” and on a course to being declared a Danger to Society. Theo’s clumsiness didn’t matter so much when she and her mother lived out in the suburbs with her mother’s lover, Jen Sar Kiladi. But, suddenly, Kamele leaves Jen Sar and moves herself and Theo into faculty housing, immediately becoming sucked into faculty politics. Leaving Theo adrift and shocked – and vulnerable… This coming-of-age novel is largely in fourteen-year-old Theo’s viewpoint. But it isn’t particularly aimed at the YA market, although I’d have no problem with any teenager reading it. The world is deftly realised and it took me a few pages just to absorb the strangeness and different customs, as Lee and Miller don’t hold up the pace with pages of explanation. So readers need to keep alert. However, this book is a delight. My very favourite sub-genre is accessible, enjoyable science fiction and this is a cracking example. Read the rest of my review here. Marrow by Robert Reed The ship is home to a thousand alien races and a near-immortal crew who have no knowledge of its origins or purpose. At its core lies a secret as ancient as the universe. It is about to be unleashed. This is definitely in the realm of epic space opera – with the emphasis on vastness. The ship Humankind has appropriated is immense. The population this ship supports is in the millions and the people running this ship are of the transhuman variety, in that they are all but immortal with lifespans stretching into the hundreds and thousands of years. To be able to sustain a storyline with plenty of twists and turns, and yet continue to be able to denote the sheer weirdness of the backdrop that is also key to said story takes serious writing skill. It’s one reason why science fiction is regarded with such snootiness in certain quarters – it is easy to write badly and difficult to write well. So is Reed up to the task? Oh for sure. The only slightly dodgy pov was the initial prologue when the ship is talking and that doesn’t last long. Other than that, the mix of multiple and semi omniscient viewpoint works well. I was gripped by the story and cared sufficiently about the characters, despite none of them being all that likeable – they are too alien and inhuman. But that didn’t stop me becoming completely engrossed in the twists and turns over a huge span of time. Read the rest of my review here. The Clockwork Rocket – Book 1 of The Orthogonal by Greg Egan There are degrees of science fiction – some books are long on character development and the social consequences of futuristic living, while being short on the science that underpins it, known as soft science fiction. Other books are far more concerned with the science and gismos that will actually power and run our future worlds – the hard science fiction. Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of the genre, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world, where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, don’t breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. This is one of the most exciting books to be produced in the genre for years – I cannot think of another story that equals the sheer inventive genius displayed by Egan. Readers can take on board as much or as little of the physics as they wish – but his cleverness would be beside the point if the narrative was so hampered by the long passages describing the world that we all ceased to care whether the heroine prevailed or not. However, Yalda’s story gripped me from the start and didn’t let go. Read the rest of my review here. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn’t expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that’s seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. But Rosemary isn’t the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed. Is all the buzz about this book merited? Oh yes, without a doubt. If you enjoyed Firefly then give this book a go, as it manages to recreate the same vibe that had so many of us tuning in to see what would happen next to the crew. While Rosemary is the protagonist, this tale is as much about the varied crew and their fortunes as they serve aboard the Wayfarer. Chambers manages to deftly sidestep pages of description by focusing on the fascinating different alien lifeforms peopling the ship. It’s always a big ask to depict aliens such that they seem realistic and sympathetic, without being merely humans with odd names and the occasional nifty add-on. Chambers has triumphantly succeeding in providing a range of fascinating lifeforms that explore the notions of gender and how to cope with difference, while stretching our preconceptions of parenting and family life. Read the rest of my review here. So here you have the first selection of my favourite space faring stories – are there any glaring omissions you would like to add? These are the books that have stuck in my memory as the most enjoyable or thought- provoking reads of the year. For those who don’t already know – I don’t bother to review books I dislike. In 2013 I read 115 books, didn’t complete 4 others and posted 69 reviews. The Bloody Angel – Book 4 in the Eddie LaCrosse series by Alex Bledsoe Having in a former life owned a yacht, I have very limited tolerance for tales that get the sailing wrong… So when my husband kept on recommending this book, I rather grumpily decided that I’d better read a couple of chapters to shut him up before returning to the next cool space opera beckoning. And then became hooked… Twenty years ago, a barmaid in a harbour town fell for a young sailor who turned pirate to make his fortune. But what truly became of Black Edward Tew remains a mystery – one that has just fallen into the lap of freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. For years, Eddie has kept his office above Angelina’s tavern, so when Angelina herself asks him to find out what happened to the dashing pirate who stole her heart, he can hardly say no – even though the trail is two decades old. If that sounds like a really cracking plot with plenty of opportunity for swashbuckling characters, a hatful of exciting adventures, plenty of humour and more than a slice of real heartbreak and horror – you’d be right. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis I picked up this copy of the book as an SF Masterworks because as a solid fan of many women fantasy and science fiction writers, I had never read her work and I discovered it was a Hugo Award winner. I’m so glad I did… When Kivrin Engle travels back through time to complete her doctoral thesis, due to an accident she lands in the middle of a major crisis her Faculty were struggling to avoid. Meanwhile the Oxford she left behind is laid low by a mysterious strain of influenza and, with no one willing to risk arranging her rescue, time is running out… This book, indeed, deserves to be part of the SF Masterworks series – from the moment I opened the first page I knew I was in the hands of a great writer at the top of her game. Willis sets the scene in Oxford’s near future with deft dexterity, her characters crackle with humanity and there is a bone-dry humour running through the whole story that helps to make the grim adventure Kivrin endures bearable. The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined by Salman Khan As an ex-teacher, the failure of our state education system is a subject that haunts me – and when I read this book, I was excited about its potential for helping fix our broken system. A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy; a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder’s online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents and teachers use the Khan Academy’s free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject, and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Khan suggests that instead of having a teacher deliver a lesson to a group of children in a totally arbitrary manner, they learn individually at their own pace using modern technology with the teacher acting as enabler. He also suggests that a far more creative, wide-ranging curriculum should be in place, where children undertake complex self-directed tasks in groups. A revolutionary approach to state-funded education? Absolutely. Read Salman Khan’s solutions to our educational problems – and then could someone point the Minister of Education in the direction of this book? Please?? We cannot continue to squander our most precious resource – our children. The Clockwork Rocket – Book 1 of The Orthogonal by Greg Egan Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of science fiction, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world – one where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. As he explains on his website – along with a series of diagrams – this fictional world he’s invented where light travels at differing speeds is due to changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a mathematical formula that governs the geometry of space-time. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, or breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. And highly readable into the bargain. The Glass God – Book 2 of The Magicals Anonymous by Kate Griffin Sharon Li: apprentice shaman and community support officer for the magically inclined. It wasn’t the career Sharon had in mind, but she’s getting used to running Magicals Anonymous and learning how to Be One With The City. When the Midnight Mayor goes missing, leaving only a suspiciously innocent-looking umbrella behind him, Sharon finds herself promoted. Her first task: find the Midnight Mayor. The only clues she has are a city dryad’s cryptic warning and several pairs of abandoned shoes… Sharon’s determinedly fair-minded stance is given a major workout as she comes up against a number of unpleasant nasties in her pursuit of the Midnight Mayor. Griffin hasn’t eased up one jot on some of the more revolting corners of London, as the story rolls forward with all the energy and slickness we’ve come to expect from one of the foremost fantasy Brit writers. A Half-Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb 1937. In a village on the Dorset coast, fourteen-year-old Mitzy Hatcher has endured a wild and lonely upbringing – until the arrival of renowned artist Charles Aubrey, his exotic mistress and their daughters, changes everything. Over the next three summers, Mitzy sees a future she had never thought possible, and a powerful love is kindled in her. A love that grows from innocence to obsession; from childish infatuation to something far more complex. Years later, a young man in an art gallery looks at a hastily-drawn portrait and wonders at the intensity of it. The questions he asks lead him to a Dorset village and to the truth about those fevered summers in the 1930s… Those of you familiar with The Legacy will recognise that Webb has again revisited the dual narrative, with one story unfolding back in the past and one storyline gradually progressing in the present. The past finally meets the present in an exciting and unexpected denouement – but the engine that drives this story is a lost, unloved soul who anchors all her hopes and affection on a charismatic artist. Webb apparently loosely based Charles on Augustus John, who had a reputation as a womaniser and clearly loved women’s bodies with a strong, sensual appreciation. Webb’s depiction of Mitzy’s harsh childhood, where she spends much of time scavenging the surrounding countryside for plants, herbs, fish and small animals to eat or make up potions for her mother to sell, is far from the rural idyll that soft-focused adverts use. Yet, she still manages to evoke the beauty and rhythm of the Dorset countryside – so much so, that I fell asleep with the colours of this book swirling in my head. The initial friendship of Charles’ two girls is a revelation for Mitzy, who is shunned by all the village children, except for Wilf. This particular narrative caught at my heart and as it spirals into a tailspin of obsession and the inevitable darkness, the book’s denouement was completely unexpected and shocking. Dark Eden by Chris Beckett You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the Forest’s lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie mountains so forbidding that no one has ever crossed them. The Oldest recount legends of a time when men and women made boats that could travel between worlds. One day, they will come back for you. You live in Eden. You are member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, in the warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of an alien, sunless world. You are John Redlantern, a teenager and agent of change for life in Eden. This book has a 1970’s feel about it – but with modern nuances with the story being told through a number of the most prominent characters in first person viewpoint. And if you only ever pick up a handful of science fiction books a year, make this one of that handful – this memorable and disturbing read is worth it. The Red Knight – Book 1 of The Traitor’s Son Cycle by Miles Cameron Twenty-eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild. Twenty-eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern’s jaws snaps shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip your head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men – or worse, a company of mercenaries – against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder. It requires the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it. The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he’s determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery it’s just another job. The abbey is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can’t deal with. Only it’s not just a job. It’s going to be war… Military medieval fantasy generally doesn’t do it for me. I’ve read plenty in my time, and until my husband nagged me to try this book, I’d more or less decided I wouldn’t shed any tears if I didn’t ever read any more. But this is different. For starters, Cameron knows what he’s talking about. He’s been involved in role-playing, martial arts – he’s actually jousted in tournaments… And it shows in the writing, which gripped me from the first page until the last – and gave me an insight into just how very different that world was, compared with our modern version. Sister by Rosamund Lipton When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister’s life – and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police, Beatrice’s fiancé and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost. The strong first person viewpoint and constant tension, coupled with the fine writing had me utterly engrossed, so that I gorged on the book in two hefty sittings. Though I did have to break off at one stage to find some tissues because I was weeping… The protagonist is beautifully handled as we follow her desperate search for her sister, which entails finding out a series of very uncomfortable truths about herself. Lupton is adept at braiding the surroundings, weather and cast of well depicted, vivid characters through Beatrice’s consciousness, so that she is one of the strongest and most interesting protagonists I’ve read for a while. Advent – Book 1 of The Advent Trilogy by James Treadwell For centuries it has been locked away. Locked away. Lost beneath the sea. Warded from earth, air, water, fire, scrying thought and sigh. Now magic is rising to the world once more. And a boy called Gavin, who thinks only that he is a city kid with parents who hate him, and knows only that he sees things no one else will believe, is boarding a train alone, to Cornwall. Where he steps into a different world… I’ve seen this book compared favourably to Susan Cooper, and while such hyped comparisons are often absurd, this time, I was reminded of Cooper’s threat-ridden landscape and sense of tension. Treadwell is a superb writer – the description of the ancient house, Pendurra, is outstanding. It is a hefty read and at no time does Treadwell throw his young readers any sort of ‘you’re only teenagers, so I’ve made it easier for you’ lifebelt, I’m delighted to report. This non-teenager was engrossed with the quality of the storytelling and this shifting, frightening world has stayed with me since I read it. A Kind of Vanishing by Lesley Thompson Summer 1968: the day Senator Robert Kennedy is shot, two nine-year-old girls are playing hide and seek in the ruins of a deserted village. When it is Eleanor’s turn to hide, Alice disappears. Thomson immediately plunges into the world of young girls, depicting first Eleanor’s rich interior landscape and then allowing us to access to Alice’s carefully modulated world, where her doting parents watch her every move. Thomson paints an exquisite picture of each girls’ fragilities, their aspirations and pin-sharp awareness of adult expectations. She beautifully inhabits the terrible, wonderful world of childhood – and the girls’ growing antipathy towards each other. One a noisy, rebellious tomboy living in a household where the adults only occasionally pay attention to their three children, while the other is the heart of her parents’ aspirations and already knows she needs to be neat and pretty to succeed. Neither girl trusts or like the other as they are forced to play together – until that disastrous game of hide and seek. This thriller/mystery is like nothing else I’ve read, and I’m still not sure that it fully works… but it certainly powerfully evoked the time and has stayed with me since I read it. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion… and more. But when the government grants right to the ever-increasing robot population, Finn struggles to find his place in the world, and her heart. If you’re looking for a slam-dunk, action fuelled adventure full of clear-cut baddies and heavy-tech weaponry, then don’t pick up The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. Because this offering is on the literary end of the genre, with nuanced, three-dimensional characterisation and coolly sophisticated prose that places this book in a heavily contemporary setting, due to the recent crash in civilisation – and also accounts for the sudden, huge reliance on robots, as their tireless assistance is needed to provide vital labour in rebuilding society. Not that this is the focus of the book. This story concentrates on Cat and her relationship with the world, after having been tutored by a robot for all her formative years. And, by default, Finn’s relationship with Cat also is under close examination. Because the bond between them is heart and engine of the book, it has to be pitch-perfect. And it is. Don’t expect any black and white answers – this book is beautifully complex and Cat’s life unfolds in unexpected and sometimes disturbing directions. And in common with the other books in this list – it is a story that still steals into my head when I’m not thinking of anything else in particular. The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, translated by K.A. Yoshida and David Mitchell I heard this book narrated on Radio 4 and was transfixed. Normally the radio is the background for the necessary loathed household chores I have to perform – but during that week, I sat down and listened. So it was a no-brainer to get hold of the book and read it for myself. Most books – for me – provide a really enjoyable way to escape the everyday. But there are a hatful of books that are inspirational, thought-provoking and genuinely life changing. I’m a tad allergic to books which trumpet this aspect – mostly because they’re not. However, The Reason I Jump is the real article. This remarkable book, written by Naoki Higashida when he was only thirteen, provides some answers. Severely autistic, Naoki learnt to communicate via pointing to letters on a ‘cardboard keyboard’ – and what he has to say gives an exceptional insight into an autistically-wired mind. He explains the often baffling behaviour of people with autism, invites us to share his perception of time, life, beauty and nature, and offers an unforgettable short story. Proving beyond doubt that people with autism do not lack imagination, humour or empathy. Naoki makes a heartfelt plea for our patience and compassion. Even if you don’t have anyone autistic in your life, it is worth reading – especially when you consider that every letter was pointed to and then written down by a scribe, before being translated into English. Among Others by Jo Walton After reading Tooth and Claw, I wanted to read more of Jo Walton’s books. Googling her immediately brought up Among Others, so it was a no-brainer to go and get hold of a copy. But would I find this next novel – so completely different from dragonkind set in a Victorian backdrop – equally engrossing? When Mori discovers that her mother is using black magic, she decides to intervene. The ensuing clash between mother and daughter leaves Mori bereft of her twin sister, crippled for life and unable to return to the Welsh Valleys that were her own kingdom. Mori finds solace and strength in her beloved books. But her mother is bent on revenge, and nothing and no one – not even Tolkien – can save her from the final reckoning. This is a remarkable book. I’ve never read anything quite like it and – for once – the OTT phrase on the cover by Jeff Vandermeer A wonder and a joy is absolutely spot on. For starters, there is a complete backstory that would easily fill a novel in the scenario that builds up to this book. Among Others is dealing with the aftermath. What happens next, once the protagonist has averted the End of the World at great personal cost. And make no mistake, the cost is heartbreakingly high. The writing is extraordinary in the pin-sharp description of the everyday, alongside the remarkable and Mori’s character is so compellingly realistic and nuanced, I’m still undecided whether there is a large chunk of autobiographical detail wrapped up in this book. And I don’t really care – other than to fervently hope, for her sake, there isn’t too much that is borrowed from Walton’s own life. Memorable and remarkable art invariably is a fusion of imagination and reality – and this is both a memorable and remarkable book. Certainly the most amazing book I’ve read this year. There are degrees of science fiction – some books are long on character development and the social consequences of futuristic living, while being short on the science that underpins it, known as soft science fiction. Other books are far more concerned with the science and gismos that will actually power and run our future worlds – the hard science fiction. Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of the genre, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world – one where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. As he explains on his website – along with a series of diagrams – this fictional world he’s invented where light travels at differing speeds is due to changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a mathematical formula that governs the geometry of space-time. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, don’t breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. However, is it readable? Does it provide entertaining fiction? In Yalda’s universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. In Yalda’s universe, plants make food by emitting their own light into the night sky. As a child, Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that is entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger—and that the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilization has yet achieved. I’m not going to tie up the rest of this review by plunging any further into the science that underpins the book, fascinating though it is. This is, after all, an analysis of whether this book actually works as a piece of fiction. This is one of the most exciting books to be produced in the genre for years – I cannot think of another story that equals the sheer inventive genius displayed by Egan. Readers can take on board as much or as little of the physics as they wish – but his cleverness would be beside the point if the narrative was so hampered by the long passages describing the world that we all ceased to care whether the heroine prevailed or not. However, Yalda’s story gripped me from the start and didn’t let go. We first meet her working on her family’s farm. In a world where mothers’ bodies break down and normally divide into four to provide two sets of twins – two co’s – Yalda is different. She doesn’t have a male twin, so is larger than normal and she has also encountered a fair amount of prejudice in her short life over her unusual beginning, often regarded as a freak. We follow her adventures – both physical and intellectual – as she strives to make sense of the world around her, despite being hampered by the ever-present threat of her biological imperative. Which creates social tensions – women effectively cease to be once their children are born and some rebel against losing their lives, while the conservatives in power, inevitably male, strive to ensure that women can’t get hold of the drugs that the prevent this process. Against these social frictions looms a far more pressing problem – when the scientists observing the Hurtlers lighting up the sky come to the conclusion that they pose a major risk to their own world and decide to build a rocket to investigate the problem and see if they can fix it, before their own planet is annihilated. The rest of the novel is taken up with series of challenges posed by such a project. The concept of an interstellar ark is an oft-trodden theme within the genre, but the unique physiology of Egan’s beings immediately provides sufficient novelty – and Yalda’s strong personality certainly ensured that I kept turning the pages, completely hooked. This is a wonderful book – and yes, there are chunks of physics, complete with diagrams within the narrative. You have the option of slowing down and fully absorbing Egan’s invented work, or skimming over the scientific details and getting on with the story. One way or another, I think this ambitious and remarkable series will still be regarded as a major benchmark in science fiction for years to come and I look forward to reading the rest of the books just as soon as I can get my hands on them. 10/10
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	71	https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/modulus/2012/09/22/orthogonal-by-greg-egan-a-review	en	Orthogonal, by Greg Egan: a review	http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/perp-300x207.png	http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/perp-300x207.png	[ "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/cropped-banner1.jpg", "http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/perp-300x207.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/print.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/email.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/facebook.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/twitter.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/linkedin.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/pinterest.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/reddit.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/tumblr.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/stumbleupon.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/buttons/simple/vk.png", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/wp-content/plugins/cookies-for-comments/css.php?k=84c44d32414ff82ad236de74aed5861e&o=i&t=700891572", "https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/statistics/piwik.php?idsite=2&rec=1" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2012-09-22T00:00:00				Spirit of Contradiction	https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/modulus/2012/09/22/orthogonal-by-greg-egan-a-review	Greg Egan’s books are remarkable for two rather unrelated reasons: on the one hand, the attention to detailed world-building which makes of his work “diamond-hard” science fiction, often including a great deal of mathematical rigour; on the other, a deft and penetrating insight into social and political conflict. Orthogonal, the yet incomplete–rather incompletely published–trilogy under review, is not an exception. Perhaps these two characteristics, which may at first seem orthogonal themselves, bear a non-zero inner product after all: the same mind which delights in the relentless consequential reasoning giving rise to novels such as Distress, can’t do anything else but apply a materialist analysis to the societies of those imagined worlds, just as it does to their physics. As this review attempts to introduce not only Orthogonal, but Greg Egan himself, to those readers who haven’t encountered his work before, I’ll quote a short excerpt from Teranesia, which is not only funny and perceptive, but also one of the sharpest attacks on the post-modernist pseudo-left I’ve ever read, in its own lair: the narrative: Madhusree had expounded with her usual nine-year-old’s volubility. ‘In the nineteen sixties and seventies, there were people in all the democratic countries who didn’t have any real power, and they started going to the people who did have all the power and saying, “All these principles of equality you’ve been talking about since the French Revolution are very nice, but you don’t seem to be taking them very seriously. You’re all hypocrites, actually. So we’re going to make you take those principles seriously.” And they held demonstrations and bus rides, and occupied buildings, and it was very embarrassing for the people in power, because the other people had such a good argument, and anyone who listened seriously had to agree with them. ‘Feminism was working, and the civil rights movement was working, and all the other social justice movements were getting more and more support. So, in the nineteen eighties, the CIA—’ she turned to Keith and explained cheerfully, ‘this is where X-Files Theory comes into it–hired some really clever linguists to invent a secret weapon: an incredibly complicated way of talking about politics that didn’t actually make any sense, but which spread through all the universities in the world, because it sounded so impressive. And at first, the people who talked like this just hitched their wagon to the social justice movements, and everyone else let them come along for the ride, because they seemed harmless. But then they climbed on board the peace train and threw out the driver. ‘So instead of going to the people in power and saying, “How about upholding the universal principles you claim to believe in?” the people in the social justice movements ended up saying things like “My truth narrative is in competition with your truth narrative!” And the people in power replied, “Woe is me! You’ve thrown me in the briar patch!” And everyone else said, “Who are these idiots? Why should we trust them, when they can’t even speak properly?” And the CIA were happy. And the people in power were happy. And the secret weapon lived on in the universities for years and years, because everyone who’d played a part in the conspiracy was too embarrassed to admit what they’d done.’ The funny thing is, every time I read that excerpt I have to wonder whether it’s actually true. It definitely has a ring of plausibility, given the strange ways in which the cold war’s players funneled funding to cultural activities. But whether or not it’s true is, in this case, secondary: what makes it such a devastating narrative is that it reads more plausible than the ostensible truth: that some people managed to squander the second best objective conditions of the century in railing against universal values and grand narratives while the potential to change the world slipped, for the sake of seeming clever. At least in Egan’s narrative someone isn’t being an idiot. So what is Orthogonal about? Orthogonal is set in a universe where physical laws are different from ours in some important ways: light generates energy when it is created, so plants are luminescent in order to generate food, instead of photosynthesizing. The universe also happens to have a radically different topology, but I will refrain from spoilers. Suffice it to say that the world where Orthogonal happens is rather carefully thought out. There are two primary strands to the first book, called The Clockwork Rocket. On the one hand, there’s the science: as readers, we’re shown how scientists carry forward their work in order to find out how the world is put together, and try to avert a catastrophe. This is the fundamental existential threat which moves the series. Meteors are hitting the world, in increasing numbers, and life itself is at risk. On the other hand, there’s an undercurrent of social conflict which is largely–though not entirely–grounded on biology and reproduction. Like in our world, the people described in Orthogonal are divided in two genders. Unlike in our world, reproduction isn’t strictly sexual: most often but not necessarily triggered by a male, the female of the species enters a dorment state, and divides into two or four children. After this process, the female is no more, her flesh inherited by her offspring. Dying without reproducing is called “going the way of men”, and is socially disapproved. In the normal course of events, siblings reproduce with each other, although some are born unpaired, which can also be a source of rejection. Some reasons why this doesn’t lead to genetic degeneration are hinted at on book two. As you can imagine, this setup leads to interesting consequences in terms of sexual conflict. On book one, it centres on contraception and birth control. There is a plant which can prevent females from undergoing reproduction, or at least strongly reduce the probabilities. The use of this plant is illegal, which gives rise to tension with the free-minded females who consider their lives worthwhile in their own right, and not a mere prerequisite for the preservation of the species. The second book, The Eternal Flame, takes place on a spacecraft which has been launched from the world in order to exploit the fact that, like in our world, speed has an impact on time. The rocket contains a scientific mission which purpose is to research the meteors and ways to stop them, and come back to the world before it is too late. Again there are two primary strands to this book, one scientific, and another political. On the science side, we get to find out more about the way matter is shaped, and how the weird topology of the universe affects its properties. Though the object of the mission is to find a practical solution to save the world from the objects bombarding it, the mission engages in all manner of theoretical research, as it is impossible to know a priori how this may be achieved. Hence, the study of matter. Politically, overpopulation begins to threaten the scarce food supplies of the craft. Typically females divide into four children, which is far more than required for a stable population base. In order to try to avoid problems, there’s a food rationing system, and females keep themselves on the edge of starvation, to trick their bodies into dividing in two instead, which is a natural response to low resources. This solution presents its own problems, and is not entirely reliable, so the biologists in the mission attempt to find a way to induce it artificially. What they find is a completely different possibility: a radically unnatural way to reproduce which would destabilise society. Or so would some have it. Some of the political attitudes encountered in this series are very reminiscent of actual problems we have in our world. For example, the reproductive role of females leads some people to believe their fundamental duty is to remain under male protection, and yield their flesh to the coming generation: He stepped away from her, visibly revolted. ‘I’m not fathering children with someone else,’ he said. ‘The flesh of our mother is the flesh of my children; however long you might borrow it, it’s not yours. Least of all yours to endanger.’ It’s not hard to imagine that these attitudes clash with the females’ desire for autonomy. Some would prefer to go the way of men; some would simply want to decide when to reproduce; and some would wish to make use of the new possibilities biological research would offer them. Needless to say, I haven’t yet read book three, The Arrow of Time, scheduled for 2013, but I very much look forward to it. I have no doubt Greg Egan will again surprise us, both with his scientific acumen, and his ability to present us with political problems which, though different from our own, are all but orthogonal.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	30	https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2019/03/20/glory-by-greg-egan/	en	Classics of Science Fiction	https://classicsofscienc…03/exoplanet.png	https://classicsofscienc…03/exoplanet.png	[ "https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/exoplanet.png?w=720", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8c1dc4a37aac22a0aad8771a1182a8c9af4de70a0b879332024ddce3ae9fa075?s=64&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/9b482983f6c98ffd498c691e0d916fb05ee1f44c2f9ee2ecc17103c611320fe7?s=64&d=identicon&r=G", "https://s-ssl.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/rss.png?m=1354137473i", "https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/cropped-science-fiction-logo.png?w=50", "https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/cropped-science-fiction-logo.png?w=50", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2019-03-20T00:00:00	"Glory" by Greg Egan first appeared in The New Space Opera (2007) edited by Gardner Dozois. This is the 9th story discussed from The Very Best of the Best (2019) also edited by Gardner Dozois. I first encountered Greg Egan when I read his novel Quarantine (1992). It impressed me greatly, yet, I have not followed his career…	en	https://classicsofscienc…on-logo.png?w=32	Classics of Science Fiction	https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2019/03/20/glory-by-greg-egan/	“Glory” by Greg Egan first appeared in The New Space Opera (2007) edited by Gardner Dozois. This is the 9th story discussed from The Very Best of the Best (2019) also edited by Gardner Dozois. I first encountered Greg Egan when I read his novel Quarantine (1992). It impressed me greatly, yet, I have not followed his career closely. There is just a tremendous amount of good science fiction to read. I have read the reviews of his following novels and read a few of his shorter stories in the best-of-the-year annuals. Egan writes hard science fiction of the super-science variety, projecting humanity into the far future. Egan is far more hopeful for the potential of our species than I am. “Glory” is about Joan and Anne, galactic citizens of the Amalgam, visiting a world that has not yet developed interstellar travel. Their adventure begins with two ingots of metallic hydrogen, one made of matter and the other anti-matter. These ingots are sculpted with neutrons and antineutrons until they are compressed into a needle one micron wide. I’ll quote Egan to give you a sample of his imagination: The needle was structured like a meticulously crafted firework, and its outer layers ignited first. No external casing could have channeled this blast, but the pattern of tensions woven into the needle’s construction favored one direction for the debris to be expelled. Particles streamed backward; the needle moved forward. The shock of acceleration could not have been borne by anything built from atomic-scale matter, but the pressure bearing down on the core of the needle prolonged its life, delaying the inevitable. Layer after layer burned itself away, blasting the dwindling remnant forward ever faster. By the time the needle had shrunk to a tenth of its original size, it was moving at ninety-eight percent of light speed; to a bystander, this could scarcely have been improved upon, but from the needle’s perspective, there was still room to slash its journey’s duration by orders of magnitude. When just one thousandth of the needle remained, its time, compared to the neighboring stars, was passing five hundred times more slowly. Still the layers kept burning, the protective clusters unraveling as the pressure on them was released. The needle could only reach close enough to light speed to slow down time as much as it required if it could sacrifice a large enough proportion of its remaining mass. The core of the needle could only survive for a few trillionths of a second, while its journey would take two hundred million seconds as judged by the stars. The proportions had been carefully matched, though: out of the two kilograms of matter and antimatter that had been woven together at the launch, only a few million neutrons were needed as the final payload. By one measure, seven years passed. For the needle, its last trillionths of a second unwound, its final layers of fuel blew away, and at the moment its core was ready to explode, it reached its destination, plunging from the near-vacuum of space straight into the heart of a star. Even here, the density of matter was insufficient to stabilize the core, yet far too high to allow it to pass unhindered. The core was torn apart. But it did not go quietly, and the shock waves it carved through the fusing plasma endured for a million kilometers: all the way through to the cooler outer layers on the opposite side of the star. These shock waves were shaped by the payload that had formed them, and though the initial pattern imprinted on them by the disintegrating cluster of neutrons was enlarged and blurred by its journey, on an atomic scale it remained sharply defined. Like a mold stamped into the seething plasma, it encouraged ionized molecular fragments to slip into the troughs and furrows that matched their shape, and then brought them together to react in ways that the plasma’s random collisions would never have allowed. In effect, the shock waves formed a web of catalysts, carefully laid out in both time and space, briefly transforming a small corner of the star into a chemical factory operating on a nanometer scale. The products of this factory sprayed out of the star, riding the last traces of the shock wave’s momentum: a few nanograms of elaborate, carbon-rich molecules, sheathed in a protective fullerene weave. Traveling at seven hundred kilometers per second, a fraction below the velocity needed to escape from the star completely, they climbed out of its gravity well, slowing as they ascended. Four years passed, but the molecules were stable against the ravages of space. By the time they’d traveled a billion kilometers, they had almost come to a halt, and they would have fallen back to die in the fires of the star that had forged them if their journey had not been timed so that the star’s third planet, a gas giant, was waiting to urge them forward. As they fell toward it, the giant’s third moon moved across their path. Eleven years after the needle’s launch, its molecular offspring rained down on to the methane snow. This is not the science fiction I grew up reading. I want to quote the whole opening that explains how Joan and Anne get to their destination, but that would involve quoting too much. I strongly recommend reading the story online just to experience the dazzling science fictional thinking of Greg Egan. I have no idea if any of his razzle-dazzling sleight of hand is scientifically possible, but Egan is a convincing preacher of the faith, of the faith that humanity has no limits in this universe. However, once Egan gets Joan and Anne to the planet of Tira and Ghahar, two rival nations of beings call Noudah, the story slows down and becomes almost mundane in its plot. Joan and Anne are evidently what humans become in the far future, and they can download their essence (mind, soul?) into any machine or being. They appear to the Tiran and Ghahari in Noudah bodies. Joan and Anne each arrange to be intercepted by the two warring nations. Their stated and honest goal is to study the Niah, a race of sentient beings that had existed prior to the Noudah on this planet, and who were premiere mathematicians of the galaxy. The Niah existed for three million years but had disappeared over a million years earlier, leaving only tablets with their mathematical insights carved into them. Joan and Anne somehow know that the Noudah are building dams on Niah sites and want to excavate them before they are lost. The real purpose of the story I believe is for Egan to present the idea of Seekers and Spreaders. The Niah are a race of seekers of knowledge. The Noudah are spreaders, wanting to conquer and colonize the galaxy. They are paranoid, fearing Joan and Anne are from another race of spreaders. Joan and Anne are really seekers though, just wanting to understand Niah math, so they have to do everything possible not to appear as spreaders. Obviously, Homo sapiens will be spreaders. Our species is a cancerous growth spreading to every nook and cranny of Earth, and if we travel to other stellar systems, we’ll spread across those worlds too. (Hint to the title of Egan’s novel, Quarantine.) I don’t know why Egan thinks we’ll become seekers in the future. Are Joan and Anne still Homo sapiens? Their minds can be copied and backed up, but are their minds like ours? I believe as long as our minds are tied to our biology we’ll be spreaders. But if we’re digitized maybe we could become seekers. Here’s the thing about me and contemporary science fiction. I just don’t buy the concept of brain downloading. It’s as believable as everlasting life. We like to think we’re the Crown of Creation, but what happens when we discover we’re no more important to the universe than naked mole rats? The urge to spread is just a way to existentially define meaning to ourselves by the amount of territory we can cover. We might be sentient, but we’re no more significant than nitrogen to reality. Science fiction writers are often philosophers. Science fiction often promotes the manifest destiny of the final frontier. Greg Egan obviously knows that spreading is pointless. But isn’t seeking equally pointless? The universe doesn’t care what we do. So does it matter if we or any other sentient beings spread or seek? And are those really the only choices for how to keep busy while existing in reality? What about art or hedonism? Sports and games? What about the Zen of just being? “Glory” is a fun story. Most readers will just accept it as a story. I think of it as a kind of religious fantasy, showing faith in a different kind of heaven. As I read the 38 stories in this anthology, I experience them as stories, but also experience them as fears and hopes for the future. James Wallace Harris, March 20, 2019
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	67	https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/collisions-in-greg-egans-orthogonal-physics/	en	Collisions in Greg Egan’s Orthogonal physics	https://wildonblog.wordp…04/spacetime.png	https://wildonblog.wordp…04/spacetime.png	[ "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c%5E2%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dt%5E2+-+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cmathbf%7Bx%7D%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dt%5E2+%2B+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cmathbf%7Bx%7D%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=cT&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c%5E2+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dt%5E2+-+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dx%5E2+-+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dy%5E2+-+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dz%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%280%2C0%2C0%2C0%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%281%2Cc%2C0%2C0%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k%5E2+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dt%5E2+%2B+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dx%5E2+%2B+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dy%5E2+%2B+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7Dz%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28kv_t%2Cv_x%2Cv_y%2Cv_z%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k+%3D+c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k+%3D+1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28v_x%2Cv_y%2Cv_z%29%2Fv_t&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28E%2Fc%2C+%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/spacetime.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=v_t&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=t_1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=xt&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=x_0&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=ct_0&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=x_1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=ct_1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28x_1-x_0%29%2F%28t_1-t_0%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=v_x%2Fv_t+%5Capprox+%28x_1-x_0%29%2F%28t_1-t_0%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c%28t_1-t_0%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=x_1-x_0&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=xt&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%7C%7Cv%7C%7C+%3D+%5Csqrt%7Bv_x%5E2%2B+v_y%5E2%2Bv_z%5E2%7D%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28kv_t%2Cv_x%2Cv_y%2Cv_z%29+%3D+%28kv_t%2C+%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7Dv_t%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28c%5E2+-+%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%29+v_t%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%281%2B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%29v_t%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=k%3D1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28c%5E2+-+%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%29v_t%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28c%5E2-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%29v_t%5E2+%3D+c%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=v_t+%3D+c%2F%5Csqrt%7Bc%5E2-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D+%3D+1%2F%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%2Fc%7D+%3D+%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=v_t+%3D+1%2F%5Csqrt%7B1%2Bv%5E2%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%28cv_t%2Cv_x%2Cv_y%2Cv_z%29+%26%3D+%28c%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29%2C+%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29+%29+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cbigl%28%5Cfrac%7Bc%7D%7B%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%2Fc%5E2%7D%7D%2C+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%7D%7B%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%2Fc%5E2%7D%7D%5Cbigr%29+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%28v_t%2Cv_x%2Cv_y%2Cv_z%29+%3D+%5Cbigl%28%5Cfrac%7B1%7D%7B%5Csqrt%7B1%2B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D%7D%2C+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%7D%7B%5Csqrt%7B1%2B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D%7D+%5Cbigr%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%2F%5Csqrt%7B1%2B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E%2Fc+%3D+Mc+%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E+%3D+M%2F%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28E%2Fc%2C+M%5Cgamma%28%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=Mc&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28E%2C+M%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%2F%5Csqrt%7B1%2B%5Cmathbf%7Bv%7D%5E2%7D%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28E%2Fc%29%5E2+-+%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D%5E2+%3D+M%5E2c%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E%5E2+%2B+%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D%5E2+%3D+M%5E2.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E+%3D+M+%5Ccos+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%7C%7C+%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D+%7C%7C+%3D+M+%5Csin+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5CGamma+%5Cin+%5B0%2C+%5Cpi%2F2%5D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccosh%5E2+%5CGamma+-+%5Csinh%5E2%5CGamma+%3D+1&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=E+%3D+Mc%5E2+%5Csinh+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%7C%7C%5Cmathbf%7Bp%7D+%7C%7C+%3D+Mc+%5Ccosh+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/orthogonaltriangles.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=x&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/orthogonalcollision.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=txy&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=xy&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=z&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=4&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+mc+%2B+Mc+%5Ccosh+%5CGamma+%26%3D+mc+%5Ccos+%5Cdelta+%2B+Mc+%5Ccos+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+Mc+%5Csinh+%5CGamma+%26%3D+mc+%5Csinh+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi+%2B+Mc+%5Csinh+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta+%5C%5C+0+%26%3D+-mc+%5Csinh+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%2B+mc+%5Csinh+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T+%3D+m+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28T-m%29%5E2%2FM%5E2+-+1+%3D+%5Ccosh%5E2+%5CGamma+-+1+%3D+%5Csinh%5E2+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=-%28T-m%29%5E2%2FM%5E2+%2B+1+%3D+-%5Ccos%5E2+%5CGamma+%2B+1+%3D+%5Csin%5E2+%5CGamma.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+T+%26%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%5Csqrt%7B%7C%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%7C%7D+%26%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta+%5C%5C+0+%26%3D+-m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccosh%2C+%5Csinh&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos%2C+%5Csin&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m%2FM+%3D+1%2F3&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=V&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/twovelocitiesorthogonal.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin%5E%7B-1%7D+1%2F3+%5Capprox+0.33984&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/twovelocitiesboth.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M%2F%5Csqrt%7B1%2BV%5E2%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/twoenergiesorthogonal.png?w=450", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Calpha%7D+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C+%5Calpha+%3D+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C+%5Calpha&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+0+%26%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta+-+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%5C%2C%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D+%5Ctheta%2C+%5C%5C+0+%26%3D+-m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta+-+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D+%5Ctheta.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=d+%5Ctheta+%3D+0&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos+%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin+%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+0+%26%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos%5E2+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+-+m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%5Ccos+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+%5C%5C+%26+%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26%5C+%2B+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+%2B+m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi+%5Csin+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cphi+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+-M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%5Csin+%5Cphi%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26+%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%28%5Ccos%5E2+%5Cphi+%2B+%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi%29%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%28%5Ccos+%5Ctheta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+-+%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi%29%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26%3D+m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta+%2B+M+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%28%5Ctheta+%2B%5Cphi%29+%5C%2C%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Calpha%7D+%5Ccosh+%5Calpha+%3D+%5Csinh+%5Calpha&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Calpha%7D+%5Ccos+%5Calpha+%3D+-%5Csin+%5Calpha&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=0+%3D+m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta+%2B+M+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bd%7D%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5Cdelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D+%3D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29%7D%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D+%3D+%5Ccos+%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Btanh%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Btan%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%7C%28T%26-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%7C+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Csqrt%7B%7C%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%7C%7D%5E2+%2B+0%5E2+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%28m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Ccos+%5Cphi+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta%29%5E2+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad+%2B+%28-m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%2B+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta%29%5E2+%5C%5C+%26%3D+m%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%28%5Ccos%5E2+%5Cphi+%2B+%5Csin%5E2%5Cphi%29+%2B+M%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%28%5Ccos%5E2+%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Csin%5E2%5Ctheta%29+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad+%2B+2mM%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%28%5Ccos+%5Cphi+%5Ccos+%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%5Csin+%5Ctheta%29+%5C%5C+%26%3D+m%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%2B+M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%2B+2mM%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5Cdelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5C%2C+%5Ccos%28%5Ctheta%2B%5Cphi%29.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29+%3D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5Cdelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%5C%2C+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D+%3D+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%7C%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%7C+%3D+m%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3A+%5Cdelta+%2B+M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3A+%5CDelta+%2B+2mM%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T+%3D+m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%2B+M+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5Cdelta+%3D+T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cpm+m%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%3D+%28T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%29%5E2+-+m%5E2+&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%2B&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=-&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%5Cpm+%26%5Cbigl%28%28T-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%5Cbigr%29+%5C%5C+%26+%3D+%5Cpm+%5Cbigl%28+%28T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%29%5E2+-+m%5E2%5Cbigr%29+%2B+M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3A+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26+%5Cqquad++%2B+2M+%28T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%29+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7B%5CDelta%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cpm&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%5Cbigl%28%28T%26-m%29%5E2+-+M%5E2%5Cbigr%29+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%28T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%29%5E2+-+m%5E2+%5Cpm+M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26%3D+T%5E2+%2B+M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta+-+2MT%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26%5Cqquad+-+m%5E2+%5Cpm+M%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5CDelta+%5Cpm+2MT%5C%2C+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D+%5Cmp+2M%5E2+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5CDelta+%5C%5C+%26%3D+T%5E2+%2B+M%5E2+%28%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2%5C%3B%5CDelta+%5Cmp+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B%5CDelta%29+-m%5E2+%5C%5C+%26%5Chspace%2A%7B1in%7D+-%5Cfrac%7B2MT%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta%7D+%28%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2%5C%3B%5CDelta+%5Cmp+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2%5C%3B%5CDelta%29+%5C%5C+%26%3D+T%5E2+%2B+M%5E2+-+m%5E2-+%5Cfrac%7B2MT%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+M%5E2+-m%5E2+%2B+mT+%3D+%5Cfrac%7BMT%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D+%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Cdisplaystyle+%3D+%5Cfrac%7BMT%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%7D.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%3D+T+-+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+m%5C%2C%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%3D+T+-+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2T%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%7D+%3D+%5Cfrac%7B-m%5E2T+%2B+mT%5E2%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2B+mT%7D+&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%3D+%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cfrac%7BT%28T-m%29%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%7D.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos+%28%5Ctheta%2B%5Cphi%29+%3D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%5Ccos%5E2+%26+%28%5Ctheta%2B%5Cphi%29%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bta%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5CDelta+-+1%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+-+1%7D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2%5C%3B+%5CDelta%7D+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2T%5E2+-+%28M%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%28T-m%29%5E2+-+%28M%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2%7D+%5Cfrac%7BT%5E2%28T-m%29%5E2%7D%7BM%5E2T%5E2%7D.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M%5E2T%5E2+-+%28M%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M%5E2T%5E2+-+%28MT%29%5E2+%3D+0&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%3D+M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%3D+%5Cpm+M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%3D+M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=M%5E2-m%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T%5E2-M%5E2%2Bm%5E2-2mT&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+M%5E2%26T%5E2+-+%28M%5E2-+m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2+%5C%5C+%26+%5Cquad+%3D+%28M-m%29%28M%2Bm%29%28T%2BM-m%29%28T-M-m%29.%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%26+T%5E2%28T-m%29%5E2++-+%28M%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2+%5C%5C+%26%5C+%3D+%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%28T%2BM-m%29%28T-M-m%29.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos%5E2+%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos%5E2+%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29+%3D+%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cfrac%7B%28M-m%29%28M%2Bm%29%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D+%5Cfrac%7B%28T-m%29%5E2%7D%7BM%5E2%7D.+&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m%5C%2C%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B%5Cdelta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%3D+M%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin+%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cfrac%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2%5C%3B%5CDelta+-1%7D%7B%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+-1%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+1+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta%7D%7Bm%5E2%5C%2C%5Cmathrm%7Bsi%7D%5E2+%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi%7D+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B%5CDelta+-+1%29%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta%7D%7Bm%5E2%28%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5E2+%5C%3B%5Cdelta+-+1%29%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi%7D+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28M-m%29%28M%2Bm%29%7D%7Bm%5E2%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D+%5Cfrac%7B%5Csin%5E2%5Ctheta%7D%7B%5Csin%5E2%5Cphi%7D.%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi+%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28M%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D%7Bm%5E2%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D+%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos%5E2+%28%5Ctheta+%2B+%5Cphi%29&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin+%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%26%5Cfrac%7BT-m%7D%7BM%7D%5Csqrt%7B%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7D+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta%7D%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Csin%5E2%5Cphi%7D+-+%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%5C%5C+%26%3D+%5Csqrt%7B1-%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta%7D%5Csqrt%7B1+-+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28M%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D%7Bm%5E2%28T%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D+%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta%7D+%5C%5C+%26+%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad%5Cqquad+-+%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta+%5Cfrac%7BM%7D%7Bm%7D+%5Csqrt%7B%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7D.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=S&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin%5E2+%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=S&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%281-S%29%5Cbigl%281+-+%26+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28M%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D%7Bm%5E2%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D+S+%5Cbigr%29+%5C%5C+%26%5Cquad+%3D+%5Cbigl%28+%5Cfrac%7BT-m%7D%7BM%7D+%2B+%5Cfrac%7BSM%7D%7Bm%7D%5Cbigr%29%5E2+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D.+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Cfrac%7B%28SM%5E2+-+m%5E2%29%28M%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%29%5E2%7D%7BM%5E2m%5E2%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=S+%3D+m%5E2%2FM%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=m+%5Cle+M&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%3D+m%2FM&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Csin%5E2+%5Cphi+%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2%28M%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D%7Bm%5E2%28T%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%29%7D+%5Cfrac%7Bm%5E2%7D%7BM%5E2%7D+%3D+%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cdisplaystyle+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%3D+%5Csqrt%7B%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7D.&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cbegin%7Baligned%7D+%5Csin+%5Cphi+%26%3D%5Csqrt%7B%5Cfrac%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7BT%5E2%2BM%5E2-m%5E2%7D%7D+%5C%5C+%5Csin+%5Ctheta+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7Bm%7D%7BM%7D+%5C%5C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5Cdelta+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BT%28T-m%29%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%7D+%5C%5C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CDelta+%26%3D+%5Cfrac%7BTM%7D%7BM%5E2-m%5E2%2BmT%7D+%5Cend%7Baligned%7D+&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=T+%3D+m+%2B+M+%5C%2C+%5Cmathrm%7Bco%7D%5C%3B+%5CGamma&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=c%5E2&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccosh&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ccos&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ctheta&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0&c=20201002", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/03827a8fdde2d3c94f69a37b531dc18259f44b0ab8d4f85af3eb4504fbe0a728?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/32e7063f065aec24ae7dcef58d504926333033641dd58b34afe3a6598b19f1cf?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/32e7063f065aec24ae7dcef58d504926333033641dd58b34afe3a6598b19f1cf?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/32e7063f065aec24ae7dcef58d504926333033641dd58b34afe3a6598b19f1cf?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/e107ac562da19e3da8c4f0a7ee024d69ded43da0e09873c2146090e47be85d39?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2021-04-12T00:00:00	In Greg Egan's remarkable Orthogonal Trilogy, physics differs from ours in one crucial respect: the Lorentz metric $latex c^2\mathrm{d}t^2 - \mathrm{d}\mathbf{x}^2$ is replaced with the Riemannian metric $latex \mathrm{d}t^2 + \mathrm{d}\mathbf{x}^2$, putting time on the same footing as space. As one would expect from this author, the consequences are worked out in great detail, and…	en	https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico	Wildon's Weblog	https://wildonblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/collisions-in-greg-egans-orthogonal-physics/	In Greg Egan’s remarkable Orthogonal Trilogy, physics differs from ours in one crucial respect: the Lorentz metric is replaced with the Riemannian metric , putting time on the same footing as space. As one would expect from this author, the consequences are worked out in great detail, and are integral to the plot. This comes at some predictable expense to characterisation and versimilitude: still I’ve found the first two books sufficiently interesting that I can (almost) ignore that much of the exposition consists of the characters giving each other physics tutorials, conducting experiments (which remarkably always work, even if the results often come as a surprise) or listening to each other give lectures and seminars. That said, the physics is leavened by some set-piece ethical dilemmas, and there is also a well-developed biological theme, concentrated on the unique (but not completely implausible) morphology of the Orthogonal race. The purpose of this post is to do one of the exercises left implicitly to the reader in the second book, The Eternal Flame, in which it is observed that when a photon is deflected by a stationary particle of ordinary matter (called a `luxagen’ in the trilogy), it may glance off at two different angles. Moreover, there is a maximum deflection angle, which is independent of the energy of the photon. Here I’ll show that this follows from the relation between energy and momentum in Orthogonal physics, and the two conservation laws, and implies that Orthogonal photons are heavier than luxagens. I’ll also show that the same behaviour holds in our universe, whenever the moving particle is heavier than the particle it strikes. My solution uses piles and piles of algebra to arrive at a surprisingly simple answer. Egan’s book hints at a simple trigonometric solution: made more plausible because his characters are of course brilliant at Euclidean geometry, thanks to the double motivation from their physics and our shared mathematics. Or maybe there is a better way to organize the algebra, perhaps starting `We take the Lagrangian …’, or maybe `By working in the reference frame in which the centre of momentum is fixed …’. Either way, I would like to know it. Much of my interest arises from how Egan (and his characters) arrive at this setup: for more background see the supplementary material on Egan’s website, or read the first book in the trilogy, The Clockwork Rocket. At the time of writing I still have the third book to look forward to. Space-time and the energy-momentum relation There is -dimensional space-time. In our universe, when we measure a time interval by the distance that light travels in this interval, space-time has the Lorentz metric . For example, a photon may move from to in one unit of time, and, corresponding to the fact that no time passes for the photon, the Lorentz distance between these space-time points is zero. In the Orthogonal universe space-time has the Riemannian metric , where is a constant with dimension distance/time; by choosing units appropriately (thus sweeping under the carpet the first half of the first book on Yalda’s experiments on Mount Peerless, the beautiful dual Pythagorean Theorem, and the fact that in Orthogonal physics, the speed of light is not constant), we may assume that the numerical value of is . We take the following (and only the following, for the time being) as further axioms: Physical laws are invariant under the group of transformations preserving the Lorentz/Riemannian metric. Every particle has a symmetry invariant tangent vector to its world line called its –velocity with units distance/time; in our universe and in the Orthogonal universe . A stationary observer measures the particle’s velocity as the -vector , as illustrated in the diagram below (click for a larger pdf). Multiplying the -velocity, normalized to have length (our universe) or (the Orthogonal universe), by the mass of a particle gives its -momentum , where is the -vector momentum. Note that (1) only makes sense because we measure time and distance in compatible units: thus is dimensionless (while the constant has units distance/time) and whenever a time appears, such as in the diagram above, it is multiplied by . Therefore the symmetry group of space-time can reasonably mix them up. The way I imagine (2), half-remembered from when I did special relativity 20 years ago (my reference frame), is that the -plane has clocks every metre, connected by rigid rods, which record the time of passing of every particle. The particle is at position (which conveniently enough happens to have a clock) at time , and at position (similarly conveniently placed) at time . The stationary observer can therefore collect the measurements from the clocks (simply by travelling to each one), and approximate the particle’s velocity as and so . Everyday objects in our universe, such as cars, trains and coronavirus, move at a negligible fraction of the speed of light, so is typically huge compared to , and corresponding the velocity measured by the observer is a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Note this is not the velocity that an observer travelling with the particle would measure. This requires the notion of proper time, seen in the diagram above as the lengths of the trajectories (1 and 2) in the -plane. Using this one can define the -vector velocity as the rate of change of space-time position with respect to the proper time along the trajectory. But in this post we will instead use the axiomatic definition in (2). In general, writing for the -velocity, and as usual in physics, for the square of its -vector Euclidean norm axiom (2) implies that . By symmetry invariance, the Lorentzian norm squared of the tangent vector is , and the Euclidean norm squared is (using the assumption that ). Now since has units distance/time, and we care only about the direction of the tangent vector, not its magnitude, it is most convenient (and usual in physics, although I’ve never seen it clearly explained why) to require, as in axiom (3), that the Lorentzian length is . Thus in our universe , and so , where is the usual dimensionless Lorentz factor. In the Orthogonal universe ; this is again dimensionless because the in the numerator implicitly has units distance/time. Therefore the -vector velocity is in our universe and in the Orthogonal universe. According to (3) the familiar -vector momentum is obtained by multiplying the spatial component of each of these -vector velocities by the rest mass . In our universe, this agrees with special relativity: a particle moving at -vector velocity is heavier according to a stationary observer by the factor . In the Orthogonal universe, we find instead that the -vector momentum is , so fast moving particles are lighter according to a stationary observer. Again by (3), the energy of the particle is given by in our universe, and in the Orthogonal universe. Substituting in the -vectors, we find that in our universe has Lorentzian length , and in the Orthogonal universe, has Euclidean length . Equivalently, energy and momentum are related in our universe by and in the Orthogonal universe by The former is one statement of the energy-momentum relation between the energy and the -momentum . Observe that the Orthogonal energy-momentum relation can be stated very neatly as and , where . The analogue for our universe, using the identity , is and . We show both by the triangles below, noting that only the Orthogonal triangle is a genuine geometric representation, rather than a helpful aide-memoire. Collision setup We now need one final pair of axioms In any system of particles, the sum of all -vector momenta is conserved; In any system of particles, the sum of all energies (as recorded in the time component of -vector momenta) is conserved. The diagrams below show a stationary particle with mass hit by a heavy particle with mass moving in the direction (and also in time, of course). Again click on the diagram for a larger pdf; four final zero coordinates got clipped off in the scan. We can suppose that after the collision motion is contained in -space (of which the diagram above shows only the -plane), so all -coordinates are zero: let (oriented clockwise) and (oriented anticlockwise) be the deflection angles of the lighter and heavier particle. The -momenta conservation equations are, in our universe, Notice that these are homogeneous in . We can therefore divide through by and obtain the equations for the Orthogonal universe by replacing hyperbolic functions with trigonometric functions throughout. As a further small simplification we introduce and observe that for our universe and for the Orthogonal universe, Therefore a unified system of equations is where are in our universe and in the Orthogonal universe. The expression is positive in our universe and negative for the Orthogonal universe; it has the three constants , and (all with units of mass) which we regard as determined by the experimental setup. The unknowns are , , and , appearing only on the right-hand sides. Numerical solutions It is routine to solve these equations numerically using NSolve in Mathematica. As an example, we suppose that the heavier particle has three times the mass of the lighter, so . The graph below show the post-collision velocity of the heavier particle for each of the two possible deflection angles , as the energy of the heavier particle increases from least (red) to greatest (violet). This agrees with the experiment conducted in Orthogonal where the heavier particle is a photon, and the characters observe the deflection angle by visual observation of a system of mirrors. The graph below the has the same axes, comparing the post-collision velocity in the Orthogonal universe (solid) and our universe (dashed), choosing the energies to get comparable shapes. Notice that the maximum deflection angle does not depend on the energy of the heavier particle, or even on which universe we are in: we show below that its sine is the ratio of the masses. Thus in these graphs it is . The graph below is the equivalent of the first graph showing the final energy of the heavier particle. If you are surprised that red is now at the top, note that in Orthogonal physics, the energy is , so is lower for faster moving particles. Tangent space equation Differentiating the momentum conservation equations using that , we obtain At an extremum for , we have . Multiplying the top equation by and the bottom equation by and subtracting, we obtain Differentiating the equation from energy conservation, using that and , so the same sign appears both times, we get Comparing these relations between the independent differentials and , we see that the coefficients must be in the same ratio: that is or equivalently, where is in our universe and in the Orthogonal universe. Solution for maximum deflection First step: solving for and The sum of the squares of the two equations for momentum is By the equation from the tangent space, at maximum deflection . Substituting and using we get in which the only unknowns are and . The only equation we have not yet used is the energy conservation equation It implies that and, by squaring this relation and subtracting , that where the sign is for our universe and for the Orthogonal universe. Using these two relations to eliminate and and recalling that is positive for our universe and negative for the Orthogonal universe, we obtain with the same conventions for the universe dependent signs. Now only appears. After multiplying through by we can simplify the right-hand side as follows It seems somewhat remarkable to me that all the signs cancel, and we are left with such a simple equation. Perhaps this is a sign that there is some more direct derivation that I am missing. Anyway, cancelling the factors of on each side and rearranging, we get the final equation which clearly has unique solution Using the relation from energy conservation we immediately get hence Final step: finding and Substituting these expressions for and into the equation from the tangent space equation we obtain Again there is a surprising simplification: the numerator of the left-hand fraction becomes if , and so vanishes if . (Of course only the specialization is physically meaningful.) The quotient by is . Hence we have Similarly one can show that the denominator factorizes as Therefore the expression above for simplifies to Using the momentum conservation equation and the same factorizations to simplify we get Hence Rewriting the equation for so it uses only sines and then substituting for using the equation above gives Hence writing for we get by a rearrangement and squaring the following quadratic equation in : It is routine to check that the difference between the two sides is and so the unique solution is . (This is one of several places where we can see that there is a maximum deflection angle if and only if .) Since is positive, we have , and, as claimed some time ago, the sine of the maximum deflection angle is simply the ratio of the masses. The equation for above now implies that and hence Summary A somewhat remarkable feature of the unique solution for the maximum deflection where is the total energy (up to the factor in our universe), is that it depends on which universe we are working in only by a change from the hyperbolic function (our universe) to the trigonometric function (Orthogonal universe). Moreover, the maximum deflection angle does not depend on the universe at all.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	88	http://www.concatenation.org/frev/egan_arrows.html	en	Review of The Arrows of Time by Greg Egan			[]	[]	[]	[ "Arrows of Time", "Egan" ]	null	[]	null	Review of The Arrows of Time by Greg Egan (2013) Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, 360pp, ISBN 978-0-575-10576-8	en			null	Fiction Reviews The Arrows of Time: Orthogonal Book 3 (2013) Greg Egan, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, 360pp, ISBN 978-0-575-10576-8 The colony within the mountain spaceship is now in its 6th generation. But their allegiance to their original mission (to develop a solution to the hurler meteorites threatening their home world) is wavering. Due to the strange laws of the very different universe in which this story is set, their fast spaceship's relativistic effects mean that generations have passed onboard while only a year or so has transpired on their home world. If they wanted, they could risk the hazardous turn-around to go to the world of their distant forebears, or they could continue in comparative safety: they might even settle some of the strange worlds they encounter. A compounding problem is that one of the relativity quirks, in this different space-time continuum, is that travelling back will mean they could (if they wanted to) build a detector to receive light (hence messages) from their future selves. This further splits the crew for if they knew that they returned safely to their home world then that would force the argument towards those wanting to complete their mission. Conversely, if they learnt they would fail, not only would the argument go the other way, if doom was involved then how could they avoid the fate their future told? It is difficult to review the final book in a trilogy without unduly giving away spoilers, and The Arrows of Time is the final volume of Egan's 'Orthogonal' trilogy that began with The Clockwork Rocket. So seek that out before you read this one. Having said that, if like me you were unsure of the whether or not the first book was going somewhere meaningful for SF readers then let me assure you now that it is. I should say that the reason I was unsure of the trilogy with the first book was that that book not only had to establish the characters and the story, it also had to explain Egan's very strange yet scientifically logical (as far as these things can be in an SFnal sense) universe. You see Greg Egan is not among the very best of storytellers, but he most certainly tells among the very best of stories. Add this to the necessarily info-dump rich nature of the trilogy and you can see that matters so easily could have gone pear-shaped. However with The Arrows of Time he seems to have pulled things off! Not only do we get a continuation of the story, and a further filling out of the science underpinning this universe, but along the way we get a fair dollop of adventure and bags of sense of wonder (sensawunda). One of the earliest incidences of the former regards a rogue space pod necessitating it being chased by another pod in a sequence vaguely 2001: A Space Odyssey-ish reminiscent. And as for the sensawunda, I really enjoyed the chapters checking out the potential of a world for possible colonisation given that there time sort of flowed backwards with effects coming before cause. Very weird, and very difficult to convey, but Egan pulled it off providing us with a set of chapters that might easily have been written with Stanislaw Lem peering over his shoulder. Now this is not the easiest of books or indeed trilogies to read. But then again worthy challenges are never easy and this trilogy is both worthy and a challenge. It has to be said that this book is a hard SF buff's delight, and those that do not relish a sound scientific veneer covering their reading may well find this impenetrable. Indeed there were times in which my bio-phile self speeded through some of the (for me less engaging) maths-physics bits. But this did not matter: I had taken in more than enough of previous info-dumps to easily get the gist, and if the story was cracking on then I really wanted to get back to that. At the end of the day I am more than ever convinced, as I said in my review of the first book The Clockwork Rocket, that this novel will attract the attention of genre aficionados and be discussed by them in years to come. After all, it is a story not just set away from Earth, away from the Solar System, or far from the Galaxy: it is set in another universe with very different laws of nature. How cool is that? Jonathan Cowie [Up: Fiction Reviews Index \| SF Author: Website Links \| Home Page: Concatenation] [One Page Futures Short Stories \| Recent Site Additions \| Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	52	https://sfbook.com/distress.htm	en	Book review of Distress by Greg Egan			[ "https://img.sfbook.com/books/large/distress.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/a-map-of-kexs-face.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/beyond-this-horizon.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/broken.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/courage-and-honour.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/earth.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/aliens-nightmare-asylum.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/the-beautiful-land.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/the-proteus-operation.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/tobacco-stained-mountain-goat.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/where-late-the-sweet-birds-sang.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/the-real-town-murders.jpg", "https://img2.sfbook.com/books/small/master-&-apprentice.jpg", "https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_GB/i/scr/pixel.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Author: Greg Egan" ]	1999-01-05T00:00:00	Distress is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Once again Egan grabs an idea and takes it to the limit, this time to th...	en			https://sfbook.com/distress.htm	Distress is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Once again Egan grabs an idea and takes it to the limit, this time to the ultimate limit. In Quarantine he tackled quantum Mechanics, this time he takes on nothing less than the Theory Of Everything (TOE). The year is 2055 and Andrew Worth is doing a documentary about Violet Mosala and her Theory of Everything. Andrew seems to have an easy job ahead of him, but as soon as he gets off the plane on Stateless, an autonomous island, where the Mosala is attending a conference on TOE, he is contacted by a mysterious person warning him about a possible murder attempt on Mosala. Things quickly pick up speed and soon Andrew has to fight for both Mosala's and his own life – and possible for the future and past of everything. Stateless is nearly worth a book of its own – it's the first description, that I can remember, of an functioning anarchy (in the book! In the book!) that is not working in some kind of vacuum. Quite interesting. Egan never ceases to amaze me – He's probably the best author today, when it comes to taking physics to its limit and still make it believable. Review by bon
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	3	5	https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/130489/the-last-book-in-the-universe-by-rodman-philbrick/9780593286166	en	The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick	https://images.randomhouse.com/cover/9780593286166	https://images.randomhouse.com/cover/9780593286166	[]	[]	[]	[ "book" ]	null	[]	null	This fast-paced action novel is set in a future where the world has been almost destroyed. Like the award-winning novel Freak the Mighty, this is Philbrick at his very best.	en	/themes/custom/penguin/images/favicons/favicon.ico	Penguin Random House Canada	https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/130489/the-last-book-in-the-universe-by-rodman-philbrick/9780593286166
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	10	https://www.orionsarm.com/forum/archive/index.php%3Fthread-3432.html	en	Welcome to the Orion's Arm Universe Project	https://www.orionsarm.co…ages/favicon.gif	https://www.orionsarm.co…ages/favicon.gif	[ "https://www.orionsarm.com/images/oa_2018/logo.png", "https://www.orionsarm.com/images/oa_2018/search.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "Orion's Arm", "orions arm", "OA", "worldbuilding", "shared world", "science fiction", "sci fi", "sci-fi", "scifi", "sf", "hard science", "hard science fiction", "hard sf", "future history", "augmentations", "mods" ]	null	[]	null			images/favicon.gif		null	Welcome to Orion's Arm, a scenario set thousands of years in the future where civilization spans the stars. Godlike ascended intelligences rule vast interstellar empires, and lesser factions seek to carve out their own dominions through intrigue and conquest. Out beyond the edge of civilized space and the human-friendly worlds, adventure awaits those prepared to risk all. Come join us in this ever-expanding collective worldbuilding effort. Within the vast universe that is Orion's Arm you will find: hard science plausible technologies realistic cultural development a vast setting 10,000+ years of historical development realistic exobiology a myriad of strange characters and cosmic stories You can begin by reading our intro, canon and illustrated primer. If you have more questions, you can search in our FAQ or ask on the forums or discord
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	48	https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/reviewing/review-oceanic-by-greg-egan/	en	Review: Oceanic, by Greg Egan	https://simonpetrie.word…/07/oceanic1.jpg	https://simonpetrie.word…/07/oceanic1.jpg	[ "https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/oceanic1.jpg?w=191&h=300", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://s2.wp.com/i/logo/wpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2016-07-01T22:32:52+00:00	(Gollancz, 978-0-575-08652-4) (Review first appeared in ASIM 43, January 2010) Greg Egan is one of the most accomplished writers currently active within the domain of hard science fiction. He’s probably most widely known for a series of standalone novels including Schild’s Ladder (2001) and Incandescence (2008), but he has also remained active as a writer…	en	https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico	Simon Petrie	https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/reviewing/review-oceanic-by-greg-egan/	(Gollancz, 978-0-575-08652-4) (Review first appeared in ASIM 43, January 2010) Greg Egan is one of the most accomplished writers currently active within the domain of hard science fiction. He’s probably most widely known for a series of standalone novels including Schild’s Ladder (2001) and Incandescence (2008), but he has also remained active as a writer of shorter fiction. His latest book, Oceanic, collects a dozen stories first published elsewhere, within the pages of Asimov’s, Interzone, and various anthologies. Oceanic opens with ‘Lost Continent’. Ali, seeking to escape an uncertain but grim fate, finds himself flung from a familiar world into an unfamiliar. ‘Lost Continent’ is an excellent opener for the collection, conveying as it does Egan’s concern with fairness and natural justice, concepts notably absent from the society into which Ali has been thrust. There are strong, almost blatant points of comparison with the plight of Australia’s would-be ‘illegal immigrants’, but Egan is careful to let us interpret for ourselves the scenario which he’s painted here. Also on show here are Egan’s gift for the vivid description of exotic environments (among modern SF writers, perhaps only Iain M. Banks has a comparable mastery for visual description) and his ability to gently move a story to the very brink. In ‘Dark Integers’, communication between alternate realities has been effected through the medium of mathematics. It’s a dialogue which begins by blind chance, but which ends up posing some deeply troubling choices. It’s typical of Egan’s subject matter that the story outline may sound abstruse, but Egan’s characterisation and the sheer clarity of his language ensures the reader’s engagement with the text. You’ll never view an ATM in the same light after reading this. ‘Crystal Nights’ concerns efforts to develop a functioning artificial intelligence through the medium of natural selection – well, ‘artificial’ natural selection if you will. Daniel Cliff is obsessed with the dream of creating an AI race, called ‘Phites’. But will the achievement of his ambition live up to his hopes? (And when, from Faust onwards, has this kind of ‘grand design’ thing ever gone well for the progenitor?) ‘Steve Fever’ is a piece of coldly drawn absurdism, in which Egan shows it’s possible to go orders of magnitude beyond spam emails, in regard to intrusiveness, malevolence, and sheer pointlessness. ‘Fever’ is not the most profound story in the collection, by a long shot, but it’s arguably the most fun. The shortest story in the collection, ‘Induction’, is a piece of diamond-hard SF which, despite its steadfast adherence to the absolute limiting speed of light (a constraint with which Egan is distinctly reluctant to tamper), emerges as a near-perfect exposition of SF’s sense of wonder. One of the criticisms most often levelled at ‘hard SF’ is its lack of emotional resonance, a complaint that can hardly ever be applied (with any justification) to Egan’s work. ‘Singleton’ is a long, and ultimately moving, story of artificial intelligence, free will, and quantum computers. As with several of Egan’s novellas, there’s enough depth and detail in the story that it’s easy to imagine its expansion to novel length, but it works just fine the size it is. ‘Oracle’, one of the collection’s older stories (it first appeared in Asimov’s in 2000) is also the closest Egan comes (in this collection, at least) to an outwardly preachy tone. The protagonist in ‘Oracle’, Robert Stoney, mathematician, is a man imprisoned for his beliefs (or lack of them). Challenged to a televised debate with Cambridge don John Hamilton (whose religous beliefs have been infused into a childrens’ book series set in the fantasy land of ‘Nescia’, and whose wife is terminally ill), Stoney attempts to make the case for machine intelligence; although in reality, the two men are at odds about something more fundamental. The one story in the collection ostensibly set in the past, Egan still manages a futuristic tone here. There’s an apparent logic to the ordering of this collection, which didn’t make itself obvious on first reading, but which on reviewing seems crystal-clear. The seven stories up to ‘Oracle’ – a little over half the book, all told – are all grounded in a society recognisable as our own, or as a near-future projection of our own civilisation, or as a mild distorion of our own circumstance. The five stories that form the rest of the collection, from ‘Border Guards’ onwards, are Egan’s exploration of the far future, with protagonists which, in several instances, are not even human. It’s a testament to Egan’s skill as a master of his craft that the division between these two groups of stories is so slight as to appear insubstantial. ‘Border Guards’ is a vaguely-located story (physical references are deliberately scant) which, in essence, offers a perspective on grief in a postmodern setting. ‘Riding the Crocodile’ is the first of three stories to share a universe with Egan’s latest (and somewhat disappointing) novel Incandescence. In ‘Crocodile’, Jasim and Leila’s preoccupation with the pathologically uncommunicative nature of the Galactic core’s ‘Aloof’ culture provides the impetus for a truly Galaxy-spanning adventure. I’ve previously reviewed ‘Glory’, Egan’s contribution to The New Space Opera. Back in 2008, I wrote: “…Egan’s use of an arcane optical phenomenon as a crucial plot element impressed me greatly, as did his refusal to resort to magical physics in the construction of his tale. Egan’s story tells of two human mathematicians, Anne and Jane, who incorporate themselves into the warring factions of the Noudah race for a chance to rescue some details of the mathematical heritage of the Noudah’s antecedents, the Niah. There are reasonably transparent analogies drawn to recent developments in terrestrial civilisation, but ‘Glory’ skirts polemicism.” I’ve nothing to add this time round, except to say that the story arguably works better here, in the context of the two adjacent tales. ‘Hot Rock’ is another somewhat-operatic space adventure. It’s a good story in its own right, which I found particularly enjoyable because Egan does here what he seems to do all too seldom: he describes a planet. All of the other characteristics of his writing are here, too, of course, such as the detailed speculation, the experimentation with truly bizarre lifeforms, and the concern with careful and plausible characterisation. ‘Oceanic’, the novella, rounds out the collection, and another planet is described. On Covenant the Deep Church and the Transitional Church both seek to make sense of human presence on a largely ocean-covered world. Daniel has been brought up in accordance with the Deep Church’s precepts; but is it possible he, and everyone around him, has been looking at things from the wrong perspective? This is a fascinating exploration of spirituality, laced with biochemistry and some decidedly innovative human engineering. ‘Oceanic’, the novella, won the 2009 Hugo Award for best novella. And Oceanic, the collection, has just won the Aurealis Award for best collection. With credentials like that, and Egan’s pedigree, how can you go wrong? Highly recommended.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	7	https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Online.html	en	Works Online	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	[ "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validHTML.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validCSS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "Greg Egan", "science fiction", "bibliography" ]	null	[]	null	Greg Egan Works Online	en	../images/egan.ico		null	Language of publication: Novels Note: Some third-party bibliographies have incorrectly described three of my novels as being part of “The Subjective Cosmology Cycle”. In fact, there is no such thing. The description of these three books as belonging to some kind of “series” is a misunderstanding; I've mentioned in interviews that they have some thematic similarities with each other that I noticed in retrospect, but they were certainly never conceived of, nor published as, a series. Morphotrophic [LATEST UPDATE] excerpt online at author’s web site. Greg Egan, 2024. ISBN13 978-1-922240-52-1 (pb) Amazon print-on-demand (USA), Amazon print-on-demand (UK), Amazon print-on-demand (Australia) etc. This paperback edition can be purchased through the Amazon stores for the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Scale excerpt online at author’s web site. Greg Egan, 2023. ISBN13 978-1-922240-43-9 (pb) Amazon print-on-demand (USA), Amazon print-on-demand (UK), Amazon print-on-demand (Australia) etc. This paperback edition can be purchased through the Amazon stores for the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. The Book of All Skies excerpt online at author’s web site. Greg Egan, 2021. ISBN13 978-1-922240-37-8 (hb) Amazon print-on-demand (USA), Amazon print-on-demand (UK) etc. This hardback edition can be purchased through the Amazon stores for the USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Dichronauts excerpt online at author’s web site. Night Shade Books, New York, 2017. ISBN 159780892X / ISBN13 978-1597808927 (hb) — 2018. ISBN 1597809403 / ISBN13 978-1597809405 (tpb) Orthogonal Book Three: The Arrows of Time excerpt online at author’s web site. Orion/Gollancz, London, 2013. ISBN 0575105763 / ISBN13 978-0575105768 (tpb) — 2014. ISBN 0575105771 / ISBN13 978-0575105775 (pb) Orthogonal Book Two: The Eternal Flame Night Shade Books, San Francisco, 2012. ISBN 159780293X / ISBN13 978-1597802932 (hb) — 2013. ISBN 1597802948 / ISBN13 978-1-59780-294-9 (tpb) excerpt online at author’s web site. Orthogonal Book One: The Clockwork Rocket Night Shade Books, San Francisco, 2011. ISBN 1597802271 / ISBN13 978-1597802277 (hb) — 2012. ISBN 1597802921 / ISBN13 978-1-59780-292-5 (tpb) excerpt online at author’s web site. Zendegi excerpt online at author’s web site. Orion/Gollancz, London, 2010. ISBN 0575086173 / ISBN13 978-0575086173 (hb) ISBN 0575086181 / ISBN13 978-0575086180 (tpb) — 2011. ISBN13 978-0575086203 (pb) Incandescence Orion/Gollancz, London, 2008. ISBN 0575081627 / ISBN13 978-0575081628 (hb) ISBN 0575081635 / ISBN13 978-0575081635 (tpb) — 2009. ISBN13 978-0575081642 (pb) excerpt online at author’s web site. Schild's Ladder Orion/Gollancz, London, 2002. ISBN 0-57507-068-4 (hb) ISBN 0-57507-123-0 (tpb) — 2003. ISBN 0-57507-391-8 (pb) — 2007. ISBN 0575081112 / ISBN13 978-0575081116 (pb, reissue) — 2008. ISBN 0575082062 / ISBN13 978-0575082069 (pb, reissue) excerpt online at author’s web site. Teranesia Orion/Gollancz, London, 1999. ISBN 0-57506-854-X (hb) ISBN 0-57506-855-8 (tpb) — Orion/Millennium, 2000. ISBN 1-85798-864-7 (pb) — 2008. ISBN 0575083336 / ISBN13 978-0575083332 (pb, reissue) excerpt online at author’s web site. Diaspora Orion/Millennium, London, 1997. ISBN 1-85798-438-2 (hb) ISBN 1-85798-439-0 (tpb) — 1998. ISBN 0-75280-925-3 (pb) — 2008. ISBN 0575082097 / ISBN13 978-0575082090 (pb, reissue) excerpt (“Orphanogenesis”) online at author’s web site. Distress Orion/Millennium, London, 1995. ISBN 1-85798-286-X (hb) ISBN 1-85798-285-1 (tpb) — 1996. ISBN 1-85799-484-1 (pb) — 2008. ISBN 0575081732 / ISBN13 978-0575081734 (pb, reissue) excerpt online at author’s web site. Permutation City Orion/Millennium, London, 1994. ISBN 1-85798-174-X (hb) ISBN 1-85798-175-8 (tpb) — 1995. ISBN 1-85798-218-5 (pb) — 1998. ISBN 0-75281-649-7 (pb, reissue) — 2008. ISBN 0575082070 / ISBN13 978-0575082076 (pb, reissue) excerpt online at author’s web site. Quarantine Orion/Millennium, London, 1999. ISBN 1-85798-590-7 (pb, reissue) — 2008. ISBN 0575081724 / ISBN13 978-0575081727 (pb, reissue) excerpt online at author’s web site. Stories “Didicosm” Analog, July/August 2023. Online at author’s web site. “Dream Factory” Online at Clarkesworld, April 2022. Sleep and the Soul (collection, Greg Egan) “You and Whose Army?” Online at Clarkesworld, October 2020. The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 5, edited by Allan Kaster. Audio and eBook; Infinivox/AudioText, Barker TX, 2021. “Zeitgeber” Online at Tor.com, September 2019. Sleep and the Soul (collection, Greg Egan) “The Nearest” Online at Tor.com, July 2018. The Long List Anthology, Volume 5, edited by David Steffen; Diabolical Plots, 2019. “Uncanny Valley” Online at Tor.com, August 2017. The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Three, edited by Neil Clarke; Night Shade Books, New York, 2018. “Bit Players” “Vedlejší postavy” online at Archetypal. Translated by Jaromír Matýšek. (Czech translation) The Best of Greg Egan (collection, Subterranean Press) Online at author’s web site. “In the Ruins” Online at author’s web site. “Crystal Nights” Interzone #215, April 2008. Online at author’s web site. “Steve Fever” Technology Review, November/December 2007. Online at Technology Review. “Glory” The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan; HarperCollins, New York / Sydney, 2007. Online (PDF) at Eos web site. “Riding the Crocodile” One Million A.D., edited by Gardner Dozois; Science Fiction Book Club, New York, 2005. Online at author’s web site. “Singleton” Interzone #176, February 2002. Online at author’s web site. “Oracle” Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2000. Online at author’s web site. “Only Connect” Nature, 10 February 2000. Online at author’s web site. “Border Guards” Interzone #148, October 1999. Online at author’s web site. “Oceanic” Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 1998. Online at author’s web site. “Océanique” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman and Quarante-Deux. (French translation) “The Planck Dive” Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 1998. Online at author’s web site. “Yeyuka” Meanjin, Volume 56 No. 1, 1997. Online at Infinity Plus. Online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman and Quarante-Deux. (French translation) “Reasons to Be Cheerful” Interzone #118, April 1997. “Põhjused rõõmustada” online at Reaktor, September 2022. Translated by Talvike Mändla. (Estonian translation) “TAP” Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1995. Online at Infinity Plus. “LAMA” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman and Quarante-Deux. (French translation) “PAT” online at Axxón. Translated by Andrés Diplotti. (Spanish translation) “Wang's Carpets” New Legends, edited by Greg Bear; Legend, London, 1995. “Wangovi sagovi” online at math.e. Translated by Predrag Raos. (Croatian translation) “Mitochondrial Eve” Interzone #92, February 1995. Online at Bli-Panika. (Hebrew translation) “Closer” Eidolon #9, Winter 1992. “Plus près de toi” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman and Quarante-Deux. (French translation) Online at author’s web site. “Worthless” In Dreams, edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman; Victor Gollancz, London, 1992. Online at Infinity Plus. Online at author’s web site. “The Demon's Passage” Eidolon #5, Winter 1991. “le Passage du démon” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman. (French translation) “The Vat” Eidolon #3, Spring 1990. “la Cuve” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman. (French translation) “La Tinozza” online at Intercom. Translated by Danilo Santoni. (Italian translation) “The Moral Virologist” Pulphouse #8, Summer 1990. “Il Virologo Morale” online at Intercom. Translated by Danilo Santoni. (Italian translation) Online at author’s web site. “Axiomatic” Interzone #41, November 1990. Short film written and directed by K.S. Kuperis, 2017 (17 minutes, free to watch online) “The Extra” Eidolon #2, Winter 1990. “le Réserviste” online at Quarante-Deux. Translated by Francis Lustman. (French translation) “Scatter My Ashes” Interzone #23, Spring 1988. Online at author’s web site. “Neighbourhood Watch” Aphelion #5, Summer 1986/87. Online at author’s web site. Free podcast at Pseudopod. “Mind Vampires” Interzone #18, Winter 1986/87. Online at author’s web site. “Tangled Up” Urban Fantasies, edited by David King and Russell Blackford; Ebony Books, Melbourne, 1985. Online at author’s web site. Interviews “SF Signal Interview” Interview by Andrea Johnson. Online at SF Signal. “Le moulin à idées” Interview and translation by Eric Jentile. Online at Quoi de neuf sur ma pile ?. (French translation) “Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures” Albedo One, Number 37, 2009. Interview by David Conyers. Online at author’s web site. “Aurealis interview” Aurealis #42, August 2009. Interview by Russell Blackford. Online at author’s web site. “The Way Things Are” Online at author’s web site. “noise! interview” My Life as a Megarich Bombshell #3, Summer 1998. Online at author’s web site. “Piffle interview” Piffle & Other Trivia #26, September 1997. Interview by Russell B. Farr. Online at author’s web site. “Ibn Qirtaiba interview” Online at Intercom. Translated by Danilo Santoni. (Italian translation) Non-fiction “The View Through a Wormhole” Online at The Astounding Analog Companion (The Analog Science Fiction Magazine Blog). “Inside 3-adica” Online at From Earth to the Stars (The Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Blog). “Polar Orbits Around Binary Stars” Online at arXiv preprint server. Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, Volume 130 (2018), p5. Online at Springer Web Site. “No Intelligence Required” Online at author’s web site. “Avatar Review” Online at author’s web site. “Born Again, Briefly” 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk; Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester / Malden, 2009. Online at author’s web site. “Anatomy of a Hatchet Job” Online at author’s web site. “Letters from the Forgotten” The Age, 17 February 2005. Online at The Age Online. “The Razor Wire Looking Glass” Online at author’s web site. “Asymptotics of 10j Symbols” Online at arXiv preprint server. Co-written with John Baez and Dan Christensen. Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 19 (2002), pp 6489-6513. Co-written with John Baez and Dan Christensen. “Stephen Wolfram's Science” Online at author’s web site. “No Sugar” Online at author’s web site. “An Efficient Algorithm for the Riemannian 10j Symbols” Online at arXiv preprint server. Co-written with Dan Christensen. Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 19 (2002), pp 1185-1193. Co-written with Dan Christensen. “Foundations 4: Quantum Mechanics” Eidolon #29/30, Autumn 2000. Online at author’s web site. “Foundations 3: Black Holes” Eidolon #28, Winter 1999. Online at author’s web site. “Foundations 2: From Special to General” Eidolon #27, Autumn 1998. Online at author’s web site. “Foundations 1: Special Relativity” Eidolon #25/26, Spring 1997. Online at author’s web site. Works Online / created Saturday, 25 October 1997 / revised Saturday, 16 March 2024
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	88	https://elflands2ndcousin.com/2011/07/19/review-the-clockwork-rocket-by-greg-egan/	en	REVIEW: The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan	http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1597802271&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20&ServiceVersion=20070822	http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1597802271&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20&ServiceVersion=20070822	[ "http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1597802271&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20&ServiceVersion=20070822", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/star.png?w=620", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/star.png?w=620", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/theclockworkrocket-plot-chart.png?w=620", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553297090&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B003XVYLEY&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1585676837&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B003VPWZU4&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553560735&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0765319640&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=076534825X&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/theclockworkrocket-intensity.png?w=300&h=200", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553560735&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1848876807&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/c55be0c555956ea0f325ebda980a777f9f5e0521d6a24fc7bfd95fc7153840f2?s=62&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D62&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/91324d7f7582a8d9c4b1caaf47d9dd46dbbfa366964952cb04108cda8b48e135?s=62&d=https%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D62&r=G", "https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/linen/images/flw-twitter.png", "https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/linen/images/flw-rss.png", "https://i0.wp.com/www.bloggapedia.com/bp_small_images/blog-gapedia9.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2011-07-19T00:00:00	Title: The Clockwork Rocket Author: Greg Egan Pub Date: June 21, 2011 Chris' Rating (5 possible): An Attempt at Categorization If You Like... / You Might Like... Timescape Tau Zero Non-Stop Picoverse Red Mars Blindsight Spin Before I get into reviewing Greg Egan's new book The Clockwork Rocket, I feel I must offer a disclaimer:…	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=32	The King of Elfland's Second Cousin	https://elflands2ndcousin.com/2011/07/19/review-the-clockwork-rocket-by-greg-egan/	Title: The Clockwork Rocket Author: Greg Egan Pub Date: June 21, 2011 Chris’ Rating (5 possible): An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like… Timescape Tau Zero Non-Stop Picoverse Red Mars Blindsight Spin Before I get into reviewing Greg Egan’s new book The Clockwork Rocket, I feel I must offer a disclaimer: I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician. The fact that I need to preface a discussion of the book with such a disclaimer should already tell you a lot about it. The Clockwork Rocket is hard science fiction, an impressive exercise in rationalist world-building that posits a universe whose physics differs significantly from our own. And while the book wins my applause for its science and world-building, I’m afraid the characters left a little to be desired. The Clockwork Rocket follows the character of Yalda, a non-human female who lives on a planet quite unlike the Earth we know. She comes from a rural farming backwater, where few people are literate (despite the fact that her species can naturally manipulate their bodies’ shape and structure with enough precision to form symbols on their skin). From the start of the book, Yalda is set apart from her neighbors. Unlike most of her siblings and cousins, she is introduced as a child who is discriminated against due to her lack of a predetermined mate and her large size. Using a child perspective character to gradually introduce the reader to some pretty complicated world-building is an old trick, but Egan pulls it off reasonably well. As Yalda learns about the physics of her world, we learn alongside her. When she becomes a teacher, we learn along with her students. The book is structured such that each chapter represents a particular event in her life, with jumps of indeterminate time between them – sometimes spanning days, other times entire years. We get to follow Yalda as she leaves the family farm, and begins to get a proper university education…still subject to her society’s discrimination and social expectation that females should be content to die giving birth to their children. By the end of the first several pages, we are absolutely certain that we are not in Kansas anymore. If the structure introduces a problem, it is that there is a colossal amount of world-building to communicate. How much world-building would that be? Well, over on his web site Egan has posted over 80,000 words (that is not a typo) of notes on the physics and math alone. They are a thing of beauty. He’s even got cool tutorial videos! However, the strategy employed and the density of the world-building both lead the first half of the book to consist of little other than one scientist explaining something to another scientist (with copious diagrams and some explanation of formula). While the explanations are intellectually interesting, the lack of emotional tension and density of the scientific material may be off-putting to some readers. From a plotting standpoint, two basic tensions are introduced. First, Yalda’s species has an interesting reproductive cycle. Females die giving birth, and if they delay reproduction for too long they risk involuntary parthenogenesis. This creates an interesting dynamic between the genders of her species, and leads to some thematic tension. Because she lacks a mate, Yalda is under particular pressure by the establishment of her society. As an independent thinker who aggressively seeks education and rejects the standard female role in her society, she challenges that establishment, and of course that establishment pushes back. It was refreshing to see that throughout the book, Yalda at no point needs to be rescued by a man. I can respect a hard SF story that puts a female scientist in jeopardy and doesn’t have her rely on an alpha male to save her. The second tension is an impending apocalypse caused by two universes (with different rules of physics) colliding. As they collide, Yalda’s world is in danger of being destroyed. As a theoretical physicist and the discoverer of her universe’s flavor of relativity, Yalda is at the heart of her species’ efforts to save themselves. Their solution – to build a rocket ship that can be taken out of time, filled with top scientists, and then re-inserted into their timeline when the scientists’ descendents have figured out a solution – is ingenious. It is really cool that Egan’s alternative rules of physics make this plausible. One would think that both the societal pressure and the risk of apocalypse would lend Yalda’s story a degree of emotional tension, but unfortunately whatever tension is produced gets subsumed by the sheer volume of diagrams and scientific explanations. The physics are fascinating – but I found that I didn’t quite care about the character as much as I would have liked to. This is especially a problem for the first half of the book, where the reader’s learning curve is very high. Once we’re grounded in the physics, the character and her problems become more engaging. But two hundred pages of world-building is a lot to plow through before we can really start investing in our perspective character. The Clockwork Rocket is not unique in this issue: much hard SF shares this problem (Kim Stanley Robinson’s classic Red Mars comes to mind). While readers used to hard SF who enjoy the intellectual challenge may enjoy this, it is not for everyone. Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket is particularly interesting when compared to Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Like Egan, Yu posits a universe with rules of physics entirely different from our own. But Yu’s book focuses on the internal and emotional experience of his everyman character. It is through his character that we understand Yu’s world-building. Egan’s strategy is to focus on the world-building first, and then have the character follow. These two different approaches yield very different reading experiences.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	87	http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/11/review-book-of-all-skies-by-greg-egan.html	en	nerds of a feather, flock together: Review: The Book of All Skies by Greg Egan	https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu	https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu	[ "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w306-h400", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-netvibes.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-yahoo.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-netvibes.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-yahoo.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRmxgqQJL1Kn0D2GjfmyW64-QyfISNGtTxzpM50AHtO9i_TejOAa-AgNMPrnPSmEgHCpITGXe-4FV5saTTRHT5Ockz81QM1IN1kSlh3REY_3FVyPiUlJdQfTogmJoShhXD8cYS7tohxDHyOWVOaWNPY6NHQiYu4XzE9mRn7fPtOH0WKRk6BBcQi_N-mKA/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/image02.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKm_oo6PrP69XRZw2K-FdIUOrl3U-Jip2BfA_-pYXMfprp6xNqTDT9fpjfx4oFYB5xx_tJGOxotxdhrkrlB40kq7Z7pQ7KUaa_6bnaSUkmnhyQVsq1c60nl0qSS3i_CNre5cR7oA-On9HeDFoUJ_GM5aIgFqz5P7iGXzuQj09W1WNNngPBIkAzWoE0LwC/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/aco.png", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tt86REM0vDByvcv4iwdMwUqvGYe_Ha2XLq6GD13yVrGzYypvPoBYbcJsVHaFrJMZ40QANrvTqvqFEbbAswZvpgilafMBr_JgqHtcWjV-jdBgYShVJT-cVrDev2SV6Aqak8uur8X_Dyn3fHdeKjlVZVGKTKI7zrJHTvX-metzOZxQwQ0YAVKqOH61_77w=w72-h72-p-k-no-nu", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3iH7Bnv27xIT2_Nyekv76JK2q9QgRvJAOW9iSi9S1sOPPRFD93jigeBsFB8DGO0glGZl6M39N6rTpY-FZK1qEZhuOJdmyJ1WHNkVZeF3LRUnYdk04Qn3FwOVmp55g6odb1l6iKpok3aiffYVHk9CVCOKUYScde0KT_Ey3Bp4BwQGLJNS7F13W45kH6PpA/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/IMG_6646.jpeg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkuon9uLvqLmeYd3PIKroRcdWnCsas7cFUlDJ5KiePEXve7VUbKDW4nhI9Q2zOeeb2JOhorYg06CaMsOptg7C67tyoxeYwQh9USP3jC_E156_NhWT7_loe_-Db0EUUk5fSYVM2ymEJBuwHASV29FbneLJnMPEd9ls3VG8kijjfZdbOwnDibMyq_ycA6ijK/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/MV5BNjBmYzFmODktNDIyZC00NWFmLTk2NTctYmZiY2E2OTA2OTc0XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Arturo Serrano" ]	null	The journey is hard to follow, but the destination is worth it Greg Egan has become my insta-buy author. At times, the scientific underpinni...	en	http://www.nerds-feather.com/favicon.ico		http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/11/review-book-of-all-skies-by-greg-egan.html	The journey is hard to follow, but the destination is worth it Greg Egan has become my insta-buy author. At times, the scientific underpinnings of his worldbuilding fly over my head, but I can always trust that he's done his homework and that the whole edifice will stand. He writes in that hard SF tradition where the conflict to overcome is not interpersonal disagreement or inner turmoil but a purely technical challenge. As in a Clarke story, the universe is villain enough. The Book of All Skies occurs in a spatially warped version of our world where two gigantic arches, known as the Hoops, serve as portals to alternate lands with different ecosystems, cultures, languages, and stars. Since this is a world without a sun, its inhabitants live in perpetual night, so they have evolved the ability to see infrared. The only sources of sustenance for living beings are starlight and geothermal energy. The Hoops themselves are not physical objects, but you can always tell where they are because the night sky visible from one side ends abruptly at a boundary where the next sky continues. Now, crucially, if you want to remain in the same land, you can always walk around a Hoop. But if you cross under it to enter the next land, you can turn around and cross it again, and enter yet another land, and repeat the procedure dozens of times. The only way to return to your point of origin is to walk back the exact same trajectory. (If you're not a topologist and, like me, feel utterly lost, the author has posted a helpful explainer here.) There's a narrative economy here that results in a constant state of surprise, but this technique may not suit everyone's taste. A line in the first page only makes sense if the reader can infer the mechanism of infrared vision, but otherwise, the reader is left alone. This isn't a novel that hands over explanations. The setting is absolutely alien to our common experience, but it's described from a standpoint of normalcy, which for the reader means waiting several chapters to even learn that this world has no sun, and even more chapters to realize (although it should have been obvious in hindsight) that the protagonists have no concept of years. There are infodumps, but they're restricted to points in dialogue where they're immediately relevant. If you're fine with exposition flowing organically from plot, spoken more for the actual benefit of another character than the reader's, you'll enjoy this style of writing. The plot follows Del, an archaeologist and linguist who lives in a land at a pre-industrial stage of technological advancement, who has been recruited for an expedition to investigate one mysterious land where the ground gives way to a seemingly endless gap and no one knows whether there's more world beyond. A legend speaks of a great migration in the past, but the only pieces of evidence available are a missing book and a closed passage under the mountains. The process to reach the other side of the gap involves extensive discussions and calculations, because gravity behaves in counterintuitive ways when you cross a Hoop that has a full world on one side and only thin air on the other. No actual numbers appear in the novel (that's what the explainer page is for), although illustrations would have been very helpful. I struggled to picture the specific shape of a gigantic bridge built to cross the gap, or the trajectory of certain buoyant vehicles, or the positions of sections of rock relative to the Hoops, and after intense rereading, I'm still not sure my mental image matches Egan's. What Del discovers at the end of her journey is not only the secret history of the fabled migration, but also the origin of the Hoops, the tragic explanation for the loss of written records, a completely different technological tradition (a discovery that underscores the relationship between scientific advancement and availability of resources), and rules for social organization she hadn't remotely suspected. However, readers must keep in mind that this is not the type of story that culminates in a big reflection on the deep truths of human life. The ending is resolved by the clever application of physics, and that's where the novel places its ambitions. The adventure in the last couple of chapters proceeds with the mechanical dryness of a Verne novel, and the text ends with unexpected abruptness in the middle of a dialogue. It does complete the thematic interests of the book, in that the ancient separation of humankind is healed, but the manner of execution can come off as ungraceful. Likewise, action scenes early in the book often pause at the strangest moments to describe a character's entire thought process, or even to insert an entire dialogue, full with meticulous strategizing, right at a moment of immediate urgency. Although this helps understand the motivations of a scene, it comes at the cost of hurting the reading flow. Readers accustomed to a more literary vein of science fiction need to consider the text for what it aims to do and the way it sets about achieving it before jumping to find fault in these writing choices. Egan's interest in exploring strange universes is mathematical first and poetic second. That's a valid way of creating science fiction, one that has historically provided the essential link between speculation and real-life innovation, and one that needs authors like Egan in order to stay fertile. Nerd Coefficient: 6/10. POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	68	https://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/07/22/the-big-idea-greg-egan/	en	The Big Idea: Greg Egan	http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/25220000/25223213.jpg	http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/25220000/25223213.jpg	[ "https://i0.wp.com/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/25220000/25223213.jpg?resize=394%2C600", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1d693e564f2fc432056d6fcfffd158ff?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/77177a481e73d20a5d6c9562ac09c8f5?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d96da7e03d39c7984307bd2f3e0cafee?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/08e866f967bac320259c093563d3d47c?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/174d05ddc6fb0a640e8f2f2028e6e1ca?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/55da62e772f86c99b2a49286026a4ba0?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/aa44c365378eea81f9a3fccfa80ba2a4?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d80717c2a0ff0a0646e645dbdfc322da?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f9d9e3a078e24edf91f6044b127668d4?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/93134acbf4e08d03b71c985d9861d99d?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2b248b6fdd9ff70f6d5a6be2136a7b99?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c79f58b9455d9f8eb4b3e82451d55cdc?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2178bd5dafa84b503f381e9e7da98251?s=48&d=identicon&r=pg", "https://i0.wp.com/c1.staticflickr.com/5/4206/35418925932_9d78f59619_n.jpg?w=639&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/52403961981_e7b56af17c_n.jpg?w=639&ssl=1", "https://whatever.scalzi.com/wp-includes/images/rss.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "John Scalzi" ]	2008-07-22T00:00:00	If you like your science fiction hard -- we're talking diamond-scratching hard, here -- then you already know that Greg Egan is your man; this Hugo winner's been spinning tales of hard SF for years that make you think and thrill at the same time. After a six-year break from novels, Egan is back with…	en	https://i0.wp.com/whatev…it=32%2C32&ssl=1	Whatever	https://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/07/22/the-big-idea-greg-egan/	If you like your science fiction hard — we’re talking diamond-scratching hard, here — then you already know that Greg Egan is your man; this Hugo winner’s been spinning tales of hard SF for years that make you think and thrill at the same time. After a six-year break from novels, Egan is back with Incandescence, which features a journey to the very core of the galaxy. You know, like you do. And for those of you who are wondering just how seriously Egan takes the “science” part of the phrase “science fiction,” here’s Egan to explain the genesis of Incandescence, which involves Einstein’s greatest discovery, and how people who aren’t exactly Einsteins themselves might discover it. GREG EGAN: Incandescence grew out of the notion that the theory of general relativity — widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement — could be discovered by a pre-industrial civilization with no steam engines, no electric lights, no radio transmitters, and absolutely no tradition of astronomy. At first glance, this premise might strike you as a little hard to believe. We humans came to a detailed understanding of gravity after centuries of painstaking astronomical observations, most crucially of the motions of the planets across the sky. Johannes Kepler found that these observations could be explained if the planets moved around the sun along elliptical orbits, with the square of the orbital period proportional to the cube of the length of the longest axis of the ellipse. Newton showed that just such a motion would arise from a universal attraction between bodies that was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. That hypothesis was a close enough approximation to the truth to survive for more than three centuries. When Newton was finally overthrown by Einstein, the birth of the new theory owed much less to the astronomical facts it could explain — such as a puzzling drift in the point where Mercury made its closest approach to the sun — than to an elegant theory of electromagnetism that had arisen more or less independently of ideas about gravity. Electrostatic and magnetic effects had been unified by James Clerk Maxwell, but Maxwell’s equations only offered one value for the speed of light, however you happened to be moving when you measured it. Making sense of this fact led Einstein first to special relativity, in which the geometry of space-time had the unvarying speed of light built into it, then general relativity, in which the curvature of the same geometry accounted for the motion of objects free-falling through space. So for us, astronomy was crucial even to reach as far as Newton, and postulating Einstein’s theory — let alone validating it to high precision, with atomic clocks on satellites and observations of pulsar orbits — depended on a wealth of other ideas and technologies. How, then, could my alien civilization possibly reach the same conceptual heights, when they were armed with none of these apparent prerequisites? The short answer is that they would need to be living in just the right environment: the accretion disk of a large black hole. When SF readers think of the experience of being close to a black hole, the phenomena that most easily come to mind are those that are most exotic from our own perspective: time dilation, gravitational blue-shifts, and massive distortions of the view of the sky. But those are all a matter of making astronomical observations, or at least arranging some kind of comparison between the near-black-hole experience and the experience of other beings who have kept their distance. My aliens would probably need to be sheltering deep inside some rocky structure to protect them from the radiation of the accretion disk — and the glow of the disk itself would also render astronomy immensely difficult. Blind to the heavens, how could they come to learn anything at all about gravity, let alone the subtleties of general relativity? After all, didn’t Einstein tell us that if we’re free-falling, weightless, in a windowless elevator, gravity itself becomes impossible to detect? Not quite! To render its passenger completely oblivious to gravity, not only does the elevator need to be small, but the passenger’s observations need to be curtailed in time just as surely as they’re limited in space. Given time, gravity makes its mark. Forget about black holes for a moment: even inside a windowless space station orbiting the Earth, you could easily prove that you were not just drifting through interstellar space, light-years from the nearest planet. How? Put on your space suit, and pump out all the station’s air. Then fill the station with small objects — paper clips, pens, whatever — being careful to place them initially at rest with respect to the walls. Wait, and see what happens. Most objects will eventually hit the walls; the exact proportion will depend on the station’s spin. But however the station is or isn’t spinning, some objects will undergo a cyclic motion, moving back and forth, all with the same period. That period is the orbital period of the space station around the Earth. The paper clips and pens that are moving back and forth inside the station are following orbits that are inclined at a very small angle to the orbit of the station’s center of mass. Twice in every orbit, the two paths cross, and the paper clip passes through the center of the space station. Then it moves away, reaches the point of greatest separation of the orbits, then turns around and comes back. This minuscule difference in orbits is enough to reveal the fact that you’re not drifting in interstellar space. A sufficiently delicate spring balance could reveal the tiny “tidal gravitational force” that is another way of thinking about exactly the same thing, but unless the orbital period was very long, you could stick with the technology-free approach and just watch and wait. A range of simple experiments like this — none of them much harder than those conducted by Galileo and his contemporaries — were the solution to my aliens’ need to catch up with Newton. But catching up with Einstein? Surely that was beyond hope? I thought it might be, until I sat down and did some detailed calculations. It turned out that, close to a black hole, the differences between Newton’s and Einstein’s predictions would easily be big enough for anyone to spot without sophisticated instrumentation. What about sophisticated mathematics? The geometry of general relativity isn’t trivial, but much of its difficulty, for us, revolves around the need to dispose of our preconceptions. By putting my aliens in a world of curved and twisted tunnels, rather than the flat, almost Euclidean landscape of a patch of planetary surface, they came better prepared for the need to cope with a space-time geometry that also twisted and curved. The result was an alternative, low-tech path into some of the most beautiful truths we’ve yet discovered about the universe. To add to the drama, though, there needed to be a sense of urgency; the intellectual progress of the aliens had to be a matter of life and death. But having already put them beside a black hole, danger was never going to be far behind. — Incandescence: Amazon \| Barnes & Noble \| Powell’s
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	44	http://www.strataoftheworld.com/2018/05/review-permutation-city-greg-egan.html	en	Strata of the World: Review: Permutation City (Greg Egan)	http://www.strataoftheworld.com/favicon.ico	http://www.strataoftheworld.com/favicon.ico	[ "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif", "http://www.blogger.com/img/blogger_logo_round_35.png", "https://follow.it/static/img/colored-logo.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	A blog about civilisation, CS, math, physics, and reviews of books on these topics.	en	http://www.strataoftheworld.com/favicon.ico		http://www.strataoftheworld.com/2018/05/review-permutation-city-greg-egan.html
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	52	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41746496-the-clockwork-rocket	en	The Clockwork Rocket (Orthogonal Book 1)	https://images-na.ssl-im…44i/41746496.jpg	https://images-na.ssl-im…44i/41746496.jpg	[ "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/siteheaderbannerimages/1717004244i/409.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1536497344i/41746496.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1536497344i/41746496.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1375595103i/32699._UY200_CR50,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1442491692i/1713956.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1327258501i/111076.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1389592122i/1229019._UX200_CR0,44,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1508811508i/4213258._UY200_CR91,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1696608350i/666892._UX200_CR0,47,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1658888239i/1639329._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1606834944i/1433865._UY200_CR47,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1301936603i/4854547._UX200_CR0,66,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1714866943i/5977802._UX200_CR0,24,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1316006133i/5370682._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1239392797i/2201886._UY200_CR44,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1363202237i/18333946._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1483904179i/2613919._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1504172448i/70907778.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1583681003i/16424712._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1302986305i/5277400._UY200_CR47,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1488298787i/36489698._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1380303248ra/687834.gif", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1665104578i/143981697._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1695651536i/34756799.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1695651899i/34756808.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1695651899i/34756809.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1534698357i/29609954._UY200_CR19,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1663746096i/26753882._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1379630302i/1453295._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1686392209i/109040982._UY200_CR19,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1311602030i/5876605._UY200_CR14,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1315492109i/961119._UX200_CR0,25,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1293943139i/4460898._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-apple_app_store@2x.png", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-google_play_store@2x.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Greg Egan" ]	null	Read 233 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. In Yalda's universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. On Ya…	en	/favicon.ico	Goodreads	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9756310-the-clockwork-rocket	June 23, 2019 Don't get me wrong, I loved this book. As several people had told me, there's nothing like it. But at same time, I couldn't help wondering what would happened... If Tolkien had done linguistics the way Greg Egan does science "Now what was that?" asked Sam, scratching his head. "Elvish, was it? But it didn't sound like no Elvish I've ever heard. Begging your pardon, sir," he added, turning to face the tall Elf. "It was Quenya," said Frodo. "Although Quenya and Sindarin have a common origin, they sound very different, because the languages diverged during the long period during the First Age when the two speaker-groups were separated." "Eh?" said Sam. "I'm sorry Master, but you'll have to say that again. In plain Westron, if you don't mind." "Let me give you an example," said Frodo patiently. "Take the word elen which I used when I greeted Gildor back in the Shire. Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo. A star shines on the hour of our meeting. Now what do you imagine elen means?" Sam turned red. "Star?" ventured Pippin. "Exactly!" said Frodo. "If you just think about it, the same root occurs in several other words you know. It's the first two syllables of Elendil. Elenna, 'the land of the star', is one of the many names of Valinor, the Blessed Realm. You have surely heard people refer to Varda as Elentári, 'the lady of the stars'. And in that beautiful song Namárië, which Galadriel sang for us the other day, you will remember her referring to i eleni, 'the stars'--" "I see!" said Merry. "But why is the plural eleni? I thought Quenya plurals were all formed with suffixes ending in -r. You know, Vala/Valar, mordo/mordor, elda/eldar--" "You have not been paying attention," said Frodo, his eyes twinkling. "What about the common word Quendi? A plural, is it not?" "Uh, yes," said Merry, embarrassed at his elementary slip. "In fact," said Frodo, "the plural in -i is very common in Quenya. It comes directly from Primitive Elvish -î, a word like Quendi representing primitive Kwendî. The plural ending -r arose later. And if you consider the matter a little more carefully, the Sindarin word êl, as for example in elanor--" "Not wanting to interrupt, sir," said Sam, "but I see a party of orcs headed our way. I can't help thinking we should get moving sharpish. If that's alright. Sir." "I suppose we have to," said Frodo reluctantly. It was always so much more interesting to discuss philology. To The Eternal Flame March 13, 2012 I have a math degree and I have read a LOT of hard SF - and this might be the hardest hard SF I have ever seen. I'm not sure it would be possible to write something harder except perhaps by throwing in some hive minds and teleportation. And yet, woven among the charts and brain-busting explanations there really is a plot with some reasonably interesting characters. If I have learned anything from all my SF reading, it is that there are hardly any books that have a very strong concept AND very strong characterizations. It's perhaps unreasonable to require it; better to have it be a nice surprise if it occurs. I knew from previous Egans that if he postulates some rules for his universe, they may be outrageous but it won't be because he hasn't thought them through. In fact, my one real beef with this book is that it made me feel stupid. After a while I decided that I could live with that, and then it was OK. If you have not read previous Egans, I don't think this is a good one to start with. Indeed, if you haven't read much hard SF, you might start with some other authors in the sub-genre before tacking Egan. July 12, 2011 This is the perfect sf novel and a clear example why sf is still my favorite genre; besides the strong sfnal content though it is very well written and flows on the page and it has in Yalda one of the best characters in recent memories, with a good supporting cast too. Shapeshifter (for good reasons explained at the author's site about how molecules look like in the universe he describes) generally (see before) six limbed aliens symmetric in 3D in their "normal" form - so they have eyes both back and front for example - that emit light, sleep in beds dug in the ground to cool down (emitting light generates heat in their universe) though of course the well off in cities have special cooled beds, that reproduce by the mother being divided into four - 2 twin pairs that each generally forms a reproducing couple, though there are the occasional solos like Yalda and the social misfits - while the men are conditioned to take care of the children... A harsh universe with unstable matter, but also a culture of cities, science, technology, society, books, philosophers, scientists... The people in this universe are "not us" and in some ways are very strange due to their biology - "being able to fly is like being able to know your mother" is one of the simple proverbs that appear in the book - but they are also "us" in many important ways that matter and this is why this book is both a pitch perfect example of how to imagine aliens that are simply not "costume-ones", but that are similar enough that we understand and care about them... And not to speak of the main story with the orthogonal stars, the threat to their civilization... The novel moved me deeply too and I almost cried at the end despite that I saw what will happen from a long time back and I really, really want the second installment. I will have a coherent review in due time since these ramblings really need editing, but for now I am still under the influence of this powerful novel... FULL FBC Rv HERE: INTRODUCTION: While contemporary sf is very diverse, encompassing everything from space opera to near-future to alt-history and steampunk, when I think of "pure sf" as the genre has originally evolved to intermix scientific speculation with literature, there are only two authors of today that stand at the top and one of them is Greg Egan whose superb far-future novels like Incandescence, Schild's Ladder or Diaspora combine the cutting edge of today's science with entertaining story-lines. Also Mr. Egan's short stories which are combined in several collections, most notably Luminous, Oceanic, Dark Integers and Crystal Nights and contain some of the most mind-blowing sf at short length that I've ever read, are mileposts of today's genre. I have read almost all of Mr. Egan's work from the first novels like Permutation City and Quarantine to his prodigious short fiction output with only the two notable exceptions of his near future novels (Teranesia and Zendegi) which are of less interest for me and I never failed to be blown away by his ability to put the most abstract and farthest reaching concepts of modern science in a story that entertains and moves. So when I read about his planned new series that takes place in a "Riemannian universe", one where the metric - the math concept that encodes the basic physics of the universe - is positive definite and symmetric in space and time as opposed to the indefinite antisymmetric metric in the Einsteinian universe we seemingly inhabit, I was truly intrigued and indeed The Clockwork Rocket was what I expected and more and so far it is my all around top novel of the year for the combination of sense of wonder, great world building, characters and general "human interest" - the shape-shifting, weird biology aliens of The Clockwork Rocket are both strange and familiar and the story of the main character Yalda is as emotional as any I've read this year... OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "The Clockwork Rocket" is the perfect sf novel and a clear example why sf is still my favorite genre; on the one hand there is sense of wonder given by the speculative but informed exploration of an universe with definite though different laws of physics than ours, on the other hand the book flows on the page and it has in Yalda one of the best main characters in recent memories, while the supporting cast is well drawn and distinctive. The protagonists of the story are strange: the metric of the universe requires complex molecules to be really complex so to speak, so all life is shapeshifting; our heroes are six limbed shapeshifters, symmetric in 3D in their "normal" form - so they have eyes both back and front for example - that emit light, sleep in beds dug in the ground to cool down - though of course the well off in cities have special cooled beds. They reproduce by the mother being divided into four - two twin pairs, each usually forming a new reproducing couple, though there are the occasional solos like Yalda and the social misfits mostly female, that run away from their twin, not to speak of the usual hardships of life that prevent exponential overpopulation from the generational doubling above, while the longer lived men are conditioned to take care of the children... A harsh universe with unstable matter, but also a culture of cities, science, technology, society, books, philosophers, scientists... The people in this universe are "not us" and in some ways are very strange due to their biology - "being able to fly is like being able to know your mother" is one of the simple proverbs that appear in the book - but they are also "us" in the ways that matter. So The Clockwork Rocket is a pitch perfect example of how to imagine aliens that are not "costume aliens" ie pseudo-humans with one human characteristic expanded to usually grotesque proportions a la Star Trek species, but that are similar enough that we understand and care about them... The book follows the "solo" Yalda - ie she "ate" her twin in the womb as the other "normal" children tease her - from a farmer family but who is lucky enough to have a father who appreciates learning and who has promised Yalda's mother to school any of the offspring that shows inclination. So despite being almost twice as big as the normal female - and females are considerably bigger than males here for obvious biological reasons - and not expected to reproduce - ie be quartered in four - in the usual age range due to the lack of a twin mate, so being potentially of huge help on the family farm, Yalda gets to go to school and later is admitted to the university in one of the cities that form the civilization of the planet. Soon she starts rewriting the physics books by some ingenious experiments, while becoming involved with a group of "liberated" professional females who had learned how to extend their lives and avoid the harsh fate nature destined for them, since even if they do not mate, there is "spontaneous" reproduction and the chances of such increase drastically with age, while the special drug that prevents it, needs to be taken in larger and larger doses... And then of course comes the main story we read about in the blurb with the orthogonal stars, the threat to Yalda's civilization and the crazy solution she and some of her friends come up with... So there is discovery, drama, even the stirrings of social change, while in the second part of the book the pace accelerates and the book becomes a true sf classic of people learning to cope with new, challenging and unforeseen circumstances, while Yalda's saga continues towards its clear conclusion. The novel moved me deeply too and I really want the second installment to see where the story goes next since there is ample scope for surprises and the author surely did not show his full hand about his exploration of this wonderfully imagined universe. Overall, The Clockwork Rocket (A++) is the one sf novel I strongly recommend to read if you want to understand why the genre has fascinated so many people for so long. Even if you are confused at the beginning by the seemingly familiar but actually strange people of the book, keep reading since things will start making sense soon and the story is captivating from the first page till the superb but emotional last paragraph... "When Yalda was almost three years old, she was entrusted with the task of bearing her grandfather into the forest to convalesce. ************** After squeezing and prodding the old man all over with more hands than most people used in a day, Doctor Livia announced her diagnosis. “You’re suffering from a serious light deficiency. The crops here are virtually monochromatic; your body needs a broader spectrum of illumination.” July 27, 2019 Greg Egan writes some freaky cool SF. But a word to the wise: expect relatively rigorous math when you step into his worlds. I'm not saying that you can't follow any of the plots or enjoy the characters without it, but your basic enjoyment of this will stem directly from your enjoyment of FREAKING COOL MATH. Not that I followed everything, myself, but learning and enjoying the process gave me pretty much all the enjoyment I needed while reading. :) I mean, yes, getting to know a race of people (read aliens) who are very much plant-like and bud and regrow limbs and eat the light that the forest produces IS FREAKING COOL. And learning that their light perception gives them the ability to grok a much deeper sense of red and blue shifts, even minor time-travel perception, is also FREAKING COOL. And then we learn that this whole universe happens to be envisioned on a simple little alteration from our own? That there is no light-speed? That the speed is based on the frequency and there is no upper limit, that energy can be created out of very odd sources? Like plants? This isn't energy conservation, this is energy creation. As in, fundamental. So yeah, we go from basic life to basic science to uncovering the secrets of this particular universe all the way up to making a generational starship run by intelligent plants and see them STOP TIME and ... go backward. :) And Egan does all of this step by step, giving us a sometimes loose interpretation but still a helluvalot more strenuous proof than almost any SF out there. Besides his own, of course. Because he kinda does this all the time. And blows us away. :) Otherwise, what we have here is a steampunk novel with plant-aliens breaking the fundamental laws of the universe on a generational starship. HOW COOL IS THAT? :) December 25, 2011 Super conflicted about this book. I believe if I could remember more of my college physics I would REALLY love this book. Because the whole premise is that we're on a made-up world with weird aliens whose world is ruled by TOTALLY made-up physics. There is a TON of exposition about how the physics works which made it feel like a pseudo textbook in a way, did you ever read Sophie's World? Kind of like that, but not as accessible. Because in Sophie's World you had the context of understanding more as a basis to build on. This book requires you to understand basic physics in order to understand how it is NOT like that on this world. I think there should have been a character who was new to the world and needed to be explained to IN COMPARISON to his/her world, that way I could have gotten on board more. That said, it was an interesting read with an interesting female alien protagonist. Some complex social and political subjects are dealt with very deftly. Not having read other books by this author it definitely makes me want to pick up something else he's written, maybe with less homework involved :) May 3, 2021 I’m fascinated by the celebrity of painting. Most children leave elementary school able to recognize names like Van Gogh or Da Vinci but are wholly unfamiliar with other names like Faraday, Turing, Laozi, Kant, Saladin, Tolkien, or so on and so forth. Why is that? What is the obsession with Renaissance-era painters to explain this disconnect between their relatively minute historical importance and their fame? I’m sure I don’t know the answer, but in many ways it mirrors the personal experience of viewing a painting. For the average person, there’s… really not much to it. Of all aesthetic experiences, I believe painting possesses the largest disparity between the creating and viewing experiences. Take even the most famous paintings - Starry Night or the Scream or the Mona Lisa - and how long will your average person linger in front of it at a museum? A minute? Nope. For the Mona Lisa, it’s an average of 15 seconds. Ultimately, paintings don’t offer much interactivity. They don’t have much content, visual or otherwise. I doubt I’m alone in finding painting museums boring. And yet I can still appreciate these works’ artistic heft, the weight of effort that went into their creation. The artist’s entire life, the thousands of paintings to finally reach masterpiece level. Those are my feelings, more or less, towards Greg Egan’s Orthogonal Trilogy. What literally god-like genius must it take to imagine a universe with physics radically different than our own, populate it with a suitable intelligent life, and then chart a course for how that life will discover and manipulate the laws of the universe around them. And Egan does that! It’s got competing theories, political factions pushing their own theories, cross-discipline paradigm shifts as a result of breakthroughs, dead end ideas… and sometimes those dead ends make a comeback to turn out to be the correct theory! It is genius. I cannot overstate that. It is genius. I’ve read sci-fi with alien species, of course, and alternate dimensions and such. But they have ALWAYS been primarily qualitative, never quantitative to any real degree. Most science fiction is really just futuristic fantasy. Greg Egan puts the science back in science fiction. BUT - and this is a big BUT - the actual experience of reading the Orthogonal trilogy is awkward and dissatisfying. At this point, I’ve read almost every novel Egan has written. Except for his out-of-print debut novel, Orthogonal trilogy are my last three. So I know well Egan’s modus operandi. Basically, he writes science thrillers: a civilization-level catastrophe occurs or looms - vacuum decay in Schild’s Ladder, a quantum rewriting virus in Terenesia, a drought in Dichronauts, etc - and in response, science must save the day! Which essentially means the protagonists must better understand the universe because what is science but the process of understanding? His early novels - Quarantine in 1992 up to Schild’s Ladder in 2002 - take place in our universe and feature human or post-human protagonists. Incandescence in 2008 bridges his early and later novels, as it is set in our universe and one of the protagonists is post-human BUT the other is quite alien. Then his most recent novels - this Orthogonal trilogy in 2011 and Dichronauts in 2017 - not only feature non-humanoid protagonists… they’re also set in entirely different universes, with different laws of physics! Orthogonal’s physics change is small but fundamental: In our universe, in the ‘metric’ of GR’s spacetime, we treat space distances as positive but time distances as negative. If you’ve ever encountered time dilation in your sci-fi or studies, then you know what this negative sign means: travelers moving at extreme speeds will age LESS than those who do NOT take detours through time. In the Orthogonal universe, time distance is ALSO positive, which means time dilation occurs in the opposite direction: the travelers will age much MORE than those who remain at home. This is, in fact, the core plot, though it takes like half of the first book (which is otherwise rather boring milieu / slice-of-life stuff) to get there: The (essentially) anti-matter half of the Orthogonal’s universe has looped back around and will soon collide with the normal matter half. In order to avert this cosmic catastrophe, the protagonists launch a generational ship travelling at extreme speeds so that its travelers can improve the state of their science, come up with some way to save the rest of the civilization, and eventually turn around and do so. So Egan’s standard MO of a science thriller, which I quite enjoy. The problem is that the small alteration of a negative to positive sign in the metric doesn’t just invert time dilation, it changes EVERYTHING. No universal light speed, so stars in the night sky are no longer pinpricks of light but rainbows. And the release of light actually INCREASES energy, so plants/crops now emit light, rather than absorb it. And so on and so forth. It changes so much that I don’t even know what it changes. For example, I’m almost done with book two at the point of writing this review, and the scientists have just about discovered Pauli’s Exclusion Principle (aka degeneracy pressure) to help explain why gravity doesn’t turn ALL solids into black holes. But I’m like… is PEP even valid anymore? And there wouldn’t really be ‘black holes’ would there? There could be gravity wells that only trap SOME of the colors of light but not others. And… sigh… I really don’t have the time, energy, or expertise to explore a new physics rabbit-hole every other page. Which breaks the reading experience of a science mystery/thriller. The way thrillers - and most other genres - work is by generating expectations. Consciously or not, the reader makes guesses about what’s going to happen next and feels compelled to keep reading to discover how those guesses match up with reality. That’s part of what makes humans more intelligent than other animals - our hypothesis engine. But how can you make expectations when dealing with a universe SO UTTERLY ALIEN to our own? Like HALF of this book is science explanations, but they’re largely opaque even to a science freak like me because I have no idea which assumptions/knowledge I’m allowed to employ in understanding them. In my Diaspora review, I referenced a strange sadness, in which I considered it one of the greatest sci-fi books I’ve ever read but would recommend it to almost no one. Orthogonal is even worse. This review saddens and disquiets me. The books are an incredible work of genius. Truly, truly genius. But I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone I know, not even myself. The one optimism I have to cheer me up, though, is the thought that Egan might well go the way of van Gogh: obscure and unappreciated in his own time. But a future, more capable, more enlightened humanity will better able to understand and appreciate his accomplishment. So cheers! Here’s to hoping we overcome our own planetary catastrophe and make it that far. June 26, 2020 In one sense this is the most ambitious SF novel I've ever read. In every other it's kinda insipid. That one sense? The science! Generally, SF that isn't actually Engineering Fiction or (the very rare) Mathematics Fiction or Alternative History does its science by saying those scientific laws you know? They're approximately right but what if there was this extra thing I've made up? (Hyperspace, wormholes that don't have singularities in the middle, infinite computing power...) Egan asks, what if the fundamental topology, geometry and laws of relativity were in fact different? (Here's a universe where there's no maximum velocity, time behaves exactly like space, in terms of laws of motion, oh, and the universe is the shape of a ring doughnut.) The answer is, apparently, then your story is 50% exposition about the consequences for physics, chemistry and biology, as discovered by our characters. Said consequences are very weird indeed and require more graphs than I've ever seen in a novel by some stretch. Perhaps the most weird thing, though, is that the consequences for alien psychology and social structure are almost negligable... I'm pretty excited about reading the two follow-up volumes but mainly because I want to know how microscopic physics works over there in Torus Universe. Whether and how the aiens save their planet come a long distant second and third. I have no idea how this stuff is supposed to appeal to anybody without a physics BSc, I don't know. July 8, 2011 Fabulous book! Greg Egan changed a minus sign with a plus one in the space-time version of Pythagoras's Theorem and created an extraordinarily alternate universe in which interstellar voyages takes longer for the travelers, not less and there is no universal speed limit and no speed of light. The Clockwork Rocket also has some of the most fascinating aliens characters I've ever encountered - six limbed shapeshifters with frontal and rear eyes, that emit light and reproduce by the mother being divided into 2 pairs of twins (all the explanations for why everything is as it is in this universe are on Greg Egan’s site). This book has everything: very well written, fascinating universe that makes you think about this one, great characters, super science, good actions and a sequel! If you are interested to know what happens if you travel through space with infinite speed READ this book! September 7, 2011 Clever idea, but too much science and not enough fiction. The whole reason why I read sci-fi is to escape beyond the constraints of the laws of physics. Changing the laws of physics and seeing how this plays out probably will appeal to some people, but to me it felt too much like a physics homework assignment. August 9, 2012 Greg Egan is an outstanding writer. I wish I could comment as glowingly about The Clockwork Rocket. It simply caused me too much pain to get through. The characters, their biology, their values, and their exploits are all interesting enough. I suppose that if I'd read the Afterword and the author's blog about the universe he was inventing first, I might have experienced less pain, but a book like this should stand alone. Egan invents his own physics in this book. Now, I have a degree in physics, and this book simply made my head spin. I grant that it's beyond clever to present an entirely made up science using geometry and graphs without equations, but it's a nasty trick to play on readers who aren't aware of the game. What befuddles me most about this book is trying to imagine who the publishers thought they were marketing it too. If trying to figure it out gave me a headache, what of readers who don't have a background in science? When the very smart people in my writers' group came upon the word "causality" in my novel Wednesday's Child, they shrieked and insisted that I remove it wherever possible. I can't even guess at how they'd react to A Clockwork Rocket. January 12, 2013 Let’s start with the rating on this one. It was reasonably-written, had some interesting character development and inhabited a universe that was very different from our own. It held my attention pretty well for its 300-odd pages, so it’s at least a solid “3”. To his credit, the author has invented a “space” (universe if you prefer) where physics, chemistry, and biology are very, very different from our own. In the beginning, the reader is tossed into it without any explanation. As the book progresses the protagonist (and readers) get to “discover” how this special “space” operates. These facts are presented in a kinder, gentler way than say in “The Quantum Thief” (no that’s not a slam, just a comparison). In this novel, what gets “revealed” is primarily the physics (and cosmology) of the universe. The author lets the characters explain or teach these principles with text and figures. Although nicely presented for the average reader (and crucial to the plot) I wonder if some readers will just gloss over these sections. I hope not. The end of the book has a couple of appendices and an afterword. While Mr. Egan doesn’t add too much to the material presented within the book, he does give a little background about the 4-dimensional universe and how it differs from our own. For originality I would mark him up another star, but I also think that more of the “supplementary” material might have been added to the back of the book rather than just placed online. So, I’m going to dock him (and his publisher) half of that extra star. Although a lot of the book is concerned with the people and society (and the inequality of their biology) the “cosmology” and “rocketry” take up the majority of it. This is a more reflective book than a lot of steampunk, but it has common elements. To our eyes, the mechanisms and energy sources that the actors must deal with seem primitive and rudimentary. Their world’s chemistry dictates that they use certain materials in certain ways and only in those ways; but throughout the book there are hints that this is not necessarily so. (I will resist the temptation of giving examples.) I am hoping that in the next novel the rocketeers make discoveries in “chemistry”. I have my suspicions but I want to see how this plays out. As for the biology of the inhabitants, we learn a fair amount about the sentient species that our protagonist belongs to, but less about the other creatures. I’m not giving anything away by saying that one group is clearly held up as some key issue to be investigated as the books progress. I enjoyed seeing how the “people” of the world dealt with the practical issues of creating and launching their “rocket”. Yes the title is apt: the steampunk-like mechanisms make this a clockwork system of propulsion. If you only read it for that, then I think you will still be intrigues, but it is and hold the promise of so much more. If you like concepts that are markedly different and not just a coat of fresh paint over our own universe, then this book and series is for you. The author expects you to do some work to follow along and I know that that is not for everyone. (It may be that the online material contains a lot of “easy” explanations for the casual viewer – I don’t know as I haven’t looked, yet.) I’ve been drifting a bit in this review…. Time to focus on what I thought was the best. In the timeframe of this one volume, we have the burgeoning science of physics (primarily focused on light – no pun intended) moving from a Newtonian understanding to an Einsteinian one (to put it in our own past history of science). Of course it is not so simple. There are elements of astronomy (akin to the Big Bang) mixed in as well as time and gravitation. But the reader does get a clear view of how a few keen minds uncovered the laws that govern their universe. It’s compressed over a shorter time than our own (say from the late 1870s through the 1920s and 30s), but that is a convenience that keeps the story within one lifetime as well as holding the reader’s attention. It’s not quite the same as sitting next to Albert in the Swiss Patent Office, but it’s pretty good. This restores that half star I took away above! So, here at the end of the review, I hope that you are interested. Even more, I hope that if you read this you will stay interested and spend a little time working through the optics and space explanations. If you blow through them, you’ll probably still like the book, but you’ll miss out one some of the depth and fun. It’s four (4.0) stars all the way. I’m looking forward to the next volume. December 5, 2014 This novel follows the familiar formula that Egan fans delight in: an alien hero works out fundamental physics to defend his/her/its species in a race against impending cataclysm from natural forces that are not, initially, well understood. Here, the greatest stylistic twist is that there is no counterpoint perspective from a more familiar human or near-human protagonist, nor indeed, any additional first-person characters. The story is told in a sequence of episodes from the lifetime a single creature, our protagonist Yalda. Her planet and species are never named, being alone in their perceived cosmos, so I’ll call them ‘Orthogonals’ in reference to the unique premise that the story stems from. I can’t do any justice to the carefully described mathematics provided at every step of the hero’s journey, but can summarize by saying that her pocket universe has a different, orthogonal geometry from our own, and Egan has extrapolated this to invent a marvelous and internally consistent set of physics for her to discover along with the reader. The novel’s theme is also a familiar one: The triumphant of applied science and nobility of those who practice it’s careful pursuit. Egan even pays homage to history’s persecuted and martyred scientists by including a dash of this to the ‘Orthogonal’ civilization he’s created. In his world, however, the selfless scientists manage to escape their adversaries and found a society of their own, where all injustices are banished and the whole community labor together for the common good and a grand project to rescue their planet. Great care is given to the details of each discovery and the particulars of the plot are largely devised in service to this exposition. I feel the story would have been more engaging and the characters more relatable if these narrative priorities could be reversed. I also would have enjoyed more interpersonal conflict and greater moral ambiguity in the characters, who all felt a little too single-minded and one dimensional (no mathematical connotation intended). Yalda particularly, is a bit too righteous, and would have been much more interesting with some dramatic flaw or dark angle. Her one social handicap is an unavoidable accident of nature, completely a faultless situation, that makes her subsequent sufferings at the hands of the unenlightened seem in parallel to historical figures like Alan Turing and other victimized minorities. The story ends with moderate abruptness, although not exactly a cliffhanger, and the largest question tensely unanswered in anticipation of the follow-up novel(s). However on its own, it still stands suitably complete, and will satisfy the reader. July 2, 2011 4.5 Stars This is a totally different take on an alien race very much like our own as they struggle with the impending doom that may befall their planet. A crash with an orthongonal star. The aliens are very different from us. They are practically amorphous and plant like in nature in that they can sprout arms, hands, and other appendages at will. Their morphology is based around their abilities to control their skin... Their reproduction is sexual in nature but can also be asexual in nature as females can spontaneously reproduce if no male is present. Their unique biology aside, we quickly come to realize that these "People" are very much like you and me and that their dreams and fears are much the same as ours. Their society is similar, their technologies, their problems, and their triumphs. Yalda is an amazing and truly memorable protagonist. She alone elevates this story and adds the emotional impact to make it stand out. Egan has given us a young "Woman" who is strong, intelligent, and courageous enough to take on society and to not be afraid to step on tradition. The structure of this book may intimidate some to quickly turn it away. This is a "Science" novel, on par with your college level physics and mathematics class. Much of the novel centers on Yalda and her friends pondering physics, time and space, and working out many equations and calculations. There are countless diagrams to view that explain their theories, and there is even an appendix at the end that tries to tie our Newtonian physics to that of the Orthagonal physics presented in this book. I loved the physics, the calculations, the theorems, and the deep questions that were trying to be solved. I reread many pages over and over again and found myself going back to diagrams to try and better understand their thought process, and to tie it in with what I know of our world. This part of the book requires an engaged reader, and may not appeal to those that feel this story reads like a text book. Greg Egan does this story due credit. He spends mass amounts of time describing the math and science of this book to make it real. Ironically by spending a small amount of time describing anything more than the biology of the alien race within this book, he was able to make them real by showing us a lot about their thoughts and feelings. Yalda is remarkable and the science is incredible, I highly recommend this one to science fiction lovers. November 21, 2020 I had been warned. This is hard science fiction. Maybe I should have tried a different Egan. But I thought I would manage it. I did not. I was comfortable with the Three-Body Problem. This though is another league. My knowledge of physics is probably above average but this was way beyond me. I am sure it is an excellent book. It is certainly well written. And I would go so far as to say I would have given it 5 stars easily had I understood, say, 25% of it. Because I am fascinated with the concept of a truly different universe. As it is I understood about 4%. So I should not rate the book at all. But I give it a wishy-washy 3. November 28, 2016 How many books can make you shed a tear as well as break a geometrical sweat? The silly cover has nothing to do with the book. I'd recommend approaching the first chapters without spoilers (including whatever is printed on the cover, the appendices and of course most reviews). I used to think of Egan as a master of the short form and had been less impressed by his longer works. As a result, I had been putting off reading this trilogy of fat books which I saw as a kind of concession to commercial concerns (pointlessly drawn-out series seem to sell well no matter how ill-suited the form is to science fiction). Also, I wasn't thrilled by the premise which felt kind of formulaic (within the context of Egan's books that is). Prompted by Stuart's recent frustration with the admittedly ridiculous word count of Reynolds' most famous series, I resolved to see what Egan had done with the form. Well, instead of effectively expanding a short story and diluting a few good ideas he just came up with more brilliant ones, built a world which wouldn't have fit a much smaller book and wove in a moving epic story... all that in the first volume (I can't speak for the others yet). What's more, the first book ends on a strong note with the organic conclusion of its narrative (imagine that!). Other than Stapeldon, I don't know any other science fiction author who exercises their imagination so thoroughly as to assemble enough provocative material to sustain a book of that size (if you do, tell me!). I still think some of Egan's shorts are better but this is a different kind of goodness. It also brings a lot more to the table than Incandescence. So what's the book about, generally speaking? Most obviously, it's about fantasy physics. Unlike with some of Egan's other works, that's merely backdrop for much of the book and it seems possible to enjoy it without caring for physics but there are quite a few passages featuring diagrams and devoted to topology, cosmology, thermodynamics, relativistic effects and so forth. It'd be a shame to miss out entierly as that aspect of the worldbuilding is amazing. Other bits of the book may be brilliant but that's what makes it unique. Reproductive rights also loom large in this book, and are surprisingly relevant to much of the plot (considering the title). The book's angle on the issue is unique on account of the biology of non-anthropomorphic aliens. There's quite a bit of social commentary on other issues as well and the book repeatedly leans on the moralizing side which might have been grating in a less exotic setting. I guess it would have been grating anyway if Egan wasn't a humanist. The book deals with lots of other things I don't want to list, starting with shenanigans related to its title. It manages to pack all that thanks to discontinuous storytelling. - SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW - A few notes about what I see as the worst problems of the book will follow. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum but I there's no way around bringing up specifics. Early in the book, there's quite a bit of excessively mathematical physics. Later on, observational and experimental data come to the rescue, though I couldn't quite suspend disbelief as to how much of the pretty arbitrary (and at one point arguably fallacious) unphysical speculation ended up being confirmed. Some of this is simply down to Egan being Egan but, going by the afterword, there's also a specific issue that he takes with a famous Tegmark paper (page 19 of the PDF, mildly spoilery) as it pertains to unphysical properties of elliptic partial differential equations (I'm not kidding) and which seems to have gotten wound up too deeply in the plot too early during the book's conception for the issue to be elided (assuming Egan would have been willing to listen to reason in the first place). And so the characters beeline to the author's pet notion with preposterous alacrity and inexplicable enthusiasm. At more or less the same point in the book, there's a more general explanatory deficit which, besides being annoying in its own right, compounds the problem. To some extent that deficit can be justified by literary choices (such as not using a single equation... even when discussing the wave equation) but I doubt it was fully deliberate. When a class is held for the benefit of the general public, explanations are comprehensive and clear but when the narrator is mulling over a problem or arguing with someone at her level, assumptions and shortcuts abound (as one would expect). Issues often get eludicated later on so readers may treat the more obscure material as clues in a sort of game but backtracking repeatedly when one doesn't interpret something right the first time can get frustrating. That said, the book is written in such a way that any sciencey bits can be skipped by readers willing to admit defeat. There are also a few details which don't make sense to me even after finishing the book. In the case of the workings of the titular rocket, I'm pinning it on dramatic license (that thing sure is cool!) but when it comes to the dark spot of a certain astronomical phenomenon, well... either I'm obtuse or something isn't obvious to everyone and should have been spelled out. That or there is a worldbuilding inconsistency but how likely is that? Oh, and that thing Benedetta did... WTF? February 11, 2021 What if an interesting physics thought experiment were a novel? Well this is that novel. You might think that it would be a pretty boring novel and you would be right. There are several things about this book that I did not like. - There are many scenes where someone is doing Science and learning or discovering something where someone will say "So it's just like when !" which is I assume meant to explain physics to the casual reader so they can follow the story and be excited about the cool physics. This most of the time just makes it boring instead. - Because in this universe time is a space-like dimension and the story is set in an alien civilization the author has helpfully made up new units. Since we as the reader have no experience of this it makes everything needlessly confusing. Example: "Red Towers is more than 8 strolls from here so it will take us 10 lapses or more to travel there." - Diagrams. If your book needs diagrams of energy potentials maybe just write a paper. - This is part 1 out of 3. The author has also thrown in societal upheaval around birth control, prejudice, patriarchy and industrial revolution. Perhaps in order to make the setting more interesting, but it takes away focus from the main story - "Engineering". Everything related to actually building or constructing anything in the real world is waved away, happens off scene and has unrealistic timelines. This ranges from inventing telescopes to constructing a self contained biome inside a spaceship. If I had to guess this was written by a theoretical physicist. Plot: Ok but meanders Style: Decent Setting: Pretty boring Characters: Two space-like dimensions July 9, 2011 Excellent new offering by Egan, backed by a dissertation of " more than 80,000 words of text and over a hundred illustrations. The pages marked “[Extra]” go into considerably more detail than the main exposition, and are targeted at readers who have studied some physics and mathematics at an undergraduate level " that the author has helpfully posted for the gentle reader at http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/OR... I read enough of the latter to get the gist of the premise underlying this universe, and launched straight into the story. But my curiosity is whetted enough to return to the physics at a later stage. Some of the physics left me reeling, but a more superficial understanding does not detract from enjoyment of the story, which is large enough in scope, and exotic enough in execution, to satisfy any lover of physics based-space opera. Perhaps at times the mathematical digressions (Egan is transparently passionate about physics!) overwhelmed the narrative, but not enough to deduct a star from the rating. And I admit that I shed a tear at the ending. August 27, 2019 This was hard. Not only in being hard science fiction but also hard to grasp fully even with a passing understanding of special and general relativity. For those interested in reading this book, here's a link that helped in familiarizing myself with the physics used in here - https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/0... Have a look at this before buying the book to know whether this is your cup of tea or not. September 25, 2023 When I was younger, I consumed a lot of youtube content about Star Wars lore, which I always found more interesting and compelling than the stories set within the universe. As a result, I naturally wondered why there weren't fictional universes that existed on their own like an encyclopedia, independent of contemporary narrative. Greg Egan books are the closest thing to this platonic ideal of faceless worldbuilding I've ever encountered. It's abundantly obvious that the universe of this book, where some fundamental physical symmetries are reversed and the implications extrapolated, is the protagonist. The people in this book are scenery, existing to either entice the easily distracted with concrete (if poorly written) political intrigue, or participate in socratic dialogues about how the setting's physics work. Greg Egan's characters are generally two-dimensional and wooden, but he steps it up to a level that's truly shocking. When one of the protagonist's deeply forgettable friends dies mitosing (the setting's metaphor for leaving the workforce to raise children), the reactions of her closest friends, who live as part of an underground dedicated to preventing exactly this thing from happening, are comically understated. They spend probably less than a page saying "oh well, nothing we can do now but raise the kids" before trucking on to explore more physics. The robotic main characters are also not helped by the fact that the guy who reads the Greg Egan audiobooks has an annoying cadence, is committed to reading supposedly tender moments with as much emotion as expository rambling, and does voices which are either slightly more nasal than the narration or outlandishly over the top. People wonder if text-to-speech could eventually replace audiobook readers, and I'd say the state of the art has probably already surpassed this guy. I do like to imagine that he was chosen because this is probably how Greg Egan would have read the books, hurrying past all the interpersonal stuff he obviously doesn't care about to talk more about the object of his fixation. All that being said, this book is awesome. I won't pretend I understand it on more than a superficial level, but his commitment to constructing what at least seems like a rigorous, internally-consistent universe is Tolkien-esque. Also Tolkien-esque, his website contains a short physics textbook diving deeper into the universe, rendered entirely in bare HTML. At 80k words, it's 70% of the length of the Silmarillion, although probably much more richly illustrated: If it wasn't clear enough that the books exist to justify the year he spent writing the supplementary materials and introduce his ideas to a broader audience, every page opens with the following header: SPOILER WARNING: This page contains "conceptual spoilers": although it makes no reference to the plot of Orthogonal, it covers scientific matters that are only revealed gradually in the novel. It's also interesting to note that he refers to 'novel' in the singular, suggesting that just like Tolkien, he wrote one huge book that his publishers had him break up into a trilogy. If you enjoy high concept science fiction, I recommend reading Egan, although as other reviews have said, this is a bad one to start with. If you've enjoyed Egan previously, I highly recommend this one. July 15, 2019 This feels like a throwback to early science fiction, which is a mixed bag of good and bad. Part of the premise of the story is that it takes in a universe that has different physical laws, that's no problem, but the alien protagonist Yalda extensively explains the physics (including illustrations!) throughout the book. This is a shtick that was popular starting with early SF, Campbell used to call stories that contained too much tech and science talk as "Electric Chicken Plucker" stories, this book skates close to that feathery edge. I am a bit of a science nerd, I have several good books on experimental physics, I just feel that the physics would make a better science article. Another strange bit is how easily they develop the technology to launch a mountain into space, my disbelieve suspension shocks are overloaded, of course there'd be no story without it and why not go big? (Cities in Flight) It does feel a bit like Rocket Ship Galileo with the various tech explanations and our plucky? heroine. I feel that in most cases, less of this is better, don't hand wave, just have the characters act like its real. The last part, which is pretty good is the aliens, Yalda is part of a strange, protean race of photovores/omnivores that has one flaw, the females die giving birth. There are social issues that arise from this and make sense given that ugly reality. It also makes this story a bit tragic, the ending's not a happy one. A novel book in the tradition of Golden Age SF, a mix of grandeur and failure. November 10, 2023 Greg Egan is a kind of genius and I almost feel someone like me reading this novel is a bit like the author casting pearls before swine. In The Clockwork Rocket Egan creates a universe ruled by a completely different physics & biology and populated by characters with an intriguingly alien physiology. It's a stupendous imaginative effort of hard sci-fi, so I feel a slightly ashamed that I found it a slog to get through at times and read it haltingly over a few weeks. March 11, 2017 I'd have given it five stars, but the writing is a little stiff. It's very inventive though, and it's fun to learn alternate-universe physics along with the characters in the book. April 30, 2024 Reseña de la trilogía completa, que también incluye [[2013 - The eternal flame - Greg Egan]] y [[2014 - The arrows of time - Greg Egan]]. Como con otros libros de Egan, la literatura en sí misma no tiene nada destacable: personajes poco interesantes con los que cuesta empatizar, tramas estructuralmente anodinas, estilo prosaico. La literatura es solo una herramienta para transmitir sus ocurrencias: y estas son sublimes. Las repaso someramente. En este caso estamos ante un proyecto colosal: la creación desde la base de un universo con unas leyes físicas completamente distintas a las del nuestro, con todas las consecuencias que ello tiene. No tan distintas, quizá, sino simétricas: en lugar de su espaciotiempo ser una [[variedad de Lorentz]] es una [[variedad de Riemann]], y por tanto toda diferencia entre direcciones espaciales y temporales es meramente dinámica. Además la variedad está acotada: la topología cerrada del universo está obligada para evitar que diverjan las soluciones a la ecuación de onda de los campos. El análogo a nuestras revoluciones científicas desde el s.XVI tienen lugar a lo largo de la serie, pero siempre marcadas por la signatura homogénea de la métrica: comienza con el análogo a la relatividad especial (primer libro), luego la estructura de la materia (mecánica cuántica, segundo libro) y en el tercero se mencionan aspectos de relatividad general. Merece la pena echar un ojo al material suplementario de su página web https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/O... La idea es tremendamente ambiciosa y está muy bien resuelta. A ello se suma el trabajo sobre paradojas temporales en el tercer libro y la especulación biológica, que si bien no está tan trabajada como la física es también radical. Ya que no hay una dirección tiempo, cualquier dirección se puede interpretar como tiempo siempre que haya una cierta coherencia entre las velocidades de los objetos de una zona (relativamente bajas unas respecto a otras) y una flecha temporal marcada por el aumento de entropía. Las trayectorias temporales divergen radialmente desde un punto de excepcional baja entropía, el análogo a nuestro [[Big Bang]] y se ramifican y curvan, intersectándose. Lo que motiva la trama es el cruce entre el sistema estelar que habitan los protagonistas y otro sistema ortogonal a este, y que por tanto desde su punto de vista tiene velocidad infinita; un impacto con alguno de los cuerpos estelares destruiría instantáneamente su planeta. Como no se les ocurre ninguna solución deciden lanzar un cohete con científicos que acelere hasta situarse en paralelo a este sistema ortogonal, pudiendo así estudiarlo, avanzar la física y la tecnología durante generaciones y desarrollar alguna solución. El cohete luego dará la vuelta (lo lanzan sin suficiente combustible para ello, pero ya se les ocurrirá algo) y regresar�� al planeta. Desde el punto de vista del cohete habrán pasado siglos, desde el del planeta unos pocos años (aquí no se entiende por qué no eligen que regrese en lugar de unos años en el futuro unos años en el pasado, ahorrando tiempo). Sobre las paradojas temporales, podemos clasificarlas en dos tipos. Las que pretenden violar las leyes de la física al plantear un libre albedrío por encima de ellas, y las que son físicamente posibles pero conllevan algo muy poco probable. Del primer caso son las de viajar al pasado y matar a mis abuelos antes de que se conozcan, Egan las resuelve como Gödel (ver:: [[solución a las paradojas de los bucles temporales - causales - Gödel]]): si no es físicamente posible no puede ocurrir, no es una solución a las ecuaciones de los campos en cuatro dimensiones, da igual lo que opine la intuición sobre el libre albedrío. El espaciotiempo es una variedad de cuatro dimensiones, no hay líneas temporales paralelas ni nada similar. Del segundo caso son las de mandar a mi yo del pasado la novela que me hizo famoso para que no tenga que pensarla, le basta con copiar y publicar. En este caso el espaciotiempo es una solución de las ecuaciones fundamentales, pero, ¿quién escribe la novela? Se trata de una aparición de complejidad donde no es físicamente necesario que aparezca, y por tanto algo altamente improbable, como que por fluctuación cuántica aparezca un elefante en mitad de la habitación (ver:: [[solución a las paradojas de los bucles temporales informacionales - Egan]]). Esto tiene implicaciones en la trama del tercer libro que rompen por completo la lógica narrativa tradicional. En primer lugar, aunque no sea tan relevante, es interesante ver que cuando se instala en la nave un sistema que permite mandar mensajes al pasado (a un momento posterior a la instalación) se detienen los avances científicos. Cualquier descubrimiento que se realizara en el futuro sería comunicado por alguien al pasado, y en ese caso en el pasado ya lo sabrían y sería un caso de aparición de complejidad, así que lo que es abrumadoramente más probable es que no haya avances científicos. Lo más original me parece el momento en que descubren que, a partir de cierto instante futuro, no llegan más mensajes hacia el pasado. Deducen dos posibilidades más probables: un meteorito choca con el cohete, destruyéndolo todo y a todos, o hay algún tipo de sabotaje en el sistema de comunicación, posibilidad más benigna. Pero el sabotaje no puede ocurrir sin alguien que realice el sabotaje, así que un grupo clandestino se organiza para realizar el sabotaje, no porque tengan motivaciones políticas o culturales para ello, sino porque si nadie realiza el sabotaje, necesariamente lo que ocurrirá es el impacto del meteorito. El futuro ya está escrito, y los protagonistas ya lo conocen, eso es lo que resulta un mecanismo narrativo extraño. En la narración tradicional los personajes eligen cual es el evento futuro que quieren que tenga lugar, y después escogen que causas emprender para que ocurra ese efecto. En este caso el efecto está fijado, y los protagonistas tienen que elegir de entre todas las causas que producen ese efecto, cual es la que prefieren. Y todo ello siendo conscientes en todo momento de que sus elecciones, igual que los resultados, ya están escritas y nada puede cambiarlas. Hay un vértigo metafísico potente en esta parte de la trilogía. Es también muy interesante el trabajo que hace sobre las flechas temporales. Distingue dos, la flecha microscópica, dada por la simetría materia-antimateria (ver:: [[teorema CPT]]) y la flecha macroscópica dada por el aumento de la entropía. El el sistema estelar de origen estas están alineadas de una manera y en el sistema ortogonal de la opuesta. Así, cuando el cohete se sitúa paralelo al sistema ortogonal lo hace con la flecha macroscópica alineada: la física que observan transcurre con naturalidad, pero cualquier contacto es letal, pues es contacto entre materia y antimateria. Cuando el cohete da la vuelta ya es posible el contacto, y de hecho descienden en un planeta, pero en este caso la flecha entrópica del planeta es la opuesta a la de los astronautas. Las escenas que pretenden transmitir las consecuencias de esto son desconcertantes, pero, aun siendo caricaturas divulgativas, en cierta medida transmiten bien la idea: los astronautas tienen una restricción de baja entropía pasada, el planeta de baja entropía futura. Desde el punto de vista de los astronautas ocurren cosas como que sus huellas en el planeta ya están cuando llegan a él, y al pisarlas desaparecen. En el cohete traían polvo que será parte del planeta y que se va juntando, amontonando en configuraciones de menor entropía. Todo esto es muy poco preciso, pero las intuiciones que genera apuntan en la dirección adecuada. Es este cruce de flechas macroscópicas lo que posibilita el sistema de comunicación del futuro hacia el pasado. Por último, mencionaré algo de la biología. No se sabe si los protagonistas son uni o pluricelulares, ni si se puede aplicar el concepto de célula a ellos. Tienen extremidades que pueden extrudir o absorber, y su sistema circulatorio es el mismo que el digestivo (un tracto que se ramifica desde el esófago hasta capilares, que luego se van unificando hasta el recto). Lo más interesante es que la reproducción no es sexual. Hay dos sexos, mujeres, que dan a luz cuatro hijos por una suerte de mitosis, y hombres, que se encargan de cuidar la descendencia que produce su pareja. Los cuatro hijos son dos parejas de hermanos, cada pareja son un hombre y una mujer y, cuando llegue el momento, él cuidará de los hijos de ella. Las mujeres son más corpulentas y aptas para los trabajos físicos. Todo esto no es tan rompedor como en novelas centradas en ello como [[1987 - Lilith_s brood - Xenogenesis - Octavia Butler]] o [[1969 - La mano izquierda de la oscuridad - Ursula K. Le Guin]], pero está interesante. No desarrolla tanto como podría cómo afectan estos géneros a las estructuras culturales y sociales, que son bastante parecidas a las nuestras; después de la física le interesa un poco la biología teórica, pero se nota que sociología, química y otras áreas le dan igual. En cualquier caso al final de la trilogía domina la visión cercana al [[constructivismo de género]] de Egan, también presente en [[1995 - El momento Aleph - Distress - Greg Egan]]: se logra inventar una forma de que las mujeres den a luz sin morir, lo que hace el sexo hombre innecesario. En el futuro solo habrá personas con sexo mujer pero con las características culturales de ambos géneros. El final es un tanto abrupto, la solución tecnológica que llevan buscando durante toda la saga se resuelve de un plumazo (descubren como convertir el sol en un reactor y llevarse su sistema solar a paseo, esquivando los cuerpos ortogonales). Esto es algo que se agradece: una vez expuestas las ideas especulativas, lo que le ocurra a los personajes, como ha ocurrido desde el principio, no le importa a nadie. --- 24 04 28 This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. June 9, 2015 Greg Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket is an incredibly imaginative read. It posits a universe with physics different from our own, and then explores the consequences of those differences, across biology, sociology, mathematics, astronomy and, yes, physics. It’s a revelatory piece of fiction, and an exceptional work of imagination. On the other hand, parts of it feel more like the reader is in a classroom than a novel. The narrative centres around Yalda; it follows her life from childhood, as one of several daughters in a farm, through her life as an academic, and beyond. But Yalda lives in an environment very different from our own. The most obvious differences are the physical – Yalda’s species are shape shifters, able to generate limbs within themselves, to move their body mass around to perform tasks. Egan manages to make this seem commonplace within the narrative – causing the extraordinary to seem ordinary. By the close of the text, the reader is likely accustomed to addition and subtraction of limbs. But there’s a biological and social exploration here as well – the species reproduces by fission, and as such, each daughter is eliminated in her own act of procreation. Egan uses this as a rather novel way to talk about gender roles in society. Yalda is almost an archetypal strong female protagonist – if not revolutionary, she’s certainly determined, and unlikely to bend under social pressures. There’s some wonderful discussions around contraception and childcare in a universe where every family is a single parent – and layers of subtext around Yalda and her circle, as the women of the species begin to take up roles in society that demand longevity. So there’s an interesting universe here. My only issue is that the fundamental physics change that the author has made is what underlies that entire universe. Which is excellent – but the infodumps required to bring the reader up to speed are rather intensive. They’re masked in the narrative as part of the process of scientific discovery for the characters – and are, in that sense, entirely narratively appropriate. However, there are quite a lot of diagrams in the text, and many of them have some degree of geometry or velocity calculations in them. What they have to say is legitimately interesting, it’s just a shame that it wasn’t possible to make them a little more digestible, from the point of view of the reader. The characters are, largely, backgrops against which our protagonist operates. There’s a couple of antagonists, though their threats never feel entirely serious. And there are a great deal more friends and acquaintances of the protagonist, who feel a tad more real; it’s a shame we don’t get to spend more time with them. Yalda, on the other hand, is a well realised character – with her own thoughts, feelings and goals. Some of these goals may feel a bit alien, but most are recognisable enough to inspire empathy in the reader. At any rate, the protagonist feels like a person. A slightly odd person, operating in a world entirely different from our own, but still a character that the reader can make themselves at home with. From a plot point of view, we’re left following Yalda as she investigates the ‘Hurtlers’, a possibly cataclysmic series of falling stars in her universe. At the same time we follow Yalda’s evolution as an individual, and the shifting social structure in which she is to be found. There’s a lot going on here. Much of it, especially the social aspect and the struggle with the Hurtlers, is quite compelling – aand I found myself quite keen to find out what happened next. Really, it’s all very clever stuff, and I’m interested to see where Egan takes the next book in the series. It’s a shame that a lot of it is wrapped in some rather esoteric scientific dialogue, but I’m genuinely impressed by the depth and breadth of imagination on display, as well. Is it worth reading? If you have a reasonable tolerance for theoretical or imaginary physics, absolutely. If you want to approach a genuinely different universe, expertly portrayed, then yes. It’s a decent read, either way – just be aware what you’re getting into. January 3, 2013 An amazing hard SF book from one of the more interesting authors in the field. While most other authors may be content to just think, "Oh, let's write a story about how the speed of light is different depending on its colour", Egan really goes in-depth by properly considering the consequences of a universe built along a different type of geometry (in this case, Riemannian Geometry), resulting in a universe where the speed of light depends on its frequency, where the generation of energy creates light, etc. In this story, we follow Yalda, a 'singleton' who wonders about her world, gets an education and helps make a series of discoveries that not only show her (and us) the nature of light and energy in her world, but also to make a discovery: that the 'hurtlers', streaks of light that are appearing more frequently in her sky, are precursors to huge lumps of matter that threaten to destroy her world. Her only solution is to launch a spaceship. For in Yalda's universe, a ship travelling along the path of the hurtlers and 'orthogonally' to her world would experience time at a much faster rate. Hopefully, fast enough to accelerate discoveries about the hurtlers on the spaceship so that by the time it returns in no time (from her world's perspective), a solution to save the world can be found. But after the ship launches, additional problems are found that need solutions, or the ship would fail in its mission. These would continue in the second book of the series, "The Eternal Flame". For those who want to know more about the physics of Yalda's world, Egan has put up a website with more information but it is best to read it after finishing this book so as not to spoil the enjoyment of learning along with Yalda about the nature of her world. July 16, 2012 Greg Egan’s “The Clockwork Rocket” (Night Shade Books, $24.99, 328 pages) is about as confusing a book as I have ever read. First, it is hard science fiction in two ways: one, it’s about science; and two, that science is fiendishly difficult. To make it worse, Egan doesn’t cut the reader any slack. It’s an alternate universe that operates under different kinds of rules (Riemannian geometry, if that helps) but at the start, Egan assumes we know the physics is different, and not, to name just one other possibility, that the perceptions of the non-human characters are where the difference lies. But once we start to accept that different colored light moves at different speeds, and that space and time are more similar (I think) in that universe than ours, Egan just keeps pouring on the charts and diagrams, and having his brilliant heroine keep coming up with hugely dramatic discoveries (sort of like Ayla in the long ago “Clan of the Cave Bear,” who undoubtedly would have discovered relativity if given enough time). There is a plot involving the heroine and various characters, but it’s pretty bloodless and the book ends as most first books of a trilogy tend to do, with not much resolved. Now those readers who are fascinated by rotational physics, geometry and alternate equations for describing the universe will undoubtedly be on board for the next two books in the Orthogonal series. Sadly, I won’t be among them, as I’d rather spend my time beating my head against my keyboard. October 19, 2012 I've been following Egan's work since Axiomatic and the early novels, and I have to say I really like the direction he's going. I remember reading about the insect-like creatures in the cellular automata world in Permutation City, and wondering what things must be like from their perspective. This book starts to fulfill that promise, with a story told from within a different universe with its own entirely unique physics. The universe he's created seems to exist at a smaller scale than our own, and the delightfully surprising alien biology and physics turn out to make space travel almost as easy as sea travel in our world. The whole story thus takes on aspects of a fable, in stark contrast to the hard-SF epics of his earlier books. But the typical Egan themes of math, physics, feminism and an unapologetic love of science are as present here as ever. This gets to the story's main weakness: as much as I love science, I get a little tired of stories whose heroes always end up being the Galileos of their world. Reading Egan I often get the feeling that there are only two kinds of people in his worldview: scientists, and the great mass of mundane individuals whose largely unexamined activities exist mainly to support, or threaten, the pursuit of science. For once, I'd love to read a book that genuinely, sensitively explores one of Egan's amazing worlds from the point of view of anyone other than a scientist. There's little room for cultural things like art, music, or literature in the Orthogonal universe. I doubt Egan himself could exist there. October 4, 2012 I got a great deal of enjoyment out of reading this book - there were aliens with non-human physiology and cultural practices, and a well-thought-out alternate physics with enough similarity to real physics that I got insight into the real world from the discussions of the "rotational physics" in the book (just as an English-speaker can get insight into English grammar by studying a related but different language like German), but more than that there were characters I really liked. Yalda, the main character, is a combination of Einstein and Turing - brilliant, yet at risk due to her deviations from her society's norms; she is devoted to her friends and to the goal of seeking knowledge through science, and is a thoroughly decent person, who takes pains to protect other people even as her own death looms. It's nice to read about a group of people coming together on a project on the scale of the Manhattan Project which has the goal of producing technologies that will protect people, not kill them - in this book, Egan shows that he can tell a fascinating tale with very little violence, and no killing whatsoever. I look forward to the sequels (two more books in this series are planned)
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	72	https://fortelabs.com/blog/science-fiction-books-ive-read/	en	Science Fiction Books I've Read	https://fortelabs.com/wp…018/10/Scifi.jpg	https://fortelabs.com/wp…018/10/Scifi.jpg	[ "https://fortelabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cropped-FL_Red_H.png", "https://fortelabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FL_Red_H.png", "https://fortelabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cropped-FL_Red_H.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Tiago Forte" ]	2018-10-15T20:25:28+00:00	I've listed below all the science fiction books I've read that I can remember, in no particular order. I've included the names of authors, and any other	en	https://fortelabs.com/wp…_Red-1-32x32.png	Forte Labs	https://fortelabs.com/blog/science-fiction-books-ive-read/	I’ve listed below all the science fiction books I’ve read that I can remember, in no particular order. I’ve included the names of authors, and any other titles they’ve written directly below their first mention. See my 2-part article What I Learned About the Future by Reading 100 Science Fiction Books for my insights and takeaways from these books. The best books are bolded, the great ones are underlined, and my absolute favorites are in red. I’ll keep this list updated as I read new ones. Prelude to Foundation (Isaac Asimov) Forward the Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation’s Edge Foundation and Earth Caves of Steel Bicentennial Man Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury) Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) Speaker for the Dead Xenocide Children of the Mind Ender’s Shadow Shadow of the Hegemon Shadow Puppets The Forever War (Joe Haldeman) Dune (Frank Herbert) Dune Messiah Destination Void The Jesus Incident The Lazarus Effect The Ascension Factor The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Life, the Universe, and Everything So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Mostly Harmless 1984 (George Orwell) Animal Farm Neuromancer (William Gibson) Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein) Starship Troopers Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick) A Scanner Darkly Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes) The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells) The Invisible Man The Time Machine Ringworld (Larry Niven) Hyperion (Dan Simmons) The Fall of Hyperion Endymion The Rise of Endymion Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) The Lost World Prey Sphere The Andromeda Strain Timeline Congo Altered Carbon (Richard Morgan) Broken Angels Woken Furies Wool (Hugh Howey) Shift Dust Nexus (Ramez Naan) Crux Apex Singularity Sky (Charles Stross) Iron Sunrise Accelerando Saturn’s Children Glasshouse Rainbow’s End (Vernor Vinge) I, Robot (Isaac Asimov) Pacific Edge (Kim Stanley Robinson) The Gold Coast 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur Clarke) 2010: Odyssey Two 2061: Odyssey Three 3001: The Final Odyssey Childhood’s End Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) From the Earth to the Moon A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle) A Wind in the Door A Swiftly Tilting Planet Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut) The Road (Cormac McCarthy) The Golden Globe (John Varley) Makers (Cory Doctorow) The Circle (Dave Eggers) Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds) Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin) The Dispossessed A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller) Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) Old Man’s War (John Scalzi) I Am Legend (Richard Matheson) Contact (Carl Sagan) The Chrysalids (John Wyndham) The Stand (Stephen King) The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury) Ubik (Philip K. Dick) The Man in the High Castle Gateway (Frederik Pohl) Solaris (Stanislaw Lem) Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) Pandora’s Star (Peter Hamilton) Judas Unchained Permutation City (Greg Egan) World War Z (Max Brooks) Aurora (Kim Stanley Robinson) Red Mars Green Mars Blue Mars The Three Body Problem (Liu Cixin) Blindsight (Peter Watts) Echopraxia Lilith’s Brood (Octavia Butler) The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (Roger Williams) Diaspora (Greg Egan)
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	33	https://www.gregegan.net/INTERVIEWS/Interviews.html	en	Interviews — Greg Egan	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	[ "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validHTML.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validCSS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null		en	../images/egan.ico		https://www.gregegan.net/INTERVIEWS/Interviews.html	Piffle interview (1997) Interview by Russell B. Farr First published in Piffle & Other Trivia #26, September 1997. Copyright © Greg Egan and Russell B. Farr, 1997. All rights reserved. Greg, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Please, in your own words, tell us about yourself. I was born in Perth in 1961. I have a BSc in Mathematics. I’ve worked as a computer programmer, mostly in jobs supporting medical research of one kind or another. But I’ve been writing full-time now since 1992. You’ve professed an interest in both music and movies. What are some of the artists you are currently listening to, and some of the best and worst movies you’ve seen recently? Most of the music I’m interested in comes from people who date back at least to the ’80s: Elvis Costello, Hunters & Collectors, Paul Kelly, The Smiths, The Violent Femmes. I buy new albums from the ones who are still putting things out, but I spend a lot of time listening to their old work. I listen to JJJ regularly, and I like a lot of what I hear, but I’m rarely grabbed by anything the way I was when I was ten years younger. About the only relatively new artists whose albums I own are Beck, and They Might Be Giants. The best movies I’ve seen recently? I thought “Underground” was very powerful, though that’s going back a bit. “Lone Star”, “Black Rock” and “Swingers” were all worth seeing. And I loved “Mars Attacks!”. “Lost Highway” certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen this year, but it was the most disappointing, because I admire David Lynch so much, and I think he made some bad decisions with “Lost Highway”. Do you ever feel the urge to go back into film-making? No. My technical skills were very much at an amateur level, and by now they’re both rusty and obsolete, so at most it would be a hobby that would take up more time and money than I can spare. Depending on how the technology evolves, I might end up doing some computer animation one day, but to learn what I’d need to learn and then create something substantial would mean putting writing aside for at least a year or two, and I’m not willing – or financially able – to do that right now. Until a few years ago, your avoidance of conventions and other public appearances was as well known as your writing, much to the chagrin of many. Now, four novels, two collections and numerous Year’s Best inclusions later, do you feel the last laugh is yours? I think my non-attendance at conventions was never of the slightest interest to more than a handful of people: a tiny fraction of Australian fandom, which itself is a tiny fraction of the SF readership. A story in Asimov’s is read by hundreds of thousands of people; the proportion for whom it would cross their mind upon seeing my name that I wasn’t in attendance at Something-or-Othercon is negligible. But it’s not a matter of having the last laugh, any more than I’m having the last laugh on ... I don’t know, the AFL for succeeding as a writer despite never going to their football matches. Fandom is about fandom, it’s a great big social club; science fiction is just the pretext. I don’t think many people in fandom really think otherwise. Bruce Gillespie says this all the time, and if I’m not qualified to know, he certainly is. In your 1993 interview for Eidolon, you mention that it was “too early to quit my day job forever”. How are the prospects of quitting the day job forever now? I’ve supported myself by writing since 1992, and I’m probably very nearly unemployable by now – not because my computer skills are all that dated, but because employers are likely to be put off by the long gap. So I hope I can keep this up indefinitely, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to. Even if I have no trouble producing new work for another forty years, the publishing industry is sure to go through some major upheavals. You’ve been extremely critical of what you describe as “Miracle Ingredient A”, or a truly unique Australianness perceived in much sf written by Australians. While this may well be the case, do you also agree there is a need to support Australian sf writers in order for them to hone their skills? I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published, which involve slightly lower hurdles in terms of quality than the major magazines. And there are fiction fanzines and low-paying semi-prozines all around the world, including Australia, that exist precisely to fill that need. But the last thing I’d suggest is that anyone has a moral obligation to buy those magazines if they don’t actually enjoy the contents. Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer – and it isn’t only new ones who suffer from that. How do you see the state of sf writing and publishing in Australia at present, both in terms of how it used to be and how it rates internationally? Australian sf book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it’s easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely. (Though not necessarily a UK one, because the Australian sales are such a big slice of the market for UK editions.) But I think the whole concept of “the state” of SF writing in Australia is meaningless. There are a lot of writers doing a lot of different things. Some years there are more and some years there are less. The idea that Australian SF writers go through cycles of improving and diminishing quality together – like vineyards having good and bad seasons – is just hilarious to me. Gardner Dozois described you as “Perhaps the hottest and fastest-rising new writer to debut in SF in the nineties”. You’ve certainly established a voice for yourself in the genre, where do you see your writing going from here? I don’t have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me – some of which change, some of which don’t. If there’s any recent trend that might be showing up in my work soon, it’s that I’ve put a conscious effort into updating my maths and physics education, which had grown very rusty. I’m reading postgraduate-level physics textbooks these days, rather than relying on popularisations, which is a good thing, I think. Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I’ve been led astray like that myself at times, but I hope my work in the future will come from a much more informed position. You’ve had three stories nominated for the Hugo Award, including two in the same category in the same year. How did you feel when you heard they’d been nominated? Have you ever given any thought to winning such an award? I hadn’t given much thought to the prospect of a Hugo nomination at the time it happened, but obviously once you’re nominated, winning one seems a bit less far-fetched than before. Going back to the 1993 interview, you said that you were “not really qualified to call myself a novelist yet”, and while you were writing 7 or 8 short stories a year you could see that tapering off. Has this happened? Definitely. I had no short fiction at all published in ’96, and I’ll only have two stories published this year. Part of the reason is the time I’ve spent on novels, but also I’ve been taking longer to write stories lately. “Reasons to Be Cheerful”, which was published in Interzone in April, took me three months. I think it was time well spent, though; I’m happy with every word in that story. Obviously you can never say “No one could have done this better”, but when you can honestly say that you wouldn’t personally change a thing, it’s a good feeling. Do you want to concentrate more on your short stories, which have been nominated for the Hugo, or your novels, one of which has won the Aurealis Award? I think I’ll always want to do both; the ratio will vary, but unless I made a conscious decision to stick to a particular form, I’d always find myself with an idea that really had to be one and not the other. And there are advantages to doing both. If I did want to write short stories exclusively, then I’d have to get a day job; there’s no way I could make my living at it. And writing nothing but novels would be exhausting; I’d probably have to waste as much time between books recovering and psyching myself up for the next one as I now spend writing short stories. Your most recent novel, Distress, was released at the end of 1995 to rave reviews. I believe your next novel is titled Diaspora, what can readers expect from this one and when can they expect to read it? Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software. But some conscious software inhabits robots that interact with the physical world, and there are also some organic humans still around. The story concerns a violent astrophysical event which ravages the “fleshers”; that triggers a search by the survivors for a better understanding of the phenomenon, and for sanctuary from any future recurrences. It turns out to be a very long, and very far-reaching journey. It’s published in the UK on 15 September, so it should reach Australia by November or December. What else can readers expect to see from Greg Egan in print in the near future? I’ll definitely have a story called the “The Planck Dive” in Asimov’s early next year, which is basically about why it might be interesting to jump into a black hole. That will be followed by a 20,000-word novella called “Oceanic”, which is too complicated to summarise in a few words. I’ve only just started the next novel, though, so that’s not going to be in print before ’99. It’s called Teranesia, and it’s about evolution, the Indian Rationalists Association, the breakup of Indonesia, quantum mechanics, and sex. Lastly, is Piffle & Other Trivia a silly name? Extremely. noise! interview (1998) Interview by Marisa O’Keeffe First published in noise! online magazine, January 1998. Copyright © Greg Egan and Marisa O’Keeffe, 1998. All rights reserved. Perhaps you could start by talking about Diaspora, what you hoped to achieve with it, and whether you feel you have achieved what you wanted. What direction is your work now taking you in? What drives you in your work? What vision do you have? How has your work changed over the years? What has become more important to you and what has become less important to you (thematically or otherwise)? One of the main things I wanted to do with Diaspora was imagine what the future might be like if one branch of our descendants ends up inhabiting computers, and to show this world through the eyes of an insider who finds it all perfectly normal. In an earlier book of mine, Permutation City, people are just beginning to be able to make copies of their minds that run as software, and it’s all still very difficult and traumatic, but when Diaspora begins there’s a whole civilisation that has existed in this form for nine hundred years. So instead of adopting a contemporary perspective and treating the idea as deeply unsettling, I wanted to take it for granted and have some fun with the possibilities – without the characters having to have an existential crisis every five minutes because they’re “only software”. I wanted to make it seem perfectly ordinary to be software, and very strange and limiting to have any kind of body, let alone one made of flesh. I think I’ve succeeded in presenting that point of view, though the more I’ve succeeded, the more off-putting it might be for some readers. If it’s disturbing to read about characters in the 21st century having a hard time being software, it can be even more disturbing to imagine people so different from us that they have no problem with it at all. Diaspora probably took me about as far in that direction as I want to go. When I write about the far future, I’m not interested in pretending that all our current problems – things like disease, poverty, war and racism – are going to be with us for the next ten thousand years. Human nature is a physical thing, and eventually we’ll transform it as much as we like. But those “temporary” problems are still enormously important to us, right now. So, although I’ve written a couple of short stories since Diaspora which share the idea that in the long run we’ll find software the most convenient form – especially for space travel – I’m backing off now, and concentrating on the near future. I suppose I have a vision of a universe that we’re increasingly able to understand through science – and that includes understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we do the things we do. What drives me is the desire to explore both the details of this vision, for their own sake – things like quantum mechanics and cosmology, simply because they’re beautiful and elaborate and fascinating – but also the ways in which we can adapt to this situation, and use what we’re learning constructively. I’m not sure that my work has changed in any particular way over the years, though I hope I’m improving stylistically, and getting better at characterisation. I think Distress was better in both respects than the previous novels; it’s hard to talk about “characterisation” in Diaspora, since the worst mistake would have been to make the characters too similar to 20th-century flesh-and-blood people. What’s important to me in every book is to push the ideas as far as I can, and to be as honest about the subject as I can. That never changes, but it does lead to different trade-offs. If you’re dealing with some fairly elaborate technical issues, as I was in Permutation City and Diaspora, the writing has to be as direct and transparent as possible; trying to make it too subtle or poetic just renders it incomprehensible. In Distress there was room for more expressive writing, and I also felt I could risk leaving some things unsaid. I was so fascinated to read (in another interview) you say that you believe there’ll be conscious software in your/our lifetime, but that you don’t think you’ll live to see scanning. Can you expand more on this please and maybe give a brief explanation of what you mean for those not familiar with your work? I’m fairly sure that there’ll be software in my lifetime that’s conscious, though how it will first arise I don’t know. It might be something like a complete computer simulation of, say, a lizard in a virtual environment – in which case it could be as difficult to convince some people that this program really is conscious as it is to convince some people that animals are conscious. Or it might be something we evolve in a computer without any real connection to biology, or something we design to test a theory about consciousness. One worry I have is that we might produce conscious software before we know it, and put the software through a lot of suffering without even realising it. We’re a very long way from that point right now, but ultimately it’s a serious issue. It would be a horrible irony if, just as we were phasing out animal experimentation altogether and replacing it with computer simulations, some of those simulations turned out to be going through just as much pain as any lab rat. “Scanning” is the term I used in Permutation City for the technique of completely mapping someone’s brain – and preferably their whole body as well – in enough detail to re-create the person as software. In that book, I glossed over the difficulties. At the very least, you’d have to be able to identify all the trillions of connections between billions of neurons, and measure how strong those connections were. It might also turn out that you’d need to know a lot more detail about every individual brain cell: which genes were switched on, and so on. Current techniques, like CAT scans and MRI – magnetic resonance imaging – are still much too crude to give you that kind of information. So even when computers are powerful enough to run a program that’s a “copy” of a human being, it could take fifty more years before we’re able to scan a human being and create the copy. What do you/did you think of cyberpunk? Do you believe it still exists or was it simply a product of the 80’s? I used to be a big champion of it – in spite of its overwhelming maleness, I thought it was a space that girls and women could go crazy in (as in, have fun in), taking from it the best bits and leaving the rest behind, and write an amazing wonderful literature where we could do anything, be anything and not be defined in relation to men. That’s the beautiful thing about sf – it allows for that possibility. It allows for any possibility (though I do prefer the scientifically plausible ones, which is one of the reasons why I like your writing so much). But now I think of cyberpunk as having been so much defined by a certain set of characteristics that it’s impossible to separate it from them, one of which was the boy hacker hero, overtones of rock star, dressed in leather etc. And that image makes me feel so bored. And unincluded. So I’ve jumped from one extreme to the other... What do you think? Do you have any comments about any of this stuff? Moving away from cyberpunk, is sf in general a good space for people to go crazy in and invent new possibilities for human interaction? I don’t want to lump all the things that were classified as “cyberpunk” together, because some of them were wonderful, and some of them stank. I think Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan wrote a lot of good books in the ’80s, and they’re still writing good books, and I don’t care which ones are or aren’t “cyberpunk”. Having said that, reading about characters who think they’re hip bores me witless – even if they’re being sent up, though it’s worse if they’re being taken seriously. And maybe it’s not a tragedy that computers have now become ultra-cool in some circles – though it’s pretty funny to someone who’s been programming since 1975 – but I’m far more interested in ridiculing the whole idea of caring about what’s fashionable. Because once you do care, you’re a slave. A lot of cyberpunk said, in effect: “Computers are interesting because cool, cynical men (or occasionally women) in mirrorshades do dangerous things with them.” If that really is the most interesting thing you can imagine about a computer, you shouldn’t be writing SF. I don’t know if cyberpunk was worse about women that most other SF, but I doubt it was any better. In general, I don’t think SF has begun to explore the possibilities for trashing gender stereotypes – and ultimately trashing gender itself. A lot of what passes for “SF about gender” just implies that we’re sentenced to repeat the worst mistakes of the past over and over, for the next ten million years. I guess that’s okay if you read it as a cautionary fable, but there ought to be a serious attempt to describe the future as well, and we certainly don’t have that when most of what’s written is either a nightmare of fundamentalist repression of one sex by the other, or predicts a world in which all the men, or all the women, have been removed. SF ought to be the ideal place to invent new possibilities for human interaction, but there’s a lot of conservatism even in SF. In Distress, the main character falls in love with an asexual person, someone who’s chosen to have no gender at all. One reviewer in an SF magazine fell over laughing at the very idea of this. He literally couldn’t conceive of two people being in love without some form of genital friction. I was really interested when in the Ibn Qirtaiba interview you said (talking about “deep self modification of the personality”) that you were trying to map some of the dangers and benefits of that. I really have thought about sf as a genre in which people can effect change by mapping out dangers and benefits of any given concept. What do you think of sf’s potential to effect change? A story like “The Moral Virologist” would suggest that you do think it has some potential, but then does sf have a broad enough audience to really touch enough people? Do you think that as technology plays a bigger and bigger part in our lives people will become more interested in sf (because it seems more relevant to them)? I don’t think SF will ever be enough, but it’s the easiest place to start examining new technologies, a few decades (or centuries, sometimes) before anyone else is discussing them. Unfortunately, when you hear some politicians talking about things like genetic engineering it sounds as if the most recent piece of SF they’ve heard of – let alone read – is Frankenstein, or maybe Brave New World if you’re lucky. And a lot of SF is biased towards alarmist possibilities and disaster scenarios, so I certainly wouldn’t want people to start treating it as some kind of substitute for an informed debate on the facts: say, banning organ transplants from animals just because some hack writes a best-selling novel in which we all die from pig viruses that leap the species barrier. All I can ever claim to be doing myself is musing out loud while I try to think something through to my own satisfaction. If what I write makes sense to some of the people who read it, or even just irritates them sufficiently, maybe it will stay in the back of their minds, and maybe they’ll think the issues through themselves a few years sooner than they might have otherwise. But sure, it’s a tiny, tiny effect, and it will probably be drowned out by all the noise the media will generate when these things are actually on top of us. A month or so ago, I read a (trashy) article which listed a whole heap of movies that were out or soon to be out that all dealt with sf in some way. Some of the movies seemed stupid, and their links with sf tenuous, but nevertheless do you think that this is a sign that public interest in and appetite for sf is increasing? Or is it just a fad? Or even, just a coincidence? I don’t know if public interest in SF is increasing, or if Hollywood will ever let real SF onto the screen. I had high hopes for Contact, and quite a few good things made it into the movie, but the ending was a complete betrayal of everything the book stood for, and everything SF stands for. Or do you mean movies about SF, rather than SF movies? I did read a review in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which discussed three films “about SF”. The reviewer included Chasing Amy, because the major characters are all superhero comic-book creators. The other two were a lame comedy about an SF writer’s relationship with his mother, and a historical biography of Robert E. Howard, who wrote the Conan the Barbarian novels! What are your plans for the immediate future? What are you working on at the moment? Excuse me being a vulture, but when will we have more new work from you? Right now I’m working on a new novel called Teranesia. It’s about the Indian Rationalists Association, the breakup of Indonesia, quantum mechanics, evolution, and sex. It won’t be finished until the middle of next year, though, so it will be published sometime in 1999. I also have a new collection of stories coming, called Luminous, but I don’t know yet when that will be out. The Way Things Are (1998) Interview by Carlos Pavón First published in Spanish in Gigamesh, July 1998. Copyright © Greg Egan and Carlos Pavón, 1998. All rights reserved. Well Greg, first of all thanks a lot for allowing us to have the opportunity to talk with you via the net. We really appreciate your kindness and your generous collaboration in the making of this special issue. Although I know you’re going to disagree with me, I have to start by asking you about your well-earned status in the field. Now that your career seems to be really taking off world wide, your works are being translated into not a few languages, and you begin to be recognized as one of the best writers in the field, how does it feel to be at the top of the genre? I’m not at the “top” of the genre by any means, but I do have some loyal and enthusiastic readers, which is very gratifying. I’m very happy with the way things have gone for me over the last ten years. I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, but it wasn’t until 1988 that I decided to try to make a career of it, and I thought it would take at least 15 or 20 years before I’d be able to make a living as a writer. So I’ve been lucky, and I’m grateful. At the beginning of your career you wrote an unpublished vampire novel, The Effects of Feeding, and your first published stories in Interzone were horror. In the past you’ve said that you might return to writing horror if you “find” a good idea. Have you found any ideas, or are you simply not interested in horror any more? Those early horror stories worked the way a dream works; they made no sense at all on a realistic level, but in a short story you can sometimes get away with suspending logic and just using imagery to get to the heart of the matter. I think “Scatter My Ashes” was the best of those stories; it was about a kind of endlessly reincarnated being who lives inside every serial killer, created by the media’s obsession with the subject. But when I tried to apply the same technique to a novel, it just didn’t work. I kept wanting to provide a coherent explanation for everything that happened, and horror novels that do that just end up being bad science fiction. In Permutation City you developed a cosmology which irrevocably led to the conclusion that the existence of God is a logical impossibility. What in your opinion is the alternative to “inventing” Gods for explaining the obscure mysteries science cannot illuminate? And do you think that embracing science as the new God for the third Millenium is also a mistaken way of trying to comprehend the universe around us? The basis of science is just systematic honesty, and there’s nothing we can’t be honest about, even if we can’t yet see precisely how to explain it. The alternative to pretending that you can explain anything with the word “God” is just to be patient, and to work hard to identify the way things are, rather than the way you’d like them to be. At any given moment in history, science has to treat some things as fundamental: certain laws of physics appear to explain most of the phenomena we see around us, but they can’t themselves be explained any further. Over the last few centuries, there’s been a lot of progress in combining separate laws for different kinds of phenomena into a single, coherent explanation, but there’s always still a level that has to be taken for granted. But that’s not a flaw in the scientific method; it’s just the way things are with our present level of knowledge. There are people who think that if you ask the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” then the only meaningful answer is “God”. I can understand why they feel that way, but I don’t think that’s really an answer at all. I don’t know what you mean by “embracing science as the new God”, unless you mean abusing science to support particular political and social agendas. Science is a tool for discovering the way things are; it’s then a completely separate matter to decide the way you want them to be. It always infuriates me when I hear politicians and economists using the word “rational” when they really mean “selfish” – or when opponents of rationality also try to pretend that the two things are the same. I don’t think we should look to either science or religion as a basis for morality; science explains where some moral instincts come from, but that still doesn’t tell us whether we should accept those instincts or not. But science is the only way we can hope to get the facts straight, about the world we’re living in, and the consequences of our actions. Most of your work so far tends to end up leading to metaphysical territories. Most of your characters, by rationally analyzing ad nauseam the world around them, end up transcending rational factuality and embrace metaphysical explanations. Is that because you think science will always have to follow the tracks of “reality”, that we can never attain “total knowledge”, or is it because you like the metaphysical in itself, that you think it’s a necessity and a valuable resort for humans to understand the world? I think what happens in my novels is that the border between science and metaphysics shifts: issues that originally seemed completely metaphysical, completely beyond the realms of scientific enquiry, actually become part of physics. That happens in reality all the time; if you spoke to a chemist from the 18th century about manipulating single atoms, they’d laugh at you as if you were talking about angels dancing on the head of a pin. There are parts of quantum mechanics where all we have is a mathematical formalism, a recipe for making predictions, and it’s a question of metaphysics to ask what’s “really” going on, because no experiment can say which interpretation of the mathematics is correct. Maybe it will stay that way, but maybe in twenty years’ time there’ll be a single, definite answer – so the question won’t be “metaphysical” anymore. The situations I write about are much more speculative than that, but I think it’s the same kind of thing. I’m writing about extending science into territory that was once believed to be metaphysical, not about abandoning or “transcending” science at all. Today real science seems to be catching up with SF. Some of SF’s most popular clichés are coming to life with quite a good periodicity. For instance, cloning is beginning to bother society with its ethical possibilities, above all with regards to the cloning of humans. How do you envision the moral debate that will arise from all these scientific advances, when most of the “developed” societies in the world are struggling to accept euthanasia or alternative family models? Medical technology is probably going to keep offering us new choices like this for the next hundred years, but if we analyse them carefully I don’t think it’s all that difficult to make the right decisions. Human cloning seems to me to be an utterly pointless thing to do – and since the failure rate would be very high, and no one could predict what medical complications the clones might face later in life, I think it ought to be illegal. Some of the debates around medical issues tend to be very emotive and uninformed, but there’s often a more sensible outcome in the long term than you’d imagine from listening to people’s first responses. It’s hard to believe some of the nonsense that was spoken about heart transplants when they were first being done; there were people seriously claiming that the recipient would take on the personality of the donor. Claims that you could “resurrect” a dead child or spouse with cloning are just as absurd, and I think that when the noise dies down, everyone will understand that. In the battle between strong AI defenders and strong AI detractors you seem to be clearly allied with the strong AI militia. Assuming that the existence of self-conscious AIs is a matter of time, why do you think that some scientists are so focused in trying to prove that the human brain cannot be reduced to a “simple” chain of algorithms? Don’t you think that this is an erroneous point of view, since the question here does not lie in mimicking the human biological brain, but in attaining a different inorganic form of consciousness? I think you’re referring to Roger Penrose, who’s argued in The Emperor’s New Mind and Shadows of the Mind that computers could never be conscious. Penrose is a brilliant physicist and mathematician, but I think he’s been misled by his intuition on this. The way computers work at present is vastly different from the way brains work, and I think Penrose is ultimately rebelling against the idea that humans are as boring and stupid as twentieth-century computers. Obviously we’re not! But I think he’s let a false comparison between the most primitive computers and the most sophisticated organic brains distort his reasoning. Once computers have been given the same built-in tools, the same flexibility, and the same breadth of education as human beings — which is easier said than done, and might take a century or more — they will be as conscious as any human being. You’ve explained your Subjective Cosmology cycle by saying that what you were aiming for was to transcend the “normal” visions of the world by “seeing through some subjective aspect of our ordinary picture of the universe, and catching a glimpse of a more objective reality behind it”. Would you say that this is applicable to most of your writing? I suppose most of my writing is about coming to terms with aspects of reality that go against our intuitive sense of the way things are. It’s hard to make this dramatic these days; four centuries ago, people could get quite upset about whether or not the Earth went around the sun, but at the turn of the century, when Hubble showed that there were galaxies outside the Milky Way and the universe was billions of times larger than anyone had thought, no one but astronomers and physicists cared! So I like looking for new possibilities that are just as shocking, now, as the heliocentric theory was when it was first suggested – ideas about the structure of spacetime, or the structure of the human mind, which show that we still haven’t come close to accepting how strange the universe might be. You’ve been criticized for aiming too high but not fulfilling the expectations you had created. What would you say to these critics? Don’t you think that a writer (or any kind of artist) has to follow his own rules and despise the rest? I don’t know exactly which critics you’re referring to, but all I can say is that I try to make every book as true to its subject matter as I can — but exactly what that means with some of the subjects I’m dealing with can be very much a matter of opinion. And when people’s expectations have been formed from the genre’s worst clichés, I certainly don’t want to fulfill them. Greg, it is obvious that you have a very original vision and your fiction has a genuine mood and voice that is easily recognized as your own, but have you ever considered the idea of a collaborative work? What do you think a collaboration would provide to your writing? I’d never do it. On a technical level, there’s no problem that a single writer can’t solve with enough research and imagination – there is no character or situation that it’s impossible for me to write about. And on the level of overall approach, I don’t believe that it’s a novelist’s responsibility to present every possible attitude to a subject within a single book; if readers want to read someone with opposing views to mine, there are plenty of places they can find them. In your latest novel, Diaspora, you have virtually dispensed with human flesh-and-blood beings. By doing so you’ve given your characters the opportunity to develop and evolve with almost no restrictions. Apart from the literary virtues of this recourse, wasn’t it a way of distancing yourself from the object of your exploration, a way to “objectivate” the subjectivity implicit in the fact that you yourself are an organic human being writing about the universe around you? Certainly, the software characters in Diaspora are much more removed from me (and the readers) than any protagonists I’ve ever written about before, but that wasn’t meant as an end in itself. I was just trying to be honest about what the future’s likely to hold. Some writers are so obsessed with creating characters that readers can “relate to” – even when they’re living in virtual reality, or a thousand years in the future – that they pretend that nothing important will change. I didn’t want to do that. With the power to reshape themselves as much as they like, no one can seriously expect the inhabitants of VR to spend century after century just imitating us. And once they stop doing that, a lot of things that are central to our lives, right now, will either vanish, or come to be seen in a very different light. Let’s talk about the commercial side of the SF field and your relation to it. Every now and then we see reputable (and not so reputable) authors doing novelizations for movies, exploiting another (deceased) author’s very well-known/well-thrashed universe, committing trilogy (or tetralogy) just for the sake of exploiting a setting or a future which’s been profitable in the past, whatever they feel about it, provided it is going to sell. You once said that you were not eager to “prostitute” your work just for the sake of money, that you would go back to your regular job as a programmer rather than do a commercial by-product. Have you changed your opinion regarding this subject? The whole point of being a writer, for me, is to have the freedom to explore the things I’m interested in; if you took away that freedom I’d have no reason to be a writer at all. I find writing very hard work, much harder than anything else I’ve ever done; if I tried to write about a subject that bored me, “just for the money”, it would be impossible. So I’m not even faced with temptation; it’s like asking if I’m tempted to try to get rich by digging ditches or breaking rocks. Anyway, no one has ever waved money in my face and begged me to write Blade Runner vs. Predator in Isaac Asimov’s Robot City. I’m sure it’s obvious to the people who manage these franchises that I’d be no good at it. Your first passion was film-making. Can you tell us what you think of cinema as a way of expressing an artist’s ideas today? Who are your favorite directors and who do you think will do justice to your stuff in an eventual filming of your work? I still think the cinema can be an incredibly powerful medium. Films like “Underground”, “Fresh” and “Oscar and Lucinda” moved me far more than anything I’ve read for a long time. It’s just a shame most SF films are so bad. The Coen Brothers are my favourite directors, but I wouldn’t trust them to film anything I’ve written – and I doubt they’d want to. I did like “Twelve Monkeys”; that was probably the most logically coherent SF movie of the decade, which is pretty funny, considering that Terry Gilliam is not what you’d call a very analytical person. “Contact” was a complete sell-out, a betrayal of everything it was meant to be about. Individuality is a subject omnipresent in your fiction. Do you think there’s room for the total isolation from the other’s points of view, that it is possible to remain a totally individualistic being? I don’t know whether it’s possible to be isolated from other people’s point of view, but I certainly don’t think it’s desirable. Individuality is a slippery thing, but it doesn’t mean cutting yourself off from everyone else’s ideas; it just means assessing them critically, and making the effort to contribute something original to your own beliefs. If we all had to find the truth for ourselves, no one would even get close. It would be like trying to live with only the things you could build with your bare hands. If you honestly believe that someone else’s arguments are valid, the only sane thing to do is to accept them. Solipsism is another recurrent topic in your fiction: the Solipsist Nation in Permutation City, the Ashton-Laval polis citizens and the truly solipsistic and uncanny Truth Mines in Diaspora, etc. Do you think that solipsism can be a reliable philosophy to face the enigmas of existence? Do new technologies open a whole new range of possibilities for philosophies so conceptual as solipsism? Solipsism means believing that literally nothing but yourself exists, and I don’t think that’s a reliable philosophy, even if it’s hard to be certain of anything else. But in Diaspora I was trying to show that there are dangerous extremes in both directions; ignoring the external world for the sake of an abstract life of the mind puts you at risk of certain perils, but abstraction can also be the key to understanding the physical world. Certainly, technology is going to keep blurring the distinction between the information that we get from our raw senses, and both “realistic” images of non-existent worlds and new kinds of data extracted from reality. Is it true that you have abandoned the anthropic principle, as Brian Stableford commented in one of his Interzone reviews? There are lots of different forms the anthropic principle can take. If there are multiple universes in any sense – either the many worlds of quantum mechanics, or the evolving generations of universes born from black holes that Lee Smolin talks about in The Life of the Cosmos – then it makes sense to say that the explanation for any special properties that let this universe support life is simply that we wouldn’t be here otherwise. We’re in a universe that supports life for the same reason we’re on a planet that supports life, however rare that is in either case. I’ve tended to write about far more radical versions of the anthropic principle, where the whole structure of what we consider “the universe” only makes sense from the perspective of a conscious observer. In the cosmologies of Permutation City and Distress, it’s meaningless to talk about a universe without life; the ordering of events in spacetime and the laws of physics only exist inasmuch as they create, or explain, observers. I think I’ve written as much about that extreme possibility as I want to, at least for a while, but there are still some subtler versions that I might explore. Between the two following memes, which one would you choose and why: Truth kills Truth heals I wouldn’t choose either. But I would say that if you don’t know the truth, you don’t even know what you’re trying to heal. The truth is never enough, but it’s a good start. In the past you’ve said that you were not interested in creating a universe of your own, that the idea of using pre-existing settings and characters was a restrictive tool in the long term. You only admitted the use of the same technology as a constant in some of your work. One of the most incredible technologies you have “created” so far is the Ndoli Device, which appears in one of your most praised stories, “Learning to be me”, and in “Closer”. Are you going to use the jewels again in future stories? Have you thought about the possibilities of a full novel set in a world under the influence of such a pristinely scary device? Maybe I’ll include them as incidental technology in a novel one day, but that could be tricky, because I don’t want to repeat “Learning to Be Me”, but I also don’t want to treat the jewels as a kind of dumb SF gimmick that the characters just accept unquestioningly. One reviewer complained that I talked about the software characters in Diaspora without going into all the philosophical issues of copying personalities! Maybe that’s a reasonable complaint, because every novel has to stand alone, but after exploring those issues in so many other things I’ve written, there comes a point where both for me, and for people who’ve read the other books and stories, there’s nothing to be gained by going over the same old ground. You’ve written what you’ve called the “Subjective Cosmology” novels, which include the first (and only) quantum-punk novel, Quarantine, the most thorough exploration of self-aware software, Permutation City, and the frankenscience, TOEs-centered mystery Distress. These three novels are set in the near future (say 50 years in the future) and their time scale is more or less short. Your last novel, Diaspora, is your most stapledonian work to date, it is SF in its largest scale. Are you going to maintain this large-scale framework in your forthcoming Teranesia? What are the ideas you are exploring in it? Writing about the far future is hard work. If you’re going to do it properly, you have to face the fact that all your personal experience of twentieth-century life, all the ordinary things a writer can draw on without thinking, are irrelevant. So even though I find it worthwhile, it might be a few more years before I can build up the courage to do it again. Teranesia is set in the early and mid twenty-first century. It’s about evolution, the Indian Rationalists Association, the breakup of Indonesia, quantum mechanics, and sex. This is the last question. If you visited Greg Egan twenty years in the future, what could you tell us about him? He’ll probably still be struggling to catch up with real science. Aurealis interview (2009) Interview by Russell Blackford First published in Aurealis #42, August 2009. Copyright © Greg Egan and Russell Blackford, 2009. All rights reserved. 1. Blackford: First, Greg, thanks for agreeing to this interview for Aurealis. I’d like to invite you to reflect on the development of Greg Egan the writer. Your early stories and your first published novel—An Unusual Angle, back in 1983—didn’t give much hint of what was to come. It was a surprise ... well, at least to me ... when you emerged in about 1990 as a hard sf writer (one who showed a fascination with philosophical puzzles). In more recent years we’ve seen a greater emphasis on narratives set in the distant future and across vast inter-stellar distances. But all this may seem very different to you from “inside” your life and career. From the outside, we don’t get to see the random things that happen to writers: like opportunities that come up, or events that set you thinking in certain ways, or even those times when stories are published in a misleading order. How has the journey seemed to you over the past twenty-five years? Egan: I think my early work arose from a desire simply to be a writer, before I had anything much to communicate. I’d wanted to be a writer since I was about six years old, and most of what I wrote in my teens and early twenties was really part of a long process not much different from the way an infant learns to speak: you make some sounds, and see how people react. Well, I babbled away for a long time, but it wasn’t until I wrote a biotech story called “The Cutie”, which was published by Interzone in 1989, that I hit a kind of positive feedback loop: David Pringle had previously bought two of my horror stories, and they were reasonably competent and atmospheric, but when he bought “The Cutie” he said, “This is good, send me more like this.” That little nudge in the right direction saved me from wasting another ten years trying to become the next Clive Barker! It’s not that I wasn’t interested, at a much younger age, in any of the scientific and philosophical issues I eventually wrote about; I even wrote a crappy story about virtual reality when I was about 13. But for a long time I lacked the technical writing skills, the aesthetic judgement, and the intellectual focus to say anything interesting, let alone original, on those subjects. 2. Blackford: Sometimes when I’m reading your work I’m reminded of Sartre or Camus, although I can’t off-hand recall any explicit allusions to them. I doubt that the last words of Teranesia—spoken by Maddy—quite count. She says: “Life is meaningless.” In context, that’s made to seem a good thing. Do you feel any affinity with the authors I’ve mentioned, and at any rate what’s your reaction to the idea of a loss of ultimate meaning, or the idea of abandonment by any kind of divinity—ideas that shaped much twentieth-century literature and seem, at least to me, to lurk somewhere in your writing? Egan: I liked The Plague very much, and from what I know of the two men’s opinions I feel much more affinity for Camus than for Sartre. But I’ve read them both rather patchily, and they’re certainly not strong, direct influences on my thinking. The interesting thing for me about “the loss of ultimate meaning” is the chance we have to reflect on where meaning actually comes from, given that it was never divine. When you take God out of the picture, it’s not as if we’re starting from nothing; innate, biological human nature, the thousands of years of history we have and the momentum it’s given us in various directions, and the actual mix of specific cultures and individual people in the world right at this moment, are all a very rich source of meaning. The urge to imagine some higher authority validating our endeavours can be very strong, but what I like to do in some of my fiction is to “stare into the abyss” as Nietzsche put it, and say, “Okay, there’s nothing but us humans treading water in the void ... but that’s fine, because that’s all there ever was.” 3. Blackford: There’s a famous statement by Freud about Copernican revolutions—the idea that Copernicus removed us from the physical centre of the Universe; Darwin removed us from the pinnacle of creation by revealing us as evolved animals; and Freud himself dealt the final blow to our pretensions, by showing us as mentally divided and not even in control of our own minds. This was pretty grandiose and immodest of Freud, but perhaps he had a point about the successive blows that science has delivered to ideas of human exceptionalism. How far are you with Freud on this? Egan: Freud was an appalling pseudo-scientist, but I’m afraid I’m not enough of a historian of philosophy to suggest who should really get the credit for first grasping the truly important thing about the human mind, which is that it must arise from natural, material processes just like everything else. Once you realise that, most of the naive metaphysical beliefs that have been held about the mind disintegrate fairly quickly under logical scrutiny. That said, my least favourite slogans about consciousness and the self come from people who say that these things are illusions. Revealing even the gravest misconceptions about the detailed nature of something does not amount to showing that the thing itself does not exist. The self exists as much as anything else in the universe exists. That it doesn’t survive death, or exert its will by defying the laws of physics, or possess detailed motives or memories for every single action we perform, are interesting facts that contradict certain historical ideas and persistent intuitions, but let’s not get carried away: minds still do all the truly delightful and amazing things that we always knew they were doing. It would probably take a glimpse of a billion-year-old alien culture to make me one iota less impressed with the human mind; Freud only made me less impressed with his particular instance. What’s more, I think there’s a limit to this process of Copernican dethronement: I believe that humans have already crossed a threshold that, in a certain sense, puts us on an equal footing with any other being who has mastered abstract reasoning. There’s a notion in computing science of “Turing completeness”, which says that once a computer can perform a set of quite basic operations, it can be programmed to do absolutely any calculation that any other computer can do. Other computers might be faster, or have more memory, or have multiple processors running at the same time, but my 1988 Amiga 500 really could be programmed to do anything my 2008 iMac can do – apart from responding to external events in real time – if only I had the patience to sit and swap floppy disks all day long. I suspect that something broadly similar applies to minds and the class of things they can understand: other beings might think faster than us, or have easy access to a greater store of facts, but underlying both mental processes will be the same basic set of general-purpose tools. So if we ever did encounter those billion-year-old aliens, I’m sure they’d have plenty to tell us that we didn’t yet know – but given enough patience, and a very large notebook, I believe we’d still be able to come to grips with whatever they had to say. 4. Blackford: One theme throughout your work has been that of personal identity, perhaps most notably in philosophical stories such as “Learning to Be Me”, but pervasively through almost all your work over the years. What took you down that path? What’s the motivation? Egan: I think the most important and interesting insight of scientific materialism is the one I alluded to in my last reply: the understanding that the mind arises from natural processes. SF has given us some great tropes for exploring what that means, and I was exposed to a certain amount of that as a teenager through writers like Philip K Dick and Stanislaw Lem, but stumbling onto my own ontological riffs with stories like “Axiomatic” and “Learning to Be Me” served as a reminder to me of how powerful the basic insight was, and how well it could work as SF. Sometimes this way of looking at things might seem remote from everyday human concerns, but you only have to read a few case studies by Oliver Sacks to have it driven home to you that our material nature can impinge on our lives dramatically without the intervention of any futuristic technology. I saw an extraordinary documentary recently about a man who’d developed amnesia at the age of 37, interacting with people who’d known him all his life but of whom he remembered nothing. The filmmakers interviewed the philosopher Mary Warnock and asked her: Is he still the same person? She replied, correctly I think, that there is no right answer to that question. We just don’t have the words to describe the situation. 5. Blackford: As your career has developed, we’ve seen you return again and again to the depiction of characters extraordinarily different from ourselves—they can be uploaded into computational realities, downloaded into physical bodies, simplified, modified, copied, erased ... They are about as posthuman as science fiction characters can get. You use such characters again in the new novel, Incandescence. Again, I’m interested in what took you down this path, so maybe you could address that, and then I have a couple of related questions. Egan: I recall being very bored and dissatisfied with the way most cyberpunk writers were treating virtual reality and artificial intelligence in the ’80s; a lot of people were churning out very lame noir plots that utterly squandered the philosophical implications of the technology. I wrote a story called “Dust”, which was later expanded into Permutation City, that pushed very hard in the opposite direction, trying to take as seriously as possible all the implications of what it would mean to be software. In the case of Permutation City that included some metaphysical ideas that I certainly wouldn’t want to repeat in everything I wrote, but the basic notions about the way people will be able to manipulate themselves if they ever become software, which I developed a bit further in Diaspora, seem logically unavoidable to me. 6. Blackford: Tell us a bit about narrating the adventures of radically posthuman characters. The point has often been made that it’s difficult to create characters who are truly alien—believably non-human—yet sufficiently understandable and engaging that we can accept them and care about what happens to them. How do you approach this? One thing that you seem to do is go out of your way to make everything that doesn’t have to be difficult for the reader as clear and simple as possible, but what are you thinking about when you face this kind of challenge? I can’t imagine that it’s the sort of thing that any writer can just handle sort of instinctively. Egan: Basically, I just look at things from the characters’ perspective and ask myself what their problems and anxieties would be. In Permutation City people have existential crises merely from waking up as software, because the process is entirely new, but in Diaspora editing and copying yourself is old hat and people are far more worried about problems in theoretical physics that might help them evade a cosmic disaster. Obviously no reader will have had personal experience of either situation, but if the characters’ priorities and reactions make sense in the circumstances, any reasonably empathetic person can relate to them. I’m also relatively conservative in the way I think our minds will change over time; for example, in Incandescence the characters can pluck various skills and bodies of knowledge at will from a massive library, but from moment to moment they’re really just thinking the way human beings are thinking right now. It might well turn out that in the future, most people’s subjective experience is something that we’d struggle to relate to at all, but there’s not much point writing a novel based on that premise. One thing readers do sometimes complain about is that the existence of backups of the characters undermines the drama: they don’t really care what happens to someone who’s almost immune to being killed. But for me, the logic of the situation is just so compelling that it’s non-negotiable: if we become software, we will make backups. To anyone whose sympathy for a character depends on them sharing the vulnerabilities of contemporary biological humans, all I can say is: get over it. 7. Blackford: Is it similar when you deal with advanced scientific and mathematical concepts—concepts that might “lose” even readers with reasonable levels of scientific literacy—or do you see that as a different kind of problem? Again, I’m interested in how it feels from the inside to an author writing this kind of work that could be challenging to an audience and must be extraordinarily challenging to create. Egan: When scientists and mathematicians think about “advanced” concepts, what they’re really doing mostly just involves some relatively simple manipulation of ideas that happen to be unfamiliar to the wider population. There are plenty of card games whose rules are more complex than the rules for doing tensor calculus! So depending on the context, I’ll sometimes just try to give the reader the gist of what those manipulations are, even if they’re going to be a little bit hazy about the things being manipulated. At other times, I’ll do as much as I can to unpack the whole process and demystify it completely. It’s impossible to write about every topic in modern science in a way that absolutely anyone can follow, but I’m not afraid to transcribe characters having detailed thoughts or conversations in which they make sense of scientific ideas, and by eavesdropping on those conversations the reader gets invited into the loop. 8. Blackford: Your themes and characters have made you something of an icon for the international transhumanist movement, something I gather you’re not entirely comfortable with. Or maybe that’s understating it? Tells us how you think, or feel, about that. Egan: I have some quite strong philosophical disagreements with large sections of the transhumanist movement, but it doesn’t bother me at all that people with whom I disagree on those points might nonetheless enjoy my books, and I certainly don’t feel that I’ve been misunderstood or misrepresented by transhumanists. So it’s not a matter of me feeling discomfort over anyone’s attitude to my work; it’s a disagreement that would be present just as strongly if I’d never written a single novel on a theme of interest to transhumanists. I suppose the heart of the disagreement, though, does boil down to the difference between science and SF-grade ideas. All SF writers make their fictional technology work by waving their hands to various degrees; even the most scrupulously logical and scientifically informed writer is making choices that let them tell the story they want to tell, rather than undertaking a sober, cautious attempt to predict the future. But an awful lot of transhumanists seem to have lost track of the distinction: they seem to think that anything desirable to them that doesn’t obviously violate the laws of physics and logic – making it a nice SF-grade idea – is actually going to be possible, practical, and maybe even just around the corner. I had an email from one transhumanist telling me that it was criminal that every intelligent person in the world wasn’t working on uploading, because every significant human problem would be solved once we were immortal software. The blood of all the people who died because uploading didn’t come sooner would be on the hands of those who didn’t hasten its arrival. Now, I’m as much in favour of universal immortality as anyone, but I think an attitude like that is stupendously naive. If we had the technology to upload people in, say, ten years from now – at negligible cost, to continue the theme of surreal optimism – the social and political upheaval involved in coming to terms with that, at such short notice, could easily make a century’s worth of bloodshed-as-usual look like a walk in the park. Another transhumanist meme that utterly amazes me is the idea that we ought to be handing the planet over to a benign, super-intelligent AI as quickly as possible. For anyone insufficiently dismayed by this prospect, it turns out that the main argument offered in its favour is that we should do this to avoid being enslaved by a non-benign, super-intelligent AI. How do we make either variety of super-intelligent AI? By writing a seed AI so clever that it can rewrite itself, to make itself cleverer – which includes being better at rewriting itself – and so on, until something emerges that is so intelligent that it is effectively omnipotent. Now, this doesn’t obviously violate the laws of physics or logic, and it has made for some very enjoyable SF by writers like Vernor Vinge, but the people who’ve convinced themselves that it’s an overwhelmingly likely outcome in the real world are waving their hands at close to the speed of light. 9. Blackford: Where next, Greg? Is there something you’re working on or something new you’d like to tackle? What can we expect from you in the future? Egan: I’m about a third of the way through a new novel, which is set in the very near future and involves the geopolitics of virtual reality. Hopefully that will be out in 2010, but before that there’s a far-future novella called “Hot Rock” that I’m pretty pleased with, due to be published late this year in Jonathan Strahan’s anthology Godlike Machines. 10. Blackford: Thanks once again. I’m sure there’s a question I should have asked but didn’t think of, so please pretend I’ve asked it. I’ll leave it up to you what thoughts you want to leave our readers with. Egan: Keep using crappy software, or the AI overlord will eat your children. Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures (2009) Interview by David Conyers First published in Albedo One, Number 37, 2009. Copyright © Greg Egan and David Conyers, 2009. All rights reserved. Greg Egan is one of Australia’s leading science fiction authors with over sixty short stories, seven novels and three collections to his name. His novel Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and his novella “Oceanic” won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award. He regularly appears in leading science fiction magazines such as Asimov’s and Interzone, and in Gardner Dozois’ The Years Best Science Fiction series. His most recent books are the novel Incandescence (Gollancz, 2008), and the short story collection Oceanic (Gollancz, July 2009). What was it that compelled you to pursue a career writing science fiction? I was interested in both science and science fiction from a very young age, and by the time I was seven or eight it was obvious to me that the best thing in the world would be to spend my life doing three things: writing books, making movies, and working as some kind of scientist. And I did make some attempts at all three, but I didn’t really have the temperament to persist with the last two. How did you get started? I wrote a lot of crap for twenty years, starting from the age of six. I had a novel published by a small press when I was twenty-one, but it wasn’t very good and it was more or less irrelevant in terms of my development as a writer. Then in the late 1980s I started writing short stories about biotech and artificial intelligence that just clicked. David Pringle, the editor of Interzone, bought several of them and encouraged me to work to my strengths. Your first mass-market novel Quarantine was published in 1992. Can you tell us the story of how this book came to be? I’d been aware for a while that some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggested an active role for conscious observers in “collapsing” the multitude of possibilities that exist in quantum superpositions into single events. I should stress that that’s a very marginal position, and it’s not one I ever believed to be true myself. Nevertheless, I thought it might be fun to imagine that only humans had this special “skill”, and that other conscious beings might not be too pleased with us running around annihilating alternatives. Who are your influences and how did they shape your writing? I must have read all the major SF that was in print in English in the 1970s. My mother was a librarian, and I had an adult library card from a very early age, so I’d just go and grab every new science fiction book as it came on to the shelves. I grew up with everyone from Aldiss to Zelazny. It’s hard to single out anyone as shaping my writing. Philip K Dick is a great example of someone who dealt with metaphysical themes, as well as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, all of which interest me greatly, and Larry Niven was the quintessential hard SF writer of the 1970s. A few years later, at a time when I’d almost given up on SF, Greg Bear’s Blood Music came along and rekindled my love of the genre. But I don’t model myself on any of these people; they were just inspiring because they worked so brilliantly with the kind of subject matter that makes SF indispensable. Who or what do you read now? Not a lot of fiction, these days. I read some of the SF magazines and anthologies, but the last novel I read was A Thousand Splendid Suns by the Afghani writer Khaled Hosseini. As well as general science and technology news, I read a lot of technical material in physics and mathematics, because my formal education in those subjects only went as far as a B.Sc. and I’m trying to keep up with modern developments. There are a number of recent SF novels I aspire to read, but whether I’ll find the time remains to be seen. You have been described as a leading visionary when it comes to ideas on what the future will be like. Gardner Dozois said that you write fiction that changes “the way that other science fiction writers think about the future.” Where do you get your ideas from? What sources (magazines, books, films, life in general and so forth) provide you with a creative spark? Basically I just spend as much time as I can reading and thinking about the subjects that interest me, and leave the fragments to collide in various ways. How do you go about constructing a story? It usually starts with an idea that I find interesting in itself, and then I look for a character and setting where the idea will have the most impact. For example, with “Reasons to be Cheerful”, I spent a few years wondering how to write a story about what it would be like to be able to choose precisely what makes you happy, before it struck me that that condition would be far more vivid and poignant if the protagonist had first lost the ability to be happy at all. You write a seemingly equal amount of short fiction compared to your output in novels. Do you prefer one medium over the other? Some ideas are perfectly suited to short stories, and there’s something immensely satisfying about finishing a piece of writing in a couple of months. It’s also very appealing to me to be able to re-read the whole story from the beginning every time I sit down to work on it – to have the whole thing in my mind all at once. It’s like working on an object you can hold in one hand: a watch or a piece of jewellery. Writing a novel feels more like building a house; you still have a vision of the whole thing, but the relationship that bears to the details and the day-to-day work is very different. Are there advantages in writing a novel compared to a short story, and vice versa? When you write a novel, you live with the same setting and characters long enough that you absorb the whole background and it becomes your default way of thinking about things. Rather than having to remind yourself of all the premises of the world you’re creating, it becomes second nature. And it’s a wonderful feeling when things you wrote six months or a year ago start slotting together into something larger. Which sells better, your short story collections or your novels? Novels generally, though Axiomatic has done pretty well. What is a typical writing day for you? I go for a walk, for about three hours; that’s when I think things over and plan what I’m going to write. It’s good to be able to do that in a situation where I’m not actually in front of the computer, because it makes it easier to try things out in my head and discard them if they don’t work. Then I sit down and write, for maybe four to six hours. You have a degree in mathematics and work as a computer programmer. Do you believe that science and/or technical qualifications are important when it comes to being able to write hard science fiction? Most hard SF involves some speculative element – and in some of my own writing the science is extremely speculative – but it does help to have enough formal education to be able to research things a bit and have some sense of the degree to which you’re remaining consistent with real science. Many of your stories involve transhuman characters built with incredible, almost magic-like technology. Do you believe this is our future? I hate the word “transhuman”; it suggests beings who have become something alien and incomprehensible to us. I’d much rather stress the continuity between humans in different eras who want much the same thing, but have various degrees of success in achieving their aims. Pretty much all decent people throughout history have wanted to live with the absolute minimum of violence, poverty and disease, and sought to improve their abilities to learn about the world, to express themselves artistically, and to try to ensure that their descendants have better lives than they had. Technology has been part of that all along. I don’t pretend to know when various specific technologies will become practical; in fiction I really just make choices that suit the story at hand. But unless the species is wiped out completely, or dragged back into a kind of pre-industrial era, “our future” encompasses everything we’re capable of doing over millions of years. Maybe it’s absurd to imagine us uploading our minds into computers and travelling between stars as pure data just a hundred years from now, but it seems equally absurd to imagine that we could survive and flourish for, say, ten thousand years and still fail to do anything that would render us as robust and flexible as uploading would. The only reason, on that timescale, not to do it would be because we’d come up with something better. Do transhuman characters with god-like powers alienate readers? Are they too far removed from human emotions and frailties that we experience in modern society? The frailty of our bodies is an enormously important part of our current reality – and I very much doubt that anyone will ever be literally immortal – but I don’t think there’s anything all that strange or alienating about the prospect of having, say, a far more robust body, or back-up copies of your mind. These are just ways of enabling us to do the kind of constructive things we’re doing right now, with fewer unwelcome interruptions. If you asked someone who’d moved from a country with endemic violence, women dying in childbirth, high infant mortality, and no effective treatment for dozens of infectious diseases to a place where all of those problems had been solved whether they felt alienated by the loss of their precious human frailty, they’d just laugh. Of course, while these problems are still extremely pressing in the real world – not to mention very unequally distributed – I can understand the impulse to treat fiction about our hypothetical invulnerable descendants as somehow decadent or trivial. But I don’t think it’s trivial to contemplate what we’ll do with our lives once we’ve been successful in dealing with our physical frailties. Do you believe we are destined to colonize other worlds, both within the solar system and other star systems? How far away do you think such a future is, if at all? I have absolutely no idea about the near-future prospects for human colonies; it’s hard enough right now to imagine that we’ll even go ahead with a single human expedition to Mars. But in the very long term, of course it would be absurd to imagine no one setting up home away from Earth. It would be far easier to do that without our traditional bodies, and I prefer to write fiction where space travel has become a form of communication more than a matter of shifting bulky, delicate freight, but I don’t know what will come first in reality. Do you think over-population, global environmental degradation and dwindling resources will put the brakes on humanity actually achieving some of the glorious technology and societies that many science fiction authors, yourself included, envisage in their fiction? Oh, I’m sure things won’t work out the way anyone has written it. When I write SF, I’m almost never trying to map out the future in the manner of someone giving sober advice about the real-world challenges ahead. I take it as given that in the real world, people know broadly what they ought to be doing, and me writing a gloomy book about environmental apocalypse isn’t going to change anyone’s behaviour if they don’t already get the message. Is it important for authors to educate readers and suggest alternate viewpoints on how the world does or could function, even when writing fiction? It’s good that there’s a certain amount of that in fiction, but I don’t think it’s an essential ingredient of every single novel, and I certainly don’t think fiction – least of all written fiction, which has such a tiny audience these days – is the most effective way to achieve any kind of urgent political goal. You have won the Hugo, John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, amongst others, and consistently appear in year’s best collections and many mass market science fiction anthologies. No other Australian writer has achieved your international success. What do you believe appeals about your writing that differentiates you from your local peers? I’m sure other Australian writers have done as well or better by various measures; if Sean Williams hasn’t sold more books than me I’d be very surprised. But I suppose I’ve been lucky in that I hit on some fresh approaches to perennial themes a couple of times, in books like Permutation City and Diaspora. There’s also something to be said for pushing things to their logical endpoint, rather than playing it safe and staying too close to the way other people are treating the same ideas. Carl Sagan was once asked which did he prefer – science or science fiction. He said “Science, because science is stranger than science fiction.” Do you agree with this observation? I agree in part. Certainly, it’s immensely difficult to come up with, say, speculative physics that’s consistent with everything we know about the real world, but also contains something interesting and new. And evolution is notoriously more inventive than most writers’ imaginations. You’ve been criticized for not developing your characters as fully as you could. How do you respond to this? Is characterization important when the story is about the science? There’s a preconception in some circles that the characters in realistic fiction ought to have a certain quota of relationship problems, family issues and emotional baggage of various kinds – and some people seem literally unable to believe that a real human being can be more passionate about scientific ideas than anything else, even though the history of science is littered with people for whom that was true. I write about characters for whom the events of whatever story I’m telling are among the most important things in their lives, and there’s not much point writing about science through the eyes of someone who’d rather be down the pub. You’ve been described as a recluse. You don’t attend science fiction conventions, there are no photographs of you to be found anywhere, and very few people in the publishing industry have actually met you. Is there a reason why you value your privacy so highly? It’s funny; I spend my long weekends mowing the lawn and visiting friends, and I get described as a “recluse” by people whose idea of normality is dashing around a dreary hotel somewhere trying to get photographed next to someone famous. Are any of your friends authors or editors, or do they in general work in very different industries? None of my friends are involved in publishing. These days authors are often advised that being a public figure helps sell their books. Even maintaining an online journal is encouraged as a means of keeping in touch with fans. Have you ever considered going down this path? No. I have a web site, which is packed with supplementary material related to my work, but it hardly requires an online journal to announce a novel every few years or a short story every few months. You turned down a Ditmar Award and your stories never seem to be nominated for the Aurealis Awards, Australia’s two leading speculative fiction awards. How did this come about, and why? Back in 1996, the rules for the Ditmars chosen by the organising committee that year made one of my novels – which had been published in the UK in December 1995 – eligible for nominations that would close before the book would be available in Australia. Obviously that was a disadvantage to me, but I didn’t really care and I didn’t say a word about it. Then a member of fandom started jumping up and down and proclaiming that the rules had been rigged in my favour, which I found both bizarre and insulting. So I withdrew the book from eligibility and spent a few months trying to get some agreement among Australian SF writers as to what would be a suitable permanent set of rules for the fiction awards. The writers all pretty much agreed, but fandom told us in so many words to mind our own business, since the whole point of the Ditmars was to have something to brawl over. So, at that point I lost all interest in Australian awards and Australian fandom. And my life is far more pleasant now that we’re entirely mutually irrelevant. Do you read many Australian science fiction authors, or do you believe nationality is not really important when it comes to writing in this genre? I don’t read much science fiction, period, and I wouldn’t read something just because it was written by an Australian author. With respect to your own work, do you have any favourite stories? “Reasons to be Cheerful” is my favourite short story. Distress was my favourite novel until recently, but I think the one I just finished, Zendegi, has taken its place. What is it that appealed to you about “Reasons to be Cheerful” and Zendegi? “Reasons to be Cheerful” felt to me like a jigsaw puzzle that couldn’t have been put together any other way; more than ten years later, when I re-read it I’m still happy with every word. That doesn’t happen often. But I like Zendegi for almost the opposite reasons; it’s full of lots of serendipitous things that could easily have been different. For example, at one point in my research for the book I decided to read the Persian epic the Shahnameh. If I hadn’t done that, I would still have written the novel, but it would have been very different. You mentioned earlier that an influence on your writing was Larry Niven who is probably best known for his Known Space series. Have you ever thought about writing a series of short stories and novels that together form a future history of the human race? I’ve written three short stories that share the “Amalgam universe” of Incandescence, and I might set some more stories and novels there in the future. Since 2002 you have been active in campaigning for refugee rights by seeking the end of mandatory detention for asylum seekers in Australia. What prompted you to do this? Armed Australian troops boarding a freighter that had rescued drowning asylum seekers, in order to ensure that they couldn’t claim asylum in Australia. How did you become involved in this cause and what actions did you take? It took me a while to get my act together and find the groups in Perth that had already been involved in the issue for years. Mostly, what I did myself was write to, befriend and visit a few dozen people who were locked up in the outback detention centres. So it was a matter of providing moral and practical support to people who were under a lot of stress – people who’d been imprisoned for at least three or four years, and had no idea when or how their situation would be resolved. Do you feel that you had any successes in your campaign? There was a nationwide movement with thousands of people, and it kept the issue in the media spotlight and provided some counterpoint to the government propaganda. Ultimately all the long-term detainees were reassessed, and virtually all of them were given visas, and while I expect that would have happened eventually anyway, I think if there’d been silence from the Australian community it might have taken much longer. Australia has recently had a change of government. Do you believe that the rights of refugees will or have improved with the new government? There has definitely been an improvement, though the legal situation remains far from ideal. The current minister for immigration is the first decent human being to hold the portfolio for a very long time, but there needs to be major legislative change to ensure that people can’t end up detained for years again in the future. Has your involvement with refugee issues influenced your writing? Mostly it stopped me writing much for about four years. But obviously it was an eye-opening experience to see people mistreated in that way, and to learn firsthand just how badly a “civilised” government can behave. I ended up writing a short story, “Lost Continent”, which is an allegory of the whole thing, just to get some of the anger out of my system and move on. But more positively, I got to meet a lot of people from backgrounds and circumstances very different from that of any of my other friends. Have any of your stories or novels been optioned to make into a movie? How do you feel about your work being transcribed into another medium? There are a couple of short stories optioned at present. The most promising project involves a young Australian screenwriter who’s working on “A Kidnapping”. He’s expanded it out in some interesting directions, and I’d be delighted if it did make it to the screen. Do you have any science fiction movies or television shows that you’ve enjoyed or influenced you? One of my favourite movies of the last ten years was Memento. I know it’s not classified as SF by most people, but it was packed with more genuine existential vertigo than any of the movies based on Philip K Dick’s books. Before that, probably Repo Man and Liquid Sky. You recently completed a manuscript for a new novel. What can you tell us about the novel, and when can we expect to see it in bookstores? The new novel, Zendegi, is set mostly in Iran. It begins in 2012, when a high-ranking Iranian politician is involved in a car accident in the company of someone other than his wife, and follows the political avalanche triggered by a mobile phone image snapped at the crash scene. But it’s also about brain mapping and virtual reality. It’s due to be published late in 2010. What other stories can we expect to see from Greg Egan in the near future?
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	64	https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-eternal-flame-by-greg-egan-reviewed.html	en	Fantasy Book Critic: "The Eternal Flame" by Greg Egan (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)	https://blogger.googleus…k-no-nu/eter.jpg	https://blogger.googleus…k-no-nu/eter.jpg	[ "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwKdhC6R6gIZN5Cfs8NcU03UCPC4p37RvL19ALTkipQN7BSKmxKq3SqptJX0kOx4tBDkhyphenhyphenh6BRDAVLiDBeNdEnWXY1UMP6bftGtbUp70URD7FZyzMvcRe4noIqL5tY2UcxwutQH8fh3iBi/s400/eter.jpg", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vJDvOOuIERGBlC572GiENSZ-L0s-Vs2EHqAadYfCKfyBsq9UsfbeoDBaX5eY5IIjpXmTobxkd2Tuf5QqoOdhgKqR-rqhHlqclHQYRCVw=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u6CQjsSOIZVPJlq2gJgTUOB5tjdhXb-s2YWGafhnbfeSJQ_ZZBhESHiyn9cMwpii95naMl3zh08XtuvA73QbQ9A4dluFIS9xfzbe0VESE=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vGUvVTQAJ5qr6-1rA8DYsNc22x6l7V52uUYsHEZ09sSNNxqLtZEa4z97o1XoTKdsXSyCrI49iB9pQOyP_foYyzxtIUVNX_y0IR9u8Upsw=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vJDvOOuIERGBlC572GiENSZ-L0s-Vs2EHqAadYfCKfyBsq9UsfbeoDBaX5eY5IIjpXmTobxkd2Tuf5QqoOdhgKqR-rqhHlqclHQYRCVw=s0-d", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcehqa7oaPxCySWqdsxNdpQxksiz_sK_1_3RgsfuOpcNmIgHPNrPE-8DKrbu_XWA_8MlIDHXxkGKOKrcZI2OR42MJ8i-yFqbkUT2BL7i2ui37jg7YeyN8HfP0j6xKiDYQLycmjRsAMBmSMhlVF_bau-AtJgPF2fAvWgkskIeRox_yc5tJo1RpKcoRBP4k/w453-h151/1500x500.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7SnMS7iOFCZOEDzaGdgikScKcFHgRfBO3VMiFJrTywgRbvuYXyWTyaBOjb5fCqAa1ajppINPJdE3_8Rv2c5eddeH96MUWiGVAEBbE0Qy9L3D4CK1x02F5SLnhQMzyLE-0ro4DilSbQ9xEfv42V1pIC91IDB-vChYbSCjJDYTjlgntUtg1CF2ghwW4_Qw/s1000/71NhYZXp3KL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicx9SW1suIpHdUP0huEjg__vjdge4ZgpugYJ7qLfQyCOZyNrFArNxaXyA83-Azu-Gg99TjWQVglqc33vb2K4gfIwsa7Qw0FqNGONLveI42c8G5MLmXVSWm_-s6pXqDbsKpeodAiY1cXuptnhM3eqKr1hIPFdPv2vmkQ4jJGpXOVZG2bqZCbBB0jSFtAhU-/s2700/Thrill%20Switch_Cover.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuqwOTWo-Jc5FMsd6Nvg_KHs1qG7NGXdQCq8jfiKeq0vul54Mzdwhie7qLpVCMsuTm-IXBfpZ-tWCUxUDa9ZbO4FwF1JiHmEvIUDJbjjdrrPfBmOMysNBgzGzEsErPLtO2DDgQokZw6hQt1Tj4-J-7De4fHam6YuegwcFLMuD-tsc1Yk-yvj_h5f2rxQ0f/s466/Atrocity%20Engine_cover.webp", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEityfg3vV0hD1SDGQ8oNIGg5OPVdXRfk7RnSaUXGK_nY4nqIt8lWlIscDyHHy8Mw0w7sTfJJj4yrcuaSQzfCk4C8-U-O3e67fZbqwFAf4Yw-D0Kr-eBCQUmVFLahGrkJGmIJdpB2XhXifah3VmDeTP6jXJ2cKFQpYX1jyxOTWhyphenhyphenQAPwx-KKlV8WtCV5AMY/s924/179911444.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYOtHzmZPvbjTrY331jRB6LU2SNZBacUKNE7KzMkecuMwNusad_sS6U_3IpyBNmS1iLB0UvZSQt0hpxofst4Sc_vsuPrVZrHPtK3hyJtGLVecBmMSA5szitFV8_Hly9NWVG2II4qTvPTsT46yreQd7hlnUIE9njfevTUbJ7I5wQ6qjSF1b9IEBU61V0w/s1200/DTG.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmWdRAB_zHXRqCDoMYGkwjvyQWjPp3_z-nUr66yoTRGAcSaN9KIRt2lwAjwqqVzc5hyphenhyphenflliI9syinrtZTvqhHDsfrkv70iuJSFhGE0B4fDMIU9NDv6jF0CLLvOdpCXdYBnwpGGVM_1jFU-e2eFtBcDggqzQXHylSEQ9CoubSi7mAzAalK7-fvI6TIekhK/s2049/the-book-of-doors-by-gareth-brown.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Speculative fiction book reviews.		https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/favicon.ico		https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-eternal-flame-by-greg-egan-reviewed.html
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	48	https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)	en	Diaspora (novel)	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/transhumanism/images/4/48/Diaspora%28GollanczPB%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230901092216&path-prefix=en	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/transhumanism/images/4/48/Diaspora%28GollanczPB%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230901092216&path-prefix=en	[ "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/transhumanism/images/4/48/Diaspora%28GollanczPB%29.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20230901092216&path-prefix=en", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6a181c72-e8bf-419b-b4db-18fd56a0eb60", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6c42ce6a-b205-41f5-82c6-5011721932e7", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/464fc70a-5090-490b-b47e-0759e89c263f", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/f7bb9d33-4f9a-4faa-88fe-2a0bd8138668" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Transhumanism Wiki" ]	2024-07-03T16:38:30+00:00	Diaspora is a hard science fiction novel by Australian writer Greg Egan, published in 1997. This novel is set in a posthuman future, in which transhumanism long ago (during the mid 21st century) became the default philosophy embraced by the vast majority of human cultures. The novel began life...	en	/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico	Transhumanism Wiki	https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)	No Title [[ \|250px]] Paperback, 5th Imp., 2003 No Title No information Diaspora is a hard science fiction novel by Australian writer Greg Egan, published in 1997. Plot introduction[] This novel is set in a posthuman future, in which transhumanism long ago (during the mid 21st century) became the default philosophy embraced by the vast majority of human cultures. The novel began life as a short story entitled "Wang's Carpets" which originally appeared in New Legends, a collection of short stories edited by Greg Bear (Legend, London, 1995), and was later adapted, and included, as a chapter in the novel. A glossary is included, which explains many of the complicated terms in the novel. Egan deftly invents several new theories of physics, beginning with Kozuch Theory, the dominant physics paradigm for nearly nine hundred years before the beginning of the novel. Kozuch Theory treats elementary particles as semi-point-like wormholes, whose properties can be explained entirely in terms of their geometries in six dimensions. Certain assumptions, common to Greg Egan literature, are made to enable the plot, such as the digital mutability of reality (that there is no difference between any real thing and a sufficiently similar mathematical replica of that thing). For the story, Egan adopts Keri Hulme's gender-neutral pronouns 've', 'vis', 'ver' for most of the characters in the novel, who opt to have a neutral gender. The world of the novel[] By 2975 CE (Universal Time), the year in which the novel begins, humanity has speciated into three distinct groupings: fleshers, biological societies consisting of statics, the original, naturally-evolving race of Homo sapiens, and a wide variety of exuberant derivatives, whose genes have been modified beyond the static baseline. These include enhancements such as disease resistance, life extension, intelligence amplification, and the ability to allow selected transhumans to thrive in new environments, such as the sea. There even exists a subculture (the dream apes) whose ancestors bred out the capacity for speech and some of the higher brain functions, apparently in order to attain a primal innocence and rapport with nature. Unlike pre-Introdus (21st century) society, the vast profusion of qualitatively different types of fleshers has made any sort of global civilisation impossible. This problem has prompted the development of a culture of "Bridgers" who modify their own minds to form a chain of intermediates between exuberant strains. gleisner robots - individual software intelligences housed inside artificial anthropoid, or flesher-shaped, physical bodies (from a design by a person or corporation named Gleisner[1]) who interact with the world in flesher-paced "real time," a fact which they regard as important, as they consider the polis citizens to be too remote and solipsistic. The gleisners live in space, mostly in the asteroid belt, and various other places in the Solar System; it is implied that they long ago agreed to leave Earth to the fleshers to avoid conflict. For hundreds of years before the beginning of the novel, gleisners have been building a grand interstellar fleet with which to colonise as much of the universe as physically possible. the citizens[2] - intelligence as disembodied computer software running entirely within simulated reality-based communities known as polises.[3] These, by far, are the majority of "humanity" at this time, followed in a distant second place by the gleisners. Together with vast networks of sensors, probes, drones and satellites, they collectively make up the Coalition of Polises, the backbone and bulk of human civilisation. They interact primarily in virtual environments called scapes, through the use of avatars or icons. The citizens of the Coalition view the gleisners and their quest as puerile and ultimately futile, believing that only "bacteria with spaceships . . . knowing no better and having no choice" would attempt to deface (by means of mass colonisation) the galaxy, especially if virtual realities afford limitless possibilities at a small fraction of the total resource consumption. Diaspora focuses in large part on the nature of life and intelligence in a post-human context, and questions the meaning of life and the meaning of desires. If, for instance, the meaning of human life and human desires are tied up with the meaning of ancestral human biology ("to spread one's genes"), then what is the meaning of lives and desires, and what is the basis of values when biology is no longer a part of life? Plot summary[] Diaspora begins with a description of "orphanogenesis," the creation of a citizen without any ancestors (most citizens are descendants of fleshers who were uploaded at some point), and the subsequent upbringing of newborn Yatima within Konishi polis. Yatima is already old within a few real-time days, because citizens' subjective time is about 800 times as rapid as flesher and gleisner time. Early on, Yatima and a friend, Inoshiro, use abandoned gleisner bodies to visit a Bridger colony near the ruins of Atlanta on Earth. Years later, the gleisner Karpal, using a gravitational wave detector, determines that a binary neutron star system in Lacerta has collapsed, releasing a huge burst of energy. The system's stable orbit had been predicted to last for another seven million years. By analysing irregularities in the orbit, Karpal discovers that the devastating burst of energy will reach Earth within the next four days. Yatima and Inoshiro return to Earth to urge the fleshers to either migrate to the polises or at least shelter themselves. Many fleshers reject this advice, or fail fully to appreciate its urgency quickly enough. Stirred up by a paranoid Static diplomat, many fleshers suspect that Yatima and Inoshiro have come to bring about an involuntary "Introdus," or mass-migration into the polises, involving virus-sized nanomachines disintegrating the human body and recording information as they convert the brain into a memory crystal. The gamma ray burst reaches Earth shortly after the conference, causing a mass extinction. The gleisners and the Coalition of Polises survive the burst, thanks to radiation hardening. Over the next few years, Yatima and other citizens and gleisners attempt to bring any surviving fleshers into the safety of the polises. The novel title itself refers to a quest undertaken by most of the inhabitants of Carter-Zimmerman ("C-Z"), a polis devoted to physics and understanding the cosmos, along with volunteers from throughout the Coalition of Polises. The Diaspora is a collection of one thousand clones (digital copies) of C-Z polis, deployed in all directions in the hope of gathering as much data as possible in order to revise the long-held classical understanding of Kozuch Theory. The bulk of the novel follows this expedition, rotating back and forth between different cloned instances of the same cast of main characters as different C-Z clones make discoveries along the way, relaying information to one another at first over hundreds of light years, then later between universes. Characters[] Yatima[4] is an Orphan, a being created by the Konishi polis conceptory rather than by a parent or parents. A central character in the novel, ve usually takes the iconic form of an African herdsman in a purple robe. Yatima exhibits a deep love of mathematics and a desire to explore the unknown. Blanca, whose icon is a featureless black silhouette, is another inhabitant of the Konishi polis, and one of the first three people that Yatima meets. Blanca is a great physicist and scape architect, and an acknowledged expert on Kozuch Theory throughout the Coalition of Polises. Inoshiro is another of Yatima's earliest friends, whose icon features metallic, pewter-grey skin. A native of Konishi but a frequenter of Ashton-Laval, a polis of great artistic merit, ve proudly considers verself delinquent. Inoshiro frequently attempts to attract Yatima away from philosophical Konishi and into more aesthetic and avant-garde pursuits. It was Inoshiro who suggested visiting the fleshers of Atlanta in ancient gleisner's bodies. Gabriel is Yatima's third early friend, whose icon is covered in short, golden-brown fur. Gabriel is Blanca's lover and another great physicist. Unlike most polis citizens, Gabriel has chosen for himself to have a specific (though non-functional) gender, a fact which is considered eccentric and perhaps perverted amongst many citizens of the Coalition. Karpal is a gleisner astronomer who lives on the surface of the Moon, and is the first to discover the collapse of Lac G-1. He later leaves his robotic body and gleisner society to transmigrate to Carter-Zimmerman polis, seeking a more profound understanding of physics, unavailable to creatures whose minds are programmed to think of things in terms of their bodies. Orlando Venetti, originally a leader of the Bridger colony of Atlanta; he and his mate Liana Zabini are the first to welcome Inoshiro and Yatima upon their arrival as gleisners. In the Lacerta Event, Liana is killed and Orlando is brought into the polis; he joins the Diaspora, and thanks to his Bridger training he makes the first interactive contact with an alien intelligence. Radiya is Yatima's first mentor in abstract mathematics and exploration of the "Truth Mines," Konishi’s metaphoric representation of the world of mathematical theorems. Vis icon is a fleshless skeleton made of twigs and branches, with a skull carved from a knotted stump. Hermann is an extremely eccentric member of the Diaspora, who often appears as a segmented worm with six flesher-shaped feet attached to elbow-jointed legs, based on the curl-up from the work of M. C. Escher. Hermann is very old, a product of the original 21st century Introdus, and describes verself as vis own great-great-grandson because ve has reinvented vis own personality so many times during vis long life. The Star Puppies are a group of Carter-Zimmerman citizens who elect to stay conscious, in real time, for the duration of their spaceflight in the Diaspora (most others are in a state of suspension). They take the form of space-evolved creatures dwelling in a scape representing the hull of the spacecraft, employing personality outlooks (software analogous to psychoactive drugs) that ensure they feel constant joy in, and at, the universe around them. The Polises[] Humanity began transferring itself into the polises (the introdus) in the late 21st century UT. There are many polises, though only a few are mentioned in the novel. The author does not go into any great detail about them, in a physical sense, though they seem to be hardware-based supercomputers of unknown size and computational ability, all of which are probably hidden in safe places. Konishi polis, at least, is buried deep beneath the Siberian tundra. Each polis has its own unique character, encapsulated in a "charter" which defines its goals, philosophies, and attitudes to other polises, and the external world. Citizens are expected to pay attention to the charter of the polis they are situated in; should they begin to disagree with the charter, they can always migrate to a polis which is more amenable to them. The most prominent difference between one polis and another, at least in the novel, is in their attitudes toward the physical world. They range from those who wish to experience the real world of normal time and space to the wholly solipsistic who live their entire lives in esoteric, isolated virtuality. The citizens of Konishi polis seem to be concerned mostly with abstract mathematics and esoteric philosophical pursuits, and are generally uninterested in the physical world. They use visual icons for social purposes, but simulated physical interaction is considered a violation of individual autonomy. After the Lacerta Event, Yatima emigrates from Konishi to Carter-Zimmerman polis, which rejects the solipsism exemplified by Konishi and embraces the study of the physical universe as of paramount importance. Given the Lacerta Event, which suggests that the universe may be very dangerous in unknown ways, Yatima has begun to share this viewpoint. Polis time, Delta, and perception[] The internal dating and time standard used in the polises is known as CST (Coalition Standard Time). It is measured in tau (an elastic value, as it changes with polis hardware improvements) elapsed since the system was adopted on Jan 1, 2065 (UT). When the novel begins the CST date in the polises is 23 387 025 000 000. The polises, generally, run roughly eight hundred (subjective) times faster than the outside world, allowing for very rapid development compared to the physical world. Being software-based, the polis citizens can live life at user-determined speeds, meaning that they can, if they wish, experience many subjective days, weeks, or months of time while a much shorter period of objective "real time" has passed. The opposite is also true - citizens can also choose to "rush", meaning to experience consciousness at a speed slower than the polis hardware can maintain. Hence citizens could experience consciousness at the same speed as a human flesher would, or slower, or even freeze their conscious state for a set time or until a previously determined event occurs. It is suggested that some citizens have opted to experience consciousness so slowly that they are able to witness continental drift and geological erosion. For a citizen running at full speed, one tau is subjectively equivalent to one second for a flesher. "Distance," another arbitrary value within the virtual Scapes of the Polises, is measured in Delta, which are not entirely explained. Delta are primarily filters, which may be used or ignored at will, which allow Citizens, Scapes, and other Polis objects to not be involved with one another when they are not related, unless a connexion is specifically made or necessary. Almost all Polis Citizens, except for those who specifically elect otherwise, experience the world through two sensory modalities: Linear and Gestalt, which are described as distant descendants of hearing and seeing, respectively. In Linear, information is conveyed quantitatively, as a string or strings of information formulated with a language which is hardwired into the mind of almost all Citizens. Citizens may "speak" to one another in Linear by sending streams of data back and forth, from mind to mind, which can be either private conversations carried on between a specific subset of intended participants, or public announcements accessible to all involved in a conversation or otherwise "listening in." In Gestalt, information is conveyed qualitatively, and data sent or received about anything arrives all at once, and is interpreted by the mind of the Citizen in all its aspects simultaneously, resulting in an experience of immediacy, and a Citizen need not consciously consider the information being sent as in Linear, but Gestalt is rather entirely or almost entirely subconscious. Citizens use Gestalt to create Icons or for themselves, which are "visual" representations within Scapes (which are Gestalt "areas" or "spaces"). Citizens also use Gestalt to convey Tags, which are packages of information being described as like an odour or essence, which are gathered by any other Citizens within several Delta, or who happen to be "reading" for specific Tags. Each Citizen has a unique Tag which identifies them as a particular person, regardless of their other appearances, and Tags may be emitted for other purposes as well, when arbitrary information needs to be conveyed and understood instantly between Citizens. Towards the beginning of the novel, for instance, Yatima learns about an asteroid in the real world by reading its tags subconsciously, which inform ver instinctively about its properties such as mass, velocity, rotation, composition, emission spectra, and other such data discernible to the Coalition's satellite network. See also[] Simulated reality [] Reviews[] Infinity Plus Parsec Mathematical Fiction SF Site SF Reader Wang's Carpets at BestScienceFictionStories.com - A review of the 1995 short story. References[] Greg Egan's homepage Egan's 1994 novel, Permutation City, could be seen as being a very loose prequel to Diaspora, as it features early experimentation into the uploading of minds into supercomputers. Orphanogenesis, the first chapter of the novel, is available, for free, at Egan's website HERE A short story, published in Egan's short-story collection Luminous, The Planck Dive, also concerns events in the Diaspora. It is available, for free, from the author's website HERE Editions[] English editions[] September 1997: Hardback, ISBN 1-85798-438-2 (UK edition), Publisher: Gollancz, 320 pages September 1997: Paperback, ISBN 1-85798-439-0 (UK edition), Publisher: Gollancz 1997: Hardback, Cover of ISBN B000GX6OQU, Publisher: Orion February 1998: Hardback, ISBN 0-06-105281-7 (USA edition), Publisher: Eos July 1998: Paperback, ISBN 0-75280-925-3 (UK edition), Publisher: Gollancz April 1999: Unbound, ISBN 0-606-18687-5 (USA edition), Publisher: Demco Media November 1999: Mass Market Paperback, ISBN 0-06-105798-3 (USA edition), Publisher: Eos Translations[] 1999: Boukoumanis Editions, Athens, Translated by Christodoulos Litharis (Greek translation) February 2000: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-45316-181-5 (pb), Translated by Bernhard Kempen (German translation) 2003: Mondadori/Urania, Milan, ISSN 1120-5288 / Number 1460 (pb periodical), Translated by Riccardo Valla (Italian translation) 2005: Hayakawa, Tokyo, ISBN 4-15011-531-1 (pb), Translated by Makoto Yamagishi (Japanese translation) cs:Diaspora (román) it:Diaspora (romanzo)
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	51	http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/11/review-book-of-all-skies-by-greg-egan.html	en	nerds of a feather, flock together: Review: The Book of All Skies by Greg Egan	https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu	https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu	[ "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHov-zOI6L-JMqUgV4opYUyR-Mes-QwkvBeBNR3mPBo6tXwpQpIH0h_hcRV8-QdmJUB5UfZ_8gkLxku9AOitTYc_R9q3K9ZYG9-qcBtSit8RGUgF04mG8qNctLw3afHqfXrlg7M1KnOQPc20n364t02SgjpIiR9ptO8CvszfcacR_44O5E9Lgvp2ou=w306-h400", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-netvibes.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-yahoo.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-netvibes.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/subscribe-yahoo.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/widgets/arrow_dropdown.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon_feed12.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRmxgqQJL1Kn0D2GjfmyW64-QyfISNGtTxzpM50AHtO9i_TejOAa-AgNMPrnPSmEgHCpITGXe-4FV5saTTRHT5Ockz81QM1IN1kSlh3REY_3FVyPiUlJdQfTogmJoShhXD8cYS7tohxDHyOWVOaWNPY6NHQiYu4XzE9mRn7fPtOH0WKRk6BBcQi_N-mKA/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/image02.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKm_oo6PrP69XRZw2K-FdIUOrl3U-Jip2BfA_-pYXMfprp6xNqTDT9fpjfx4oFYB5xx_tJGOxotxdhrkrlB40kq7Z7pQ7KUaa_6bnaSUkmnhyQVsq1c60nl0qSS3i_CNre5cR7oA-On9HeDFoUJ_GM5aIgFqz5P7iGXzuQj09W1WNNngPBIkAzWoE0LwC/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/aco.png", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tt86REM0vDByvcv4iwdMwUqvGYe_Ha2XLq6GD13yVrGzYypvPoBYbcJsVHaFrJMZ40QANrvTqvqFEbbAswZvpgilafMBr_JgqHtcWjV-jdBgYShVJT-cVrDev2SV6Aqak8uur8X_Dyn3fHdeKjlVZVGKTKI7zrJHTvX-metzOZxQwQ0YAVKqOH61_77w=w72-h72-p-k-no-nu", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3iH7Bnv27xIT2_Nyekv76JK2q9QgRvJAOW9iSi9S1sOPPRFD93jigeBsFB8DGO0glGZl6M39N6rTpY-FZK1qEZhuOJdmyJ1WHNkVZeF3LRUnYdk04Qn3FwOVmp55g6odb1l6iKpok3aiffYVHk9CVCOKUYScde0KT_Ey3Bp4BwQGLJNS7F13W45kH6PpA/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/IMG_6646.jpeg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkuon9uLvqLmeYd3PIKroRcdWnCsas7cFUlDJ5KiePEXve7VUbKDW4nhI9Q2zOeeb2JOhorYg06CaMsOptg7C67tyoxeYwQh9USP3jC_E156_NhWT7_loe_-Db0EUUk5fSYVM2ymEJBuwHASV29FbneLJnMPEd9ls3VG8kijjfZdbOwnDibMyq_ycA6ijK/w72-h72-p-k-no-nu/MV5BNjBmYzFmODktNDIyZC00NWFmLTk2NTctYmZiY2E2OTA2OTc0XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Arturo Serrano" ]	null	The journey is hard to follow, but the destination is worth it Greg Egan has become my insta-buy author. At times, the scientific underpinni...	en	http://www.nerds-feather.com/favicon.ico		http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/11/review-book-of-all-skies-by-greg-egan.html	The journey is hard to follow, but the destination is worth it Greg Egan has become my insta-buy author. At times, the scientific underpinnings of his worldbuilding fly over my head, but I can always trust that he's done his homework and that the whole edifice will stand. He writes in that hard SF tradition where the conflict to overcome is not interpersonal disagreement or inner turmoil but a purely technical challenge. As in a Clarke story, the universe is villain enough. The Book of All Skies occurs in a spatially warped version of our world where two gigantic arches, known as the Hoops, serve as portals to alternate lands with different ecosystems, cultures, languages, and stars. Since this is a world without a sun, its inhabitants live in perpetual night, so they have evolved the ability to see infrared. The only sources of sustenance for living beings are starlight and geothermal energy. The Hoops themselves are not physical objects, but you can always tell where they are because the night sky visible from one side ends abruptly at a boundary where the next sky continues. Now, crucially, if you want to remain in the same land, you can always walk around a Hoop. But if you cross under it to enter the next land, you can turn around and cross it again, and enter yet another land, and repeat the procedure dozens of times. The only way to return to your point of origin is to walk back the exact same trajectory. (If you're not a topologist and, like me, feel utterly lost, the author has posted a helpful explainer here.) There's a narrative economy here that results in a constant state of surprise, but this technique may not suit everyone's taste. A line in the first page only makes sense if the reader can infer the mechanism of infrared vision, but otherwise, the reader is left alone. This isn't a novel that hands over explanations. The setting is absolutely alien to our common experience, but it's described from a standpoint of normalcy, which for the reader means waiting several chapters to even learn that this world has no sun, and even more chapters to realize (although it should have been obvious in hindsight) that the protagonists have no concept of years. There are infodumps, but they're restricted to points in dialogue where they're immediately relevant. If you're fine with exposition flowing organically from plot, spoken more for the actual benefit of another character than the reader's, you'll enjoy this style of writing. The plot follows Del, an archaeologist and linguist who lives in a land at a pre-industrial stage of technological advancement, who has been recruited for an expedition to investigate one mysterious land where the ground gives way to a seemingly endless gap and no one knows whether there's more world beyond. A legend speaks of a great migration in the past, but the only pieces of evidence available are a missing book and a closed passage under the mountains. The process to reach the other side of the gap involves extensive discussions and calculations, because gravity behaves in counterintuitive ways when you cross a Hoop that has a full world on one side and only thin air on the other. No actual numbers appear in the novel (that's what the explainer page is for), although illustrations would have been very helpful. I struggled to picture the specific shape of a gigantic bridge built to cross the gap, or the trajectory of certain buoyant vehicles, or the positions of sections of rock relative to the Hoops, and after intense rereading, I'm still not sure my mental image matches Egan's. What Del discovers at the end of her journey is not only the secret history of the fabled migration, but also the origin of the Hoops, the tragic explanation for the loss of written records, a completely different technological tradition (a discovery that underscores the relationship between scientific advancement and availability of resources), and rules for social organization she hadn't remotely suspected. However, readers must keep in mind that this is not the type of story that culminates in a big reflection on the deep truths of human life. The ending is resolved by the clever application of physics, and that's where the novel places its ambitions. The adventure in the last couple of chapters proceeds with the mechanical dryness of a Verne novel, and the text ends with unexpected abruptness in the middle of a dialogue. It does complete the thematic interests of the book, in that the ancient separation of humankind is healed, but the manner of execution can come off as ungraceful. Likewise, action scenes early in the book often pause at the strangest moments to describe a character's entire thought process, or even to insert an entire dialogue, full with meticulous strategizing, right at a moment of immediate urgency. Although this helps understand the motivations of a scene, it comes at the cost of hurting the reading flow. Readers accustomed to a more literary vein of science fiction need to consider the text for what it aims to do and the way it sets about achieving it before jumping to find fault in these writing choices. Egan's interest in exploring strange universes is mathematical first and poetic second. That's a valid way of creating science fiction, one that has historically provided the essential link between speculation and real-life innovation, and one that needs authors like Egan in order to stay fertile. Nerd Coefficient: 6/10. POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	8	https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/author/greg-egan/	en	Greg Egan : Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy	https://clarkesworldmaga…cw_214_800.jpg?3	https://clarkesworldmaga…cw_214_800.jpg?3	[ "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/robot-head.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/twitter.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/facebook.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/bluesky.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/large/subscribe-clarkesworld-9.jpg?id=22", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/large/subscribe-clarkesworld-10.jpg", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/large/3hs.jpg", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/facebook.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/x.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/mastodon.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/images/icons/bluesky.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-dark-mode/assets/images/btn-1/light.png", "https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-dark-mode/assets/images/btn-1/dark.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine: Greg Egan	en	/favicon.ico	Clarkesworld Magazine	https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/author/greg-egan/	Greg Egan Greg Egan has published fourteen novels and more than eighty shorter works. His novella “Oceanic” won the Hugo Award, and his novel Permutation City won the John W Campbell Memorial Award. His latest books are the collection Instantiation and the novel The Book of All Skies. Greg Egan has the following works available at Clarkesworld: Dream Factory NOVELETTE by Greg Egan in Issue 187 – April 2022 1 “Any pets?” Justine asked, glancing up from the checklist on her phone. “No,” James replied, hopeful that this might count in his favor, though it was hard to read […]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	10	https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026826-800-incandescence-by-greg-egan/	en	Incandescence by Greg Egan	https://images.newscient…26.800-1_300.jpg	https://images.newscient…26.800-1_300.jpg	[ "https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/mg20026826.800-1_300.jpg", "https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=273 273w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=321 321w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=369 369w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=394 394w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=546 546w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=642 642w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=738 738w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02113544/SEI_210498967.jpg?width=788 788w", "https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=273 273w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=321 321w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=369 369w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=394 394w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=546 546w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=642 642w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=738 738w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/25121622/SEI_209436093.jpg?width=788 788w", "https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=273 273w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=321 321w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=369 369w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=394 394w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=546 546w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=642 642w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=738 738w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24140958/sei204548736.png?width=788 788w", "https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=273 273w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=321 321w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=369 369w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=394 394w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=546 546w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=642 642w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=738 738w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/24091215/sei205501134.jpg?width=788 788w", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/apple.691391b5.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/google.f217b9d7.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/instagram.49e1fa34.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/meta.f61ba35f.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/twitter.86154302.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/tiktok.020a2952.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/linkedin.aff7042c.svg", "https://www.newscientist.com/build/images/footer/whatsapp.a05d81f2.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "books" ]	null	[ "David Langford", "#author.fullName}" ]	2008-11-12T18:00:00+00:00	Six years after his last novel, Egan returns with an extraordinary work of ultra-hard sci-fi - a breathtaking, if sometimes knotty, thought experiment.	en	/build/images/layup/new-sci-favicon.d65b52af.ico	New Scientist	https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026826-800-incandescence-by-greg-egan/	SIX years after his last novel, Greg Egan returns with an extraordinary work of ultra-hard science fiction. Its two plot strands are different kinds of quest. In a far-future interstellar community, one of our descendants gets the chance to explore the galactic core, whose mysterious inhabitants, the Aloof, have previously rebuffed all contact. Now they are allowing a “child of DNA” into their realm to seek a lost enclave of our cousins. Meanwhile, within the Splinter, a translucent habitat moving through the perpetual light known as the Incandescence, these cousins are trying to fathom the universe.…
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	3	https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2020/12/27/orthogonal-by-greg-egan/	en	Orthogonal by Greg Egan	https://www.oliverbrown.…g-egan/cover.jpg	https://www.oliverbrown.…g-egan/cover.jpg	[ "https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/assets/clockwork_rocket.jpg", "https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/assets/clockwork_rocket.jpg", "https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/assets/eternal_flame.jpg", "https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/assets/arrows_of_time.jpg", "https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/assets/dichronauts.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "Books", "Greg Egan", "Kindle", "Book review", "" ]	null	[ "Oliver Brown" ]	2020-12-27T00:00:00	I was inspired to write this review after watching Christopher Nolan’s movie Tenet. The central idea of Tenet is explored in the Orthogonal series (amongst many other things) but with more rigor and detail. As such, this review contains spoilers about the premise of Tenet. I won’t cover the details of Tenet’s plot, but if you were already going to watch Tenet, do that first. Despite ostensibly being a review, this is mostly a piece designed to persuade you to read these books.	en	/favicon.ico		https://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2020/12/27/orthogonal-by-greg-egan/	I was inspired to write this review after watching Christopher Nolan’s movie Tenet. The central idea of Tenet is explored in the Orthogonal series (amongst many other things) but with more rigor and detail. As such, this review contains spoilers about the premise of Tenet. I won’t cover the details of Tenet’s plot, but if you were already going to watch Tenet, do that first. Despite ostensibly being a review, this is mostly a piece designed to persuade you to read these books. It contains a fairly detailed explanation of the initial premise for the book (while avoiding spoilers for the plot), because talking about the things that are good is difficult otherwise. Tenet The movie Tenet follows in the wake of Interstellar by taking a confusing scientific concept and creating a movie that can be compelling for a mainstream audience. In Interstellar this was the idea of time dilation, in Tenet it is the idea of the “arrow of time”, and whether, perhaps, it is not as immutable as it seems. The one line conceptual spoiler for Tenet is the following: there are machines that allow people and objects to travel backwards in time, while in the same space as people traveling forwards. Interactions between normal people and “inverted” people are strange and unintuitive. In the movie, the details of “how” are basically ignored. And although the plot is clever and demonstrates much of the oddness that would be present, there is little detail. Riemannian space The premise for Orthogonal is a simple change to a single formula that defines the geometry of space-time. There is a detailed explanation by the author himself, but a summary is as follows: In two dimensional space, the distance between two points can be found using the Pythagorean theorem: d = â(xÂ² + yÂ²), where x and y are the differences in the points’ positions in the x-axis and y-axis respectively. A very similar formula also works for three (and higher) dimensions: d = â(xÂ² + yÂ² + zÂ²). General relativity combines time and space together to form a single thing called spacetime. It is possible to calculate the “distance” between two points in spacetime. However, in this case the formula features a minus sign: d = â(xÂ² + yÂ² + zÂ² - tÂ²). This kind of spacetime is described by the author as “Lorentzian”. That minus sign is a consequence (or a cause, depending on your philosophy) of the speed of light being constant, and appears to describe our universe. In the universe of Orthogonal however, the spacetime is “Riemannian”. That is, the distance between two points in spacetime is just: d = â(xÂ² + yÂ² + zÂ² + tÂ²). This is summarized by saying the universes have metrics of +, +, +, â and +, +, +, + respectively. The Arrow of Time This small change has a lot of consequences. The biggest is that there is no longer a universal speed limit. You can go as fast as you want, even reaching a sort of infinite velocity. Just like in our universe there is time dilation at high velocities. At “infinite velocity”, time stops passing completely for a stationary observer. In the universe of Orthogonal however, if you were to continue accelerating you would find that time has started to progress backwards for you, relative to a stationary observer. The exact mechanics of this may sound confusing, but are explained well in the book, and it more detail on the author’s site. An actual review With all the preliminaries out of the way, it’s time to explain why I think Orthogonal is so good. It basically does three things, and it probably could have stopped at the first one and still have been good. 1. Hard sci-fi with a relevant plot The story is “hard sci-fi”. It has a universe that has solid rules that are as scientifically rigorous as possible and tries to avoid deviating from them. In order to also be a good sci-fi story though (as opposed to just good science), it also needs a plot that allows the reader to explore that universe. Orthogonal presents the main characters with a world ending disaster. Not a terribly unique idea in the abstract, but in this case the disaster is one that could only happen in the Riemannian spacetime it presents. Very quickly, the characters devise a plan to avert disaster. In the best traditions of disaster movies, it initially sounds crazy, but it just might work. And like the disaster itself, the proposed solution would only be possible in Riemannian spacetime. 2. Explore some further detail of the universe Orthogonal is a trilogy of novels, spanning a significant time period. A lot of less apocalyptic consequences of Riemannian spacetime are explored. One of the more surprising is a running story of social development. In the world of Orthogonal, women are not treated well. The way this manifests is very similar to our own world (so similar that it reminds me of classic allegorical Star Trek episodes). However the reason for the treatment in the story is, again, something that could only happen the world of Orthogonal (and is in fact a direct result of of the physics possible in Riemannian spacetime). 3. First principles The final thing Orthogonal does, and the thing that takes the story from being “good” to being absolutely staggering, is how the details of the world are presented. It starts in a world with a similar level of technology to us at the beginning of the 20th century. The author makes no overt attempt to explain the world narratively. For the reader it appears initially that the characters inhabit a world that behaves very differently to our own for no reason. But, the main characters in the story are striving for knowledge (after all they soon have a world ending disaster to avert), and so they start to learn how the world works. As the plot develops over several generations, we follow scientists and engineers as they untangle the physics of the universe. We learn with them as the details of how the Riemmannian equivalents of electromagnetism, thermodynamics, relativity and quantum mechanics work. That is the what makes Orthogonal really special. Not only working out how this strange universe works, but coming with a plausible way that characters in the universe might be able to work it out for themselves. Conclusion Stephen Hawking said that he was warned every equation added to a popular science book would halve the number of sales. Despite being a work of fiction, much of Orthogonal feels like a popular science book but the author has not let such an idea concern him. It is full of equations and diagrams. I wouldn’t say it is impossible to enjoy the book if you chose to ignore them (or at least not completely engage with them), but you would be missing out on a lot. If, on the other hand, that kind of detailed explanation appeals to you, there is a site (all created personally by Greg Egan himself) dedicated to providing way more detail on all the physics and maths explored in the book. Orthogonal is hard sci-fi. Conceptually it may be the least accessible of Egan’s works. It is, however, spread over three novels to avoid overwhelming the reader and plenty of time is dedicated to exploring how the characters deal with this world, and that can be enjoyed independently of understand why and how it works. Dichronauts
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	2	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City	en	Permutation City	https://upload.wikimedia…y%281stEd%29.jpg	https://upload.wikimedia…y%281stEd%29.jpg	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fe/PermutationCity%281stEd%29.jpg/220px-PermutationCity%281stEd%29.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Book_collection.jpg/32px-Book_collection.jpg", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2003-07-19T09:40:33+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City	1994 science fiction novel by Greg Egan Permutation City is a 1994 science-fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, through various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust", which dealt with many of the same philosophical themes.[1] Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award the same year. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark.[2][3] Permutation City asks whether there is a difference between a computer simulation of a person and a "real" person. It focuses on a model of consciousness and reality, the Dust Theory, similar to the Ultimate Ensemble Mathematical Universe hypothesis proposed by Max Tegmark. It uses the assumption that human consciousness is Turing-computable: that consciousness can be produced by a computer program. The book deals with consequences of human consciousness being amenable to mathematical manipulation, as well as some consequences of simulated realities. In this way, Egan attempts to deconstruct notions of self, memory, and mortality, and of physical reality. The Autoverse is an artificial life simulator based on a cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry. It is deterministic, internally consistent and vaguely resembles real chemistry. Tiny environments, simulated in the Autoverse and filled with populations of a simple, designed lifeform, Autobacterium lamberti, are maintained by a community of enthusiasts obsessed with getting A. lamberti to evolve, something the Autoverse chemistry seems to make extremely difficult. Related explorations go on in virtual realities (VR), which make extensive use of patchwork heuristics to crudely simulate immersive and convincing physical environments, albeit at a maximal speed of seventeen times slower than "real" time, limited by the optical crystal computing technology used at the time of the story. Larger VR environments, covering a greater internal volume in greater detail, are cost-prohibitive even though VR worlds are computed selectively for inhabitants, reducing redundancy and extraneous objects and places to the minimal details required to provide a convincing experience to those inhabitants; for example, a mirror not being looked at would be reduced to a reflection value, with details being "filled in" as necessary if its owner were to turn their model-of-a-head towards it. Within the story, "Copies" – digital renderings of human brains with complete subjective consciousness, the technical descendants of ever more comprehensive medical simulations – live within VR environments after a process of "scanning". Copies are the only objects within VR environments that are simulated in full detail, everything else being produced with varying levels of generalisation, lossy compression, and hashing at all times. Copies form the conceptual spine of the story, and much of the plot deals directly with the "lived" experience of Copies, most of whom are copies of billionaires suffering terminal illnesses or fatal accidents, who spend their existences in VR worlds of their creating, usually maintained by trust funds, which independently own and operate large computing resources for their sakes, separated physically and economically from most of the rest of the world's computing power, which is privatized as a fungible commodity. Although the wealthiest copies face no financial difficulties, they can still be threatened because copies lack political and legal rights (they are considered software), especially where the global economy is in recession. Hence they cannot afford to retreat into solipsism and ignore what is happening in the real world. At the opposite end from the wealthy Copies are those who can only afford to live in the virtual equivalent of "Slums", being bounced around the globe to the cheapest physical computing available at any given time in order to save money, while running at much slower speeds compared to the wealthy Copies. Their slowdown rate depends on how much computer power their meager assets can afford, as computer power is traded on a global exchange and goes to the highest bidder at any point in time. When they cannot afford to be "run" at all, they can be frozen as a "snapshot" until computer power is relatively affordable again. A Copy whose financial assets can only generate sufficient interest to run at a very slow rate is stuck in a rut because he/she/it becomes unemployable and is unable to generate new income, which may lead to a downward spiral. By creating this scenario, Egan postulates a world where economic inequality can persist even in one's (virtual) afterlife. The concept of solipsism is also examined prominently, with many less-wealthy Copies attending social functions called Slow Clubs, where socialising Copies agree to synchronise with the slowest person present. Many of these less-wealthy Copies become completely deracinated from their former lives and from world events, or else become Witnesses, who spend their time observing (at considerable time lapse) world events unfold, at the cost of any meaningful relationships with their fellow Copies. A subculture of lower/middle-class Copies, calling themselves Solipsist Nation after a philosophical work by their nominal founder, choose to completely repudiate the "real" world and any Copies still attached to it, reprogramming their models-of-brains and their VR environments in order to design themselves into their own personal vision of paradise, of whatever size and detail, disregarding slowdown in the process. Egan's later novels Diaspora and Schild's Ladder deal with related issues from other perspectives. The plot of Permutation City follows the lives of several people in a near future reality where the Earth is ravaged by the effects of climate change, the economy and culture are largely globalised, and civilisation has accumulated vast amounts of cloud computing power and memory which is distributed internationally and is traded in a public market called the QIPS Exchange (Quadrillion Instructions Per Second, see MIPS). Most importantly, this great computing capacity has enabled the creation of Copies, whole brain emulations of "scanned" humans which are detailed enough to allow for subjective conscious experience on the part of the emulation. Scanning has become safe enough and common enough to allow for a few wealthy or dedicated humans to afford to create backups of themselves. Copies do not yet possess human rights under the laws of any nation or international body. In 2050, Paul Durham, a Sydney man having experimented on Copies of himself, offers wealthy Copies prime real estate in an advanced supercomputer which, according to his pitch, will never be shut down and never experience any slowdown whatsoever. Durham predicts that efforts to utilise chaotic effects will clash with Copy rights, as both Copies and weather simulations will demand increasing QIPS Exchange shares. All that each Copy must do is to make the comparatively small investment of "two million ecus" in order to bring Durham's fantasy computer into existence. Durham hires Maria Deluca, an Autoverse enthusiast, to design an Autoverse program which, given a powerful enough computer, could generate a planet's worth of evolvable Autoverse life. He also clandestinely commissions a famous virtual reality architect, Malcolm Carter, to build a full scale VR city; outside of Durham's knowledge, Carter secretly hacks two Slum-dwelling Solipsist Nation Copies (Peer and Kate) into this city's machine code. When Maria learns of a computer fraud investigation on Durham, she confronts him. Durham reveals that his self-experiments convinced him that there is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics, and that all mathematically possible structures exist, among them our physics and therefore our spacetime, a belief he refers to as "Dust Theory". The dust theory implies that all possible universes exist and are equally real, emerging spontaneously from their own mathematical self-consistency. Because Copies exist in virtual realities held together by heuristics merely for the sake of their experience, it should be the case that when a Copy is terminated and deleted, its own conscious experience will continue. Indeed, Durham himself claims to have been through such a process dozens of times. Durham uses the money from his financial backing to simulate a minute or two of a "Garden of Eden" configuration of an infinitely-expanding, massively complex cellular automaton universe, in which each iteration of the expansion serves to "manufacture" an extra layer of blocks of a computing configuration.[4] According to his Dust Theory, such a simulation would create a self-consistent "TVC universe" to persist in its own terms even after its termination and deletion. His and his investors' Copies would therefore persist indefinitely in the simulation. The Autoverse planetary seed program designed by Maria is included in the TVC universe package for his investors to explore once life had evolved there after it had been run on a significantly large segment of the TVC universe (referred to as "Planet Lambert"). After a successful launch, simulation, termination, and deletion of the TVC universe, Durham and Maria have uncomfortable sex in awkward celebration, and later that night, while Maria is asleep, Durham disembowels himself with a kitchen knife in his bathtub, believing his role as the springboard for his deleted TVC Copy to discover its true identity to be fulfilled. Maria wakes in Permutation City seven thousand years of subjective time after the launch, furious at Durham for awakening her. He explains to her that intelligent life has arisen on Planet Lambert in the form of complex swarms of insect-like eusocial beings, evolved from Maria's original Autobacterium hydrophilus. He wishes to use Maria's slice of the universe's processing power (as a founder of the world she was given de facto control of a continuously-growing zone of the processor network as well) to make forbidden first contact with Lambertians. He believes this is necessary because he has lost the ability to pause the Autoverse simulation or slow it down past a constant multiple of the size of the processor network it occupies. Durham is worried that the rules of their simulated universe are breaking down. They discover that the combined intelligence of Lambertians has exceeded that of Permutation City; as such, the TVC universe is being overwritten into a system existing solely as a byproduct of the self-perpetuation of the Autoverse. Durham, Maria, and some other companions quickly launch an emergency expedition into the Autoverse to attempt to convince the Lambertians of the validity of the creator hypothesis and its methodological preferentiality over their own newly formulated theory. Unfortunately, the Lambertians reject the creator theory, prompting Permutation City and the entirety of TVC processor-networks to begin collapsing into nothing. Durham and Maria inform the inhabitants of Permutation City, who launch a new TVC Garden of Eden in their universe's final moments. Maria convinces a reluctant Durham to come along to a new universe, pledging to work with her to discover the underlying rules that governed the Autoverse's takeover of Permutation City. Novels portal Artificial consciousness Mathematical universe hypothesis Mind uploading Mind uploading in fiction The Age of Em Farnell, Ross (2000), "Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan's 'Permutation City' ", Science Fiction Studies, 27 (1): 69–91
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	9	https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781597808163/the-arrows-of-time	en	The Arrows of Time	https://skyhorse-us.imgi…uto=format&w=298	https://skyhorse-us.imgi…uto=format&w=298	[ "https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cloudfront.net/skyhorse-wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/18083517/Skyhorse-Publishing_web-logo1.png", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597808163.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781949102253.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805438.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805421.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805414.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805445.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805407.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805384.jpg?auto=format&w=298", "https://skyhorse-us.imgix.net/covers/9781597805391.jpg?auto=format&w=298" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2018-04-16T07:37:34+00:00	Hard science fiction’s grand master delivers the stunning conclusion to his Orthogonal trilogy.In a universe where the laws of physics and the speed of lig...	en	https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cl…_icon2-32x32.png	Skyhorse Publishing	https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781597808163/the-arrows-of-time	Orthogonal Book Three Greg Egan 368 Pages ISBN: 9781597808163 Series: Orthogonal Imprint: Night Shade Books Trim Size: 6in x 9in x 0in Format: $15.99 Description Hard science fiction’s grand master delivers the stunning conclusion to his Orthogonal trilogy. In a universe where the laws of physics and the speed of light are completely alien to our own, the travelers on the ship Peerless have completed a generations-long struggle to develop advanced technology in a desperate attempt to save their home world. But as tensions mount over the risks of turning the ship around and starting the long voyage home, a new complication arises: the prospect of constructing a messaging system that will give the Peerless news of its own future. While some see this as a guarantee of safety and a chance to learn of their mission’s ultimate success, others are convinced that the knowledge will be oppressive or worsethat the system could be abused. The conflict over this proposed communication system tears the travelers’ society apart, culminating in terrible violence. To save the Peerless and its mission, two rivals must travel to a world where time runs in reverse. Continuing the epic multiple generation-spanning scope of The Clockwork Rocket and The Eternal Flame, Greg Egan’s Orthogonal series has continuously pushed the boundaries of scientific fiction without ever losing track of the lives of the individuals carrying out this grand mission. The Arrows of Time brings this fascinating space opera to a close. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors. Authors Greg Egan is a computer programmer, and the author of the acclaimed SF novels Diaspora, Quarantine, Permutation City, and Teranesia. He has won the Hugo Award as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His short fiction has been published in a variety of places, including Interzone, Asimov’s, and Nature. Egan holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Western Australia, and currently lives in Perth. Reviews If you haven’t read any Egan, you so should. He takes the wildest frontiers of today’s science and turns them into brainbending speculative fiction that continually challenges the reader’s ideas of both reality and humanity.” Jon Evans, author of Dark Places and The Executor related titles The Best of Greg Egan 20 Stories of Hard Science Fiction by Greg Egan Teranesia A Novel by Greg Egan Diaspora A Novel by Greg Egan Distress A Novel by Greg Egan Schild's Ladder A Novel by Greg Egan Axiomatic Short Stories of Science Fiction by Greg Egan Quarantine A Novel by Greg Egan Permutation City A Novel by Greg Egan
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	46	https://atboundarysedge.com/2023/10/03/book-review-quarantine-by-greg-egan/	en	BOOK REVIEW: Quarantine, by Greg Egan	https://atboundarysedge.…2023/10/egan.jpg	https://atboundarysedge.…2023/10/egan.jpg	[ "https://atboundarysedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cropped-logo.png", "https://atboundarysedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/egan.jpg?w=302", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/626830c64f7c941684e93b9d2c4e19bf2494b7aab1f13b31da5939c945da7539?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://atboundarysedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cropped-logo.png?w=50", "https://atboundarysedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cropped-logo.png?w=50", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2023-10-03T00:00:00	Teaser In the middle of the twenty-first century, our solar system is shrouded in an impenetrable barrier, forever cutting us off from the stars. A generation later, a missing persons case leads a detective into a most unusual conspiracy . . . Review I first learned about Greg Egan through the YouTube channel Media Death…	en	https://atboundarysedge.…ed-logo.png?w=32	At Boundary's Edge	https://atboundarysedge.com/2023/10/03/book-review-quarantine-by-greg-egan/	Teaser In the middle of the twenty-first century, our solar system is shrouded in an impenetrable barrier, forever cutting us off from the stars. A generation later, a missing persons case leads a detective into a most unusual conspiracy . . . Review I first learned about Greg Egan through the YouTube channel Media Death Cult. The two key things to know about the man are a) he is an incredibly qualified mathematician and scientist, and b) his books take the term ‘hard SF’ to the extreme. This is a man who writes what he knows, which I always enjoy seeing in this genre. Unfortunately, such books also have a tendency to reveal my own stupidity. Because while I started off enjoying this book, I pretty much lost the ability to focus after the first act. The first act uses the isolation of the human race largely as background for a run-of-the-mill police procedural. A woman has been abducted from a mental asylum, but no one can figure out how. Classic locked room mystery. Egan only takes us forty years into the future (seventy at the time he wrote it) so all of the developments feel plausible. I suppose living on the cutting edge of science lets you predict the future with some degree of accuracy. Egan depicts a society where you can download modifications at will. For example, police officers modify themselves to remain calm under pressure, while our protagonist spends time with the data ghost of his dead wife. It’s an expanded, and quite frankly better, version of an idea that I encountered recently in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The second act is where quantum physics comes into play. Now, I am familiar with the paradox of Schrodinger’s Cat, which is simultaneously alive and dead until concrete proof either way is observed. that, I can just about wrap my head around. Egan goes further. Too far for my puny brain to handle. What if, he posits, the entire universe is the Cat? What if we define the universe through the simple act of observing it? Okay, I think I can get behind that idea. But again, Egan is several steps beyond me. What if those possible universes all exist, and are trying to influence the observer, ensuring that they become real? At least, I think that’s what was happening. It all got very technical, and very confusing. I walk away from Quarantine in awe of Egan’s imagination, but frustrated by my own inability to follow his lines of thought. Maybe it’s a communication issue, but it’s just as likely I’m too thick for this sort of literature. Maybe even a hard SF nut like myself has set limits. Curiously, if this same mind-blowing idea had been presented in a tenth of the pages, I think I would have been all over it. There’s something to be said for the short story, and that’s the format any future encounters between myself and Egan are likely to take. Like the meeting that could have been an email, Quarantine is a novel that could have been a short story. I’m sure there are those who will praise Egan for the lengthy exploration of the idea, but for me it was simply overwhelming. Book Stats
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	49	https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-ted-chiang/	en	An Interview with Ted Chiang	https://www.thebeliever.…019/11/Chang.jpg	https://www.thebeliever.…019/11/Chang.jpg	[ "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/logo.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/TB146_cover_for_mockup2-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/TB145_cover_final_lores-1-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TB144-800x941.jpeg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/TB143_cover_lores-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/TB142_cover4-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/bottle-night.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/bottle-day.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/bottle_nosky.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Dots.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Close.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/B.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Hamburger.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Issue.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Logger.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/bag.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Search.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/TB146_cover_for_mockup2-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/TB145_cover_final_lores-1-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TB144-800x941.jpeg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/TB143_cover_lores-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/TB142_cover4-800x941.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/bottle.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Chang-800x960.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Facebook.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Twitter.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/link.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Message.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Chang-800x960.jpg", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Facebook.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Twitter.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/link.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Message.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Facebook.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Twitter.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/link.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/Message.png", "https://www.thebeliever.net/wp-content/themes/believer/img/logo.png", "https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-fWqcUGDKZGWMt.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Niela Orr" ]	2019-12-02T12:00:13+00:00	“I write short stories at very long intervals,” Ted Chiang stresses to me, thrice, during our initial conversation. “That is no way to make a living as a writer.” Despite this, the fifty-two-year-old author does in fact make a living writing such stories in such spans of time, crafting remarkably poignant, thoughtful science fiction that, at […]	en	https://www.thebeliever.…pped-B-32x32.png	Believer Magazine	https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-ted-chiang/	“I write short stories at very long intervals,” Ted Chiang stresses to me, thrice, during our initial conversation. “That is no way to make a living as a writer.” Despite this, the fifty-two-year-old author does in fact make a living writing such stories in such spans of time, crafting remarkably poignant, thoughtful science fiction that, at times, resembles Borges filtered through Black Mirror, but with a thrilling sense of revelation, hope, and beauty that is all his own. “He would tell them about the shape of the world,” Chiang writes in one story, a line that could serve as a kind of personal directive. Readers have been listening. Despite having published only two story collections’ worth of fiction—2002’s majestic Stories of Your Life and Others and 2019’s celebrated Exhalation—Chiang has won nearly every major award science fiction has to offer: four Nebulas, four Hugos, four Locus Awards—twenty-seven wins out of a whopping fifty-six nominations. Even his non-wins are noteworthy: there is a story passed among Chiang-heads about how he once turned down a Hugo nomination because he considered the work unfinished. Chiang was born in 1967 in Port Jefferson, New York, an hour’s train ride from Midtown Manhattan. The eldest son of college-educated Chinese immigrants from Taiwan—his father is an engineering professor, his mother was a librarian—he attended the famed Clarion Workshop in 1989 to study science fiction, which he described to me as “a life-changing event.” Not long after, he published his debut story, “Tower of Babylon,” an extraordinary reimagining of the Tower of Babel myth that follows a group of Elamite miners hired to crack the Vault of Heaven. Described occasionally as a science fiction writer’s science fiction writer, Chiang had his biggest breakthrough in 2016, when “The Story of Your Life,” originally published in 1998, was adapted into the acclaimed Denis Villeneuve–directed film Arrival. The story centers on a linguist tasked with communicating with an ominous group of cephalopod-ish alien visitors. Chiang’s renown continues to grow. Barack Obama included Exhalation on his 2019 summer reading list, hailing it as “the best kind of science fiction.” I met Ted Chiang in January 2019 at a sushi restaurant outside Seattle, where he has lived since taking a job at Microsoft to write technical manuals, an occupation he has freelanced until recently, and one, he tells me, to which he still expects to return. That winter afternoon, I arrived to find him already there, hands folded behind his back as he observed the lily-padded waterfront in calm reverie. The venue had been his suggestion: it would be quieter for conversation than his preferred restaurant, a bustling local ramen joint. For this meeting he had tied his silver-and-black hair into a ponytail; he wore a black trench coat, a dark zippered fleece, and black slacks and shoes, in a precise, practical fashion sense that I found in keeping with his work. Chiang’s stories could be compared to sleek machines— meticulously and elegantly designed, with no visible seams or extraneous parts, although that description risks selling short their emotional and philosophical merits, which are vast. Over the course of our meal, I learned that Chiang doesn’t much enjoy small talk. Paris Review–style queries on writerly particulars such as “What is your writing schedule like?” and “How do you feel about the release of your new book?” almost seem to irritate him. (“Is that really what you want to ask?” he said at one point, smiling and waving his hands in exasperation. “Pass.” ) Neither does he necessarily relish chatting about process or story scaffolding. What Chiang prefers to discuss is the art of science fiction. Technology is a deep interest of his—“I can talk about AI all day long,” he confessed in half apology—but even more so, Chiang is interested in the ways society and culture respond to tech. At the heart of Chiang’s stories are investigations of character motivation and human nature, explorations of the limits of connection and interaction, fate and free will. “I want to know whether my decisions matter!” demands one character. Conveying the rush of understanding in arresting, ever-inventive ways, his stories manage to reveal bracing insights into age-old quandaries. This interview took place over two conversations: the first at the sushi restaurant, and the second in July 2019, over the phone, two months after his book had come out, to rapturous reviews (“Teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates in The New Yorker). When I mentioned preferring to speak in person, Chiang vigorously agreed. “It’ll be a long time,” he said, “before some technologically mediated interaction will be exactly as rich as face-to-face.” One such rich moment took place in the parking lot of the sushi restaurant. As we were parting, he mentioned that he had googled me because he had been “curious.” There was something touching about his awkward transparency, his humane gesture of reassurance. The move was both surprising and gracious—not unlike his fiction. —James Yeh I. LIFE CYCLES THE BELIEVER: In your story “Seventy-Two Letters,” you write of “the content and the vessel, an echo in a self-sustaining reverberation.” How important is it to you to satisfactorily arrive at the content and vessel for a story? TED CHIANG: Well, I do spend a fair amount of time thinking about what is the best way to tell any given story. I can’t claim to be super experimental in terms of form. Formally, there’s some variety in my stories, but nothing really off the beaten track or super challenging to readers. But within the scope of conventional narrative techniques, I do look around for a structure or kind of scaffolding that I think would best suit the story I’m trying to tell. BLVR: “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” is a story about virtual pets that engages with the idea that it takes at least twenty years of steady effort to, as you say, “make a useful person.” The story uses progressions in time—“it’s a year later,” “another two months go by,” and so on—as a kind of road map and vehicle. It’s also the longest story you’ve written to date, at 110 pages. What were the formal considerations for this particular story? TC: You know, this movie hadn’t come out at the time I was writing the story, but there’s that Richard Linklater film Boyhood. The things that make Boyhood unusual as a film have to do with the nature of its production, of having a cast of actors [who age progressively over the course of the twelve-year period in which it was filmed]. But I guess there is maybe a similarity in that if you want to convey a story about the maturation of someone from youth to near adulthood, you could spend a long time—a novel, or a few novels—doing that. BLVR: As Knausgaard has done. TC: [Laughs] Yes, yes. But if you’re doing it in a shorter work, you’re trying to evoke the passage of time, but there’s this difference in scale; you’re trying to convey a long story in a short space. One way to do that is to jump forward in time to significant moments. BLVR: The world of the virtual pets is slowly disintegrating. There are fewer updates, fewer pets and users. It’s a story about maturation, but it’s also about dealing with loss, yes? TC: Yes. One of the ideas I wanted to explore in the story is the difference in time scale between raising a person, or even owning a pet, and the rapid technological obsolescence that we’ve grown accustomed to: people getting a new smartphone every couple of years; having forced operating system upgrades because the software you want can’t run on the old OS anymore. There are a lot of different reasons for why that happens, but nothing lasts very long in the current software landscape that we live in. There’s this very sharp contrast between that and the projects of raising a pet or raising a child or any sort of long-term emotional relationship. Apple has released ten versions of the iPhone in the time that my cat has been alive. If your pet actually lived on an iPhone, you’d be in big trouble. Obviously, Siri is not conscious, it has no feelings or anything, but even if some company were to create a version of Siri that was actually your own personal copy that you could develop a friendship with, that’s something that could not last very long in our current world of software. We have this model of software as a subscription to a service, and it’s something that, by design, you have no real ownership of. It’s a license that can be taken away from you at any time; the company can change the terms whenever they want; they can stop supporting it whenever they want. Companies could still sell you software that you own, but they don’t want to; the subscription service just works better with their business model. They want brand loyalty, but they don’t want you to become so attached to a specific iteration of a program that you never want it upgraded or rebooted. There are people who still love the original iPods and buy them off eBay because Apple won’t sell them anymore. The scenario depicted in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” is another manifestation of this underlying issue. II. THE SCHOOL OF ESCALATION BLVR: I have a few more questions about form. “Understand” and “Tower of Babylon” could both be considered escalation stories: you could describe “Understand” as a person leveling up in terms of intelligence, education, and skills, and in “Tower of Babylon,” there’s the literal climb of miners as they ascend a tower. At the risk of being dogmatic, I want to ask: How essential would you say escalation is to storytelling? TC: [Laughs] That’s interesting. I hadn’t really made the connection between those two stories, but I see what you mean. I wouldn’t say that escalation is an essential part of storytelling as a whole, but I think there is a specific mode of science fiction storytelling in which extrapolation is a key part: taking an idea as far as it will go, trying to imagine what comes next, to the limit of your imagination. BLVR: Is there a platonic ideal of these science fiction escalation stories that you might point to? TC: A couple of examples come to mind. One from the golden era of science fiction would be “Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon. Then, more recently, the science fiction writer Greg Egan wrote a short story called “Dust” that he later expanded into a novel called Permutation City.1 In that novel, he’s taking an idea as far as it can go. BLVR: I feel like this idea of escalation got into my head from a George Saunders essay about Donald Barthelme’s “The School.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with that story. It’s about a cursed school: everything in it dies. The school gets these plants and they die, it gets a hamster and it dies, it gets a Korean orphan and the kid dies. Saunders describes it as an escalation story, where even the escalation starts to escalate. By the end, the children are talking about “fundamental datums” and the meaning of life. I’m also thinking of the classic story structure, Freytag’s Triangle, in which the action rises until it reaches a climax and then falls. TC: OK, OK, I think I better understand what you’re talking about. There’s this sort of traditional plot structure of rising tension, and obviously that is a very common type of plot. There are a lot of ways in which you can think about escalation. There’s raising the emotional stakes; in screwball comedy, the situation for the protagonist usually gets worse and worse, so there’s a doubling of the complications that Cary Grant has to juggle. Those are all different ways to implement rising tension. The particular mode of science fiction I was talking about before features escalation on more of a cognitive level than an emotional one. There are some stories that become harder to read as you progress in them, because the writer is engaged in the escalation of the complexity of the ideas. Greg Egan’s stories become harder to understand because he often winds up pursuing ideas to a level of abstraction that most readers probably can’t follow. It’s like taking a class or listening to a lecture and the lecture builds on its initial ideas, so you’re following along but it becomes more taxing, and eventually it reaches a point where you sort of fall by the wayside and only a few people can understand what the lecturer is saying all the way up till the end. BLVR: You recently published an “op-ed from the future” in The New York Times, and it’s been noted that your fiction takes essayistic forms from time to time. What is it about the essay that makes it an interesting form to you for science-fictional purposes? TC: I’m not sure I’m super interested in the essay for science-fictional purposes. The New York Times started this series of op-eds from the future, so that basically means writing a science fiction story in under a thousand words that also has to look like an op-ed. A couple other times I’ve written short-short pieces that appeared in Nature—“What’s Expected of Us” and “The Evolution of Human Science.” I guess I’m not comfortable trying to write a more conventional piece of fiction in under a thousand words; I don’t really know how to do flash fiction. I think an essay framework offers a way to tell a story in under a thousand words in a way that I can manage. BLVR: Are there any new forms you’ve been wanting to explore or employ in your work? TC: I don’t know about new forms, but I have for a long time been curious about stories written around formal conceits. I haven’t been successful at coming up with a story that’s entirely based around a formal conceit. I’ve never been able to start with a structure and format and actually write a story from it, so I don’t think my writing mind actually works that way. But it’s certainly something that I have been interested in for a long time. Just as an example, I liked the idea of Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars. Do you know that book? It’s a novel told in the form of fictional encyclopedia entries. It’s organized alphabetically, and there are all these little entries about this imaginary culture, and there’s a story that unfolds as you read them. The novel didn’t work as well as I had hoped, but I liked that idea. J. G. Ballard has a short story that was written in the form of an index. I thought that was a really cool idea, but I guess I like the idea of the story more than the story itself. BLVR: Are you saying that the act of reading it would have been more pleasurable if it was more conventional? TC: Those forms—an encyclopedia and an index—run very counter to conventional narrative. I don’t know if it’s possible to write something that makes sense as an encyclopedia, or as an index, and that also works as a narrative, because maybe the incompatibility is just too great. [At this point in our phone conversation, I heard loud meowing in the background, followed by rustling sounds, then silence.] BLVR: I hear another presence in the room. Perhaps several, even. TC: So far, just one. I think it has reached a level where I have to take some action. BLVR: May I ask what the being’s name is? TC: Sasha. BLVR: My dog’s been here, sleeping, mostly. How old is Sasha? TC: [Laughs] I think she is thirteen now. BLVR: Well, I won’t be one of those obnoxious readers who connect the somewhat-advanced age of the cat to the work. TC: [Laughs] I mean, Sasha was quite young when I was writing “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.” But anyone who has ever had a pet for any period of time has been through the whole life cycle of having a pet. BLVR: Yeah. My dog, he’s sixteen. TC: And you’ve had him since he was a puppy. BLVR: Since he was two months old. TC: So you’ve seen the whole thing. BLVR: Well, not all. Thankfully. TC: Your dog reached maturity fairly quickly compared with a human child. If he were a human child, you’d still be ramping up. Having a child is a long-term project. BLVR: Are you a parent, Ted? TC: Oh, no, I’m not a parent. I do not have kids. BLVR: I was just curious. TC: Did you want to ask more about that? BLVR: Well, I was just thinking that I could see you being one, based on the empathy in your writing. TC: Well, I suppose being a pet owner is the closest I will come to being a parent; I’m not going to claim that it’s all that close. But I guess I am interested in the parent-child relationship because of how profoundly asymmetrical it is. In most other human relationships, the two parties are much closer in standing. But the difference between a parent and a child is enormous. What a parent owes a child is not remotely like what a child owes a parent, which makes it harder to determine what is fair. III. REASONABLE CAREER PATHS BLVR: You’ve talked about being interested in “finding ways to make philosophical questions storyable.” How do you go about this, and why do you feel compelled to do so? TC: A lot of philosophical issues can seem really abstract and remote when philosophers describe them, so that can lead people to think that these questions have no bearing on their lives in any way, shape, or form. But the reason philosophical questions are interesting is that they can actually have relevance to our decision-making; the choices that we make in our daily lives can be reflective of certain philosophical or moral positions. So I think dramatizing these philosophical questions is a way of making their relevance clearer to people. These issues are not purely abstract or intellectual, and science fiction stories offer a way to make you genuinely invested in the outcome of a thought experiment. BLVR: I was wondering if you could speak a bit about the decision to include story notes at the end of each collection, to let the reader have a look under the hood, as it were. TC: As a reader, I’ve always enjoyed story notes. They might be more common in science fiction collections than in mainstream collections—The Best American Short Stories and other anthologies sometimes include story notes—but I’m always interested to read what a writer has to say about a story, and I imagine there are other people who like reading those too. Sometimes, when you’re doing an event and there’s a Q&A, people in the audience want to learn more about the story, and the only way they’re able to phrase it is “Where did you get the idea for this story?,” which may or may not be the most interesting thing to ask about the story. A story note can be a way to have that conversation. It may not be the precise response to “How did you get the idea?,” but it’s a way to answer the reader if they knew what the best question to ask was. If there is something interesting to be said about the story, then a story note lets you choose how you’re going to frame it. BLVR: You’ve also mentioned not wanting to add extratextual elements to your work. TC: Well, obviously, I write story notes, so it’s not that I’m actively avoiding it. If I were actively avoiding it, I would say nothing. I guess I hope that those extratextual elements are not required in order to make sense of the work. BLVR: I was wondering if you might be willing to speak more biographically. You haven’t to date written about race or Asian American identity or Asian American culture—not that one has to, of course. In interviews, too, you’ve been reticent in engaging on that. And yet, as someone who has a very similar family background—parents from Taiwan, librarian mother, father in the sciences, sister in medicine—I am curious about your perspective. But it also feels like I’m prying. TC: Well, OK, do you want to ask, like, “How did my parents feel about me going into a creative field?” Is that what you’re working your way toward? BLVR: That, and also how they feel now. From personal experience, I can say that my parents weren’t immediately amenable to my deciding that I would study literature. And I suppose a larger thing is that, coming from a marginalized or underrepresented background, there aren’t a lot of role models for people to see. You can feel alone when you’re working at it by yourself. So when there are folks like yourself who are able to really succeed, I think it’s interesting to hear the stories of how they did it. TC: I would say my career path wasn’t as likely to raise objections with my parents because I have always been a science nerd. When I was a kid, my intention was to become a physicist. That was a perfectly respectable career choice for the son of an engineer. I figured I would be a fiction writer on the side, and that, I think, is perfectly acceptable to Asian parents. They were supportive of my fiction writing as a hobby, and that was what I thought of it as. In college I switched from physics to computer science; I got a degree in computer science and went to work in the industry. But again, that’s a perfectly reasonable career path as far as Asian parents are concerned. If I had announced that I was going to get a degree in art history or something like that, there probably would’ve been some resistance. But that’s not what happened. At no point did I ever say to them or think to myself, Oh yeah, I’m gonna make a living writing fiction. BLVR: I’m curious to know how much you feel your parents understand, appreciate, or accept your work now. TC: I guess it depends on exactly what you mean by that, because on one level you could be asking, Do they read my work and understand it and enjoy it? On another level, you could be asking, Have they accepted that I write fiction as a part of my identity? BLVR: Both, I guess. TC: OK, so, well, my mom just passed away a few months ago. But I think she read my work. I wouldn’t say she understood it, but she was supportive of my pursuits. My father, he doesn’t really read fiction, so I don’t think he has read my work, but he is also supportive of me pursuing fiction writing. But, again, my day job for most of my life has been perfectly respectable. My expectation was always that I would write fiction on the side, and that remains my expectation. I write short stories at very long intervals. That is no way to make a living as a writer. I would never say to anyone that writing occasional short stories at long intervals is a good way to make a living. When I talk to writing students, I quote a friend of mine, Andy Duncan, who said: “You can make a life as a writer without making a living as a writer.” BLVR: How do the students usually respond when you tell them that? TC: I think the reaction varies, because science fiction is a more commercial genre. There are a lot more people in science fiction whose goal is to make a living from writing fiction by publishing one or more novels a year. And people who enter science fiction generally receive more messaging about fiction writing as a sole source of income than, say, people entering mainstream fiction. The messaging there is different: get an MFA, teach; it’s understood that your teaching position supports your career as a writer. For writers entering science fiction, that’s not really a thing yet. We’re maybe getting there, but the messaging they receive is mostly: Be very prolific. BLVR: Are you still working as a technical writer on the side? TC: Right now I am able to take a break from that. But I’m under no illusion that this is a permanent situation. BLVR: Has the increased interest in adapting your work into film offered more opportunities? TC: That’s not a reliable source of income. The odds of anything coming from that are just so long. BLVR: I read that the same screenwriter who worked on Arrival is working on something for your story “Understand” as well.2 TC: There are a lot of announcements of things. But announcements of things don’t mean that anything is actually going to happen. I read about an agent who said that, in his experience, one in thirty things that get optioned eventually get made. And I think he’s probably a pretty high-powered agent, and his odds of having his clients’ work produced are probably significantly higher than most people’s. How many people are going to be able to make a living off that? IV. “A GOOD EXPLANATION CAN BE A BEAUTIFUL THING.” BLVR: How crucial is the element of language to your process of writing? TC: I don’t imagine that my use of language is the main attraction of my work. I wish I could write more beautiful sentences; I can’t, but there are certain writers whose prose I admire, whose sentences I am envious of. I know I’ll never be at their level. BLVR: Is there a reason you said “certain writers” instead of naming any actual names? TC: I very much admire the sentences of John Crowley. I wish I could write sentences like his, but I know I’m not going to be able to. BLVR: You got a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Do you ever see the work of creating a story to be analogous to an engineering process? TC: I don’t see the two as being that closely aligned. What I would say is that the closest connection between my fiction and my day job of technical writing is that a good explanation can be a beautiful thing. So I am interested in clarity, in helping a reader to understand concepts, in both technical writing and fiction writing. The techniques involved are radically different, but my goals are similar, in that in both cases I’m trying to get an idea across, and I think a lot about what’s the best way to do that. BLVR: Isaac Asimov was a major early influence for you. You’ve also mentioned admiring Borges. Are there writers that you find yourself returning to regularly now? TC: Well, I don’t read Asimov anymore, if that’s what you mean. BLVR: Do you still read Borges? TC: Sometimes. BLVR: You’ve mentioned being interested in ideas of conceptual breakthroughs. How useful do you find these in propelling a narrative? TC: OK, so the term conceptual breakthrough is sometimes used in science fiction criticism to describe the moment in the story in which a character’s understanding of their universe changes in some fundamental manner. They are experiencing a sort of paradigm shift about their place in the universe. I think that’s a way of dramatizing the process of scientific discovery. That process is one of the reasons I was interested in reading about science as a kid; I could vicariously experience that thrill. Stories about conceptual breakthrough offer a way to re-create that experience in fiction. In the actual history of science, there are only a handful of really dramatic scientific discoveries, but you can’t keep telling their stories over and over again. Most of the history of science isn’t actually that dramatic. In science fiction, you can have your characters make discoveries that radically expand their view of the world just as much as Galileo’s or Darwin’s discoveries expanded ours. BLVR: Do you feel that emotional and psychological breakthroughs can be used similarly? TC: I would categorize those as being something different. Science fiction is known for the sense of wonder it can engender, and I think that sense of wonder is something that is generated by stories of conceptual breakthrough. I don’t know if a sense of wonder is engendered by stories of personal epiphany. BLVR: In the title story of Exhalation, you write: “Through the collaborative action of your imaginations, my entire civilization lives again,” which could be an apt description for literature itself. I was also reminded of Jimmy Carter’s message to alien civilizations on the Voyager spacecraft: “We are attempting to survive our time so that we may live into yours.” How collaborative, in your view, is the relationship between the writer and reader? Is there a reader you imagine, or that you actually have, who serves as an ideal interlocutor? TC: I don’t know if this is a direct answer to your questions, but what they make me think of is that many years ago, in 2007, I was in Japan, and I was interviewed at a convention, and someone in the audience asked me what I’d been reading recently. I mentioned this novel called Blindsight by Peter Watts, and I said that I disagreed with almost everything in that novel but I recommended it because it is engaged in ideas; it is trying to make an argument in a way that I find really interesting. So while it might be nice to have a reader who’s completely sold on everything I say in the work, it’s more important to have readers who are engaged with the arguments I’m trying to make, who like thinking about similar ideas, even if they don’t necessarily agree with me or think I’ve succeeded. BLVR: How important would you say the Clarion Workshop was to your development as a writer? TC: Clarion was a life-changing event not just because of what I learned about writing, but because it made me believe that I could be a writer. Prior to attending Clarion, I’d been working in complete isolation. I didn’t know anyone else who was trying to write science fiction—I knew barely anyone who read science fiction. So I had no one to really talk to about what felt like the central passion of my life. I’d gotten only form-letter rejections; I didn’t know if I was cut out to be a writer. At Clarion people told me that my stuff was good; that was the first time I had gotten positive reinforcement. But it was also the first time that I found other people who shared my passion. A lot of people say that going to Clarion is like meeting a family you didn’t know you had, and to me it definitely felt that way. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who had read the books I had read and understood the things I was interested in and were trying to do the things I was trying to do. I remember, on maybe the first or second night at Clarion, one of my classmates mentioned the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis3 and then started to explain what it was, and I said, “Oh, I know what that is.” And he said, “You’re the first person I’ve met who’s heard of that before.” That sort of thing happened to us constantly. Going to Clarion was how I found there was a community for writers out there that I could fit into. BLVR: How important is reading to your work? TC: I don’t know if this is exactly what you’re asking, but I’ll say this. This has to do with the question of genre, which is often defined in terms of a certain set of tropes or a formula. But there’s this other definition of genre that I find speaks more to me, which is to think of genre as an ongoing conversation. Genre is a conversation between authors, between books, that extends over decades. And one of the reasons I definitely identify as a science fiction writer is because I want to be a participant in the ongoing conversation that is science fiction. My writing is informed by the books I’ve read, so it is a response to what other writers have written. I want to be in conversation with other works of science fiction. 1. Permutation City (1994) posits a near future in which people’s brains and physiological processes can be fully replicated and downloaded onto “Copies,” who live in simulated worlds running at a reduced speed. Copies can then be made of other Copies. 2. An update from Chiang in late August 2019: “As an example of my point, this project is now dead.”
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	0	https://www.gregegan.net/	en	Greg Egan’s Home Page	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	[ "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Morphotrophic.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Sleep.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Scale.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/Platonic.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/feed-icon-14x14.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Phoresis.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/PerihelionSummer.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/AllSkies.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/Instantiation.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/ALLSKIES/AllSkies100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BORDER/Border100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/Diaspora100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/Dichronauts100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DIDICOSM/Didicosm100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/Distress100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Incandescence100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/MORPHOTROPHIC/Morphotrophic100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/OCEANIC/Oceanic100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/Orthogonal100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/Permutation100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Planck100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/Quarantine100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/SCALE/Scale100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Schild100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/TERANESIA/Teranesia100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/ZENDEGI/Zendegi100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validHTML.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validCSS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "Greg Egan", "science fiction" ]	null	[]	null	Official web site of the science fiction writer Greg Egan	en	images/egan.ico		https://www.gregegan.net	“You and Whose Army?” “This Is Not the Way Home” “Zeitgeber” “Crisis Actors” “Sleep and the Soul” “After Zero” “Dream Factory” “Light Up the Clouds” “Night Running” “Solidity” “The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred” “Dispersion” “Phoresis”
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	65	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/review-of-eternal-flame-orthogonal-book-2-by-greg-egan/	en	Review of The Eternal Flame – Orthogonal Book 2 by Greg Egan	https://sjhigbee.wordpre…eternalflame.jpg	https://sjhigbee.wordpre…eternalflame.jpg	[ "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eternalflame.jpg?w=652", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/facf47c4635e52baf7a60dba100fdd51ab3c0b9af6d306defaf2896c1d88fe7e?s=60&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/047dc07fcb0cff627070f1de95e142470629423a7ae5df968f67b2729a15a6b4?s=50&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/facf47c4635e52baf7a60dba100fdd51ab3c0b9af6d306defaf2896c1d88fe7e?s=39&d=identicon&r=G", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/picky-eaters-1-ebook-final-cover-1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/flame-and-blame-ebook4.png?w=185", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/mantivore-dreams2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/mantivore-prey-final-ebook.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/mantivore-warrior-cover-art-lo-res1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-roos-plus-spaceship-3.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-dying-for-space-ebook-plus-spaceship.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/sjh-breathing-space-ebook-plus-space-station-2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sunblinded-box-set-cover.jpg?w=2000", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/netted-hi-res.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/netgalley-reviewer-badge.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/eighty_percent_feedback_ratio_120.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/infinitydreamsaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/bunny-hop.gif", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/liebster-award1.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/champions-awards.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dragonaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/real-neat-blog-award.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/versitle-blogger1.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/sunshine.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2014-11-08T00:00:00	The first book in this remarkable series, The Clockwork Rocket blew me away - read my review of it here. If you have just stumbled across this book without knowing anything about the series or the author – Egan is a physicist and has extensively used his knowledge to produce a universe that works different.…	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=32	Brainfluff	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/review-of-eternal-flame-orthogonal-book-2-by-greg-egan/	The first book in this remarkable series, The Clockwork Rocket blew me away – read my review of it here. If you have just stumbled across this book without knowing anything about the series or the author – Egan is a physicist and has extensively used his knowledge to produce a universe that works different. As he explains on his website – along with a series of diagrams – this fictional world he’s invented where light travels at differing speeds is due to changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a mathematical formula that governs the geometry of space-time. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. The eye-bulging inventiveness doesn’t end there. Egan also peoples his world with beings who are able to extrude limbs at will and use their own bodies to draw sketches and diagrams. Their biology is markedly different from ours… In an alien universe, the generation ship Peerless has set out to discover the technology needed to save its home world from annihilation. But the Peerless is facing urgent problems of its own. It does not carry enough fuel to return home, so without a new form of propulsion the explorers will remain stranded in space. Which wouldn’t be such a big issue – but a population explosion has stretched life support to its limits, and the biology of the travellers offers only the harshest way to prevent growth: subjecting the women to famine in a drastic attempt to limit the number of children they bear. So, does this second book in this intriguing series continue to engross and impress? Firstly, my firm advice is that if you do encounter The Eternal Flame and you haven’t yet read The Clockwork Rocket – do hunt down this first book and read it first. I know – I regularly offer up this suggestion on the grounds that you will get far more out of the world and writing if you thoroughly know the backstory. But in this case, I think it could be crucial. Egan doesn’t make any allowances at all for new readers – and because he immediately plunges us into the current crisis on the Peerless, I do think those – particularly those without a scientific background – who haven’t read his book or visited his website could struggle to work out what exactly is going on… Once more, the plight of these interesting aliens and their unusual biology gripped me – but Egan is even more ambitious during this slice of the story. In The Clockwork Rocket we largely follow the fortunes of Yalda – in this book we have three main protagonists. Tamara, a female astronomer who discovers the Object and is in charge of the vital mission to explore it; Carlo, a biologist struggling to overcome the difficulties caused by their species’ breeding cycle; and Carla, whose discoveries about the nature of light challenges her basic belief in how their physical world works… Having three main story strands that come to a successful, satisfying conclusion in a book with a familiar setting is a big enough ask – but when the world and its beings are so removed from anything we normally experience, this is placing a very big demand on the author. Has he pulled it off? I’ll be honest – the story strand about Carla and her experiments into the nature of light within Egan’s Riemannian universe mostly slid past me as I am not a mathematician or scientist by training. However, that was largely because late at night I wasn’t feeling like pummelling my tired brain into coping with the various diagrams and detailed discussions about the nature of light. I’ll freely accept that just because the level of the story is set above my ability to easily absorb the information doesn’t mean there’s an innate problem with the book. Scientists are also entitled to fiction they can get immersed in. However I did feel that the storylines that engaged me, particularly Carlo’s investigations into their breeding biology, merited more attention in bringing that particular strand to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. While I am aware there is a third book – indeed, I’ve already bought it – leaving the plotpoint dangling to the extent that it waves in the wind was frustrating. I also missed the complexity and charisma of Yalda and in this story no one adequately took her place as the main protagonist I really cared about.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	32	https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir126.html	en	Books in Review: #126			[ "https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/covers/moonbut.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null					null	BOOKS IN REVIEW A Genuine Engagement with Reality. Karen Burnham. Greg Egan. Modern Masters of Science Fiction. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2014. xii + 190 pp. $85 hc; $23 pbk. On 13 February 2015, while I was in the midst of writing this review, the 2014 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards were announced, and they included Karen Burnham’s Greg Egan on the shortlist for Best Non-Fiction Work. It is a nomination that is richly deserved. Burnham’s book is an informative, illuminating, and in-depth study of an author who is one of the preeminent voices of hard sf. The depth of Burnham’s analysis, coupled with the fluency she exhibits moving from short story to novel and back again, help establish Greg Egan as a definitive work of Egan scholarship that will prove invaluable to anyone interested in this notable sf author. Greg Egan is organized into detailed chapters that address thematic foci structuring Egan’s short and long fiction. For example, Chapter Two addresses Egan’s exploration of ethical issues, and Burnham further divides this chapter into sub-categories: Medical Ethics; Uneven Benefits of Technology; Money and Politics in Research Science; Ethics in Relation to Created Life; and First Contact Situations. Key stories such as “Blood Sisters” (1991), “The Caress” (1990), “Yeyuka” (1997), and “Mitochondrial Eve” (2001) allow Burnham the opportunity to provide carefully focused analyses, although she is equally meticulous in covering as much of the breadth of Egan’s fiction as possible. A similar pattern is evident in Chapter Three’s focus on identity and consciousness and its sub-categories (Neurochemical Consciousness, Digital Consciousness, and Consciousness as Information), Chapter Four’s focus on scientific analysis and its sub-categories (Subjective Cosmology, Alternate Physics, Alternate Cosmologies, Process of Science, and Science in Culture), and Chapter Five’s focus on Science and Society, including such sub-categories as Science vs. Religion, Postmodern Silliness, and Critics of “Pure” Science. The content in these four chapters is remarkably consistent and informative, including connections between Egan and his contemporary hard sf luminaries, although the “Alternative Cosmologies” sub-category in Chapter Four seemed out-of-place, chiefly because Burnham spends too much time focusing on Ted Chiang’s work while only sporadically making connections with Egan’s corpus. Chapter Five is particularly compelling as it addresses key social-political issues; thus, readers are provided an account of how Egan’s fiction has engaged in culture wars over the course of his career. Burnham shows how Egan’s fiction steadfastly privileges “the side of science and the rationalist, materialist universe” (129), while also exploring Egan’s disdain for morally corrupt religious beliefs and the hijacking of science for religious purposes; similarly, readers are also shown Egan’s disgust for a postmodernism that is simply lazy intellectualism when compared to the truths available through well-disciplined scientific inquiry. For example, Burnham writes that “the best way to make sure that science is not purely Western and patriarchal is to get as many people as possible around the world involved in its practice. Bias can never be eliminated in any one individual…. However, because of the scientific method, where hypotheses are testable and experiments replicable, even gross errors of judgment and bias can eventually be straightened out” (146). As a scientist herself who works as a physicist and engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Burnham clearly aligns herself with Egan in such instances and seems to be writing as much for the broader science community as for Egan himself. In the same vein, Burnham mounts a spirited defense against accusations that Egan routinely fails at characterization or that his novels, particularly Incandescence (2008), Diaspora (1997), and Schild’s Ladder (2002), are largely incomprehensible (and quite boring) to anyone without advanced degrees in mathematics and science. Regarding characterization, Burnham provides a thorough account of the “Egan Defense” that stipulates that “it is acceptable for characters to be flat, bland, non-existent, or indistinct because the ideas are the important thing” (39; emphasis in original). Again aligning herself with Egan, Burnham writes that the extent to which flat characterization “represents a failing of Egan’s writing depends on how much a reader appreciates Egan’s strengths and is willing to overlook the weakness” (40). Shortly thereafter, Burnham appears irked, if not defensive, when she writes that “there are those, and one may speculate that Egan is among them, who would find no better pastime for their future experiments over extremely long timescales or to work out new mathematical theorems. While that is not most people’s idea of a fun eternity, those who do think that way needn’t be dismissed out of hand” (42). Defending against criticism of Egan’s indecipherability, Burnham is quite clear that any deficiencies are to be found in the reader, not the writer: Only a few readers are willing to put that level of work into reading a novel. For them, Egan is perhaps the most rewarding, challenging author publishing today. However, the stories have plenty to offer even those readers who are less scientifically dedicated. Readers and critics who are less inclined to space-time diagrams are still impressed by his work. Egan is a respectable craftsman at the sentence level, and the sense of wonder is accessible even to those who don’t grasp all the details of the mathematics. The resonances between science and society that he illuminates are meaningful to a broad swath of readers. (103-104) While Chapters Two through Five represent the meat of Burnham’s analysis, the highlights of this stellar book are found in Chapter One and Chapter Six. In the former, Burnham undertakes a creative exercise by combining Egan’s short stories and novels to “map out a rough future-history framework in which to place Egan’s technologies and themes” (31). Although Burnham acknowledges Egan’s eschewing of a fixed future history or shared universes (in spite of the narrative intersections of “Learning to be Me” [1990], “Closer” [1992], and “Border Guards” [1999] or “Luminous” [1995] and “Dark Integers” [2007]), Burnham’s creative mapping demonstrates the depths of her knowledge about Egan’s shorter and longer fictions while simultaneously placing divergent narratives into dialogue with one another. She effortlessly moves between short story and novel by beginning her future history with “technology that alters people’s fundamental personality/beliefs through neurochemistry” (32) and concludes with distant futures “in which the galaxy has reached something resembling stasis” (33). This is a striking and wholly original way of grasping the larger thematic contexts of Egan’s fiction and can serve as the backbone for anyone looking to develop a course explicitly devoted to Egan’s oeuvre. Although it is not technically identified as a distinct chapter, the second highlight is the lengthy interview with Greg Egan that concludes the volume (i.e., Chapter Six). Burnham has quoted extensively from this interview (as well as other interviews) throughout the preceding five chapters, so reading the entire conversation provides the most thorough-going examination into this enigmatic author. Burnham covers all the typical biographical expectations, including Egan’s influences and early (often failed) forays into publishing, as well as his thematic foci and his staunch belief that sf “is wasted when it’s used simply to crank out metaphors for familiar things” (174). Ultimately, Burnham concludes Greg Egan with Egan’s hopeful optimism about the impact of his own humble contributions to science fiction: “Art that’s blind to the true landscape we inhabit—physical reality in this case—is just absurdly, pathetically blinkered and myopic. So while I’m sure that the individual works I’ve written have only succeeded to varying degrees, I’m still proud to have done something to nudge the center of gravity of contemporary SF some microscopic distance toward a genuine engagement with reality” (180). If any critique can be leveled against Greg Egan it would have to do with the paucity of Egan-specific critical work. As noted, Burnham relies extensively upon interviews, particularly her own material; in addition, she does provide general context by drawing upon N. Katherine Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999), Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993), and Bill McKibben’s Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), to name a few. Nevertheless, there is no real sense of the growing scholarship devoted exclusively to Greg Egan; thus, academic work by Wayne Daniels, Andrew Macrae, Ross Farnell, Neil Easterbrook, or my own humble contributions are absent (Burnham does quote from my entry in Mark Bould et al.’s Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction [2009], but misattributes the content to the editors). It would have been helpful had such scholarship been referenced or included in a more thorough bibliography gathering secondary works in tandem with primary materials and interviews. In the end, such an oversight does not detract from what is an otherwise stellar piece of scholarship. As part of the University of Illinois’s Modern Masters of Science Fiction series, the affordable Greg Egan not only deserves to be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the author’s oeuvre or sf scholars and aficionados in general, but it is also a fantastic template for anyone writing on any other authors for this increasingly illustrious series. —Graham J. Murphy, Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology Speculating and the Spectacle. James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull. Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014. xiv + 240 pp. $25 pbk. Sf cinema is rich with the history of cinema itself. For instance, it is often pointed out that Georges Méliès created Le Voyage dans la Lune [A Trip to the Moon, 1902] with a camera that was science-fictional at that time. Still, sf film has been studied primarily within the confines of its own genre and not placed more broadly within the history of film as such. This approach has certainly led to many groundbreaking publications from film scholars such as John Baxter, Vivian Sobchack, and Annette Kuhn, to name but a very few of the contributors to this discourse. Related studies have yielded histories of the genre, thematic-oriented analyses, and important and insightful applications of critical theory, despite the latter being referred to in this book as a “voguish trend” (7). Projecting Tomorrow aims to widen the critical reception of science fiction to include a broader array of films than the “same narrow array of examples (Alien, Blade Runner, The Terminator)” and to demonstrate how these films influenced and were influenced by films in other genres. It presents twelve case studies that situate the chosen films within the framework of popular cinema and the cultural anxieties of the day. The result is a “contextual cinematic history” (xiii). The film selection covers a broad range of subgenres from the science-fiction musical to the literary adaptation and from the space opera to the documentary. The films come from the United States and Great Britain. Titles discussed include, in order of appearance: Just Imagine (1930), Things to Come (1936), The War of the Worlds (1953), The Quatermass Series (1955, 1957, 1967), Forbidden Planet (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Planet of the Apes (1968), The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), Logan’s Run (1976), Star Wars (1977), RoboCop (1987), and Avatar (2009). Projecting Tomorrow is a follow-up to Chapman and Cull’s earlier Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (2009), which looked at the portrayal of imperialism in British and Hollywood cinema from the 1930s to the twenty-first century. Both this earlier publication and Projecting Tomorrow are based on extensive archival and empirical research. Each chapter contains a detailed analysis of production history based on interviews with actors, directors, producers, and writers, studio records, scripts, personal correspondence, film reviews, publicity materials, censor reports, legal records, and autobiographies. The authors split the chapters between them. Altogether, there is remarkable consistency in the topics they cover from the pre-history of the project through to each film’s afterlife. The collection’s overarching narrative is tied to the growth of the cinema as spectacle, from Hollywood of the thirties, then by way of Star Wars, and culminating in James Cameron’s Avatar. It is not a coincidence, then, that the book begins with a closer look at Just Imagine, one of the few sf musicals, which was not inspired by “what if” but by Broadway. Much time is spent on the difficulties of adapting the more speculative and introspective sf literature to a visual medium. Things to Come and 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance, provide examples of sf authors, H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke, who embraced film as a medium and collaborated with their respective directors. Logan’s Run pushed the boundaries of what could be displayed in film at that time and were censored by the “guardians of taste and decency: the Production Code Administration” (84). Certainly, the chapter on Star Wars was a necessary inclusion as a milestone due in part to its special effects, the strength of its story, and the arrival of the Hollywood science-fiction blockbuster. RoboCop then documents the growing influence of comic books on the silver screen, while Avatar is presented as the merging of Cameron’s childhood musings and a special-effects industry that had finally attained the ability to represent them. The book also clearly links science fiction to other film traditions and genres. For instance, chapter three explains why Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein considered filming War of the Worlds in 1930 and then ultimately moved to another project. It points out that both Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will (1935) influenced Star Wars. A number of genres are represented, including Hammer Films’ The Quatermass series (horror), Star Wars (western and adventure fantasy), The Hellstrom Chronicle (documentary), and RoboCop (comic books), among others. Many chapters outline the broader accomplishments of those who worked on the film at hand. The lyricists Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown and the composer Ray Henderson, who wrote for Just Imagine, went on to write a number of musical standards (e.g., “Button up your Overcoat”). Rod Serling, Pierre Boulle, and Charlton Heston all worked on The Planet of the Apes. The Hellstrom Chronicle’s David Wolper produced Roots (1977). As film history, the book traces a number of common themes in the development of Anglo-American cinema: the influence of the Cold War and later of Vietnam, the fear of nuclear war, the social revolutions of the Sixties, the growth of mass media and its focus on young audiences, the dominance of television, the coming of film merchandising, etc. It does this in the compelling detail that comes from intense archival research. For instance, Prohibition is mocked in Just Imagine. Sf film is integrated into the discourse on McCarthyism in the chapter on The Planet of the Apes series, as its two blacklisted screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, worked on the film uncredited. Quatermass 2 points to the “enemy within” in its dark vision of an increasingly authoritarian state and RoboCop brought the genre of cyberpunk to the “rust-belt” city of Detroit. Transnational elements occur early on in multiple discussions of Hollywood studio strategies to benefit from British film subsidies. While the volume provides a fascinating view of each film through the archival microscope, sometimes the book itself becomes a bit myopic. It fails to come up for air from time to time and make an wider observation to help situate its current chapter in the broader context of (sf) film history. Chapter 8 ends with the question: “What does the The Hellstrom Chronicle tell us about the development of the SF genre?” (143) Although each chapter finishes with the post-history of each film, most chapters should have asked a similar question. Even a paragraph of conclusions at the end of each chapter would have been useful. Certainly Planet of the Apes has “remained a touchstone in American culture” (127) and the final section on the film relates how this is so. Yet it would have been helpful here to have similar observations reminding the reader not only how important the film was to popular culture, but also why it had been chosen in the first place. The “Afterword” tries to do this, but in a perfunctory way and much too late in the book. That said, the collection is full of fascinating revelations and details about the chosen films that only this type of exacting research can produce. The authors were aware of their limited selection of films and suggest other films that they might have included (7). Yet the depth attained via the case-study format required the smaller choice. There is no fan-edited or other audience-influenced film in the list of possibilities. This type of chapter is essential to a collection that focuses on production history in a time when digital cinema has revolutionized filmmaking. What does this innovation mean for the theme film as spectacle? Overall, the book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on popular cinema and is bound to bring a broader audience to the study of sf film as the story of cinema. —Sonja Fritzsche, Illinois Wesleyan University Furthering Second-Order Systems Theory. Bruce Clarke. Neocybernetics and Narrative. Posthumanities 29. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2014. 248 pp. $75 hc; $25 pbk. Neocybernetics and Narrative is intended to articulate a second-order systems-theoretical basis for reading narrative texts, specifically the social and technological interactions among characters. The first, third, and fifth chapters develop the details of the theory in conjunction with readings of film and literature, including Octavia Butler’s Mind of My Mind (1977) and the film Avatar (2009). The second and fourthchapters are readings of theory, specifically work by Michel Serres and Bruno Latour. Systems theory understands the world as an environment composed of closed systems. These systems may be biological, such as cells; psychic, such as consciousness; or social, such as nation states. Systems produce and reproduce themselves through internal processes of self-reference. This process of “self-making” is called autopoiesis. Self-reference and closure are essential because, for second-order systems theory, “circular recursion constitutes the system in the first place” (4; emphasis in original). Clarke extends his focus to media and narrative theories because media and narrative often serve as the embodied environments where psychic and social systems interact; they are “additional environmental resources for” the information processing and interpretive operations “of psychic and social systems” (6). The first chapter provides an overview of systems theory, explicating the technical vocabulary of the field with clarity and precision. Systems theory uses a wealth of technical terms that can obfuscate their own utility if not well presented. Clarke’s success comes from his frequent habit of defining some terms in opposition while also showing where they overlap. For instance, he offers a distinction between “the biotic autopoiesis of living systems and the metabiotic autopoiesis of minds and societies” (12). Defining machines and “technical objects” as non-autopoietic but functioning within metabiotic systems “to convey meaning” offers a conceptual tool for readers concerned with technology and its mediation of meaning between different forms of life (14; emphasis in original). Throughout the rest of the book, a recurring argument is that other systems theories outside of the specific field of second-order systems theory suffer from their lack of insistence on operational and self-referential closure. Clarke focuses on this theme most fully in his second and fourth chapters. The second chapter is particularly appealing because it articulates the theoretical differences between Michel Serres and Niklas Luhmann. Even though both thinkers refer to systems, Serres emphasizes that energy and information open systems up to universal integration instead of constituting a system’s operational closure. In Clarke’s view, this means “notions of structural self-organization have to patch up the conceptual lacunae that can be properly filled in only by operationally closed autopoietic self-production” (64). As such, Serres’s open theory can account for neither the distinction of living beings from one another nor from their environment (75). Clarke provides a genuine service to readers familiar with, but not yet fluent in, Serres or Luhmann’s work by clarifying what is privileged and useful for each of them. In the thought-provoking fourth chapter, Clarke critiques Bruno Latour’s “discursive and novelized resurrection” of a failed public transport project in Paris known as Aramis (112). Latour eventually wrote a book about the project, using fictive engineers to discuss the real endeavor. For Clarke, the lack of closure in Latour’s actor-network theory results in the text sometimes treating Aramis as autonomous and sometimes not, creating “an irony suitable to the treatment of something that never existed as something that also did exist” (131; emphasis in original). Clarke’s critiques raise useful questions for articulating posthumanist theoretical priorities in reading texts. Do texts concerned with human/nonhuman interface offer an account where distinct systems relate through some form of media? Or does the text celebrate play in dissolving boundaries? The latter may be the more familiar state of cyborg creation, but Clarke’s reading of Avatar relies on systemic closure, and his articulation of a mind’s movement between bodies and social systems is more successful for doing so (166). There is one concept that seems worthy of more than the brief mention Clarke gives it: structural coupling, which functions as substitute for communication by transmission. Transmission is untenable because “autonomous social and psychic systems construct their own meanings” internally, so communication between systems only emerges when they are “coupled to the other in their respective environments, and mediated by the medium of meaning” (48). This comes across as an essential concept, but is not treated beyond a brief reference. If transmission of meaning between systems is impossible, then different forms of life must emerge together in an environment to share mechanisms of internal meaning-making. Readers of science fiction can look for the ways structural coupling leaves transmission behind in favor of depicting a mutual growth that both maintains systemic closure and highlights shared media. Given the wealth of conceptual tools it provides, Neocybernetics and Narrative succeeds in its goal to “sharpen second-order systems theory’s scholarly profile and enhance its intellectual cred” (ix). —Walter Merryman, University of California, Riverside Apocalypse Now. Monica Germaná and Aris Mousoutzanis, eds. Apocalyptic Discourse in Contemporary Culture: Post-Millennial Perspectives on the End of the World. Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature.New York: Routledge, 2014. xv + 244 pp. $140 hc. From academic texts such as Žižek’s Living in the End Times (2010) and Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) to the range of (post)apocalyptic films as varied as Wall-E (2002) and Snowpiercer (2013) and the continued popularity of television adaptations such as The Walking Dead (2010), it is clear that apocalyptic discourses are both lucrative storytelling and academically rich terrain. As part of Routledge’s Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature series, Apocalyptic Discourse in Contemporary Culture: Post-Millennial Perspectives on the End of the World contributes to discussions about the appeal of apocalyptic narratives and their changing significance in our contemporary global moment. Editors Monica Germaná and Aris Mousoutzanis note that the purpose of such a collection is two-fold: first, it examines the cultural and historical development of apocalyptic narratives through an interdisciplinary lens. Thus, essays in the collection utilize a variety of theoretical frameworks, highlighting the ways ecocriticism, feminism and gender studies, trauma studies, and critical globalization studies might be read into, and supplemented by, analysis of apocalyptic narratives. The collection’s secondary aim is a consequence of the ways such interdisciplinary work can unsettle previously established claims—thus, the editors note that the collection also “interrogates the theoretical foundations of the apocalypse’s linearity … in order to highlight its complex intersections with the current contextual terrain outlined by late capitalism, globalization, and twenty-first-century technology” (2). This is, to me, a particularly exciting aspect of the collection. The book’s collection of fifteen essays is divided into four sections on theory, space, time, and language. Accordingly, the first section on “theory” is the most philosophically dense and considers how apocalyptic discourse might reveal “immanent” rather than “imminent” dimensions. This is a question the editors already set up nicely in the introduction by challenging the implicit linearity associated with the term. Lee Quinby’s chapter sets the tone for the section by historicizing the apocalypse as both a “geopolitical phenomenon and … also increasingly a biopolitical one” (19). Quinby asserts that theorizing the apocalypse requires paying attention to why certain apocalyptic visions are encouraged and how this might relate to structures of governmentality, thus leading Quinby to outline the emergence of a form of contemporary “apocalyptic security.” Chapters two (by Sophie Fuggle) and three (by John Vignaux Smyth) share many similarities as both focus on the contradictions inherent in Slavoj Žižek’s and Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s work on apocalyptic discourses, though Smyth’s chapter is more conceptually sophisticated in thinking about apocalypse as both ruse and revelation. The section concludes with Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik’s “The Apocalyptic Sublime,” which provides a strong reading of the relationship between apocalyptic narratives and the developments of modern science. This chapter might be of particular interest to sf scholars, as Horner and Zlosnik also outline the emergence of a “New Gothic Sublime,” which they argue challenges the promises of post-Enlightenment economic progress. Part two (“Space, Place, and Environment”) and part three (“Time and History”) move away from theorizations of the significance of the apocalypse to focus on the ways specific texts utilize apocalyptic discourse for their own purposes. Emily Horton’s chapter convincingly argues that the postapocalypic vision in John Burnside’s Glister (2008) uses qualities of the sublime to foster increased environmental awareness. Next, Joanne Murray’s chapter on J.G. Ballard and New Brutalism examines the significance of space in relation to witnessing and the aesthetics of aftermath. Focusing on gendered futures, Elizabeth Russell’s chapter examines transnational representations of dystopian and apocalyptic futures that foreground the horrors of violence against women in our own present. In “‘Soul Delay’: Trauma and Globalization in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (2003),” Mousoutzanis performs an insightful analysis of the ways apocalyptic narratives mediate the traumas of globalization. In the third part of the book, Christopher Daley’s chapter historicizes British disaster novels by examining the ways Brian Aldiss and J.G. Ballard rework “cozy catastrophe” themes in the context of 1960s counterculture and the Cold War. Following this, both Magdalena Zolkos and Francesca Haig examine the continuities between post-Holocaust testimonial, memory, and contemporary apocalyptic narratives. Though there is already an overwhelming amount of theorization of zombie apocalypses, David Cunningham and Alexandra Warwick’s chapter is an excellent re-reading of these texts as products of the cultural logic of late capitalism, in which “the zombie is less a consumer of commodities, or a figure of the collective living labor that produces them, than it is the horror of the human being taking on the very form of the commodity itself” (186; emphasis in original). The horror of the zombie apocalypse, then, lies not in the sense of an ending but in the horrific repetition of the same in which capital continues to “[lurch] ever onward of its own accord” (186). The book concludes with a section on “Language and the End of the World.” Will Abberley’s chapter traces the ways supposed language degeneration in early apocalyptic narratives reflects Victorian ideologies regarding the progress of civilization, while later fictions—such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980)—view postapocalyptic language as offering transformative ways of thinking and being against increasing global homogeneity. Germaná’s chapter continues with the focus on language as both symbolic system and fundamental social structure. Germaná argues that Oryx and Crake (2003) reveals the ways the apocalypse can be viewed as circular, immanent rather than imminent, as a result of our language systems and the problematic disjunction between the real and the symbolic/Other. Concluding the book is Adam Roberts’s chapter, which focuses on language creation as a significant form of rupture (or defamiliarization?) that is a critical part of thinking the world otherwise in science-fictional texts. As with any collection, the essays here are of mixed quality. In my opinion, the book’s interdisciplinarity is simultaneously its major strength and its greatest challenge. While the many good essays offer a variety of perspectives on the meaning of “apocalypse” in the twenty-first century, some chapters are highly specialized and will appeal only to those interested in their specific topic. Murray’s chapter, for instance, has interesting implications for those thinking about ruins and the aesthetics of aftermath, but its primary focus is really on the relationship between Ballard and New Brutalism. Such breadth, however, is simultaneously a part of the book’s strength, as such diverse chapters also share several insights. Hence, despite addressing a wide range of topics across fields such as literature, film, and philosophies of time, a few central thematic threads are woven through several of the chapters, including an emphasis on the ways apocalyptic discourses continually function as uneasy and intentional points of rupture in the process of globalization. The collection performs, in essence, what Fredric Jameson (drawing on Marx) notes is the role of the cultural critic, in which “the urgency of the subject demands that we make at least some effort to think the cultural evolution of late capitalism dialectically, as catastrophe and progress altogether” (Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991, 47]). In this way, the book’s methodology mirrors its thematic drive, where the dialogue that emerges between chapters is one that plays with the dialectic between catastrophe and progress, stasis and change, absolute endings and liminal spaces. Nearly all of the chapters will appeal in some way to sf scholars as they address several topics that are of interest to the field, including the relationship between sf and representations of globalization, monsters, and contemporary biopolitical structures. Because of my own scholarly bias, I wish there were more chapters on global/transnational apocalyptic narratives (only Russell’s chapter really addresses this), that could have included, for instance, the perspective of Latin American dystopian fiction. Though several chapters in the collection perform a strong and insightful analysis of the ways contemporary apocalyptic narratives are particularly attuned to the context of global capital, most focus primarily on texts from the Global North. Alas, this may be a digression on my part, but only because the collection does a good job of inciting such questions and in this way fulfills the editors’ note that they “[do] not claim to offer a universal kind of revelation” and “hope instead that the richness of this volume might encourage readers to keep interrogating ‘the end’ and pursue further unveilings of their own” (11). This compelling collection will provide many starting points for thinking further about the significance of apocalyptic narratives in contemporary sf and would be a useful addition to any library. —Malisa Kurtz, Brock University √-1, Other. Elana Gomel. Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xi + 232 pp. $85 hc. To read Elana Gomel’s fascinating book Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule is to find oneself lost—enjoyably, mind-alteringly, other-sentiently—in a Borgesian meditation labyrinth designed precisely to lose the reader’s “self” by misplacing the reader in the self’s absence. The result: approximately 200 pages of continuous intellectual suspense. Enigmas proliferate. What is the other’s self? What is the other’s other? Insofar as the other’s other turns out to be one’s own self, then which one of us is the actual Other? To the extent that we live in a posthuman era, have “human rights” become obsolete? Is empathy a misguided form of anthropomorphism? Is it possible to empathize with an entity incapable of empathizing back? These are the kinds of questions that Elana Gomel explores with insight and wit through three “Parts” (“Confrontation,” “Assimilation,” “Transformation”) consisting of vibrant sections framed by titles that are often instructively wacky: “Us Are Them” (9), “Ethics of Metamorphosis” (27), “The Monster Next Door” (100), “Identity on Ice” (101), “Utopian Frogs” (134), “A Loquacious Broccoli” (165), “The Zombie in the Mirror” (176). Alive with what might be called xenopathy (other-feeling) and metapathy (beyond-feeling), the pages of Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism ultimately guide the reader to a space where one discovers a reflective surface. What one finds in the depths of the reflective surface is not the grammatical subject (or even object) that one might expect, but rather a series of science-fictional pronouns. What do I mean by a “science-fictional pronoun”? Science-fictional pronouns can assume various shapes under various circumstances. The first-person singular “I,” for instance, takes on a science-fictional charge (thereby becoming, in effect, a science-fictional pronoun) whenever it is placed immediately before a comma, a space, and the noun for something to which subjectivity is not ordinarily ascribed: “I, Robot,” “I, Vampire,” and so on. By contrast, the absence of pronouns such as “I” in the science-fictional language that Samuel R. Delany conjures in his novel Babel-17 (1966) virtually amounts to a science-fictional pronoun in itself. The plural first-person narration in (among other texts) William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” (1930) and Ed Park’s novel Personal Days (2008)—the subtle use of “we”/“ours”/“us”—elicits an eerie sense of other-humanly consciousness, consciousness distributed elusively across individual identities, consciousness disembodied (or perhaps meta-bodied), consciousness difficult to locate in space or in time. Meanwhile, in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We (1924), the central pronoun is not the first-person plural (as the title might suggest) but the square root of minus one—the imaginary number “i” that erupts from within D-503 (the narrator and protagonist of We) in a narrative voice identifiable as the square root of the negative first-person singular (or the √-1st-person singular). Hence the novel has an invisible and “unreal” subtitle: not “I, Robot,” but “i, D-503,” which is to say: “√-1, D-503.” Although Elana Gomel does not present her argument in exactly these terms, Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism is a book mindful of and preoccupied with science-fictional pronouns and pronouns more generally. “Torn between attraction and revulsion, we are watching the skies,” Gomel writes in “Invasions of Discourse Snatchers” (the opening of “Introduction: Why Do We need Aliens?”) before immediately interrogating her own use of the first-person plural: “‘We,’ perhaps, is the wrong pronoun to use here since it assumes the uniformity of audience and response” (1). The readership she has in mind, Gomel goes on to explain, consists of those of “us” who follow literary science fiction. Refreshingly, and mind-openingly, Gomel has “made a conscious choice” to analyze “less-known writers and texts,” among them Michael Bishop’s Transfigurations (1979), Sheri S. Tepper’s Grass (1989), Nancy Kress’s Steal Across the Sky (2009), Paul Park’s Celestis (1993), Housuke Nojiri’s Usurper of the Sun (2002), Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961),and Amy Thomson’s The Color of Distance (1995). As for the book’s purpose, Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism “focuses on literary SF as a testing-ground for the ontological, epistemological, and especially ethical issues raised by the possibility of the existence of alien intelligence—entities that defy our cultural and psychological conflation of reason and humanity” (2). The “testing-ground,” however, is more than merely experimental: “While aliens may, or may not, exist,” Gomel writes, “the nonhuman is already here, inhabiting and undermining our most cherished verities of humanism. We need aliens because we are already alien to ourselves” (4). In other words, “we” and “we” (let alone “we” and “I” or “you”) are not identical. “We” does not equal “we.” Through close readings that are engaging and rich in detail, Gomel probes the ethical implications of the above-mentioned non-equation. In particular, she investigates works of literary science fiction that defy the symmetrical ethics of reciprocity and challenge the “Golden Rule” referred to in the book’s subtitle. She draws attention, for example, to a giant “brotherhood in arms” in Adam Roberts’s novel New Modern Army (2010) that chants: “I, I, I, I, I, I, I am most myself when I am fighting” (qtd. 68). What kind of pronoun is claiming here to be most itself (himself? themselves?) when fighting? Does “I” count as human? If so (or even if not!), can he/it/they be held accountable for war crimes? Or (Gomel wonders) does the first-person singular “remain locked in the hall of mirrors where the ‘I’ fights its own shadows?” (68). Moreover, when the first-person singular is preceded by the word “the” (as it is in Gomel’s query above), does “I” not then transform into a third-person “it”? What if the grammatical third person is in fact another pronoun for the grammatical first person? What if consciousness—of other selves, of one’s own self—is unavailable for any kind of narrative experience? This last speculation is one that Gomel addresses with special astuteness. “The plot of alien infestation inscribes an intratextual transformation of a human being into an alien,” she writes: Thus, it poses significant theoretical questions about the narrative representation of subjectivity. Narrative voice and focalization are the standard tools of such representation. Can these tools cope with an alien subjectivity located in a human body; that is, lacking the external, corporeal signs by which nonhumans are ordinarily marked in SF? And if they fail, what does this failure tell us about the limits of psychological realism and its underlying assumptions about human ontology? (95) As Gomel argues persuasively, the brilliance of science fiction resides in its power to reveal “the basic disparity between the narrative techniques used to represent the human subject and the thematic concern with the posthuman.... Novels of alien infestation are textual sites where the narrative techniques of humanism splinter under the thematic impact of dealing with the ontological Other” (100). This may be the most striking lesson that Gomel’s provocative book has taught me: alien figures expose the rift between conventional narrative techniques and posthuman issues. Perhaps along similar lines, science-fictional pronouns expose the rift between conventional grammar and a posthuman ethical system—a system capable of comfortably answering questions such as “What if the Other is a moral agent but with a morality different from mine? What if compassion backfires when my own intuitions provide no clues to the desires and needs of my interlocutor? How do we navigate in a world where forms of agency are as multiform as the biological configurations of posthuman bodies?” (5). While such questions are not theoretical—cybernetic organisms, for example, already exist, and there have always been fundamental limits to the self’s ability to identify with the other—“posthumanism” remains more “theory” than “practice.” What will it take for posthumanism to become an applied way of life? Will it take a new science-fictional grammar? An alien invasion? Both? —Seo-Young Chu, Queens College Reinventing the Wheel. Steven Hrotic. Religion in Science Fiction: The Evolution of an Idea and the Extinction of a Genre. Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. ix + 225 pp. $112 hc. As critical work on science fiction becomes more mainstream across multiple disciplines, we see more and more scholarship that does not take the disciplinary assumptions and well-worn thematic concerns of “science fiction studies” as its starting point. As a development this is, paradoxically, both very welcome and very frustrating: welcome in the sense that such new approaches have the potential to breathe new life into our sub-discipline, but frustrating in the sense that such work often feels like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent the wheel—or, perhaps worse yet, that it treats itself as a landmark expedition into virgin territory without taking any note whatsoever of the extensive work that has already been done in the field. Such as it is, for better and for worse, with Religion in Science Fiction, a book whose focus on the genre’s uses and abuses of religious thinking both benefits from and is significantly harmed by its independence from decades of sf scholarship. Neither the words “Suvin” nor “Jameson” appear anywhere in the text; “Le Guin” is mentioned only a few times in passing, once in a reference to her anthropologist father; “Atwood” appears only in the context of her famous frustration with the science-fiction label; nor is there any reference to Samuel R. Delany, Stanislaw Lem, James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nalo Hopkinson, or any of a host of other writers who have rightly become inevitable references within our field. This deeply odd principle of selection extends even to authors who would seem absolutely unavoidable touchstones for a book on this subject; Philip K. Dick, for instance, appears only in a footnote about the comparatively much more obscure Roger Zelazny—and even then the reference is to the book he co-wrote with Zelazny, Deus Irae (1976), rather than to VALIS (1978), or to Dick’s famously bizarre “Exegesis” of his own myriad mystical experiences. Isaac Asimov, president of the American Humanist Association and in some sense the poster child for the often tense relationship between science fiction and religion, barely appears in the text, primarily in the context of a close reading of the comparatively obscure story “Trends” (1939)—and his successor-president at the AHA, Kurt Vonnegut, again does not appear anywhere in the text at all. This striking independence of Hrotic’s work from mainline “science fiction studies” sometimes produces interesting quirks in the text, like his creation of the opposing categories “gSF” (for genre SF, by which he means the literary, “niche” sf of specialist fandom) and “mSF” (mainstream SF, your blockbuster hits)—essentially a replication of Suvin’s decision to throw out “95%” of what is published as sf, a posture long since been reconsidered by the field—or his prolonged development of the term “metanarrative” to identify, in the end, exactly what Damien Broderick had already named the “megatext” twenty years ago. In other cases the lapses seem much more severe: it seems extremely hard to credit Hrotic’s claim that there has been no significant “evolution” of science fiction’s use of religion since The Sparrow (1996) with Robinson, Hopkinson, Atwood, and so many others still hard at work, much less to admit his final conclusion that the category he calls gSF—the very category on which SFS still publishes three times a year—has thus become “extinct” altogether! The deep disjuncture between the form of Religion in Science Fiction and the subfield of scholarship to which it would seem most naturally at home is all the more regrettable insofar as much of the book in isolation is quite admirable, shining light on an area of sf that has perhaps become so naturalized to us that we do not talk much about it. With notable exceptions such as Clifford D. Simak—another author I find surprisingly underdiscussed in this treatment—science fiction of the so-called “Golden Age” really did generally predict the near-term extinction of religion, and really has proven to be spectacularly wrong on that account. And more recent science fiction really has had to come to terms with the persistence (and to a large extent radical resurgence) of religion, as it has to varyingly successful degrees in some of the more recent work Hrotic does take up late in the book (such as the aforementioned The Sparrow, or Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (2008), or Octavia E. Butler’s Parable novels [1993, 1998]). Hrotic’s tracing of the contours of gSF over the decades also resurrects some unjustly neglected texts from authors who have tended to fall out of the familiar discursive habits of “science fiction studies,” such as Fred Barclay, Arthur Jones, and Leigh Brackett—authors we might very well take up and begin to read again, or perhaps read for the first time. Even Hrotic’s disciplinary standpoint as a cognitive anthropologist, as opposed to a literary critic or philosopher, marks his intervention as usefully distinct from our field’s usual patterns of inquiry; the approach is quite different from what we usually do, and quite usefully so, and the book surely worth reading. But I suspect many of Hrotic’s readers who originate within our academic sub-specialty will find themselves reading Religion in Science Fiction with the same sour mix of enjoyment and frustration I experienced, with the same bemused grimace on their faces, and with the same half-uttered “Okay, but what about…?” on the tips of their tongues. —Gerry Canavan, Marquette University Historicizing the Human. Despina Kakoudaki. Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2014. xi + 256 pp. $27.95 pbk. The first image in Anatomy of a Robot, Despina Kakoudaki’s engaging new study on the “cultural work of artificial people,” occurs on the second page. In it, an anonymous technician stands over Yul Brynner’s disassembled head. Brynner’s face, as cleanly removed from the rest of the head as if it were nothing more than a protective plate, sits on the chest of his supine body as the technician attends to the head’s exposed circuitry, itself sandwiched between a clean white bedsheet and a black cowboy hat. This screenshot from Michael Crichton’s 1973 film Westworld, taken before the robot’s haywire programming causes him to six-shoot his way to the junk bin, is an apt opener for a book that proposes to analyze the cultural significance of the robotic body, especially in terms of how such anatomies call attention to “interior” and “exterior” notions of physical functioning, to the often porous boundaries between public and private ownership, and to the complicated assumptions we have about individual identity. As this striking image of Brynner’s piecemeal cowboy suggests, the artificially constructed physiology functions as a stage upon which these tensions might play out. Kakoudaki excels at providing close-up examples of robotic bodies, such as this one, and using them to crystallize one of her most interesting arguments: “everything that usually takes place inside the body is externalized; processes of conception and gestation are transformed into visible and instantaneous events … technological promises of clarity and control” (29). There is much to praise in Anatomy of a Robot. Through an introduction, four chapters, and a brief conclusion, Kakoudaki grapples with the cultural significance of artificial people across a great swath of time ranging from antiquity to the present day. She attempts to offer a transhistoric account of not just the physical appearances and functions that artificial bodies have possessed throughout the ages, but also a nuanced consideration of how such bodies—still—align with ancient and pre-modern philosophical notions of vitality, animism, and humanism. The first chapter, a close reading of Frankenstein (1818), pays special attention to the novel’s embedded narrative form as well as its language of animation and de-animation. This is a fresh and original reading—no small feat for a text that has itself been animated, de-animated, and re-animated across different epochs of critical attention. Particularly convincing is the argument that Shelley’s “animating and de-animating language shifts between Victor and the monster numerous times” (36) and consequently creates a parallel between the human being and his artificial creation. From Frankenstein, Kakoudaki looks back to the Renaissance philosopher Paracelsus, and then even further back in time to Ovid’s Galatea, Hesiod’s Pandora, and the Old Testament account of creation. Through this genealogy, she demonstrates how moments of coming-into-consciousness prove that animation, rather than imitation or verisimilitude, is what vouchsafes the newly-conscious identity, a crucial insight for the line of reasoning that the second chapter explores. In the second chapter, the author again reaches back to antiquity for her framework, not to Ovid or Hesiod this time, but to Aristotle. Again, her temporal scope is sweeping. After starting with an analysis of Ironman (2008), The Terminator (1984), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and other contemporary narratives about mechanical bodies, she returns to Aristotle. In Aristotle’s framework, the soul is not, as Plato would have it, a strange remnant of a transcendent realm, ultimately incompatible with physical reality. For Aristotle, the soul is quite conversely a thing that emerges in correspondence with—and even as a consequence of—physical laws. Aristotle’s hylomorphism, she argues, illuminates ancient notions of vitality and motion that persist to this day in discourse about artificial persons. The third chapter moves away from robotic bodies per se, in order to discuss how narratives about artificial persons help clarify issues of human rights and social justice. Once again, her examples are wide-ranging in temporal scope. She begins with a reference to Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man” (1976), moves on to Blade Runner (1982), returns to Frankenstein, jumps forward to Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), and then takes us back to the text from which, arguably, all narratives about enslaved robots stem, Čapek’s R.U.R. (1920), demonstrating through these wide-ranging examples that enslaved robots often stand in for all-too-real-world practices of racial discrimination. In her fourth and final chapter the author discusses several robot stories in the post-WWII environment that question subjective boundaries and, hence challenge the integrity of the human subject. Kakoudaki hopes through her analysis not simply to point out moments where anxiety about subjective dislocation occurs but also to prepare a way for us to think about how such stories might encourage a model of subjectivity that is not undermined by perceived threats to its cohesion. She begins with an analysis of Dick’s “Imposter” (1953), an excellent specimen of paranoia, linking it to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” (1816), Clifford Simak’s “Good Night, Mr. James” (1951), and Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954), among others. As a whole, the book does a wonderful job of calling attention to long-enduring questions about what it means to be a human being and makes a strong case for the importance of historicizing them. With that said, the problem of historicizing is one from which the book at times suffers. In the introduction, Kakoudaki positions her transhistoric approach in contrast to other critical studies that have attempted to draw a through-line between pre-modern, modern, and contemporary works of art that deal with similar issues. Such works, she contends, are so focused on making connections between fictional works and contemporary scientific practice that they fail to pay attention to the larger historic contexts that inform them and suffer from a “voracious ahistoricizing” (14). A transhistoric approach would be welcome for the reasons she provides, but in practice her approach is more selectively historic than it is transhistoric, and it is often unclear why certain texts and time periods get more attention than others. The theoretical framework that she employs instead—in her own words, a structuralist approach informed by Vladimir Propp and Claude Lévi-Strauss (26)—often forecloses more urgent and contemporary matters in favor of tracing the “isomorphic” narrative patterns that occur in stories about artificial persons across time (41). Such an approach is surprising, given that the author is clearly very interested in tracing contemporary problems. Her chapter on the depictions of robotic enslavement is timely and urgent. And yet here is where her sweeping trans-historicizing falls most short. The author reads Asimov’s “Bicentennial Man” as an allegory of American slavery and then moves on to discuss slavery in relation to the class-conscious satire that is R.U.R. To be sure, these are not mutually exclusive readings; however, by moving from a reading of the historically specific practice of American slavery to another, wholly distinct form of oppression as it was viewed and criticized in the tumultuous pre-Soviet Czechoslovakia era (the “enslavement” of a workforce within a capitalist context), the author elides extremely important differences and subsumes them all under the term of “metalfacing,” a term that at once references blackface and erases racial difference. There is also throughout Anatomy of a Robot a peculiar lack of engagement with other critical works that have taken on similar topics. For example, Jessica Riskin’s Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002) gets only the briefest of mentions. This is surprising, given that text’s detailed analysis of Madame du Coudray’s eighteenth-century “birthing machine,” an object that would have helped complicate Kakoudaki’s description of the “artificial birth” in chapter one, and that same author’s analysis of Jacques Vacaunson’s defecating duck, which reveals its inventor’s fascination not merely with verisimilitude but also with the animation and re-creation of physical bodily functioning. Additionally, the chapter on slavery makes no mention of Kevin Lagrandeur’s Androids and Intelligent Networks in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2012), which goes all the way back, as Kakoudaki does, to Aristotle. Finally, given the author’s ambition to look back to the past to help conceive of “new” ways to think about identity in the present, especially in terms of how artificial persons trouble the boundary between lived experience and inert material, it would have been useful to provide more than only a quick, offhand reference to “thing criticism” (16). A discussion of Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), which also reaches back to the past in order to inform the present, would have been welcome, as would any number of other works within the field of Object-Oriented Ontology or Actor Network Theory. If one can set these concerns aside, one can more readily accept the important, even profound, insights that Anatomy of a Robot offers. As Kakoudaki writes in her final chapter, “whatever we imagine the artificial person to be, that is what we know or suspect that we are” (211). In other words, the great strength of Kakoudaki’s new study is not only its lucid demonstration that the robot—that quintessentially modern, constructed, human-made entity—has a pre-modern history, but also that this history is eerily and inextricably tied up with our own. —Lisa Swanstrom, Florida Atlantic University No Fantasy after Auschwitz? Judith B. Kerman and John Edgar Browning, eds. The Fantastic in Holocaust Literature and Film: Critical Perspectives. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014. x + 232 pp. $40 pbk. Theodor Adorno famously prohibited imaginative representation of the Holocaust (“no poetry after Auschwitz”). Seldom has a prohibition been more honored in the breach than in the observance. In 1967 George Steiner wrote that the “world of Auschwitz lies outside speech”—and violated the rule himself in his 1981 novella The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. in which a speech about “the world of Auschwitz” is delivered by its miraculously resurrected creator, Adolf Hitler himself. Other writers, artists, and critics who in various ways echoed Steiner’s statement were Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann, Berel Lang, and Dominick LaCapra. And like Steiner, they all proceeded to speak of Auschwitz, often at great length, as in Lanzmann’s monumental documentary Shoah (1985). This paradox lies at the heart of this collection. On the one hand, the Holocaust is seen as such an exceptional event that it commands artistic restraint. On the other hand, its very exceptionality challenges the imagination. In his chapter, Eric Sterling summarizes the attitude that would censor the very body of works to which the collection is dedicated: “because creativity, art, and language cannot adequately express the suffering and horrific acts during the Holocaust, it is better to say nothing and be respectfully silent” (51). But the ever-growing volume of Holocaust literature and cinema demonstrates that the more we are asked to be silent, the more we are inclined to speak. And moreover, like Steiner, we speak in fables and fantasies. Critics have often argued that realism is the only morally respectful way to relate to the suffering of the victims. Berel Lang insisted that Holocaust literature must be “prosaic,” “non-figurative,” and “authentic” (84). But in fact, Holocaust literature and film tend to the fantastic, the science-fictional, or the grotesque. Famous examples abound, from Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus (1980-1991) and Robert Harris’s alternative-history Fatherland (1992) to Quentin Tarrantino’s burlesque Inglorious Basterds (2009) and Martin Amis’s time-reversal fantasy Time’s Arrow (1991). In fact, the mutual attraction of the Nazi genocide and fantasy makes it unique among historical atrocities. This collection barely scratches the surface of its theme, yet a volume on the fantastic in representations of, say, the Gulag or the Great Leap Forward would run out of texts to discuss pretty quickly. One would expect this collection to engage with this cultural paradox. But instead it is still trying to answer the question asked by Gary K. Wolfe in his Introduction: “can the Holocaust be represented with sensitivity and historical verisimilitude in an imaginative mode”? (7) Every single essay debates whether the texts it discusses are ethically “legitimate.” Some contributors, such as Joan Gordon in her discussion of Maus, frankly acknowledge their own moral ambivalence. Others, such as Judith Kerman in her overview of uses of the fantastic in Holocaust literature, unenthusiastically endorse the genre because it can “provide serviceable approaches, however partial” to understanding the enigma of the atrocity (23). Still others, such as Michael McCleary in the essay that was the impetus for the present volume (it appeared in a special issue of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts in 1993 devoted to the topic), go further in arguing that “not only is the fantastic appropriate for depicting the Holocaust, it may indeed be, paradoxically, the most ‘natural’ way to represent this age of extremity” (27). But besides pointing out that there was something “apocalyptic” about the event, he does not explain why this should be so. Some solutions are offered by other contributors. In his essay on Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002), Paul Eisenstein suggests that Holocaust fantasies underscore the human freedom to make ethical choices. But such an anodyne conclusion tells us very little about the imaginative pull of the Holocaust as a specific historical event. In several essays dealing with Jane Yolen’s young-adult Holocaust fantasies, The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988) and Briar Rose (1992), Ellen R. Weil, Vandana Saxena, and Carol A. Senf suggest that these novels fulfill an essentially pedagogical function by combating forgetfulness and/or indifference. But the question remains: why the fantastic? Jane Yolen herself, in her brief Foreword to the volume, suggests an answer. Rather than discussing her own writings, she talks about the German fairy tale of Rumpelstilskin and argues that it is a covert anti-Semitic allegory. Yolen’s Foreword shifts the emphasis from the experience of the victims to the motives of the perpetrators, from trauma to ideology. Wolfe makes a similar point when he reminds us how the “the whole self-imposed myth of Nazism” generated a body of fantastic and science-fictional literature before the Holocaust became a historical benchmark—indeed, before the Holocaust even happened (9). The exceptionality of the Holocaust lies not so much in its atrocity as in its phantasmagoric genesis. Motivated by a delusionary racial anthropology, it is the purest (though not the only) example of an ideological genocide, in which the perpetrators impose a fantasy of their own making upon the reality of their victims. It is this aspect of the Nazi genocide that obsessed Stanislaw Lem, himself a Holocaust survivor, and that was brilliantly exposed in Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972), in which an alternative-history Hitler writes the history of the Third Reich as a Tolkienesque fantasy novel (unfortunately neither Lem nor Spinrad is discussed in this collection). The issue of the Holocaust as an ideological atrocity is addressed indirectly in some of the essays in the collection. Leon Stein discusses the representation of Nazism in Stephen King’s novella “Apt Pupil” (1982) but eventually faults King for focusing too much on the perpetrators rather than the victims. In the essay dedicated to the 1980s TV serial V (1983-85), John Edgar Browning touches on the intriguing question of the “teratology” of Nazism: the way in which the Nazi has become a monster figure, merging with the traditional icons of the zombie and the vampire. But while this trend is noted, it is not theorized. Ultimately it seems that the prescriptive still overwhelms the descriptive in this collection. Kristopher Mecholsky in his essay on Martin Scorcese’s movie Stutter Island (2010) reiterates Adorno’s injunction: “It would seem that in the case of Holocaust narratives meant to reach a wide audience, ‘authenticity’ … may be impossible. Not only might such attempts be in ‘bad taste,’ they may be unethical and immoral” (178). This implies, as do the arguments of Lang, LaCapra, and others, that the only ethical approach to trauma is emotional rather than intellectual. But arguably, in focusing on the pain of the victims rather than the responsibility of the perpetrators, we reify the actual historical event of the Holocaust into a mystical icon. The search for “authenticity” becomes profoundly inauthentic. We cannot do justice to the victims by trying to relive their suffering. But we can make sure that we understand why they suffered in the first place. Fantastic literature and cinema have a special role in exposing the ideological phantasm that caused the Nazi genocide. Unfortunately, the essays collected in this volume have little to say about it. —Elana Gomel, Tel-Aviv University Fierce, Intelligent, Passionate Engagements. Paul Kincaid. Call and Response. Essex, UK: Beccon, 2014. 381 pp. £16 pbk. Paul Kincaid began writing reviews for the British Science Fiction Association’s magazine Vector in the late 1970s, later moving on to venues as diverse as the Times Literary Supplement, Bookslut, Foundation, Interzone, and this very journal, as well as writing a number of entries for reference works. He has long been one of the more thoughtful and informed contributors to that non-academic, essentially belletristic tradition of sf criticism that has always seemed to flourish more in the UK and Australia than in the US, which means that an understanding of his critical methodology has to be derived mostly from shorter pieces such as reviews rather than from extended monographs or theoretical essays. Fortunately, England’s tiny Beccon Publications has made available a generous selection of these shorter pieces, as they have done previously for John Clute and (full disclosure) myself. Call and Response is Kincaid’s second collection for Beccon. The first, What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, appeared in 2008 and was organized into broadly thematic categories (“Theory,” “Practice,” “Britain,” etc., with individual sections on only two authors, Christopher Priest and Gene Wolfe). That inevitably involved a bit of shoehorning, as disparate essays and reviews, most not written with the idea of developing a single cohesive argument, were more or less fitted together like puzzle pieces that do not quite reveal a big picture at the end. Call and Response seems to me to be organized in a much more straightforward and useful way, simply author by author. Kincaid covers 27 authors, mostly through reviews but with a few pieces drawn from Kincaid’s contributions to Masterplots and Richard Bleiler’s Supernatural Fiction Writers (1985), and a few not previously published anywhere. In addition, three essays focus on various kinds of anthologies: best-of-the-year annuals (including his widely discussed review of the 2012 annuals, where he questions whether sf has reached a state of “exhaustion”), anthologies purporting to make everything new again (The New Space Opera [2007; ed. Gardner Dozois], The New Weird [2008; ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer], The New Wave Fabulists [2002; ed. Bradford Morrow and Peter Straub], The New Uncanny [2009; ed. Sarah Eyre and Ra Page]), and anthologies meant to reconsider historical developments (Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology [2007; ed. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly], The Secret History of Science Fiction [2009; ed. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly], The Secret History of Fantasy [2010; ed. Peter Beagle]). These overviews, which often touch upon classic stories that show up in such anthologies, afford Kincaid an opportunity to provocatively question some of the widely accepted views of the genre, including the idea that it has a single coherent history, let alone a “secret history.” And as for the “new,” Kincaid tends to view such collections as largely “genre propaganda.” Citing Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint’s concept of “enrolment,” he writes that “If a work is science fiction, then it has to be claimed for the heartland because otherwise it might drift away in the on-going boundary changes and be lost forever” (230). And yet Kincaid himself does not hesitate to look outside the traditional genre in order to find insights about it. What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction included a fine piece on the work of Steven Millhauser, and Call and Response includes an equally substantial series of pieces on Paul Auster, including Kincaid’s entry on Auster from Bleiler’s Supernatural Fiction Writers. Obviously, entries originally written with the more or less generic constraints of reference works such as Masterplots (there are only a handful) are less personal than Kincaid’s reviews or journal essays, but they have the advantage of providing a contextual overview of the author’s work that individual reviews cannot. By combining such an overview essay with three reviews of Steve Erickson novels, for example, Kincaid produces what is the most enlightening overview I have seen of the work of this author’s rather intimidating output. And the same might be said of Kincaid’s treatment of his close friend Christopher Priest, which begins with a reader’s guide called “Christopher Priest 101,” providing a thorough grounding for a section that otherwise includes only two novel reviews and two pieces on the film of The Prestige (2006). With other authors—presented in simple alphabetical order—Kincaid tries to provide such overviews with brief introductions to each section but faces the unavoidable problem that no working reviewers for multiple venues can cover everything, or cover what they do in a systematic manner. (It is a problem I myself am all too familiar with.) So it would be a mistake to expect a summative essay on Brian Aldiss, when what we get are short reviews of two novels, two story collections, and one nonfiction collection, scattered over more than two decades. But this is enough to build a portrait of a writer who, in Kincaid’s term, has always been “restless,” and Kincaid’s insights into, for example, Aldiss’s affinity for Thomas Hardy or the novel HARM (2007), which Kincaid likes slightly better than I did, are undeniably useful in approaching this author’s work. Similarly, Gene Wolfe is covered only in books published since 2007 (including a disappointingly brief review of The Best of Gene Wolfe [2009]); but the best pieces here, reviews of An Evil Guest (2008) and Home Fires (2010), deserve to be regarded as among the more salient approaches to Wolfe’s later work, which has barely begun to make a dent in academic considerations of sf’s arguably most significant writer. There is also occasional attention paid to critical or nonfiction works; the section on H.G. Wells includes reviews of three critical studies, a biography, and David Lodge’s novel about Wells, A Man of Parts (2011). The result is less an overview of Wells than a somewhat spotty but insightful discussion of the difficulties modern readers and scholars still have in trying to make sense of Wells’s many facets. But this sort of scattershot approach, as much as anything, is the chief value to scholars of review and essay collections such as this. Kincaid may not cover the standard canon of Philip K. Dick, but when he points out that the dread and incipient paranoia of characters from his early mainstream novels prefigure his more classic sf works, it is an invaluable insight for any student of Dick. His view of Jon Courtenay Grimwood as a postcolonial writer should be brought to the attention of all students of the many recent variations on postcolonial fiction, since Grimwood is one of those important authors who seems to escape academic attention. And when Kincaid recounts his enthusiasm in discovering new writers such as Christopher Barzak or Ian McDonald, he is sharing one of the great thrills of the front-line encounters with literature that are the stuff of reviewers’ lives. There are, of course, plenty of assessments here that one could take issue with—if there were not, the book would hardly be a significant work of criticism—and there is an inevitable piecemeal effect when you try to read the book from beginning to end, but the individual pieces are marked by a fierce, intelligent, and passionate engagement with the field that marks Kincaid as one of our most reliable critics. —Gary K. Wolfe, Roosevelt University More—and Less—of the Same. Rick McGrath, ed. Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology 2014. Toronto: Terminal P, 2014. 198 pp. $39.99 hc; $24.99 pbk. Last year, Pedro Groppo’s review of The J.G. Ballard Book (2013) for this journal considered the collection a “grab bag,” containing “all sorts of things, none of which could be considered essential” (SFS 41.2 [July 2014]: 450) Deep Ends, editor Rick McGrath’s second Ballard anthology in as many years, could be described using the same language, but even more so, and much less politely. Most will find something to like here, but that may be as much as to say that everyone will find something to dislike, from the tonal inconsistency to the elevation of minutiae to the status of esoterica-plus. Some quality art and incisive essays will recommend this to the Ballard completist, but it ultimately exists as a sort of unnecessary B-side to The J.G. Ballard Book, itself a shadow of the forward-looking concept-art piece that was 1984’s RE/Search issue on Ballard. The first problem with this offering is its stated main attraction. Whereas the 2013 collection boasted “over 60 pages of handwritten JGB memorabilia” from the collection of Ballard biographer James Goddard, as well as personal letters between Ballard and McGrath, the analogous draw in Deep Ends is “a previously unknown Ballard composition called Crystal of the Sea,” the foreword to a book of Japanese art-photography, which McGrath straight-facedly describes as “the first hieroglyph in the deep of any large, drained swimming pool of a book” (6). The great discovery, two columns of New Age prose-poetry on page 33, would be best forgotten as it represents Ballard at his most ineffectual. To wit: “After the infinite dimensions of the sea, we realise that space is flat, and that its apparent limitless depth is in fact an illusion, a dream of our waking minds. A powdery light clings to our waists, the crystal of the sea dissolves in a silken froth,” etc. (33). This is not representative of the Ballard of 1980, nor of any time in his career. Far from being essential, it represents the current state of picked-overness in critical treatments of Ballard, right along with interviewer David Pringle’s long-winded attempts to coax Fay Ballard into pinpointing the exact locations visited by her father on family trips to Europe during her childhood, or trying to make obscure biographical connections between Ballard’s schoolmates and his written work (“Even if you don’t recall hearing the name Helliwell, do you remember your father ever referring to an old school friend who had died in a crash?” [27] She did not.). I suppose my distaste for this type of generalized privileging of trivial ephemera (Volume 3 will no doubt come with fingernail clippings) is ultimately personal; however, that it is done in the name of an author whose work repeatedly eschews the personal for the archetypal is especially bothersome. The concept of the “assemblage” is deployed throughout the anthology as an oblique self-justification, but there is a difference between Ballard’s aggregation of the signifiers of a techno-corporatist media landscape in service to work that is ultimately conceptual, and depersonalized, and digging through the rubbish bin of his personal history. It is not wholly a waste of time: Bea Ballard, for example, shares amusing anecdotes about her adoption of the gerbil-impostor “Ratty George” (10), and of her father’s surprisingly sure-handed single-parenting of his teenage daughters (12). Ultimately, what succeeds in this anthology are the artworks and some of the critical essays. Ana Barrado’s photo-series, “Neotropic Cyphers,” immediately follows “Crystal of the Sea” and almost redeems it through stark post-apocalyptic images of coastal mundanity, photos taken in Florida but seeming as if they were ripped from Ballard’s own mind. The editor includes high-quality images of Feroze Alam’s “Landscapes of the Dream” series, paintings inspired by scenes from or titles of Ballard’s works, which are like the movie posters for Ballard books you never knew you wanted. Less successful are the interpolations of Atrocity Exhibition-inspired “advertisements” throughout the collection, as these seem designed merely to copy the form, not the spirit, of the originals, a spirit captured more effectively in variously entertaining prose parodies by D. Harlan Wilson (“Geometry of Mourning”) and Christopher Cokinos (“Why I want to Fuck Rupert Murdoch”). It is hard to say whether the collection’s tonal inconsistency is a result of the materials available to the editor or his decision to include everything he found. The shift from the biographical to the critical appears to be signaled by Umberto Rossi’s unwieldy, long-form “Is the War Inside Your Mind” (97) about halfway through, but even after this the stronger entries tend to be the more pop-critical short essays on beloved Ballard works, such as Paul Green’s “Dreaming of the Towers” (120) on Ballard’s enigmatic “The Watch-Towers” (1962), and Cokinos’s “Book Review, Meet JG Ballard” (156) on A User’s Guide to the Millenium (1996), a collection of book reviews and brief essays (including the by-now classic New Worlds manifesto “Which Way to Inner Space?” [1962]). Rounding out this selection of academic and non-academic pieces are forgettable interviews with artists loosely inspired by Ballard’s work, and a few very good scene/shot analyses of the films Shanghai Jim (1991) and Empire of the Sun (1987), by Pippa Tandy and Pedro Groppo, respectively. No doubt the target demographic of serious Ballard aficionados will appreciate this collection, and the editor should be commended for gathering in one volume a few of these pieces that previously existed scattered across the ’net, but none of this is essential, and none of these critical thoughts or biographical facts are unavailable elsewhere—2013’s The J.G. Ballard Book might be a good place to start. In D. Harlan Wilson’s faux-biographical style-parody “Geometry of Mourning,” there is an uncanny moment of Ballard-mythologizing that archetypally sums up our obsessive fascination with the trinkets and ephemera surrounding the massive void his passing left in the world: “There is only one giant, however, drowned like a jungle yeti, beached like a white whale…. Bystanders and scientists and police officers observe and inspect the marvel…. Tourists huddled on the dunes stare through binoculars with expressions of shocked reserve…. Then the giant is ‘stripped of all flesh’; and remembered not as a Nephilim but as a ‘large sea beast.’ Soon no collective memory of the giant remains” (81). That anthologies like this one represent a pitched battle against such disappearances is no doubt true; it would be better, however, to not only care for the memories entrusted to us, but also to be more discerning about the new myths we assemble in this literary giant’s absence. —Michael Jarvis, University of California, Riverside Revisiting Bradbury’s Mars. Gloria McMillan, ed. Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars: Biographical, Anthropological, Literary, Scientific and Other Perspectives. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014. ix + 253 pp. $40 pbk. As heralded by the title, this anthology focuses on Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) through interdisciplinary approaches to his canon, conscientiously homing in on biographical, anthropological, literary, scientific, and educational aspects of his work. From the alien deserts of Arizona to the remote trenches of Mars, Bradbury’s sf tales emphasize the parallels between the Western frontier and the final frontier. The similarities between American and Martian terrain highlight the colonizing fantasies of our expansionist civilization, decisively establishing the author as a forerunner in social-critical and ecocritical themes within science fiction. These essays, through varied perspectives, effectively illuminate Bradbury’s critical vision and his biographically influenced cosmology. The anthology begins by detailing Bradbury’s formative years growing up in the American Southwest. The contributors utilize the trope of Western expansion to identify recurring themes within his work and, indeed, within science fiction itself. The essays primarily concern themselves with issues of alienation and Otherness; however, like Bradbury’s stories, they subvert boundaries by crossing over into multiple fields of inquiry. A distinguished cast of scholars contributes to this powerful and intricately knit exploration. Some, such as Jonathan R. Eller and Wolf Forrest, reveal obscure details of Bradbury’s fascination with geographical isolation and his “excitement of exploration” as a boy (21). Exploring the dawning of his writing talents and awareness of the universe’s vastness and mystery, Eller and Forrest show how Bradbury’s omnivorous reading of classic works of fantasy in Depression-era Arizona created the blueprint for a social consciousness expressed through science fiction. In addition to noting the geographical analogies in Bradbury’s work, many of the contributors pay special attention to his commentaries on cultural marginalization. Some of the anthology’s strongest essays—such as Marleen S. Barr’s “Prescient Border Crossing,” Adam Lawrence’s “A ‘Night Meeting’ in the Southwest,” and Francisco Laguna-Correa’s “Illustrating Otherness”—meticulously deconstruct the invisibility and social paradox of the native “alien” within his own homeland in Bradbury’s short stories. This section provides a strong anthropological foundation for the remainder of the volume’s essays. Those that employ a literary lens invoke the Southwest through critiques of realism (Aaron Barlow’s “Loss in the Language of Tomorrow”), the American Dream (Kimberly Fain’s “Bradbury’s Mars”), and the “frontier process” of ecological conquest (Christopher Cokinos’ “The Desert is Earth and Mars”). The interdisciplinary aspect of these essays becomes even more apparent in subsequent sections. Ari Espinoza’s “Why Does Mars Beckon Us?”—along with David M. Acklam’s “The Exploration of Mars,” Charles L. Dugan, Jr.’s “A Martian Chronicle,” and Christopher P. McKay and Carol Stoker’s “The Naming of Names”—pinpoints the physical parallels between burgeoning scientific knowledge of Mars and Bradbury’s descriptions of the Red Planet. And, in yet another analytic shift, Paul Cote (in “De-Alienating the Alien”), Howard Allen (in “The Illustrated Man Illustrates Our Future”), and Martin R. Hall (in “Silver Locusts on the Silver Screen”) investigate the transference of Bradbury’s social commentary to cinema and television. Despite this range of approaches, each essay complements and builds upon preceding themes, so that the authors at times appear to directly address each other’s arguments (and some actually do interact as part of the book’s “conversation”). McMillan, as editor, rounds out the contributions by concluding with a reflection on her Tucson students’ responses to classes themed around Bradbury as a local author who conscientiously defamiliarizes Western expansion and historical definitions of human progress. This anthology would be a valuable academic resource for teaching The Martian Chronicles or as a companion text in courses that incorporate a humanities approach to science and anthropology. Each essay is packed with astute analysis and extensive research. Navigating the sf master’s migratory status as a “generic border crosser par excellence” (41) and a pioneering genre explorer, the book provides a lasting contribution to Bradbury studies. —Paris Brown, University of California, Riverside Between Humanisms. Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, eds. Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction. Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. 313 pp. $51.95 hc. In the Paradiso, Dante retells the Greek myth of the fisherman Glaucus, who, when granted a boon by the gods, “transhumanates”—i.e., becomes a god himself. Dante may have been punning on the Italian transumanza—literally “between earths”—in which shepherds guide their flocks between hillsides and valleys according to the shifting seasons. Thus Glaucus’s apotheosis mirrors Dante’s spiritual journey, moving from Hell to Heaven. With the Commedia, rooted in medieval Christianity, enlightenment was a spiritual, religious affair. With the ascendancy of the scientific revolution, enlightenment became true knowledge of the world; the human, no longer an image of God, would instead be defined by ideals, achieved by improving oneself through one’s actions and knowledge. In time, as education has improved not only knowledge, but also the capacity for artifice, our powers to manipulate the physical world have come to include the power to change ourselves. The present volume examines the heritage of both the scientific and the spiritual concepts of enlightenment, as expressed in the two apparently similar (though in fact quite distinct) terms “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” —the former a critical approach, the latter a techno-utopian ideology. Added to the confusion that they are often used interchangeably, posthumanism is a term so contested that several of the authors append modifiers to distinguish it further: cultural, critical, philosophical, and speculative posthumanisms. Some say transhumanism is merely a subset of posthumanism, and others that transhumanists speak of the posthuman as a future state of being, achieved when a period of physical and spiritual transition (transcendence, transgression) is past. One thing is clear, however: at stake is the “human”; where the transhumanists place their faith in the Enlightenment’s humanistic ideals as a transcendental truth, to ground our species’ future technological evolution, posthumanism takes to heart Foucault’s suggestion that the human is a discursive category, historically situated and soon to be overcome. The book is intended to serve as an introduction to the topics of post- and transhumanism, as well as to be the first book in a series from the publisher, Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism. It is divided into five sections and 19 chapters, as well as an introductory chapter. The sections are “Confessions,” “Lands of Cockaygne,” “Neo-Socratic Reflections,” “Ontologies of Becoming,” and “Paragone of the Arts.” The first section opens with co-editor Stefan Lorenz Sorgner’s “Pedigrees,” which provides a “general philosophical map” (18) of the two -humanisms, the first of a series of definitions that, over the course of the book, becomes repetitive. Sorgner also takes the opportunity to argue for his own version of humanism, “metahumanism,” which combines the strengths of both trans- and posthumanism—the prefix meta, meaning both “between” and “after” semantically unifies the two. Hava Tirosh Samuelson’s chapter on “Religion” highlights the influences of religion on transhumanism, with particular emphasis on the eschatological, highlighting Julian Huxley’s spiritualism. Huxley, who first used the word “transhumanism” in a manner similar to its contemporary meaning, spent much of his life championing what he eventually came to call “evolutionary humanism,” aiming to preserve a moral dimension in a secularized world. In Trijsje Franssen’s “Prometheus: Performer or Transformer?,” the myth of the Titan who stole fire from the gods is used as a framing device to examine how the two -humanisms differ from classical humanism—and each other. Posthumanism is performative, while transhumanism is, appropriately, transformative, though cryptically this means the two philosophies are “post-humanist and posthuman-ist” (81-82; emphasis in original). Yunus Tuncel’s chapter on “Nietzsche” analyzes the philosopher’s importance and inspiration for the two -humanisms, providing an interesting overview of how a single philosopher has inspired such different yet similar approaches. As Tuncel acknowledges, however, “there are many philosophers or philosophical movements that have inspired these movements” (83), and unfortunately for such a philosophically oriented collection, Nietzsche is the only philospher who is examined at chapter length. The next section examines the role of technological utopias, and Michael Hauskeller’s “Utopia” contrasts the transhumanists’ technological utopian visions with the posthumanists’ scepticism of both progressive narratives and the supposed superiority of humans. The following two chapters take on specific transhumanist utopias. Curtis D. Carbonell’s “Brave New World” offers a revisionist reading of Aldous Huxley’s classic 1932 novel, with a revisionist reading, adding nuance to the commonplace view of the novel as a warning of a technocratic future. Carbonell argues that Huxley’s satire shows both upsides and downsides of enhancement, while castigating the supposed virtues of a state of nature. Sascha Dickel and Andreas Frewer’s “Life Extension: Eternal Debates on Immortality” discusses a specifically transhumanist topic, describing the numerous proposed methods for life extension—nanotechnology, mind uploading, cryonics—as well as a brief overview of the arguments given for and against such extension, finally questioning whether any immortal being could still be considered human. In “Neo-Socratic Reflections,” James Hughes’s chapter on “Politics” reflects his own organizing role within the transhumanist scholars’ community. Hughes defends transhumanism from the accusation that its adherents are mostly anarcho-capitalist libertarians, and uses the opportunity to promote the post-gender possibilities that novel technologies can lead to, claiming that, while posthumanists seek to dismantle old-fashioned binaries through critique, transhumanists are more active in trying to bring about a post-gendered society. Robert Ranisch’s “Morality” is more sober and, while remarking that there “is no comprehensive transhumanist morality or moral theory” (148), identifies ten claims of transhumanist morality to point out a tension between individual freedom and perfectionism. Ranisch’s discussion is grounded in the debate on human enhancement in bioethics, and effectively uses posthumanism to critique certain claims concerning human exceptionalism and the morality of enhancement. Thomas D. Philbeck’s chapter “Ontology” engages with a central point on which transhumanism and posthumanism differ: dualism. Stressing the importance of modern technology for the question, Philbeck’s analysis shows that transhumanism seeks to amplify and preserve the traditional split between “large ontological structures such as ‘mind’ and ‘body’” (178), while posthumanist approaches question the validity of this ontological claim, concluding that while transhumanism has an outdated ontological framework, posthumanism is yet to come up with a satisfying alternative. In “Nature,” Martin G. Weiss furthers the philosophical argument to show that nature itself is a contested term that the -humanisms approach differently: where transhumanism seeks to escape nature, posthumanism would define it away. Particularly central to transhumanist ideology is that (post)humanity’s future will come about through an evolution directed through technology. In “Evolution,” Steve Fuller outlines an idiosyncratic evolutionary attitude, while categorically distinguishing posthumanism and transhumanism “on a point of logic”; for Fuller, “posthumanism is anti-humanist, while transhumanism is ultra-humanist” (201; emphasis in original). Fuller aligns the two with, respectively, Darwinian and Lamarckian theories of evolution, and while not taking sides outright, Fuller clearly sees the transhumanists’ intentional attitude towards evolution as the better of the two, citing recent years’ discoveries in epigenetics as a return to Lamarckism in biology. The final section, “Paragone of the Arts,” constitutes five chapters, though with some overlap among the contributions. Andy Miah’s “Bioart” and Evi Sampanikou’s “New Media Art,” for instance, both refer to artists such as Stelarc and Eduardo Kac, but where Miah delves deeper into the explorations of enhancement and biological experimentation among certain recent artists, Sampanikou distinguishes between posthumanism and transhumanism as distinct artistic disciplines, combining a thorough knowledge of critical theory with a historical view on the development of posthumanist art. Similarly, the two chapters on literature, Marcus Rockoff’s “Literature” and Domna Pastourmatzi’s “Science-fiction Literature,” are arguably both about science fiction, but Rockoff uses readings of specific works as points of departure for discussions about the philosophical issues attendant to the -humanisms, while Pastourmatzi ably reviews the larger field of (primarily) novels that engage with technological enhancement. Transhumanist themes have become increasingly popular in cinema in recent years, and Dónal P. O’Mathúna therefore restricts his discussion of film to the mainstream, also bringing up the theme of embodiment, which, while central to posthumanist discourse, is only cursorily touched upon in other chapters. In the final chapter, on “Music,” Sorgner rehearses his philosophical distinctions, also stressing the performative aspect of metahumanism. Sorgner approaches the question of post- or transhumanist music first by looking, though cursorily, at how new musical technologies enable new ways of extending the human in creation. Sorgner’s main approach, however, is to study a selection of pieces—classical and modern—thematically, in showing how music becomes an essential part of the whole work in films and operas. Throughout the book, the similarities between post- and transhumanism, even while they both engage with the emergent technologies of our age, are revealed to be superficial. I would have liked to see greater engagement with the technologies that these -humanisms, whether in breathless anticipation or concerned detachment, engage with, as the definitions are repetitively rehearsed in nearly every chapter, even as their similarities and differences vary according to the chapter author. One of the chapter authors even claims that transhumanism is a “philosophical posthumanism” and posthumanism is a “cultural posthumanism,” though it seems to me that the roles are in fact the reverse, as the former promotes a culture of enhancement, using philosophy as an argumentative prop, whereas the latter engages critically with the questions that are posed by modern technologies. Dante took Glaucus’s story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There, an overarching theme is that everything will and must change—and that we are powerless to control it. As this book reveals, transhumanism is, paradoxically, a doctrine that insists on preserving a human essence, all the while fetishizing change itself. Posthumanism, however, questions whether there is any such thing as the human to change at all. —Hallvard Haug, Birkbeck College, University of London Hidden Gods Revealed. Natacha Vas-Deyres, Patrick Bergeron, Patrick Guay, Florence Plet-Nicolas, and Danièle André, eds. Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) [The Hidden Gods of French and Francophone SF, 1950-2010]. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, coll. Eidôlon, 2014. 315 pp. 23€ pbk. As I previously pointed out in a book review called “Good News from France” (SFS 40.3 [Nov. 2013]: 534-39), since 2012 there has been a growing corpus of top-notch criticism about sf generally—and Francophone sf in particular—being published in France and Québec. And what is especially notable about this development is where this scholarship is being published and who is producing it. Challenging a very long tradition of resistance to the study of sf in the academy, professors and graduate students at a number of universities in France and Québec are now leading the charge. And their university presses are joining the ranks. This book gathers together the papers given at an academic conference on sf—one of the first of its kind—that took place at the Université de Bordeaux in November 2012. A companion volume, called C’était demain [It Was Tomorrow] and focusing on Francophone sf from 1890 to 1950, is scheduled to appear in 2016; it will collect the papers from another academic conference on sf that took place at the Université du Québec in Chicoutimi in October 2013. Both conferences and the resulting publications were organized by the CLARE group of the Université de Bordeaux Montaigne, the University of New Brunswick, and the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC). The title of the present volume refers to the famous book Le Dieu caché: étude sur la vision tragique dans les Pensées de Pascal et dans le théâtre de Racine [The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the Theater of Racine, 1955] by the Marxist-humanist Lucien Goldmann. In it he explores the “hidden” world-views that shaped the creative work of these two iconic writers of the French literary tradition. Further clarifying this intertextual reference, in a preface called “Au commencement étaient la religion, la métaphysique et la politique” [In the beginning was religion, metaphysics, and politics], the two editors Vas-Deyres and Bergeron identify these three ideological aspects as “hidden gods” embedded in Francophone sf from 1950 to 2010, themes around which both the 2012 conference and this book were organized. But for those sf scholars unfamilar with French-language sf, the title of Les Dieux cachés might also just as easily be understood as referring to the many important but “hidden gods” of French sf from the post-WWII years to today—writers such as Gérard Klein, Nathalie Henneberg, Jean-Pierre Andrevon, Pierre Pelot, Serge Brussolo, and Pierre Bordage, among many others—who deeply influenced the thematic and stylistic paths that Francophone sf would take throughout this period. The book is divided into five sections, with three to six articles per section. The first is called “Politique-fiction dans la science-fiction française et francophone” [Politics-fiction in French and Francophone sf]. It contains articles by Hervé Lagoguey on Andrevon and especially the latter’s ecological sf; by Alexandre Marcinkowski on French cyberpunk; and by Pierre-Gilles Pélissier on the dystopian worlds of Pelot. The second section is titled “Singularités et marges de la science-fiction [Singularities and margins of sf]. It features articles by Isabelle Limousin on the sf exposition at the Musée des arts décoratifs [Museum of the decorative arts and design] in Paris in 1967-68; by Thierry Jandrok on Brussolo’s “hybrid” sf; by Cédric Cauvin on the representations o
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	24	https://www.gregegan.net/	en	Greg Egan’s Home Page	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	[ "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Morphotrophic.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Sleep.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Scale.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/Platonic.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/feed-icon-14x14.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Phoresis.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/PerihelionSummer.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/AllSkies.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/Instantiation.jpg", "https://www.gregegan.net/ALLSKIES/AllSkies100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/BORDER/Border100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/Diaspora100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/Dichronauts100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DIDICOSM/Didicosm100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/Distress100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Incandescence100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/MORPHOTROPHIC/Morphotrophic100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/OCEANIC/Oceanic100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/Orthogonal100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/Permutation100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Planck100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/Quarantine100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/SCALE/Scale100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/SCHILD/Schild100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/TERANESIA/Teranesia100.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/ZENDEGI/Zendegi100.gif", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validHTML.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validCSS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "Greg Egan", "science fiction" ]	null	[]	null	Official web site of the science fiction writer Greg Egan	en	images/egan.ico		https://www.gregegan.net	“You and Whose Army?” “This Is Not the Way Home” “Zeitgeber” “Crisis Actors” “Sleep and the Soul” “After Zero” “Dream Factory” “Light Up the Clouds” “Night Running” “Solidity” “The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred” “Dispersion” “Phoresis”
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	73	https://www.amunology.com/blog/2020/12/schilds/	en	📖 Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan :: Mohamed Elbadwihi (amunology.com)	https://www.amunology.co…on-32x32.png?v=3	https://www.amunology.co…on-32x32.png?v=3	[ "https://www.amunology.com/blog/2020/12/schilds/schilds.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "Book Review", "Science-Fiction" ]	null	[ "Mohamed Elbadwihi" ]	2020-12-06T00:00:00+00:00	Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan (Photo by me) Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑 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.	en	/apple-touch-icon.png?v=3		https://www.amunology.com/blog/2020/12/schilds/	Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑 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 ;)]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	5	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_(novel)	en	Distress (novel)	https://upload.wikimedia…DistressEgan.jpg	https://upload.wikimedia…DistressEgan.jpg	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b0/DistressEgan.jpg/220px-DistressEgan.jpg", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2004-06-28T01:06:57+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_(novel)	1995 novel by Greg Egan Distress is a 1995 science fiction novel by Australian writer Greg Egan.[1] Distress describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property. The narrator is a journalist for a science channel called SeeNet named Andrew Worth who carries video recording software in an intestinal implant. He is offered a story on a new illness called Distress, but declines. He journeys to Stateless through a series of convoluted flights to cover a presentation by 27-year-old South African physicist Violet Mosala, supplanting the preproduction by a colleague, Sarah Knight. When he arrives, he is informed by an asex anthrocosmologist named Akili that Violet's life is in danger. Violet is finishing her Theory of Everything, which she intends to present on the conference's last day. Through interfacing with a talkative local, Worth learns that Violet plans to emigrate to Stateless after the conference to use her celebrity status to provide an opportunity for South Africa and other nations to end their support for the United Nations boycott of Stateless. He also witnesses the islands' physical underpinnings: it is basically held up by the activity of millions of micro-organisms. After meeting with a faction of anthrocosmologists, he learns that they believe in the concept that the universe is created by one person's Theory of Everything. That person is called the Keystone. Worth becomes deathly ill and believes he has been infected with cholera by a faction of anthrocosmologists who wanted him to transmit the disease to Violet Mosala. He recovers and is kidnapped by this group, who are led by a rival physicist Worth saw with Violet at the conference. Worth and Akili are held on a tanker where it is explained that these cultists believe Violet's TOE will destroy the world. Worth signals for help by connecting his implant to a port on the ship. He and Akili are rescued by citizens of Stateless. Worth returns to the conference and learns that a biotech conglomerate sent a militia to Stateless, angry at the technology they have appropriated. He negotiates with the militia to let a suddenly ill Violet return to South Africa, where she dies. Before her illness, however, she tasked an AI to synthesize her final theory. The militia moves to take over the main city of Stateless, brutalizing the citizens as they evacuate to the outskirts. While seemingly helpless to do anything at first, they soon strike back at the invaders by having triggered microorganisms consume the cities structural underpinning, sinking it into the ocean. Worth is fired from SeeNet and Sarah Knight replaces him, covering the war. Worth discovers that Sarah was working with the cultists, and that AIs are exhibiting symptoms of the titular mental illness as well. Believing that the AI that wrote the paper became the Keystone and that Distress will continue until a human reads it, Worth downloads and reads the paper, and realizes that all minds, together, collaborate in being "the" Keystone, giving all of humanity an intuitive connection with the universe. The novel contains a great deal of commentary on gender identities, multinational capitalism, and postmodern thought. It also features Egan's usual playful exploration of physical, metaphysical, and epistemological theories. Egan uses his hypothetical future to postulate the existence of not just one but five new genders, and introduces a set of new pronouns for gender neutral people. One of the central characters of the novel, Akili Kuwale, provides a demonstration of this change and its implications. As an asexual human, Akili has had all reproductive organs removed entirely. Within the scope of the novel, Egan uses the pronouns 've', 'ver', and 'vis' to represent Akili's definitive gender neutrality. Egan also uses the hypothetical technological advances in Distress to explore ideas about anarchism, especially when its protagonist, Andrew Worth, a journalist, travels to the anarchistic man-made island named Stateless. Andrew meets some minor characters on Stateless who explain to him the relationship between anarchistic principles and various ideas such as quantum physics, information theory and independent spirituality.[2] Worth also meets a painter, Munroe, who attempts to explain how anarchy functions on Stateless.[3] Munroe is an Australian as are Andrew Worth and Greg Egan himself. Egan uses Munroe to deliver a critique of Australian culture. Don't you ever get sick of living in a society which talks about itself, relentlessly - and usually lies? Which defines everything worthwhile - tolerance, honesty, loyalty, fairness - as 'uniquely Australian'?"[4] A major theme running through Egan's presentation of a futuristic anarchism is something called Technolibération, which is to do with the liberation of technology and information from corporate control as well as the idea of using advanced technology to enable liberatory social movements. 1996 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner[5] 1997 James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award, longlisted[6]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	10	https://house.fandom.com/wiki/House,_M.D.	en	House, M.D.	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/5/58/HouseLogo.png/revision/latest?cb=20090407183707	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/5/58/HouseLogo.png/revision/latest?cb=20090407183707	[ "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/e/e6/Site-logo.png/revision/latest?cb=20210623204144", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/e/e6/Site-logo.png/revision/latest?cb=20210623204144", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/5/58/HouseLogo.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20090407183707", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/9/96/HouseTitle.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20090407184645", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6a181c72-e8bf-419b-b4db-18fd56a0eb60", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6c42ce6a-b205-41f5-82c6-5011721932e7", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/464fc70a-5090-490b-b47e-0759e89c263f", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/f7bb9d33-4f9a-4faa-88fe-2a0bd8138668" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to House Wiki" ]	2024-07-12T14:06:28+00:00	This page is about the television series. For the character also called House, see Gregory House. The Wikipedia article on this subject was the featured article on May 8, 2011. This article uses text from the Wikipedia article under a Creative Commons license. The show is narrated by David...	en	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house/images/4/4a/Site-favicon.ico/revision/latest?cb=20210623204145	House Wiki	https://house.fandom.com/wiki/House,_M.D.	This page is about the television series. For the character also called House, see Gregory House. The Wikipedia article on this subject was the featured article on May 8, 2011. This article uses text from the Wikipedia article under a Creative Commons license. The show is narrated by David Shore. House (also called House, M.D.) is an American television medical drama that originally ran on the Fox network for eight seasons, from November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012. The show's main character is Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), a pain medication-dependent, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius who leads a team of diagnostic fellows at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (PPTH) in Princeton, New Jersey. The show's premise originated with Paul Attanasio, while David Shore, who is credited as creator, was primarily responsible for the conception of the title character. The show's executive producers included Shore, Attanasio, Attanasio's business partner and wife Katie Jacobs, and film director Bryan Singer. It was filmed largely in Century City, Los Angeles although the Pilot was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. House often clashes with his fellow physicians, including his own diagnostic team, not only because many of his hypotheses about patients' illnesses are based on subtle or controversial insights, but due to his perception that he is in near constant pain. His flouting of hospital rules and procedures frequently leads him into conflict with his boss, hospital administrator and Dean of Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein). House's only true friend is Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), head of the Department of Oncology. During the first three seasons, House's diagnostic team consists of Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer), a cardiologist, intensivist and surgeon. Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), an immunologist, and new team member Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), a neurologist. At the end of Season 3, this team disbands. Rejoined by Foreman, House gradually selects three new team members: Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley (Olivia Wilde) an internist, Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson), a plastic surgeon, and Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn), a specialist in rehabilitative and sports medicine. Chase and Cameron continue to appear in different roles at the hospital until early in Season 6. Cameron then departs the hospital, and Chase returns to the diagnostic team. Thirteen takes a leave of absence for most of Season 7, and her position is filled by third-year medical student Martha M. Masters (Amber Tamblyn). Cuddy and Masters depart before Season 8; Foreman becomes the new dean of medicine, while Dr. Jessica Adams (Odette Annable) and Dr. Chi Park (Charlyne Yi) join House's team. House was among the top 10 shows in the United States from its second through fourth seasons. Distributed to 66 countries, House was the most-watched television program in the world in 2008. The show received numerous awards, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, and nine People's Choice Awards. On February 8, 2012, Fox announced that the eighth season, then in progress, would be its last. The series finale aired on May 21, 2012, following a hour-long retrospective. In 2011, House, M.D. was the most widely discussed television series on the social media site Facebook. Production[] Conception[] In 2004, Shore, Attanasio and Jacobs, pitched the show (untitled at the time) to Fox as a CSI-style medical detective program, a hospital whodunit in which the doctors investigated symptoms and their causes. Attanasio was inspired to develop a medical procedural drama by The New York Times Magazine column, "Diagnosis" written by physician Lisa Sanders, an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Fox bought the series, though the network's then-president, Gail Berman, told the creative team, "I want a medical show, but I don't want to see white coats going down the hallway". Jacobs has said that this stipulation was one of the many influences that led to the show's ultimate form. As Shore put it, "We knew the network was looking for procedurals, and Paul Attanasio came up with this medical idea that was like a cop procedural. The suspects were the germs. But I quickly began to realize that we needed that character element. I mean, germs don't have motives." After Fox picked up the show, it acquired the working title Chasing Zebras, Circling the Drain - "zebra" is medical slang for an unusual or obscure diagnosis, while "circling the drain" refers to terminal cases, patients in an irreversible decline). The original premise of the show was of a team of doctors working together trying to "diagnose the undiagnosable". Shore felt it was important to have an interesting central character, one who could examine patients' personal characteristics and diagnose their ailments by figuring out their secrets and lies. As Shore and the rest of the creative team explored the character's possibilities, the program concept became less of procedure and more focused upon the lead role. The character was named "House" (from the inspiration of the character, Sherlock Holmes), which was adopted as the show's title, as well. Shore developed the characters further and wrote the script for the pilot episode. Bryan Singer, who directed the pilot episode and had a major role in casting the primary roles, has said that the "title of the pilot was 'Everybody Lies', and that's the premise of the show".Shore has said that the central storylines of several early episodes were based on the work of Berton Roueché, a staff writer for The New Yorker between 1944 and 1994, who specialized in features about unusual medical cases. Shore traced the concept for the title character to his experience as a patient at a teaching hospital. Shore recalled: "I knew, as soon as I left the room, they would be mocking me relentlessly for my cluelessness and I thought that it would be interesting to see a character who actually did that before they left the room. A central part of the show's premise was that the main character would be disabled in some way. The original idea was for House to use a wheelchair, but Fox rejected this. Jacobs later expressed her gratitude for the network's insistence that the character be reimagined—putting him on his feet added a crucial physical dimension. The creators considered giving House a visible scar, but that posed problems with make-up.. The writers ultimately chose to give House a damaged leg arising from an incorrect diagnosis, which requires him to use a cane and causes him pain that leads to a narcotic dependency. References to Sherlock Holmes[] Main article Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes connections References to the fact that House was based on the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appear throughout the series. Shore explained that he was always a Holmes fan and found the character's indifference to his clients unique. The resemblance is evident in House's reliance on deductive reasoning and psychology, even where it might not seem obviously applicable, and his reluctance to accept cases he finds uninteresting. His investigatory method is to eliminate diagnoses logically as they are proved impossible; Holmes used a similar method. Both characters play instruments (House plays the piano, the guitar, and the harmonica; Holmes, the violin) and take drugs (House is dependent on Vicodin; Holmes is often dependent on cocaine). House's relationship with Dr. James Wilson echoes that between Holmes and his confidant, Dr. John Watson. Robert Sean Leonard said that House and his character—whose name is very similar to Watson's—were originally intended to work together much as Holmes and Watson do; in his view, House's diagnostic team has assumed that aspect of the Watson role. Wilson even has a dead-beat brother who may be dead, like Watson's dead alcoholic brother. Shore said that House's name itself is meant as "a subtle homage" to Holmes. House's address is 221B Baker Street. a direct reference to Holmes' street address. In Hunting, Wilson's address is also shown to be 221B. Individual episodes of the series contain additional references to the Sherlock Holmes tales. The main patient in the pilot episode is named Rebecca Adler after Irene Adler, a character in the first Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia". In the Season 2 finale, House is shot by a crazed gunman credited as "Moriarty", the name of Holmes' nemesis. In the Season 4 episode It's a Wonderful Lie, House receives a "second-edition Conan Doyle" as a Christmas gift. In the Season 5 episode The Itch, House is seen picking up his keys and Vicodin from the top of a copy of Conan Doyle's The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. In another Season 5 episode, Joy to the World, House, in an attempt to fool his team, uses a book by Joseph Bell, Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. The volume had been given to him the previous Christmas by Wilson, who included the message "Greg, made me think of you." Before acknowledging that he gave the book to House, Wilson tells two of the team members that its source was a patient, Irene Adler. The series finale pays homage to Holmes' apparent death in "The Final Problem", the 1893 story with which Conan Doyle originally intended to conclude the Holmes chronicles. Production team[] Bryan Singer directed the pilot episode and the third episode, Occam's Razor. House was a co-production of Heel and Toe Films, David Shore's Shore Z Productions, and Bryan Singer's Bad Hat Harry Production in association with Universal Network Television for Fox. Attanasio, Jacobs, Shore and Singer, were executive producers of the program for its entirety. Lawrence Kaplow, Peter Blake, and Thomas L. Moran joined the staff as writers at the beginning of the first season after the making of the pilot episode. Writers Doris Egan, Sara Hess, Russel Friend, and Garrett Lerner joined the team at the start of Season 2. Friend and Lerner, who are business partners, had been offered positions when the series launched, but turned the opportunity down. After observing the show's success, they accepted when Jacobs offered them jobs again the following year. Writers Eli Attie and Sean Whitesell joined the show at the start of Season 4. Since the beginning of Season 4, Moran, Friend, and Lerner have been credited as executive producers on the series, joining Attanasio, Jacobs, Shore, and Singer. Hugh Laurie was credited as an executive producer for the second and third episodes of Season 5. Shore is House's showrunner. Through the end of the sixth season, more than two dozen writers have contributed to the program. The most prolific have been Kaplow (18 episodes), Blake (17), Shore (16), Friend (16), Lerner (16), Moran (14), and Egan (13). The show's most prolific directors through its first six seasons were Deran Sarafian (22 episodes), who was not involved in Season 6, and Greg Yaitanes (17). Of the more than three dozen other directors who have worked on the series, only David Straiton directed as many as 10 episodes through the sixth season. Hugh Laurie directed the 17th episode of Season 6, Lockdown. Elan Soltes has been the visual effects supervisor since the show began. Lisa Sanders, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine is a technical advisor to the series. She writes the "Diagnosis" column that inspired House's premise. According to Shore, "three different doctors... check everything we do". Bobbin Bergstrom, a registered nurse, is the program's on-set medical adviser. Casting[] At first, the producers were looking for a "quintessentially American person" to play the role of House. Bryan Singer in particular felt there was no way he was going to hire a non-American actor for the role. At the time of the casting session, Hugh Laurie was in Namibia filming the movie Flight of the Phoenix. He assembled an audition tape in a hotel bathroom, the only place with enough light, and apologized for its appearance (which Singer compared to a "bin Laden video"). Laurie improvised, using an umbrella for a cane. Singer was very impressed by his performance and commented on how well the "American actor" was able to grasp the character. Singer was not aware that Laurie was English, due to his convincing American accent. Laurie credits the accent to "a misspent youth watching too much TV and too many movies". Although locally better-known actors such as Denis Leary, David Cross, Rob Morrow, and Patrick Dempsey were considered for the part, Shore, Jacobs, and Attanasio were as impressed as Singer and cast Laurie as House. Laurie later revealed that he initially thought the show's central character was Dr. James Wilson. He assumed that House was a supporting character, due to the nature of the character, until he received the full script of the pilot episode. Laurie, the son of a doctor, Ran Laurie, said he felt guilty for "being paid more to become a fake version of [his] own father". From the start of Season 3, he was being paid $275,000 to $300,000 per episode, as much as three times what he had previously been making on the series. By the show's fifth season, Laurie was earning around $400,000 per episode, making him one of the highest-paid actors on network television. Robert Sean Leonard had received the script for the CBS show Numb3rs, as well as that for House. Leonard thought the Numb3rs script was "kind of cool" and planned to audition for the show. However, he decided that the character he was up for, Charlie Eppes, was in too many scenes; he later observed, "The less I work, the happier I am". He believed that his House audition was not particularly good, but that his lengthy friendship with Singer helped win him the part of Dr. Wilson. Singer had enjoyed Lisa Edelstein's portrayal of a prostitute on The West Wing, and sent her a copy of the pilot script. Edelstein was attracted to the quality of the writing and her character's "snappy dialogue" with House, and was cast as Dr. Lisa Cuddy. Australian actor Jesse Spencer's agent suggested that he audition for the role of Dr. Robert Chase. Spencer believed the program would be similar in style to General Hospital, but changed his mind after reading the scripts. After he was cast, he persuaded the producers to turn the character into an Australian. Patrick Dempsey also auditioned for the part of Chase; he later became known for his portrayal of Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy. Omar Epps, who plays Dr. Eric Foreman, was inspired by his earlier portrayal of a troubled intern on the NBC medical drama ER. Jennifer Morrison felt that her audition for the part of Dr. Allison Cameron was a complete disaster. However, before her audition, Singer had watched some of her performances, including on Dawson's Creek, and already wanted to cast her in the role. Morrison left the show when her character was written out in the middle of Season 6. At the end of Season 3, House dismisses Chase, while Foreman and Cameron resign. After an episode in which he "borrows" a janitor whom he calls "Dr. Buffer" to assist in a diagnosis, House must then recruit a new diagnostic team, for which he identifies seven finalists. The producers originally planned to recruit two new full-time actors, with Foreman, who returns in Season 4's Mirror Mirror, bringing the team back up to three members; ultimately, the decision was made to add three new regular cast members. (Along with Epps, actors Morrison and Spencer remained in the cast, as their characters moved on to new assignments.) During production, the show's writers dismissed a single candidate per episode; as a result, said Jacobs, neither the producers nor the cast knew who was going to be hired until the last minute. In the season's ninth episode, House's new team is revealed: Foreman is joined by doctors Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn), Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson), and Remy "Thirteen" Hadley (Olivia Wilde). The candidates rejected by House did not return to the show, with the exception of the last one cut: Amber Volakis (Anne Dudek), who appeared for the rest of Season 4 as Wilson's girlfriend, and in Seasons 5 and 8 as a hallucination of House's. While Penn and Wilde had higher profiles than the actors who played the other finalists, Jacobs said they went through an identical audition process and stayed with the show based on the writers' interest in their characters. Kutner was written out of the series in episode 20 of Season 5 after Penn took a position in the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. The contracts of Edelstein, Epps, and Leonard expired at the end of Season 7. As a cost-cutting measure, the three actors were asked to accept reduced salaries. Epps and Leonard came to terms with the producers, but Edelstein did not, and in May 2011 it was announced that she would not be returning for the show's eighth season. Filming style and locations[] House is often filmed using the "walk and talk" filming technique, popularized on television by series such as St. Elsewhere, ER, Sports Night, and The West Wing. The technique involves the use of tracking shots, showing two or more characters walking between locations while talking. Jacobs said that the show frequently uses the technique because "when you put a scene on the move, it's a... way of creating an urgency and an intensity". She noted the significance of "the fact that Hugh Laurie spans 6'2" and is taller than everybody else because it certainly makes those walk-and-talks pop". Nancy Franklin of The New Yorker described the show's "cool, Fantastic Voyage–like special effects of patients' innards. I'll bet you didn't know that when your kidneys shut down they sound like bubble wrap popping." "Cameras and special effects travel not only down the throat of one patient," another critic observed, "but up her nose and inside her brain and leg." Instead of relying primarily on computer-generated imagery, the interior body shots tend to involve miniature effects and motion control photography. Gale Tattersall, House cinematographer from 2007-2012, was widely recognized for shooting the Season 6 finale entirely on the Canon 5D DSLR - the first time a network television show was shot on an under-$2000 prosumer camera. The pilot episode was filmed in Vancouver, Canada; primary photography for all subsequent episodes has been shot on the Fox lot in Century City, Los Angeles. Bryan Singer chose the hospital near his hometown, West Windsor, New Jersey, as the show's fictional setting. Princeton University's Frist Campus Center is the source of the aerial views of Princeton‑Plainsboro Teaching Hospital seen in the series. Some filming took place at the University of Southern California for the Season 3 episode Half-Wit, which guest-starred Dave Matthews and Kurtwood Smith. Part of House's sixth season was filmed at the abandoned Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, as the fictional Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. Opening sequence[] The opening sequence begins with an MRI of a head with an image of the boxed "H" from the logo (the international symbol for hospital) in the foreground. This is then overlaid with an image of Dr. House's face taken from the pilot episode with the show's full title appearing across his face. House's head then fades and the show's title is underlined and has the "M.D." appear next to it, producing the entire logo of the show. This was the full extent of the title sequence in the pilot episode. All subsequent episodes contain a longer sequence including the names of the six featured cast members and creator David Shore. Laurie's name appears first, followed by the names of the five other featured cast members in alphabetical order (Edelstein, Epps, Leonard, Morrison, and Spencer, then Shore). After the show's title fades, an aerial view of PPTH (actually various Princeton University buildings, primarily Frist Campus Center) is followed by a series of images accompanying each member's name; most are shown next to, or superimposed upon, illustrations of the human anatomy. Laurie's name appears next to a model of a human head with the brain exposed; Edelstein's name appears next to a visual effects–produced graphic of an angiogram of the heart. Epps' name is superimposed upon a rib cage X-ray; Leonard's name appears on a drawing of the two hemispheres of the brain. The producers originally wanted to include an image of a cane and an image of a Vicodin bottle, but Fox objected. Morrison's title card was thus lacking an image; an aerial shot of rowers on Princeton University's Lake Carnegie was finally agreed upon to accompany her name. Spencer's name appears next to an old-fashioned anatomical drawing of a spine. Between the presentations of Spencer and Shore's names is a scene of House and his three original team members walking down one of the hospital's hallways. Jacobs said that most of the backgrounds have no specific meaning; however, the final image—the text "created by David Shore" superimposed upon a human neck—connotes that Shore is "the brain of the show". The sequence was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design in 2005. The title sequence continued to credit Spencer and Morrison, even when their characters were reduced to background roles during Seasons 4 and 5, and Morrison even after hers was written out. A new opening sequence was introduced in Season 7 to accommodate the changes in the cast, removing Morrison's name and including Jacobson and Wilde's. It was updated in Season 8 removing Edelstein's name and added Annable and Yi. The series' original opening theme, as heard in the United States, comprises instrumental portions of "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. The piece was used in part because of the distinct tempo which roughly mimics the sound of a beating human heart. An acoustic version of "Teardrop", with guitar and vocals by José González, is heard as background music during the Season 4 finale Wilson's Heart. Series overview[] Gregory House, M.D., often construed as a misanthropic medical genius, heads a team of diagnostic fellows at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Most episodes revolve around the diagnosis of a primary patient and start with a cold open precredits scene set outside the hospital, showing events ending with the onset of the patient's symptoms. The typical episode follows the team in their attempts to diagnose and treat the patient's illness, which often fail until the patient's condition is critical. They usually treat only patients whom other doctors have not accurately diagnosed, and House routinely rejects cases that he does not find interesting. The story lines tend to focus on his unconventional medical theories and practices, and on the other characters' reactions to them, rather than on the details of the treatments. The team employs the differential diagnosis method, listing possible etiologies on a whiteboard, then eliminating most of them, usually because one of the team (most often House) provides logical reasons for ruling them out. Typically, the patient is misdiagnosed at least once and accordingly receives some treatments that are at best useless; this usually causes further complications, but—as the nature of the complications often provides valuable new evidence—eventually these help them diagnose the patient correctly. House often tends to arrive at the correct diagnosis seemingly out of the blue, often inspired by a passing remark made by another character. Diagnoses range from relatively common to very rare diseases. The team faces many diagnostic difficulties from patients' concealment of symptoms, circumstances, or personal histories, so House frequently proclaims during the team's deliberations, "The patient is lying", or mutters "Everybody lies"; such an assumption guides House's decisions and diagnoses, and makes the countermeasure of housebreaking a routine procedure. Because many of his hypotheses are based on epiphanies or controversial insights, he often has trouble obtaining permission for medical procedures he considers necessary from his superior, who in all but the final season is hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy. This is especially the case when the proposed procedures involve a high degree of risk or are ethically questionable. Frequent disagreements occur between House and his team, especially Cameron, whose standards of medical ethics are more conservative than those of the other characters. Like all of the hospital's doctors, House is required to treat patients in the facility's walk-in clinic. His grudging fulfillment of this duty, or his creative methods of avoiding it, constitute a recurring subplot, which often serves as the series' comic relief. During clinic duty, House confounds patients with unwelcome observations into their personal lives, eccentric prescriptions, and unorthodox treatments. However, after seeming to be inattentive to their complaints, he regularly impresses them with rapid and accurate diagnoses. Analogies with some of the simple cases in the clinic occasionally inspire insights that help solve the team's case. A significant plot element is House's use of Vicodin to manage pain, caused by an infarction in his quadriceps muscle five years before the show's first season, which also forces him to use a cane. In the first season, 11th episode Detox, House admits he is addicted to Vicodin, but says he does not have a problem because the pills "let me do my job, and they take away my pain". His addiction has led his colleagues, Cuddy and Wilson, to encourage him to go to drug rehabilitation several times. When he has no access to Vicodin or experiences unusually intense pain, he occasionally self-medicates with other narcotic analgesics such as morphine, oxycodone, and methadone. House also frequently drinks liquor when he is not on medical duty, and classifies himself as a "big drinker". Toward the end of Season 5, House begins to hallucinate; after eliminating other possible diagnoses, Wilson and he determine that his Vicodin addiction is the most likely cause. House goes into denial about this for a brief time, but at the close of the season finale, he commits himself to Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. In the following season's debut episode, House leaves Mayfield with his addiction under control. However, about a year and a half later, in Season 7's 15th episode, Bombshells, House reacts to the news that Cuddy possibly has kidney cancer by taking Vicodin, and his addiction recurs. Characters[] Main article List of characters Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie): Infectious Disease Specialist, Nephrologist, Head of Department of Diagnostic Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein): Endocrinologist, Dean of Medicine Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard): Head of Department of Oncology Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps): Neurologist, Diagnostic Medicine, Dean of Medicine (Season 8) Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) Surgeon, Intensivist, Cardiologist, Head of Department of Diagnostic Medicine (Everybody Dies) Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison): Immunologist, Diagnostic Medicine, (Seasons 1-3) Emergency Room Senior Attending Physician (Seasons 4-6) Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson): Plastic Surgeon, Diagnostic Medicine (Seasons 4-8) Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn) Sports Medicine specialist, Diagnostic Medicine (Seasons 4-5) Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley (Olivia Wilde): Internist, Diagnostic Medicine (Seasons 4-7) Martha M. Masters (Amber Tamblyn): Double-Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Art History, Medical student, Intern (Season 7) Dr. Jessica Adams (Odette Annable): Prison clinic physician, Diagnostic Medicine (Season 8) Dr. Chi Park (Charlyne Yi): Neurologist, Diagnostic Medicine Main characters[] Throughout House's run, six of the main actors have received star billing. All of them play doctors who work at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), the title character, heads the Department of Diagnostic Medicine. House describes himself as "a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty of infectious disease and nephrology". Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), House's one true friend, is the head of the Department of Oncology. Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), an endocrinologist, is House's boss, as she is the hospital's dean of medicine and chief administrator. House has a complex relationship with Cuddy, and their interactions often involve a high degree of innuendo and sexual tension. In the sixth episode of Season 5, Joy, they kiss for the first time. Their physical relationship does not progress any further during the fifth season; in the finale, House believes he and Cuddy had sex, but this is a hallucination brought on by House's Vicodin addiction. In the finale of Season 6, Cuddy tells House she loves him. They kiss and agree to try being a couple. Throughout Season 7, House and Cuddy try to make their relationship work. House's original team of diagnosticians consists of Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), a neurologist; Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer), an intensivist; and Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), an immunologist. In the Season 3 episode Family, Foreman announces his resignation, telling House, "I don't want to turn into you." During the season finale, House tells Chase that he has either learned everything he can, or nothing at all, and dismisses him from the team. Cameron, who has developed an affection for Chase, soon resigns. This leaves House without a team for the Season 4 premiere Alone. Under orders from Cuddy to recruit a new team, House considers 40 doctors. Season 4's early episodes focus on his selection process, structured as a reality TV–style elimination contest (Jacobs referred to it as a "version of Survivor"). House assigns each applicant a number between one and 40, and pares them down to seven finalists. He assesses their performance in diagnostic cases, assisted by Foreman, who returns to the department after his dismissal from another hospital for House-like behavior that makes him otherwise unemployable. While Foreman's return means only two slots are open, House tricks Cuddy into allowing him to hire three new assistants. He ultimately selects Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson), a former plastic surgeon; Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn), a sports medicine specialist; and Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley (Olivia Wilde), an internist (nicknamed for her number in the elimination contest). In the season finale, Thirteen discovers she has, as she had long dreaded, Huntington's disease, which is incurable. In the 11th episode of Season 5, Joy to the World, Foreman and Thirteen engage in a passionate kiss. Thirteen is at first reluctant to start a relationship with Foreman, but the two eventually begin dating and are still together at the end of the season. They break up early in Season 6. In the 20th episode of Season 5, Simple Explanation, Kutner is found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. Because Kutner left no note, House suspects foul play, though the death is accepted by the other characters as a suicide. In the seventh episode of Season 2, Hunting, Cameron and Chase have a one-night stand. In the middle of Season 3, they initiate a sexual relationship that Cameron insists be casual; when Chase declares that he "wants more", Cameron ends the affair. By the end of the season, however, Cameron recognizes that she has romantic feelings for Chase and they begin a serious relationship. After leaving the diagnostic team, they assume different roles at the PPTH, Cameron as a senior attending physician in the emergency room and Chase as a surgeon. They become engaged in the Season 5 episode Saviors (the episode immediately following Kutner's suicide) and are married in the season finale. When Chase rejoins House's team in Season 6, Cameron leaves her husband and the hospital in Teamwork, the season's eighth episode. She returns as a guest character in Lockdown, nine episodes later. Early in Season 7, Thirteen takes an unexplained leave of absence. Cuddy orders House to fill her position with another woman, but eventually makes the choice for him: medical student Martha M. Masters (Amber Tamblyn), who makes her first appearance in the season's sixth episode Office Politics. Thirteen returns in the The Dig—the season's 18th episode and the show's 150th—in which the reason for her absence is revealed: she was in prison for six months for having helped euthanize her brother, who was suffering from advanced Huntington's. While Jacobson and Wilde play central characters (as did Penn), they did not receive star billing until Season 7. They were credited as "Also Starring", with their names appearing after the opening sequence. In Season 7, Jacobson and Wilde received star billing; new regular cast member Tamblyn did not. Recurring characters[] The first six seasons of House each included one or more recurring featured characters, who appear in multiple-episode story arcs. In Season 1, Edward Vogler (Chi McBride), the billionaire owner of a pharmaceutical company, appears in five episodes. He donates $100 million to the PPTH in return for chairing its board. Vogler represented an attempt to introduce a villain, a move urged by Fox. By the time the Vogler episodes began to air, the show had become a hit and the character was soon dropped. Shore said the concept of a villainous boss was not really viable for the series: "It's called House. The audience knows he'll never get fired." Stacy Warner (Sela Ward), House's ex-girlfriend, appears in the final two episodes of Season 1, and seven episodes of Season 2. She wants House to treat her husband, Mark Warner (Currie Graham), whom House diagnoses with acute intermittent porphyria in the Season 1 finale. Stacy and House grow close again, but House eventually tells Stacy to go back to Mark, which devastates her. Michael Tritter (David Morse), a police detective, appears in several Season 3. He tries to extract an apology from House, who left Tritter in an examination room with a thermometer in his rectum. After House refuses to apologize, Tritter brings him up on charges of unprescribed narcotics possession and forces him to attend rehabilitation. When the case reaches court, Cuddy perjures herself for House and the case is dismissed. The judge reprimands Tritter for pursuing House to excess, and tells House that she thinks he "has better friends than he deserves", referring to Cuddy's 11th-hour testimony on his behalf. House is sentenced to one night in jail for contempt of court and finishes his rehabilitation under the influence of Vicodin. The candidates for House's new diagnostics team are Season 4's primary recurring characters. In addition to the three who are chosen, the other four finalists are Jeffrey Cole (Edi Gathegi), a geneticist; Travis Brennan (Andy Comeau), an epidemiologist; Henry Dobson (Carmen Argenziano), a former medical school admissions officer posing as a physician; and Amber "Cut-throat Bitch" Volakis (Anne Dudek), an interventional radiologist. Each of the four departs the show after elimination, except for Volakis, who appears throughout the season, having started a relationship with Wilson. In the two-part season finale, Volakis attempts to shepherd a drunken House home when Wilson is unavailable. They are involved in a bus crash, which leads to her death. She reappears late in Season 5 among the hallucinations House suffers. Private investigator Lucas Douglas (Michael Weston), a character inspired in part by Shore's love of The Rockford Files, appears in three episodes of Season 5. House initially hires Douglas to spy on Wilson, who has ended their friendship after Volakis' death (the friendship is subsequently rekindled). House later pays Douglas to look into the private lives of his team members and Cuddy. If the character had been accepted by the audience, plans existed to feature him as the lead in a spin-off show. In September 2008, Shore spoke to Entertainment Weekly about his vision for the character: "I don't want to do just another medical show. What does excite me in terms of writing is the choices people make and the nature of right and wrong... and a private investigator can approach that question much more readily than a doctor can." There was no show featuring Douglas on the fall 2009 network television schedule. He returns to House in Season 6 as Cuddy's boyfriend. They are briefly engaged until Cuddy breaks it off, realizing that she is in love with House. Reception[] Critical reception[] House received largely positive reviews on its debut; the series was considered a bright spot amid Fox's schedule, which at the time was largely filled with reality shows. Season 1 holds a Metacritic score of 75 out of 100, based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Matt Roush of TV Guide said that the program was an "uncommon cure for the common medical drama". New York Daily News critic David Bianculli applauded the "high caliber of acting and script". The Onion's "A.V. Club" approvingly described it as the "nastiest" black comedy from FOX since 1996's short-lived Profit. New York's John Leonard called the series "medical TV at its most satisfying and basic", while The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert appreciated that the show did not sugarcoat the flaws of the characters to assuage viewers' fears about "HMO factories". Variety's Brian Lowry, less impressed, wrote that the show relied on "by-the-numbers storytelling, albeit in a glossy package". Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle described it as "mediocre" and unoriginal. General critical reaction to the character of Gregory House was particularly positive. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him "the most electrifying new main character to hit television in years". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Rob Owen found him "fascinatingly unsympathetic". Critics have compared House to fictional detectives Nero Wolfe, Hercule Poirot, and Adrian Monk, and to Perry Cox, a cantankerous doctor on the television show Scrubs. One book-length study of the series finds a powerful kinship between House and another famous TV doctor, Hawkeye Pierce of MAS*H. Laurie's performance in the role has been widely praised. The San Francisco Chronicle's Goodman called him "a wonder to behold" and "about the only reason to watch House". Gabrielle Donnelly of the Daily Mail said that because of Laurie's complex personality, he was "perfectly cast" in the title role. Critics have also reacted positively to the show's original supporting cast, which the Post's Shales called a "first-rate ensemble". Leonard's portrayal of Dr. Wilson has been considered Emmy Award worthy by critics with TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today. Bianculli of the Daily News was happy to see Edelstein "finally given a deservedly meaty co-starring role". Freelance critic Daniel Fienberg was disappointed that Leonard and Edelstein have not received more recognition for their performances. Reaction to the major shifts of Season 4 was mixed. "With the new crew in place House takes on a slightly more energized feel", wrote Todd Douglass Jr. of DVD Talk. "And the set up for the fifth season is quite brilliant." The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall wrote, "The extended, enormous job audition gave the writers a chance to reinvigorate the show and fully embrace Laurie's comic genius". Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, took issue with the developments: "the cast just kept getting bigger, the stories more scattered and uneven until you had a bunch of great actors forced to stand around watching Hugh Laurie hold the show together by the sheer force of his will". USA Today's Robert Bianco cheered the season finale: "Talk about saving the best for last. With two fabulous, heartbreaking hours... the writers rescued a season that had seemed diffuse, overcrowded and perhaps too ambitious for its own good." Season 5 of House was met with a more positive response in comparison to the previous season. It holds a Metacritic score of 77 out of 100, based on ten reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". It also holds a 100% approval rating on aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.1 based on nine collected reviews. USA Today praised Laurie's performance and the repercussions of the Season 4 finale, stating "a carry-over from last season's brilliant finale, House is firmly in the forefront. And when you have an actor of Hugh Laurie's range, depth and charisma, putting him center-stage makes perfect sense, particularly when you've written a story that explores the character and his primary relationships in a way that seems". The New York Daily News noted that "The show pays more attention to relationships we care about, hints at a sensible number of new ones that show some promise, and thus doesn't rely on obscure medical mysteries to carry the whole dramatic burden", and noted that "the prognosis for this season could be better than last season seemed to foreshadow". Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times highlighted the performances of the cast, especially Michael Weston as detective Lucas Douglas, calling him a "delightful addition". She concluded, "So different is the premiere that the savvy House (and Fox) viewer may expect the revelation that it was all a fever dream. That does not seem to be the case, and one assumes that Laurie and the writers will be bringing a different version of their now-iconic character back to Princeton. Not too different, of course, but different enough." Conversely, The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan disliked Weston's character, calling him "An unwelcome distraction... an irritating pipsqueak". She continued saying "House used to be one of the best shows on TV, but it's gone seriously off the rails". The Sunday Times felt that the show had "lost its sense of humour. The focus on Thirteen and her eventual involvement with Foreman also came under particular criticism. At the end of the show's run, Steven Tong of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "House had, in its final seasons, become a rather sentimental show". In New York Magazine's blog 'Vulture', Margaret Lyons wrote, "More than a hospital drama or a character piece or anything else, House is a complex meditation on misery." But, continued Lyons, there is a line between "enlightened cynicism" and "misery-entropy", and "as the show wore on, its dramatic flare dimmed while its agony flare burned ever brighter." Alan Sepinwall wrote, "The repetition and muck of the middle seasons ultimately severed whatever emotional connection I had to House's personal struggles." The show placed #62 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list. The show was declared the second highest rated show for the first ten years of IMDb.com Pro (2002–2012). U.S. television ratings[] In its first season, House ranked twenty-fourth among all television series and was the ninth most popular primetime program among women. Aided by a lead-in from the widely popular American Idol, the following three seasons of the program each ranked in the top ten among all viewers. House reached its peak Nielsen ratings in its third season, attracting an average of 19.4 million viewers per episode. According to Jacobs, the production team was surprised that the show garnered such a large audience. In its fifth season, the show attracted 12.0 million viewers per episode and slipped to nineteenth place overall. It remained Fox's most popular show other than American Idol. The most-watched episode of House is the Season 4 episode Frozen, which aired after Super Bowl XLII. It attracted slightly more than 29 million viewers. House ranked third for the week, equalling the rating of American Idol and surpassed only by the Super Bowl itself and the Super Bowl XLII post-game show. Awards and honors[] Main article List of House awards House has received many awards and award nominations. In 57th Primetime Emmy Awards, 59th Primetime Emmy Awards, 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, 61st Primetime Emmy Awards, 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards and 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Drama Series The Emmy board also nominated House for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, but the show never won the award. For the Season 1 episode Three Stories, David Shore won an Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series Emmy in 2005 and the Humanitas Prize in 2006. Director Greg Yaitanes received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing - Drama Series, for directing House's Head, the first part of Season 4's two-episode finale. The show has been nominated for six Golden Globe Awards and received two. Hugh Laurie has been nominated six times for the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama; he won in 2006 and again in 2007. In 2008 the series received its first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series - Drama. House was nominated for best dramatic series again the following year, but did not win in the category. The show received a Peabody Award for what the Peabody board called an "unorthodox lead character—a misanthropic diagnostician" and for "cases fit for a medical Sherlock Holmes", which helped make House "the most distinctive new doctor drama in a decade". The American Film Institute (AFI), included House in its 2005 list of 10 Television Programs of the Year. In 2011, House won four People's Choice Awards: favorite TV drama; favorite dramatic actor and actress for Laurie and Edelstein; and favorite TV doctor. Laurie won the Screen Actors Guild's award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series in both 2007 and 2009. Writer Lawrence Kaplow won a Writers Guild of America Award in 2006 for the Season 2 episode Autopsy. In 2007, the show won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for prosthetic makeup. In 2005, Laurie appeared on the cover of TV Guide as "TV's Sexiest Man". In 2008, Gregory House was voted second sexiest television doctor ever, behind ER's Doug Ross (George Clooney). Distribution[] In 2008, House was distributed in a total of 66 countries. With an audience of over 81.8 million worldwide, it was the most watched television show on the globe and far surpassed the viewership figures of the leading TV dramas the previous two years (CSI and CSI: Miami). The following year, it placed second in the world after CSI. House episodes premiere on Fox in the United States and Global Television Network in Canada, which have identical schedules. The show was the third most popular on Canadian television in 2008. That same year, House was the top-rated television program in Germany, the number 2 show in Italy, and number 3 in Czechia. The series is also very popular in France, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, the first four seasons were broadcast on Five. Sky1 acquired first-run rights beginning with Season 5. The original, English-language version of the show also airs in Australia on Network Ten, in New Zealand on TV3, and in Ireland on 3e, TV3's cable channel. Episodes of the show are also available online for download: Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes Store and the Zune Marketplace offer episodes from all of Seasons 1-8. In 2007, NBCUniversal (the show's distributor) and Apple Inc. (iTunes' owner) had a disagreement that temporarily kept the fourth season off iTunes. In a statement to the press, Apple claimed that NBCUniversal wanted to drive up the per-episode price to $4.99. In September 2008, it was reported that the issue between Apple and NBC had been resolved. Episodes can now also be purchased in HD on iTunes for $2.99 and all 8 seasons are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Merchandise[] For a charity auction, T-shirts bearing the phrase "Everybody Lies" were sold for a limited time starting on April 23, 2007, on Housecharitytees.com. Proceeds from sales of those shirts and others with the phrase "Normal's Overrated" went to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). House cast and crew members also regularly attend fundraisers for NAMI and have featured in ads for the organization that have appeared in Seventeen and Rolling Stone. The show's efforts have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the charity. Jacobs said that through their association with NAMI, they hope to take "some of the stigma off that illness". Nettwerk released the House M.D. Original Television Soundtrack album on September 18, 2007. In 2008, the Spanish game company Exelweiss designed a cellphone game for the show, which was released in both Spanish and English versions. In June 2009, Legacy Interactive announced a licensing agreement with Universal Pictures Digital Platforms Group (UPDPG) to develop a video game based on the series, in which players step into the roles of House's diagnostic team to deal with five unusual medical cases. The game, released in May 2010, included a minigame calling upon the player to "navigat[e] a restaurant-placemat-style maze, in which a giant sandwich must avoid hungry physicians on its way to Dr. House's office." It received a F from The A.V. Club, however Legacy updated the game by August 2010. Episodes[] Main article List of episodes DVD releases[] House, M.D. - Season One House, M.D. - Season Two House, M.D. - Season Three House, M.D. - Season Four House, M.D. - Season Five House, M.D. - Season Six House, M.D. - Season Seven House, M.D. - Season Eight [] Official website at archive.com Official House Wiki at archive.is House, M.D. at IMDB House at TV.com Polite Dissent (critiques the medicine in each episode) "Complete List of the Commercial Tracks Used on House" House fandom history House (TV series) at Wikipedia Featured articles January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 Lupus House, M.D. Eve This article is also available in Spanish at es.dr-house.wikia
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	12	https://selfawarepatterns.com/2015/04/10/greg-egans-amalgam-is-close-to-the-most-likely-interstellar-civilization/	en	Greg Egan’s Amalgam is close to the most likely interstellar civilization	https://selfawarepattern…ecover.jpg?w=197	https://selfawarepattern…ecover.jpg?w=197	[ "https://selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/incandescencecover.jpg?w=197&h=300", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/398dae9483126fae47550a98f3d8e3ee915b80b6a2bf934fddb13f0d6ef20e7e?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/398dae9483126fae47550a98f3d8e3ee915b80b6a2bf934fddb13f0d6ef20e7e?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f1ed06698f53ce2315c1750fc0761fe223d9b450d01764b8b06a39ca07947f0b?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8cf8054fa803110597f26177db26b5407c7fdd7cb4242da345ad29a755f89d3d?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/98df8e81d6f092ea931c3529dd87d16aad64d87b1b1d8ed1ce3a8885e9f4e287?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6e21f691a2dc9015b0c304430c7d5a5799bacdd4c347740920e5fc90c429977e?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6e21f691a2dc9015b0c304430c7d5a5799bacdd4c347740920e5fc90c429977e?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6e21f691a2dc9015b0c304430c7d5a5799bacdd4c347740920e5fc90c429977e?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=48&d=identicon&r=G", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/1196px-connectome_extraction_procedure.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/hyperspace.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/robot-g7fcaf03e0_1920.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/pexels-photo-2599244.jpeg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/beingyoucover.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/daniel_dennett_oct2008.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/thehiddenagendaofthepoliticalmindcover.jpg?w=40&h=40&crop=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/estatesgeneral.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/theknowledgemachinecover.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/spacetime_lattice_analogy-svg.png?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f24950706c1efa1f52697ca45b31e7eda507fd3e2cdf571a6575cd58997fcc4f?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a355782ad994d416dcd440d9fb9831a5a769488bcddd3059e2a753e2c3b1619f?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a355782ad994d416dcd440d9fb9831a5a769488bcddd3059e2a753e2c3b1619f?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a355782ad994d416dcd440d9fb9831a5a769488bcddd3059e2a753e2c3b1619f?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://i0.wp.com/files.mastodon.social/accounts/avatars/110/804/284/153/864/543/original/772f50430b162889.png?ssl=1", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6261439fa48c88ff8b73cfe64f786b793697bc521973d19e9c4a0d87f3b090b0?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6e21f691a2dc9015b0c304430c7d5a5799bacdd4c347740920e5fc90c429977e?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/profileheadshot.png?w=32", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/88c548b78fcec589d457d28169d22a531e8825d765d36fdf0549d787727c2ada?s=32&d=identicon&r=G", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/facebook32.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/twitter32.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/tumblr32.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/rss32.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/threadsicon32.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/bluesky-social-logo-32x32-1.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/mastodon_logotype_simple_new_hue.svg_-e1667768499321.png", "https://selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/profileheadshot.png?w=50", "https://selfawarepatterns.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/profileheadshot.png?w=50", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2015-04-10T00:00:00	The other day, I did a post engaging in speculation on, assuming we don't discover a completely new physics, what I thought an interstellar civilization might look like. In summary: Given special relativity, travel faster than the speed of light is impossible. This has been verified by innumerable experiments, and nothing in nature has been observed to…	en	https://selfawarepattern…eadshot.png?w=32	SelfAwarePatterns	https://selfawarepatterns.com/2015/04/10/greg-egans-amalgam-is-close-to-the-most-likely-interstellar-civilization/	The other day, I did a post engaging in speculation on, assuming we don’t discover a completely new physics, what I thought an interstellar civilization might look like. In summary: Given special relativity, travel faster than the speed of light is impossible. This has been verified by innumerable experiments, and nothing in nature has been observed to travel faster than light, at least not yet. There are various notions of ways around this (wormholes, Alcubierre drives, etc) but they are very speculative, requiring the existence of either exotic or cosmological amounts of energy. Even getting a decent sized spaceship to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light requires appalling amounts of energy. This has led some scientists to conclude that humans will never explore beyond the solar system. Sending a small probe (possibly microscopic) is still extremely expensive, but conceivable. A fleet of small probes could be sent to other stars. Once there, they could find local raw resources and bootstrap a communication and exploration infrastructure. These probes could even manufacture copies of themselves to be sent to stars further out. Over time, an interstellar communications network could be developed, allowing information from throughout the galaxy to be transmitted back to Earth, and AI (artificial intelligence) entities could be sent to the stars to explore. If mind uploading of some form or another is possible, human minds could be sent to the stars. If mind uploading is not possible, humanity may have to content itself with the information it receives from its interstellar network. Wyrd Smythe pointed out to me that this was more or less the vision that Greg Egan has with his Amalgam stories. Egan is a science fiction author who has explored the concept of mind uploading extensively in his fiction, perhaps more than anyone else so far. I’d read some of Egan’s work before, but had missed the Amalgam ones. The Amalgam is the name of the interstellar civilization in the stories. The Amalgam is introduced in the short story, ‘Riding the Crocodile’, which is available for free on Egan’s web site. Egan calls the self replicating probes “spores”, which I think is a pretty descriptive label. He describes the operation of the spores in the opening pages of another story, ‘Glory’, which is also available for free. If the idea of this type of civilization interests you, I highly recommend both stories. (I actually had read ‘Glory’ some years ago, but hadn’t realized the Amalgam background to it.) If you find yourself with a burning desire to know more about the Aloof, the mysterious alien network in ‘Riding the Crocodile’, then you can read Egan’s novel, ‘Incandescence‘, which gives insights into them. I should warn you that, while I mostly enjoyed ‘Incandescence’, particularly all of the fascinating ideas that it explores, I often found it tedious. Most of the novel is about aliens working out the principles of general relativity, which it describes in what I found at times to be excessive detail. (Egan’s stated attitude is that it’s okay for a fictional book to require you to take notes to keep up. Not sure how many readers will agree. I didn’t take notes, but can’t say I always kept up either.) Egan gives insights into the Aloof, but only indirectly. The reader has to piece them together from the clues left by the two plot threads. Many readers finish the book in a state of confusion. If you do read the book, and find yourself in that state, at least with regards to the Aloof, my recommendation would be to read the opening pages again, up to the point where the Aloof is described, then reread the final page. While I think Egan’s Amalgam concept has a lot going for it, there are a couple of things about it that I find a bit dubious. The first is that the society described is very utopic. Everyone in the Amalgam just gets along with everyone else. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to live in such a society. It follows a common vision in science fiction, of the post-scarcity civilization. While it’s nice to hope for that, I’m not sure how realistic it is. Even if your resources span the galaxy, there will still only be so much of those resources, which means economy and conflict will likely still be facts of life. The other is that the Amalgam is an conglomeration formed from multiple alien species. I’ve given my reasons why I think that’s unlikely. Egan does leave room for the possibility that some or all of those other species are “uplifted” ones, species whose intelligence has been boosted by other intelligent species, which I think is more plausible. Egan’s vision is the closest I’ve seen in science fiction to what I think is the most realistic vision of humanity reaching the stars. Of course, even the most educated guesses of what reaching the stars will look like is probably as far off as a 15th century monk’s speculation on how humans might reach the moon. But the Amalgam strikes me as more likely than the common Star Trek like visions. (Not that I’m not a fan of Star Trek.)
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	3	7	https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-last-book-in-the-universe/chapanal002.html	en	The Last Book In The Universe - Section Two - Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 Summary & Analysis	https://dolmv3q9e9skh.cloudfront.net/productImage/?sku=guides-the-last-book-in-the-universe&w=200	https://dolmv3q9e9skh.cloudfront.net/productImage/?sku=guides-the-last-book-in-the-universe&w=200	[ "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/bookrags_logo.png?1706062909", "https://dolmv3q9e9skh.cloudfront.net/productImage/?sku=guides-the-last-book-in-the-universe&w=150", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/content/icon_printfriendly.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/content/icon_rtf.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/content/icon_pdf.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/btn_buynow.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/btn_buynow.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/content/btn_prev.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/aero300/content/btn_next.png?1706062909", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/gb/gb_litguide_full.gif", "https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1059911285/?label=p72FCLPs3gIQ9eyz-QM&guid=ON&script=0", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/socialicons/facebook-socialicon.png?1457284146", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/socialicons/twitter-socialicon.png?1457284146", "https://d22o6al7s0pvzr.cloudfront.net/images/bookrags/socialicons/pinterest-socialicon.png?1457284146" ]	[]	[]	[ "The Last Book In The Universe", "Section Two - Chapters 5", "6", "7", "and 8", "Summary", "notes", "summaries", "chapter summaries", "analysis", "outline", "synopsis", "The Last Book In The Universe plot summary", "overview", "book", "literature", "reviews", "reports", "essays" ]	null	[ "Rodman Philbrick" ]	null	The Last Book In The Universe by Rodman Philbrick - Section Two - Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 summary and analysis.	en	/favicon.ico	www.BookRags.com	https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-last-book-in-the-universe/chapanal002.html	Summary Billy and his Bangers wake Spaz up to collect Ryter's things. Billy asks if there was anything else and Spaz lies about the book. Billy asks where Spaz got the food, and Spaz tells him about the proov girl. Billy has heard rumors about the girl: she's a slummer who likes to spend her time with the normals. Billy warns him that if the other proovs find out, they'll kill him. He leaves, and Spaz worries about lying to him. If Billy finds out, he'll either be banished or killed. Spaz returns to the Stacks to take Ryter's book. Little Face appears, asking for more chocolate, and takes Spaz to Ryter's place. Ryter seems hopeful to see him, so Spaz decides to steal the book later. Ryter asks him about his life. Spaz remembers his foster sister, Bean, who was...
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	28	https://oikofuge.com/egan-orthogonal/	en	Greg Egan: The “Orthogonal” Trilogy	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…=474%2C259&ssl=1	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…=474%2C259&ssl=1	[ "https://oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/headerlogo8.jpg", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/orthogonal-e1506868942583.png?resize=474%2C259&ssl=1", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c9d28a26a662046c69a50d03a36874ed?s=34&d=mm&r=g", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/oikofuge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rss.png?w=474&ssl=1" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2016-02-21T11:00:47+00:00	A review of Greg Egan's trilogy of novels set in a spacetime different from our own	en	https://i0.wp.com/oikofu…it=32%2C32&ssl=1	The Oikofuge	https://oikofuge.com/egan-orthogonal/	Greg Egan is an Australian mathematician who has been writing hard science fiction for thirty years, although his hard science is the stuff that sits at the borderland of philosophy: the relationship between mathematics and reality, the nature of consciousness, the implications of quantum mechanics. Previous novels have involved speculations on what life might be like if quantum superpositions could involve entire people (like the cat in Schrödinger’s infamous thought experiment), and what it might be like to inhabit a universe with an extra spatial dimension. Anyway, as you can see, Egan is so well established that his publisher has given him his own typeface, and his name printed bigger than the title. When The Clockwork Rocket was published in 2011, it was a new departure for Egan, because it was billed as the first part of a trilogy—his previous novels have all stood alone. And, knowing how complicated his science fiction is, I had a horrible feeling I wouldn’t be able to properly remember the set-up from the first book by the time the second and third volumes were published. So I bought the book, and stock-piled it. I did the same for The Eternal Flame in 2012, and The Arrows Of Time in 2013. Finally, I’ve got around to reading all three as if they were a single, 1,000-page novel—and I’m glad I waited. What has preoccupied Egan in these novels is the geometry of spacetime. Although Einstein showed us that time is simply another dimension, he also showed that it’s a different kind of dimension—it’s treated differently mathematically, in a way that gives spacetime a hyperbolic geometry, which produces all the distortions of space and time experienced by observers in relative motion. Egan asked himself what a universe would be like if the time dimension was exactly like the space dimensions, producing a basic spacetime geometry that could be understood by Euclid. He did a lot of mathematics with this idea, working hard to come up with the physics for an internally consistent alternate universe, with that kind of spacetime, which could support intelligent life. A sample of his workings appear on his website. Egan’s new universe is a strange place—one in which it’s possible to achieve infinite velocity with a finite amount of energy, in which the total energy of a moving object is less than that of a stationary one, in which it’s impossible to lose heat by thermal radiation, in which you can travel in time or convert yourself to antimatter simply by motoring around at a high velocity on a curved course. The physics of matter is different, too—liquids are horribly unstable, so biology has to be based on solids and gases. Egan comes up with flexible beings who continuously remodel their bodies using internal light signals. Into that mix, he stirs a unique method of reproduction—females, once “triggered” by a male, become dormant, adopt a smooth elliptical shape, and then split into between two and four children. The children are then cared for by the male. So he’s given himself a ludicrously complicated set-up to impart in the form of a novel. No wonder he decided to build his alien society around recognizable human models (schools, factories, farms), and to give his aliens recognizable human emotions and concerns. At least there are some things we can take for granted as the story progresses. He does marvellously well in drip-feeding the strange biology (and its associated gender politics) into the story without subjecting the reader to huge data-dumps. For the physics … well, the story is about the physics, to a large extent. In the three novels we follow three separate generations of scientists as they piece together the detail of how their universe works. In The Clockwork Rocket, the simple geometry of the universe allows scientists to come to an understanding of spacetime while at a technological level similar to our Enlightenment—as if Newton discovered Relativity. The odd energetics means that they can also access the equivalent of nuclear energy via simple chemistry. The “clockwork rocket” of the title is a multigeneration interstellar spacecraft, an entire mountain launched into space with “chemical” rockets, stabilized and maintained by simple clockwork mechanisms. In The Eternal Flame, the inhabitants of the interstellar ship develop their equivalent of quantum mechanics and laser technology. Egan’s scientists do a lot of talking and draw a lot of diagrams, and I found this a little more wearing than I did in the previous novel. Multiple pages detailing the discovery of quaternions was too much even for me, and I like quaternions. This was offset by a separate story strand about the aliens’ problematic reproductive biology, in which females die while producing children. Scientists attempting to find ways for females to avoid or survive childbirth are subjected to harassment that has clear parallels in our own world. In The Arrows Of Time, Egan shows how his universe allows the inhabitants to reverse the direction of flow of their own time, relative to other objects. It’s possible to receive messages from your own future—what might the implications of that be? It’s also possible to bring big, complicated objects together which have their entropy running in opposite temporal directions—what happens if you land on a planet that is ageing in reverse? So: Lots of big fun physics, for people who like big fun physics. But many little personal stories of conflict, failure, success and deeply strange love. There are characters in jeopardy, puzzles to be solved, daring rescues and civil insurrections. But if you don’t like big fun physics, I suspect the background to this series might be too weirdly complicated to let you just wing the science and enjoy the story. Note: I’ve now review Egan’s subsequent big fun physics novel, Dichronauts. You can find that review here.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	23	https://locusmag.com/2023/04/alexandra-pierce-reviews-scale-by-greg-egan/	en	Alexandra Pierce Reviews Scale by Greg Egan	https://locusmag.com/wp-…3/03/locus-1.jpg	https://locusmag.com/wp-…3/03/locus-1.jpg	[ "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Topper-align-left5b.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Topper-for-Mobile6rainbow.jpg", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TransparentBanner.png", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Topper-Subscribe-Ad-for-Mobile7.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/locus-1-333x350.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/locus-1-200x300.jpg", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/greenDonateNow.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/screenshot-60x90.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/guggenheim-60x90.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/locus-11-200x300.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/swanwicknsm_193x300-193x300.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/lavalle-changeling-200x300.jpg", "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5f8f72ecda53dcfbbe3acc5660d368c9?s=74&d=mm&r=g", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/762coverx650-499x648.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/blacklivesmatter1-2.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/locus-9-60x90.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/locus-3-60x90.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FrankRPaul-60x90.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/366622798_773701524760796_8512305531128128323_n-60x90.jpg", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/merch-ad-1.png", "http://www.locusmag.com/2014/Ads/legalthanks.jpg", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/birdie.gif", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Facebook_icon.svg/2000px-Facebook_icon.svg.png", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Patreon_logo.svg.png", "http://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/instagram.png", "https://locusmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Red-White-and-Black-Modern-Rough-Animated-Subscribe-Youtube-Channel-Outro-Video-2-300x169.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "science fiction", "fantasy", "magazine", "book review", "author interview", "news" ]	null	[]	2023-04-12T15:30:27+00:00	The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news, reviews, and author interviews	en	https://locusmag.com/wp-…usRocketLogo.jpg	Locus Online	https://locusmag.com/2023/04/alexandra-pierce-reviews-scale-by-greg-egan/	Scale, Greg Egan (Self-published 978-1-92224-044-6, $23.00, 272pp, hc) January 2023. I’m not afraid to admit that I felt trepidation before embarking on this novel. A world where the most significant difference between people isn’t color or creed, but instead their scale – that is, their relative heights – and that comes with a website explaining how the science of that scaling works? The very idea – people on seven different scales, where Scale Seven is 1:64 of Scale One – seemed entirely likely to break my brain. But… it’s a new Greg Egan book, the first since 2021’s The Book of All Skies. I figured that if I managed – indeed, thoroughly enjoyed – his Orthogonal Universe trilogy, complete with vector diagrams as part of the story, then I was prepared to give this new wild, likely-to-be-immaculately-thought-out, proposition a go. The thing I love about Egan’s work is that neither the scientific ideas nor the narrative are there to carry the other. The idea that humans could exist at seven different scales isn’t present to make a detective story more complicated, nor does the detective story (which turns into a serious political situation) exist simply to enable wild, what-if fantasies. Instead, they work together to make this a genuinely thought-provoking story on both a political and a scientific level. It should be noted that Egan’s concepts here aren’t always easy to wrap your head around. Early on I struggled to remember which scale meant larger humans: our first introduction to the differences between scales is when people of different scales have to modulate frequencies to understand one another. I am no audio engineer, so it wasn’t intuitive for me. Eventually I was able to keep straight in my head that Scale 1 was the largest – and like navigating between different cultures in a fantasy novel, once you learn their characteristics it became straightforward. The novel opens with a private detective taking a case: locate a missing businesswoman. The detective, Sam, is Scale 4, while the missing woman, Cara, is Scale 1. Cara has been doing business with Scale 4 exporters – electronics mostly – and she was in the Scale 4 area when she disappeared. The case rapidly evolves as Sam discovers that folks in Scale 7 have been developing new technology and that Cara may have stumbled on to information that someone desperately wanted to keep secret. Around and contributing to this fraught technological situation is a political one, around how the scales interact with one another. Early on, Sam tells his son a myth about how the scales came to be: that once upon a time, some people in a village had children who were born half the size of others, who then learned faster than the other ‘normal’ children, and who aged faster as well. Scaled-down animals and vegetation were already known, and so everyone managed to live harmoniously. (It’s unclear when the other scales came along.) These days, at least in Sam’s country, the scales share cities but have their own districts, with appropriately-sized buildings and so on. Disputed urban land is divided according to scale, but there are still disputes about how to scale agricultural land, and indeed further problems are arising as industrial processes don’t scale as easily as living space. There’s a fair bit of maths and physics around this issue, but the upshot is that some smaller-scale folk – who live faster, from the perspective of the larger scales – are discontent with their lot. They are particularly discontented with having to live under strictures imposed by the larger folk, which aren’t necessarily appropriate to Scale 7 ways of living. For example, despite being smaller in height, their mass is the same, which has many consequences: road surfaces that are appropriate for all scales being just one. The technological advances that Cara stumbled on may have explosive consequences for how the different groups can live together. Egan neatly illustrates the differences between the scales, in particular through Sam’s interactions with both Cara’s sister, at Scale 1, and another private detective he asks for help, at Scale 7. They live at different speeds, so the sister asking for a meeting in two hours is onerous: it may be her afternoon, but Sam would usually be asleep by then. At the other end, when Sam is speaking to Scale-7 Jake, Jake has to decide whether to cook dinner around the conversation – since he’ll have the time to do so. Other differences are shown through incidental moments – like a three-month-old boy who is old enough to make stupid decisions, but not old enough to be in a militia. Or that for Scale 7, an entire day on a train is a long journey, the experience likened to being a prisoner. The reader does need to do some work to be able to follow the intricacies of the situation here; thinking at different scales is unlikely to come naturally. But Scale is rewarding, intriguing, and ultimately highly enjoyable, and while maybe I wouldn’t suggest as your entry to Greg Egan’s work, it’s a marvellous example of how seemingly bizarre ideas can be turned into an excellent novel. This review and more like it in the March 2023 issue of Locus. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field. ©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	35	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156775.Quarantine	en	Quarantine	https://images-na.ssl-im…8448i/156775.jpg	https://images-na.ssl-im…8448i/156775.jpg	[ "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/siteheaderbannerimages/1717004244i/409.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308958448i/156775.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308958448i/156775.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1375595103i/32699._UY200_CR50,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1442491692i/1713956.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1484863606i/17744555._UX200_CR0,15,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1508811508i/4213258._UY200_CR91,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1442491692i/1713956.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1507465969i/20498957._UY200_CR38,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1505195595i/23385697._UX200_CR0,37,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1717114246i/35570542.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1569291263i/28192716._SX540_.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1399048696i/1444651._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1452041473i/9456990._UX200_CR0,24,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1501820241i/13125862._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1510365058i/16803629._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1446801280i/42490432._UX200_CR0,3,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1658888239i/1639329._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1595263774ra/29846205.gif", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1558228335i/96003075._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1358104537i/2160463._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1257784636i/2920307._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1587041256i/38117634._UY200_CR100,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1483904179i/2613919._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1476128200i/60444495._CR0,6,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1422135250i/2945070._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1675545595i/62919203.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1503951832i/70855448._CR0,49,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1583298356i/5049442._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1198024083i/650953._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1392079166i/3800589._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1621280728i/17236421._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1718701864i/40590836._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1691856630i/165056511._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1356832592i/15897348._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-apple_app_store@2x.png", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-google_play_store@2x.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Greg Egan" ]	null	Read 405 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. It causes riots and religions. It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscr…	en	/favicon.ico	Goodreads	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156775.Quarantine	March 6, 2021 - This court is now in session. Would the defendant please rise. Greg Egan, how do you plead? - Not guilty, your honour. - Mr Egan, what is your profession? - I am a science-fiction writer, your honour. - What kind of science-fiction writer? - An Australian science-fiction writer, your honour. - Your country of origin is immaterial, Mr Egan. We wish to ascertain what sort of science-fiction you claim to produce. - Some people quite like it, your honour. - Mr Egan, I see I shall have to phrase my questions more precisely. Are you what is generally known as a "hard" science-fiction writer? - I have been called that, your honour. - Do you accept this description? Is it one you consciously attempt to live up to? - It's hard to say what's conscious and what's unconscious, your honour. I'm just trying to tell a story. - Mr Egan, please restrain your feeble attempts at humour. You generally manage to do that in your published works. Would you care to explain to the court, in your own words, what you consider differentiates "hard" science-fiction from other kinds of science-fiction? - Well your honour, I would say that it involves making a serious attempt to get the science right. - Thank you, Mr Egan. Now, you have been referred to at various times as "the king of hard science-fiction". You are presumably aware of that? - I have seen the expression, your honour. - Have you seen it often, Mr Egan? - Quite often, your honour. - When did you see it last, Mr Egan? We are trying to establish what "quite often" means. - Your honour, about a minute and a half ago I received a mail from someone called nrrrdgrrrls4eva who used that phrase. - Since you appear to have this document to hand, Mr Egan, would you perhaps read it out to the court? - Yes your honour. It starts like this. Greg, you are the king of hard science-fiction. I am now rereading Orthogonal again, I just wanted to you to know that every time I get to the bit about the quaternions and the spinors it makes me so wet that I-- - Thank you Mr Egan, that will be sufficient. - Yes, your honour. - Mr Egan, does quantum mechanics play an important part in your novel Quarantine? - It does, your honour. - In what way would you say that you treated the subject of quantum mechanics in that work? - In a non-standard way, your honour. - Mr Egan, do you know anything about quantum mechanics? - I like to think I do, your honour. - In that case, can you tell us how you believe other experts on quantum mechanics would view its treatment in your book? - It would depend on the person in question, your honour. - Do you imagine that most of them would consider your treatment credible? - Probably not, your honour. - Would they, perhaps, consider it implausible in the extreme? - They might, your honour. - Would they go so far as to call it complete and utter nonsense? - I can't rule that out, your honour. - Yet you sell your books as "hard science fiction". Do you consider that you are treating your readers in a fair and ethical manner, Mr Egan? - Your honour, I have very limited influence on my publisher's marketing department. - Mr Egan, we want to know why you did this. - With all respect, your honour, the notion of "motivation" is philosophically slippery. And when creating literary works, the reasons behind an author's artistic choices may be particularly hard to reconstruct. Plato, in The Republic-- - Mr Egan, I shall have to ask you to keep to the point. Plato is not on trial here. And he was not a science-fiction writer. - Your honour, the late Mr Kingsley Amis argued, I think quite convincingly, that Plato's Critias is perhaps the first clear example of-- - Mr Egan, I find it tedious to repeat myself on such elementary matters, but Plato wrote philosophy, not science-fiction. I do not suppose that you consider your novel to be a piece of philosophy? - As a matter of fact, your honour-- - Thank you. I am sure we would all enjoy continuing this discussion, but unfortunately we have a schedule to keep. Have the members of the jury reached a verdict? - We have, your honour. We unanimously find the defendant guilty on all counts. - Sentencing will be postponed until next week. I need to think of something sufficiently cruel and unusual. - Yes, your honour. - That brings this session of the Court of Public Opinion to a close. Thank you and good afternoon. [I also have a serious review here] June 13, 2020 Mods, Moods, and Modes To measure something is to change it, to cause it to become fixed by eliminating its infinite possibilities. This is a well-established principle of quantum mechanics. If that is true, human beings have much more to answer for than we thought. As our techniques of measurement have become more refined and better able to reach further into the far reaches of the cosmos, we have left a path of destruction literally as far as the eye can see. The really spectacular advances in artificial intelligence in Egan’s world of Quarantine are not the ‘mods’ (apps) of data manipulation, communication, and presentation. Rather they are those which can control our basic moods - alertness, rationality, even our loyalties. There are experimental mods which are so advanced that they can alter our very mode of being. This is the real import of AI - not how it mimics human consciousness but what it does to human consciousness Philosophically speaking, human are the thinking creatures. Thinking is what makes us different, possibly unique, from other sentient beings. Thinking is our mode of being and the essential cause of our destructive rampage throughout the universe as we measure, analyze, and judge it. It is what we value above all else - the ability to value at all - and what we are ‘hard-wired’ to pursue. But by thinking we are reducing the complexity of everything we think about. Through the quantum effects of reflective thought the universe becomes a less diverse entity. We are literally dumbing it down as we learn about it. But suppose there were a mod which could effectively re-wire our brains, by-passing the normal neural processes that involve quantum effects. Perhaps we could then avoid the adverse consequences of thought. We could stop being in a state of permanent warfare with the rest of physical creation. Would such a leap represent a scientific breakthrough or an apocalyptic spiritual, moral and physical disaster? Eagan is a genius. It is very possible only he knows the answer. Postscript on Corporate Sociology Quarantine is densely packed with speculative technological ideas and their consequences. But it also contains an important thread about human organization which is highly insightful in its own right. This is the issue of corporate structure and is implications for human behaviour. The protagonist Nick is forcibly recruited to an entity called The Ensemble. A mod is inserted in his brain which ensures that he will be totally loyal to the interests of The Ensemble. He is aware of this but he is also aware that he can do nothing about this enforced loyalty except to go mad. The interests of The Ensemble are essentially his own interests. However during the course of his duties Nick discovers that there are factions within the group that runs The Ensemble. This group, called the Canon, is composed of people who have not been implanted with the loyalty mod; and they have different views about what their interests and those of The Ensemble are. One of his similarly loyal colleagues makes the point to him that only those who have the loyalty mod are actually qualified to judge what the interest of The Ensemble really are. But even this presents a dilemma because even such loyal and altruistic corporate citizens have different views about what the interests of The Ensemble are. The only method available to resolve this situation is conversation. In this conversation, the views of each loyal participant must be accepted in their entirety and without compromise. These views are then used as the way to find the wider purpose in which the diverse views fit as special cases. The loyalty mod does not relieve Nick of the obligation to make judgments of value; it insists upon these judgments. This is a profound vision of corporate organization. What Egan has demonstrated is that loyalty to a corporate entity does not mean abandoning one’s individual values. Rather, the identification of the corporate interests, of joint purpose, depends crucially on the preservation and transformation of those individual values. The idea is remarkably close to that of ‘loyalty to loyalty’ by the American philosopher, Josiah Royce: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... This theme alone would make Quarantine a masterpiece of sociological thought. June 21, 2018 I've had Greg Egan on my radar for a long time but aside from a lucky chance encounter with a novella, it still took me almost two decades to finally break down and read him! It wasn't his fault. That lies entirely with me. I'm absolutely ashamed. Why? Because this hard-SF novelist is unashamedly tackling some of the hardest quantum physics interpretations, (smearing possibilities and collapsing the wave functions of reality) to very, very courageous levels. The writer runs with a loaded gun with a safety off. It's pretty awesome. The risk he takes from turning a cyberpunk Private Investigator novel into a completely sidelined thought experiment including the mythical Observer and the death of all the wave functions to create a single reality, multiplying it by a few observers, and then eventually to the whole Earth, is not an end ANYONE ought to miss. I cheered. I gasped. I whooped. Am I explaining this too esoterically? Possibly. Okay, let's back up. The Earth is suddenly quarantined in a quantum bubble to protect the rest of the universe from summarily changing realities willy-nilly because we THINK it into being. It starts out as quantum tunneling on the macro scale, cheating at cards, getting hugely improbable number sequences right, but then we go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole where multiple worlds can be chosen from at will, thousands, hundreds of thousands, and each die as the "best" possible world becomes real. Now let's throw that into the stew and add more people. How about adding everyone to that powerful quantum schedule? What happens when we all get the ability to be gods? Yeah, Egan attempts just this. :) Brilliant attempt, too! So why didn't I give it 5 stars? Because great ideas don't always equate great fundamental stories with plot and characters. There's nothing wrong with this one, but most the plot and characters are puppets to the need to make clear what is going on, science-wise. I like good exposition when I need it to follow the intent of the author. In this case, it's absolutely necessary. And delightful. But it necessarily slows down the plot, too. Like, to a crawl. Fortunately, it was never boring to me. Just uneven. No harm, no foul! And what we have here is a novel of quantum possibilities gone totally nuts. :) I LOVE THIS! March 6, 2021 This book is an interesting philosophical novel masquerading as a slapdash SF thriller, and at first I had trouble understanding what it was about. It's one of those deals where the world-building contains two elements which at first sight appear to have nothing to do with each other. On the one hand, computer-brain interfaces have improved to the point where virtually any new knowledge or behaviour can be inserted into your head as a "mod", a rapid rewiring of the neurons mediated by suitably constructed nanobots. On the other, the main plot is based on a highly implausible version of quantum mechanics: we're asked to accept that the collapse of the wave function is caused by human minds, who have only recently evolved to the point where they can do this. With most science-fiction writers I would just have rolled my eyes, but Egan knows a great deal about physics and it seemed out of character for him to get quantum mechanics wrong. Whatever had happened? Was he having a terrible off-day, or did he actually know less about QM than he seemed to? Neither hypothesis came across as likely. But after a day of thought, it seems to me that there is a way of looking at the book which makes perfect sense, and involves both threads equally. The moral problem with the "mods", which comes up many times in different forms, is that you can change your behaviour in any way you like; but after you've done so, you're arguably a different person. The hero, an ex-cop, has had a number of mods implanted which are standard for police officers. When activated, they suppress emotions and enhance rational, goal-driven thinking about how to further the greater societal good. As he likes to put it, they turn him into a zombie boy scout, but they also enable them to do his job far better than a normal person would. This is why they're standard. One night, while his cop mods are turned on, his home is bombed by terrorists. His beloved wife is killed, but he escapes. Knowing that the grief could psychologically cripple him as soon as he returns to normal, his mods make a cool and rational decision. They purchase a new mod, which gives him the illusion that his wife is still alive and with him: he can talk to her, touch her, anything. He knows intellectually that she's not real, but emotionally he feels she is. He's changed himself into a person who technically isn't sane, and the old him doesn't exist anymore, but it's the same rationale as with the police mods. He functions better this way, and he doesn't want the option of returning to the way he used to be. The QM thread, I realised, is basically the same thing but even more so. The way it works here, people automatically collapse the wave function all the time, reducing the huge cloud of simultaneously existing potential versions of themself into a single real version, while all the other versions disappear. However, a mod has been developed that lets you inhibit the collapse. You no longer have to stop the other versions of you from existing: they can all carry on developing in parallel. This is combined with a second mod, which lets you influence the relative probabilities of your different versions: when you do collapse the wave function, you can choose a version which gives you whatever you want. This typically manifests as some bizarre coincidence taking place, apparently for no reason. But at the end, people back away from this extraordinary freedom. They don't want to be everyone they could ever potentially be, it's too much. They want to be just one person, even if it means that all the other people they could have been are effectively killed. It seems to me that Egan has found a nice way to dramatise a problem in moral philosophy that's going to become increasingly important as technology improves. We're always changing ourselves to try and become a better person, and we should be doing so. (Half of Plato is about exactly this issue). We have a vague feeling that when we do it "naturally" by learning from experience, it's okay, and that there's something wrong with taking an artificial shortcut that lets us reach our goal more quickly. But why? Speeding things up makes it clearer what's going on, but maybe there's no real difference. Egan's asking some really searching questions here. [I also have a frivolous review here] July 17, 2020 I was twelve, […] the night the stars disappeared from the sky. (Spin) versus I was eight years old when the stars went out. (Quarantine) Had Robert Charles Wilson read this prior writing Spin or is just that great minds think alike? Anyway, despite the initial surprise at this similarity, the resemblance between the two works stops here. Quarantine starts out as a detective story: our main character, Nick, a private investigator, is hired to find Laura Andrews, a thirty-two years old woman who escaped the mental facility whose resident she was, being in a complete vegetative state. But, with each page, the complexity of the story grows exponentially. If you’re familiar with Egan, you know that plot and characters are just side-lines. The central part of his books is expanding on mathematical & physics concepts; all others are just part of the structure. Here the focus is on the wave function collapse.* What he does in this story not only entangles your neurons in the complexity of quantum mechanics applied to a macro scale, but also touches more sensitive topics such as free will, consciousness and dealing with emotions. I decide to take the stairs? Maybe I have no choice in the matter; maybe every last detail of my thoughts and actions has been, or will be, selected by my smeared self. But the illusion of free will remains as compelling as ever, and I can’t (literally can’t?) help thinking that the choice was mine. ‘So what? Everyone’s in an artificial state. Everyone’s brain is self-modified. Everyone tries to shape who they are. Are neural mods so terrible, simply because they do it so well – because they actually let people get what they want? Do you honestly think that the brain-wiring that comes from natural selection, and an accidental life, and people’s own – largely ineffectual – striving to change themselves ‘‘naturally’’, is some kind of touchstone of perfection? Okay: we spent thousands of years inventing ludicrous religious and pseudo-scientific reasons as to why all the things we couldn’t control just happened to be the best of all possible alternatives. God must have done a perfect job – and if not God, then evolution; either way, tampering would be sacrilege. And it’s going to take a long time for the whole culture to grow out of that bullshit. But face the truth: it’s a heap of outdated excuses for not wanting the things we couldn’t have. And that’s why I read Egan: because his imagination in extrapolating on mathematical/physics notions is astounding; no other does it better than him when it comes to hard SF. * For those of you who want more details about it, here is an essay in which the author explains why he chose this concept for his book, where the science end and where the science-fiction begins: https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/Q... Furthermore, for math afficionados, here are some more details on the probabilistic events in the book: https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/R... Read June 11, 2024 Quarantine - Greg Egan's imagination ablaze. There's so, so much going on in this hard SF novel. Below are seven hits of futuristic stuff contained in its pages. Incidentally, I was warned by Goodreads friend Manny Rayner that Greg has created a universe with a different quantum mechanics from our own, a universe where men and women can "control the collapse of the wavefunction and select which branch will be left." Anyway, here goes. I hope what I've noted will encourage readers, even liberal arts types like myself, to pick up a copy of Quarantine and blast off to the year 2067 with Greg Egan. What a fabulous adventure. THE BUBBLE On November 15, 2034, our solar system was enclosed by a perfect sphere. Along with every other sensible person on the planet, the tale's narrator, a private investigator named Nick Stavrianos, recognizes there is only one plausible explanation: vastly superior aliens constructed a colossal bubble to seal off our solar system from the rest of the universe, effectively putting us in quarantine. The looming question that has remained unanswered for more than three decades is: why? APOCALYPSE SOON Nick tells us there have been all sorts of conjectures and theories put forth. “A few intellectually rigorous killjoys argued that any explanation to which humans could relate was probably anthropomorphic nonsense, but nobody invited them onto talk shows.” As perhaps expected, fundamentalists cash in on one more sign portending the end of the world. However, the most extreme group, Children of the Abyss, formed by young men and women born after Nov 15, 2034 and proclaiming “this is the Age of Mayhem” pose the most serious problems. To date, by things like poisoning water supplies and blowing up buildings, they've killed nearly 100,000 people. And, gulp, these radicals are active in forty-seven counties. LAURA An anonymous client hires Nick to find Laura Andrews, age thirty-two, who has suffered brain damage since birth. Although Laura can walk clumsily, her ability to understand the world and communicate has always been on the level of a six-month-old baby. Therefore, doctors, staff, security at the Hilgemann Institute, the police, and everyone else are baffled as to how Laura could have disappeared from the institute, where she has been an inpatient since the age of five. She surely couldn't have escaped by herself – Laura could barely turn a doorknob to open a door. Was Laura possibly kidnapped? Nick utilizes sophisticated technology to explore all the possibilities without much success. But when Nick connects the fact that Laura Andrews was conceived on or close to November 15, 2034, the infamous Bubble Day, this astonishing futuristic SF plot torques, twirls, and thickens. PROGRAMMING MODS Men and women can purchase various neural modifications (mods) that interact with their thoughts. For example, Nick has a mod that functions as a kind of internal smartphone and another mod that generates a hallucination of his dead wife, Karen, allowing Nick to carry on a conversation and receive advice from her. The mods are tiny; some mods are microscopic. All mods can easily be placed on the side of the head. PERSONALITY MODS A darker aspect of neural modification can be seen in those that alter behavior and identity. During his time on the police force, Nick used six standard "Priming mods," which he admits made him less human but a more effective officer. One mod even numbs his grief over his wife's death, reflecting his struggle with genuine human emotions. In another scene, Nick fumes, "Why put up with four more hours of boredom and anxiety? For the masochistic thrill of enduring real human emotions? Fuck that; I had my dose of that this morning, and nearly walked away from the case." These instances raise important questions about humanity and technology. Then there are mods that are forced on individuals, like the Puppet mod, which makes a person simply repeat what an organization or group wants them to say. Or the Loyalty mod, whereby a person offers unflinching allegiance to whatever the group desires. Now, does all this neural modification sound a tad sinister? You bet it does. In this way, Greg Egan has given us a cautionary tale prompting serious philosophic reflection. A DETECTIVE'S HELPERS Prior to entering a top-secret building at night, Nick sends out a computerized scanning system in the form of a mosquito that, in turn, is equipped with a dozen minuscule chameleons. Nick receives the information he needs. “Finally, it checked back with the chameleons, who'd cracked the security system's signal validation protocol, and reported that, after sampling all thirty-five cables, they'd identified twelve by means of which a useful set of contiguous blind spots could be created.” If such surveillance can be conducted on a top-secret facility, just think of the average person's right to privacy. Obliterated! MIGHTY MULTIVERSE All of the above is from the first half of the novel and sets the framework for Greg Egan's version of a mind-boggling expansion of quantum mechanics and the eigenstate (please see Comment #1 below). And, yes, at the end, Greg ties all the physics fireworks in with Laura, The Children of the Abyss, and The Bubble. Phenomenal accomplishment. I encourage all readers to accept the challenge and tackle Quarantine. Australian author Greg Egan, born 1961 - Greg takes pride in not having any photos of himself available on the web. This photo is the way I picture the outstanding SF novelist writing at his computer. June 12, 2019 What improbable collapse of quantum potential states has resulted in the fact that immediately after reading a science book about confronting the measurement problem in quantum physics that I should read a science fiction book that is centrally about the measurement problem in quantum physics??? Quarantine is an extremely odd book. It’s a book of ideas. It’s bizarre, surreal and mind-bending and also grounded in quantum physics. As I discuss in my review of What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker, there are several primary theories (with multiple variations) that purport to solve the measurement problem of the Schrodinger Equation and explain what that equation says about reality. Becker sees the traditional Copenhagen Interpretation—despite being relatively the most popular theory among physicists—as the weakest solution and one that instead of actually confronting the measurement problem, looks the other way and says that there is no measurement problem. (See my review for more for more on this topic.) Egan world-builds the premise of his novel by assuming the literal truth of one of the currently less-favored solutions to the measurement problem, one that Einstein himself considered illogical and absurd. That said, it makes for an interesting premise to project out a story. Egan begins with the theory that part of the human brain (some theorists have even described it as “consciousness,”) is responsible for collapsing the wave function. He then lays on top of this premise, the fantastical idea that some living beings can exist in “smeared” state, before the wave form collapses, and that there is a way to alter the human brain to control quantum behavior and determine what possibility is selected from all the infinite possibilities. In quantum physics, the so-called smeared state (which is actually a presumption under the Copenhagen Interpretation—according to theories such as Many-Worlds Interpretation or Pilot Waves theory, there is no smeared state) is the period before measurement when a particle exists in all possible states simultaneously. With that as the basis, the storyline itself is a science fiction noir espionage/thriller involving evil corporations, cults and technology-based body modifications. It’s a fascinating story that is occasionally dragged down by extended scientific lectures and debates. I couldn’t quite tell if he was intentionally diverting the story into these “talking head” types of scenes as an almost absurdist distraction, or if that’s just how he wrote it, unironically. Sometimes I found the talking-head scenes amusing while other times I wanted him to just move on. Yes, Quarantine is driven by some rather absurd extensions of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but even so…they aren’t any more insane than quantum physics itself is. I think Egan did a pretty remarkable and highly inventive job applying cutting edge quantum theory to a wild ride of a story that I found hard to put down. If you enjoy science fiction, particularly of the cyberpunk variety, then this book is highly recommended. Since consciousness is an abstraction, or as philosophers would label it, qualia...an inner representation of neurological functions...how could qualia affect matter directly? That is, how could something immaterial affect a particle that is merely "observed?" It's far from clear that this is possible or even what observation exactly is. February 28, 2022 I'm not a huge Greg Egan fan. But that may well be because he outgrew me, and I stopped keeping up with the right varieties of science to really appreciate his work. However, Quarantine, one of his first novels, is one of my favorites. I reread it over the past few days, but I first read it when it came out. We older SF fans talk a lot about the sense of wonder (aka sensawonda). But over the years, I got less and less of that sense from the physics/chemistry parts of SF and more from things like alien cultures (often thinly disguised human cultures, which I then went and read about.) But Quarantine fully awoke that feeling, and did it with Quantum mechanics and (QM nearly inevitable fictional co-star) philosophy. Given Quarantine is a QM book, it is delightful that observation by the reader plays a major role in determining what kind of book it is. Depending on how the wave function collapses Quarantine may be a first rate horror novel/psychological thriller, a detective story that is the product of a marriage between cyberpunk and noir, an understated tale of tragic love, a first contact story, or a delightful exploration of some wild implications of QM. Of course, the book is all of these at once until the reader decides which it is. I'd recommend this book to people who like the their SF to have the science up front and center (not technobabble, but science), to people who liked cyberpunk but want something somewhat different, and to people who want weird worlds conveyed without weird literary techniques. May 11, 2016 Quarantine: Cool quantum mechanics, pedestrian plot Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Greg Egan is an Australian writer of hard science fiction who specializes in mathematics, epistemology, quantum theory, posthumanism, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc. When you pick up one of his books, you know you will be getting a fairly dense crash course in some pretty outlandish scientific and mathematical ideas, with the plot and characters coming second. The cover blurb advertises Quarantine as “A Novel of Quantum Catastrophe,” and the back describes “an impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15, 2034” causing riots and chaos. However, the book mainly takes place in Perth and New Hong Kong, which was relocated to Australia after the Chinese took over. So don’t expect too much galaxy-spanning space travel or conventional aliens. This book is about quantum physics, simultaneous ‘eigenstates’ when humans use neural ‘mods’ to ‘smear’ themselves before collapsing back into a single state of existence, erasing those infinite possibilities. The story centers on private investigator Nick Stavrianos, who is asked by an anonymous client to investigate the disappearance of Linda Andrews, a brain damaged patient at the Hilgemann Institute who, one day, disappeared from her room without a trace. It’s a fairly typical scenario, designed to reveal elements of the plot as his investigation progresses. Surprise, surprise, this is not just a random disappearance, but the tip of a much more elaborate conspiracy by shadowy organizations to exploit the neural ‘mods’ that could blow the lid off our conventional reality quicker than you can say ‘cookie-cutter private-eye story about collapsing wave functions and reality-altering nanotech mods.’ The early part of Quarantine establishes the nanotech-filled world of the 21st century, brimming with technological wonders but also with religious mania and terrorism inspired by the Bubble that surrounds the solar system. It’s not a pleasant world, and technological espionage is commonplace. Once Nick and Linda’s backstories are established, the book delves into its main subject matter, a revolutionary new mod that could allow the user (the ‘observer’ in the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment) to choose from an infinite number of quantum probabilities while ‘smeared’ when the wave function collapses back into a single reality. If this can be controlled, the possibilities are unlimited — pursuing personal profit, improving the lot of society, or perhaps something much more radical. Nick gets deeply embroiled in the conflicting factions seeking to control this mod, and the mechanism by which his loyalties are controlled is quite fascinating — one of the better ideas in the story. It’s not until things get extremely technical and complicated that we discover the connection between this reality-bending mod and the Bubble that mysteriously appeared at the beginning of the book. I’ve always been interested in quantum mechanics, Multiple Worlds Theory, nanotech, etc., and all the mind-bending possibilities that these ideas entail. Egan spends enough pages explaining quantum ‘smearing’ and ‘collapsing’ that even a complete layman like myself, who loves hard science fiction ideas but hates differential equations and complex calculations, to understand the basics. As Egan explains in a very illustrative article on his blog (Quantum Mechanics and Quarantine), he chose a very unlikely interpretation of quantum mechanics and wave function collapse in order to make an exciting and imaginative science fiction novel. In general, I think he succeeds at this, though at the expense of in-depth characterization. If that appeals to you, by all means give Quarantine a try. Out of all the possible quantum probabilities, this is probably one of the better iterations. Notes on the Audible Studios version: When I discovered that you can get many of Egan’s books in Kindle and Audible versions for the COMBINED price of $4.98, I figured that was just too good to pass up. In particular I snapped up Quarantine, Permutation City, and Diaspora as promising titles. Then I noticed the ratings on Audible were surprisingly low (the low 3s), and discovered that most of the audiobook readers liked the books but pilloried the narrator Adam Epstein for being completely inept — boring, bad accents, painfully slow, mispronouncing words. No wonder its so cheap, I thought. Maybe this was a mistake. But I knew I could at least fix one thing, the overly-slow narration speed, by simply selecting 1.5x speed, my normal pace. Perhaps some listeners aren’t aware of that option. Long story short, they were right that Adam Epstein is NOT a particularly good narrator, especially his atrocious Australian and Chinese accents and mispronouncing of words like Taoist (he read it as “T” rather than “D”) or ASEAN (he read it as “A-Shawn” instead of “As-ee-an”), which suggests he doesn’t listen to financial news at all. Surprisingly, I thought he soldiered through the technical parts fairly well, though they inevitably sounded like a textbook at times. However, I decided to forgive this since I am getting Greg Egan’s audiobooks for just $1.99 each. February 18, 2022 Mind-numbing, -blowing, -expanding novel. Fun beyond measure, I can’t get enough Egan right now. September 5, 2019 My head still hurts from reading this one, is it my head or one of my eigenstates' head? A book that takes the idea of each individual choice creating a separate path or separate you to an extreme AND tries to define it mathematically. Egan is sort of like PKD with a Physics degree, there is an incredible amount of interesting commentary packed into this, less than 300 page, book from bio mods changing who you are, but who cares because it is the same as drinking a cup of coffee, to this whole changing the universe idea just because you think it. I almost started over right when I finished just to see what I could get out of it the second time. My 2 quantum physics classes in college just barely prepared me, for sort of understanding where Egan got his math and because of that I can't really recommend this to anyone other than hard sci-fi fans or someone who is searching desperately for a PKD substitute. 3.5 stars rounded up because this IS my cup of tea, demerits for the too long eigenstate discussion which made part of the book a slog. I am definitely going to read another Egan book. November 9, 2020 What starts as a detective set in 2067 quickly turns into a head spinning novel about the possible existential effects of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics – more specifically the consciousness causes collapse variant. In short: humans observing stuff limits the number of possible worlds. If you thought the popcorn sci-fi of Dark Matter was hard, well, this is the real deal. On the other hand, compared to the only other Egan I’ve read so far – the brilliant Schild’s Ladder – this is an easier, more accessible book. The first half is smooth reading: Nick Stavrianos, a hardboiled PI, investigates a kidnapping/closed room mystery. The specifics of the setting – Earth quarantined by “an impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system” in 2034 – seem a cool yet inconsequential backdrop at first. It’s brilliant how Egan manages to weld the two mysteries together. The same goes for the other science fictional thing Quarantine features: mental modifications people install in their brains via nanobots. Again seemingly gimmicky in the first half of the book, it nonetheless gives the detective story a futuristic, exciting edge that would not be out of place in a Hollywood action flick. But as the story progresses (...) Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It July 20, 2020 An Egan novel, I’ve learned, follows a particular structure. It begins, like every other novel, by establishing the setting and characters and their aspiration & motivations. Usual stuff. Nothing crazy. Just ease the reader in, a normal sci-fi novel, nothing to worry- SUPER. EGAN. MODE. -and then it unleashes the math and science THUNDERSTEM! Egan lets loose with the true sci-fi aspect, building a wild ride out of an imaginative extrapolation of some major science idea. Same story with Quarantine, technically Egan’s second published novel, but typically considered his actual debut. The novel starts out as a detective / mystery novel, in which the main character - an ex-cop turned private investigator - is hired to find the whereabouts of a mentally retarded adult woman who somehow managed to escape her caretaking facility. Which occurs roughly 30 years after a giant black hole-esque “bubble” surrounded the solar system, cutting us off from the rest of the universe. That is, the titular quarantine. While lacking the stylistic flair of a Hammett or Chandler, all the trappings are there. A brave, if stoic, protagonist. A seemingly simple case that turns out to be not so simple at all. A mysterious and/or uncooperative client. Etc, etc. As someone who loves noir detective (and indeed wrote a novel in that style), I found this part to be satisfactory. But I wouldn’t call it great. But then the joy of an Egan novel isn’t its first half. It’s the second half’s Super Egan Mode, where his imagination truly shines. Which I’m now going to talk about, so… *SPOILER WARNING* The sci-fi premise of Quarantine relates to the observation problem of quantum mechanics. In QM, quantum particles are treated as probability waves that only “collapse” to a particular real state when observed. Which is a problem because we have no idea about the actual physical mechanism of collapse or observation. Assuming that collapse even occurs and isn’t merely some sort of mathematical artifact. And what counts as an observation anyway? As John Bell quipped, “Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of million years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some high qualified measurer - with a PhD?” Quarantine posits that the universe actually began in a perpetually uncollapsed state and that uncollapsed intelligent beings evolved within this universe. Which… well, I’d never considered that and it’s difficult to imagine, but doesn’t seem impossible? If the quantum world can exist in a largely uncollapsed state, why couldn’t our macro world? I mean, “micro” and “macro” are arbitrary, human-centric distinctions - who’s to say that our “micro” world isn’t some other species’ “macro” world, and vice versa? Well, regardless, mammals on Earth evolved neural structures capable of initiating a collapse. Which is problematic for the rest of the universe and those “uncollapsed” intelligent beings & civilizations. When we look to the stars, we collapse them into only those configurations which would cause us to see what we see. Which isn’t terrible - that leaves a lot of leeway, especially when you consider we’ve yet to directly observe dark matter or dark energy - over 95% of the universe. But as our instruments advance, we increase both the depth and breadth of our observations and destroy yet more possibilities. Hence… the Quarantine imposed on us. The main character actually gains the ability to turn off the collapse-inducing part of his brain and (crucially) the ability to change the probabilities/weight of the various possibilities. Thus he can choose WHICH potential state ends up being the real “collapsed” one. But even then it’s not really “he” doing the choosing but this sort of meta uncollapsed congolomeration of infinite versions of himself, a point of view that we never get to see first-hand. To actually write such a perspective requires a bit of narrative flubbing - you get this conceit where what we, the reader, are reading represents only a sort of retroactive memory of the actual chosen “collapsed” state. But we also go down a lot of dead ends, in the sense that we end up reading the perspective of one version of the protagonist who actually ends up not being the “real” one. It’s a clever bit of dramatic irony. Reminded me of The Demolished Man, which involves the main character misreading a secret code that the reader is perfectly capable of noticing. And much of the protagonist’s angst over whether he would turn out to be the “real” one reminded me of the character Angier in the film The Prestige, when he said: “It took courage... it took courage to climb into that machine every night... not knowing... if I'd be the man in the box... or the prestige.” Now, all throughout this second half, I had this strong sense that it didn’t quite all add up, but I was never able to consciously articulate what it was. It seems ludicrous that our world could be stable - that, for example, this book review would somehow collapse to the exact same words for every single reader at every single time - if it were constantly fluctuating between collapsed and uncollapsed states. And yet, in a sense, that’s how our world already is. We may look at a lawn-mower, for example, and it will appear completely solid and unchanging. But that isn’t the case. It’s just, from our macro perspective, we don’t really care about individual quantum particles. It doesn’t matter if every second a billion electrons tunnel out of their voltage wells to escape their atomic prisons because there’s a trillion trillion that don’t, enough to maintain the illusion. But there’s a difference between that and an entire macro object - a whole person - collapsing into extremely unlikely configurations. As Egan wrote in his essay on the matter, decoherence (essentially, external elements interfering with an “isolated” quantum system) would ruin the whole thing. Well, however the chips of reality may fall, it’s a fascinating thought-provoking read. But be warned: it is incredibly, though subtly, bleak. In contrast to my experience with other Egan novels, spending the time to ponder Quarantine left me feeling depressed. Because, despite all the ludicrous, wild events of the novel, the final line is: “It all adds up to normalcy.” And he’s exactly right. Wonder and magic can feel as powerful and fiery as blazing stars, but in the grand scheme of life, they’re ultimately only microscopic pinpricks of light in a vast and overwhelming void of normalcy. December 15, 2019 I started reading this book to complete my ABC challenge, as the only letter I needed was a "Q"...but to my surprise I liked the book a lot more than I had ever expected. Also I had no idea what it was about; only that it was science fiction..so I was surprised to find out the main character was an ex-cop who was now doing detective work. This story takes place in the future where advance tech is common. One type of this tech that is central to the story is mods that are downloaded into your brain and they run programs. The detective has one that can keep him calm by shutting down his emotions as it's important for police work. But mods can do all sorts of stuff and some might be illegal. And he has lots of mods. Thirty-some years ago something bizarre had happened: the stars had vanished! This event is part of the story. The science is very big in this book, especially quantum mechanics. Now I never dreamed I'd enjoy a book so much about quantum mechanics but to my utterly surprise I did. And before I started reading this I truly didn't know anything about it but I watched a few simple videos on YouTube and they gave me a general background on the subject. And I suppose it helped but the novel does explain it but I am glad I watched the videos. I just found this book far more interesting than the very famous book I read before this one (Night Circus) - I guess the unusual plot and the science just engaged my mind. In the story the detective sets out to find a missing woman and he ends up in New Hong Kong. But while there he ends up trying to save the world. As noted above, this story is very science heavy and it may not be for everyone. The plot deals with alternate realities, chance and of course why the stars vanished. It's not an action story. It's more about unraveling a mystery so the detective can find out what's really going on. And the plot does have several twists. He thinks he has it figured out but then it changes. This is the first book in a trilogy. I enjoyed this one enough that I'd like to read the others. I think it does a good job of explaining very complicated science in a way that most people can understand and what better way to do that than in a story? October 26, 2014 At the very hard edge of hard sf's furthest boundary is Greg Egan. One could describe Egan as one who writes fiction for scientists to read. This should not deter anyone else from reading his work though. The premise here is that (as in Robert Charles Wilson's 'Spin') an impenetrable barrier has been thrown around the Solar System, blotting out the stars. Nik Stavrianos is an ex-cop private detective in a near future Australia where many residents have been gene-sequenced to produce melanonin and are therefore now black. he left the service when an apocalypse cult (The Children of The Abyss) killed his wife but he keeps her within his consciousness as a virtual recording to occasionally spend time with him. Nik's latest case is to find a catatonic woman who somehow escaped three times from a high-security nursing home. The third time, so Nik discovers, she was kidnapped and taken to New Hong Kong. Nik's investigations lead him further than he would have imagined, into a company where the quantum nature of reality is being discovered and explored. The lead character's profession and backstory immediately give the novel a noir feel. It's a subtle touch. Undeniably the science seems faultless if at times a little impenetrable, but having said that, fascinating. Heisenberg, Schrodinger's Cat and the infinite multi-parallel universe come together to connect the woman's disappearance with the mysterious barrier surrounding the solar system. Amazing brain-workout stuff. June 1, 2015 The story revolves around the concept of the "observer effect" in quantum physics (the idea that what occurs in the world is based on multiple possible variants each of which exists simultaneously until some sort of "observation" causes a single version to become the only reality). Readers who can experience the bizarre consequences of Egan's interpretation of quantum physics as magic - and can flow with the magic making its rules as it goes along - will find a unique and incredible landscape. I've struggled with the unsatisfying oddities of the observer effect, wave-particle duality and such in the past. The thing is, (for me) experimental results don't seem to give a coherent picture, as I tried to express a few years ago in this short article: http://hardsf.org/Ques2Slt.htm As a result, the book brought up my problems with "quantum philosophy". I doubt this will impact many readers as it affected me. So, my rating of the book probably has less to do with the literary or speculative quality of the book than it reflects how the above issues complicated my reading of it. The book begins as an SF detective mystery, but transitions to a story about trying to understand possible ramifications of the observer effect (and controlling it). The book also envisions using nanotech to "rewire" areas in a person's brain in order to perform functions other books describe as being done by "neural implants". February 18, 2018 I remember reading this while I was in high school and it blowing my mind. I didnt understand some of it. Might be inetersting to re read to see what my older self thinks. September 21, 2011 4 Stars I am giving the overall of this book 4 stars only because Egan is not afraid to write hard science fiction. This is my second Egan novel that I have read, Clockwork Rocket (a book that I loved) being the first. Greg Egan is not afraid to use fiction to explore real science, physics, quantum mechanics, and deep philosophy. This book Quarantine, a first in a trilogy is focused around quantum mechanics, specifically around a measurement known as Schroedinger’s Cat. “Quantum mechanics describes microscopic systems—subatomic particles, atoms, molecules—with a mathematical formalism called wave function. From the wave function, you can predict the probabilities of getting various results when you make measurements on the system.” The multiverse theory has a strong basis around this, around the fact that for every observation made by man, a new universe is created. All outcomes are realized. This is fascinating stuff that is right up my alley. This book centers on our protagonist Nick Stavrianos, a private eye that is hired to find a girl that has gone missing from a high security hospital facility. The catch is, the girl Laura is a vegetable, non-responsive, and immobile. Did she get kidnapped? Did she somehow escape? Is there wrong doing? This mystery is the plot that is used to explore eigenstates, smearing, collapsing, observations, and finally genocide. Much of this book is philosophical as well as scientific as Nick comes to understand his role in the universe, the power of which he himself as an observer wields, and ultimately the perpetrator of cosmological scaled genocide. I ate up the philosophy, gave myself mass headaches as I tried to wrap my beliefs around this freaking cool concept, and eagerly read on to find out more that will mess with my head. Egan does not hold back, nor does he dumb down any of his concepts to make them more accessible…Bravo! Even if you do not buy into these theories, this science, or their morale’s, you cannot help being totally impressed by the implications that Egan pens in this book. The weakness of this book is the story as a whole. Although the plot works as a private eye type science fiction novel, and Nick is a decent protagonist, this book ends up being incomplete. It ends when the main threads are just being brought to a head. Questions are not answered. Plot lines are not completed, and we are left feeling like we were cheated. Move on to book two or get no satisfaction out of this one. In today’s market where everyone writes trilogies, this really makes me mad. I am a huge fan of Greg Egan now, and totally recommend him to all that love really hard science fiction novels. Be prepared, much of his writing may leave you needing to get a pen and paper out to try and follow his writing just like you did back in physics class. Physics, Mathematics, and life’s big philosophical questions are all explored here. I loved the science, I liked the detective mystery, but I hated the way it ended. May 17, 2019 This is exactly what you expect a book written by a mathematician to be. A living stereotype of Wigner's friend quantum mechanics explained to death. The good side: the hard sci-fi concepts are really cool and interesting and the world building is awesome. The bad side: sadly, the writer isn't experienced as a writer but he's using his books as a method to push his high flying concepts to people. The characters fall flat and I couldn't care much about the MC even though the book is written in first person and first person is supposed to make you root even for an unsympathetic character. Our MC feels a lot like a robot and honestly if they killed him and stuffed his brain in a jar I wouldn't have been bothered even a little. Then another problem is that after he introduces his setting, the author goes skimming even more on character development by introducing new characters who read like one big single secondary guy/girl. But the worst thing is that at some point the book derails completely into a mental experiment in quantum mechanics. You get this huge portion of the book where you just read pages and pages of logical derivations of the consequences of the quantum mechanical rules that were just introduced. Absolutely, this exercise is essential so that readers can follow how the setting rules will enforce what happens in act 3 of the book but the whole thing is so alienating and frankly tedious that I've read textbooks that are more exciting. At least textbooks have this habit leaving the exercise to the reader, habit which is sadly absent in this book. February 7, 2021 Starts off as a detective novel, then expands into a larger world of nanotech, alien contact and world manipulation through quantum mechanics. Comparable to The Lathe of Heaven, with more specifics given on the engines behind manipulation. Le Guin's book has the better story, though. This book has a lot going on in a short count of pages. Some force that has put out solar system into a kind of "bubble", a doomsday cult reacting to that event, nanotech and brain modifications similar to smartphone "apps", potential alien contact and the aforementioned quantum mechanical manipulations. I can see how tags like "cyberpunk" landed on it, but this really is more of a "what if" story focused on quantum states. I can't say much about the ending without spoiling the story. The author freely admits one of his interpretations is wrong, discussing it in a spoiler-filled essay on his website. Like most good science fiction, though, the exact method isn't the important factor in the examination. Discussions of the right to manipulate and which evils to choose are held between characters, with a lot of science in the mix, which could turn away more casual readers. Quibbles aside, I liked it - a solid 3½ stars. While listed as part of a "series", the author has clearly stated they are not connected at all; this book stands alone. I plan to read other stories from Egan in the near future. September 11, 2011 If you really like quantum mechanics and philosophizing on all of the strange reality that it entails, then you'll love this book. Otherwise, it's basically a mind f---. The ideas explored here aren't novel, but they are taken to such an extreme that it's hard to enjoy the book as a story instead of a thought experiment. And a challenging one at that - even with quite a bit of qm theory under my belt, I still ended up re-reading pages to make sure I kept everything straight. As a result, I only give Quarantine three stars - the first half is vibrant and enticing, but once the "real" thread of the story starts unraveling, you won't be doing much beyond trying to stay afloat. May 23, 2022 I enjoy how Egan plays with identity and technological modification, some of his novels are extreme in modification and some are less so, for Egan this was a "less so" and felt similar to a PKD novel - in the best possible way. There is a lot of overlap between how he deals with quantum woo and multiverse and how Neal Stephenson handles it in his great novel, Anathem. NS published Anathem 16yrs after Egan published Quarantine and I wonder if he was influenced by it. Anyway, its a fun sci-fi novel, especially for fans of Greg Egan. October 7, 2020 3.5 questo libro mi ha lasciato sentimenti contrastanti, d una parte grande ammirazione per l'autore che ha costruito l'intero romanzo su una sola ipotesi, speculando su questa per tutta la storia, dall'altro ho avuto momenti di difficoltà nel seguire alcuni "spiegoni", del resto non si potevano evitare perchè sono i pilastri su cui si legge il libro. Forse da rileggere tra qualche anno February 6, 2021 Notes: Thought provoking but failed to hold up within the story confines. February 15, 2017 I picked this up because I was drawn in by the private investigator/missing persons description, which the book definitely started with. Ironically, I had trouble concentrating on this book until it ended up taking a screeching turn away from a PI storyline and turned into a mindf*ck of a speculative science fiction novel; then, I was intrigued and reeled in until the end of this short "big idea" book. It's incredibly difficult to describe what this books is about, but contrary to my experience with other "hard" speculative science fiction novels that establish a modified framework for the story's reality based on the author's mathematics or physics knowledge, Quarantine didn't make me feel like Greg Egan is a pompous ass or that he was condescending to the reader. This could be because the tone of his writing is matter-of-fact, which others might find dry, but which helped me go along with Egan's thought experiment, pun intended. By using the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, Greg Egan explores the "big" questions about the nature of reality and the multitude of possibilities for the individual, society, and humanity. I think that knowing that this book was published in 1992 increased my intrigue, because it was prior to other novels that I've read that explore the idea of posthumanism, and its writing predates the widespread use of smart technology and apps, which are actually primitive versions of the brain "mods" in Quarantine. This book definitely isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it, since I'm the type of person who enjoys imagining systems that are technically not "real," that have user-specified parameters, and thinking, "Hmm, what would happen if we poked the system?" February 1, 2015 As good sci-fi should, 'Quarantine' takes an existing area of scientific study, asks the reader to accept a key concession, and turns the dial up to 11. In this instance, the area of study is the observer effect in quantum physics and the concession is that the collapsing of a quantum wave function is a process that is triggered specifically in the brain of the observer. From there it explores all kinds of nuanced philosophical implications, which I won't detail for fear of spoiling the fun. All this takes place within the framing device of a tech-noir detective story and an exciting adventure narrative. The characters are quite multifaceted and interesting - they're no mere conduits for the exploration of a hypothesis, but key players in an engaging story of corporate espionage and more. I can imagine that those who like their sci-fi particularly soft might not dig the crunch of 'Quarantine' quite so much, but I'm confident that even they should be able to enjoy the story otherwise. I wholeheartedly recommend this book. November 13, 2021 Una novela detectivesca situada en un futuro cercano donde la humanidad ha sufrido un Evento Alienígena, una Burbuja que los aísla del resto del Universo, y que poco a poco deriva en teoría de como la tecnología puede alterar los estados mentales, llegando a eliminar o atenuar los sentimientos, ya por propia elección o impuesto por terceros. Además de eso y por si fuera poco el misterio detectivesco va derivando en una "conspiracion" embarcada en descubrir quien, como y porque se ha generado la Burbuja, y poco a poco ese misterio nos lleva hacia una descripción y elaboración de diversas teorías de física cuántica. Por lo que he leido acerca de Egan una constante de sus historias es que son un vehículo para poder explicar y desarrollar esas teorías científicas, pero por lo menos a mi en esta novela me ha resultado muy llevadero y entretenido. January 7, 2016 There are three themes in the novel , it is so called Dyson sphere , quantum mechanics and nanotechnology. At the beginning of it the descriptions are drawing strongly and high technology is written in detail. (less) Jan 05, 2016 12:57PM · delete 40590836 Ami Iida " Schrödinger's cat" appears in it. If human being discovered quantum mechanism , we could not prosper consumer electronics products computer and ICT. But at the end of story is boring..................
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	7	https://subterraneanpress.com/the-best-of-greg-egan/	en	The Best of Greg Egan	https://cdn11.bigcommerc….386.513.jpg?c=1	https://cdn11.bigcommerc….386.513.jpg?c=1	[ "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/250x100/logo_1657049402__89678.original.png", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/6012/16982/Egan_The_Best_of_Greg_Egan_cover__08598.1687451103.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/160w/products/6012/16982/Egan_The_Best_of_Greg_Egan_cover__08598.1687451103.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/6134/17015/Hand_The_Best_of_Elizabeth_Hand_cover__70607.1687451106.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/6725/8052/best_of_lucius_shepard_1__16386.1687451121.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/6760/17219/Silverberg_The_Best_of_Robert_Silverberg_Stories_of_Six_Decades_cover__73607.1687451123.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/7065/15713/the_best_of_elizabeth_hand_1_1__50612.1687451124.jpg?c=1", "https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-65f8qukrjx/images/stencil/500x659/products/6786/17234/Smith_The_Best_of_Michael_Marshall_Smith_cover__78179.1687451120.jpg?c=1" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Subterranean Press creates readable art, publishing limited editions and groundbreaking original works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.	en	https://cdn11.bigcommerc…es/1/favicon.jpg	Subterranean Press	https://subterraneanpress.com/the-best-of-greg-egan/	Dust jacket illustration by David Ho. Greg Egan is arguably Australia’s greatest living science fiction writer. In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has produced a steady stream of novels and stories that address a wide range of scientific and philosophical concerns: artificial intelligence, higher mathematics, science vs religion, the nature of consciousness, and the impact of technology on the human personality. All these ideas and more find their way into this generous and illuminating collection, the clear product of a man who is both a master storyteller and a rigorous, exploratory thinker. The Best of Greg Egan contains twenty stories and novellas arranged in chronological order, and each of them is a brilliantly conceived, painstakingly developed gem. The book opens with “Learning to be Me,” about a society in which the organic human brain can be replaced by a miraculous piece of technology called “the jewel,” a “mock brain” that confers, among other things, a kind of immortality on its recipients. “Bit Players”—the opening movement in a trio of tales that continues with “3-adica” and “Instantiation”—posits a world in which cheaply generated software beings are exploited for the basest commercial purposes. (Other sets of interconnected stories—all of them reprinted here—include the mathematically-themed “Luminous” and “Dark Integers,” and a pair of stories centered on the complex marriage of a physicist and a mathematician: “Singleton” and “Oracle.”) “Reasons to be Cheerful,” concerns a young boy whose brain tumor has an unexpected effect on his life, moods, and view of the world. “Axiomatic” tells the story of a society in which “implants” can be used to alter the human personality, with potentially lethal results. And the Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is a powerful account of a boy whose deeply held religious beliefs are undermined by what he comes to learn about the laws of the physical world. This book really does represent the best of Greg Egan, and it therefore takes its place among the best of contemporary SF. Startling, intelligent and always hugely entertaining, it provides an ideal introduction to one of the most accomplished and original writers working today. This is an important and provocative collection, and it deserves a place on the serious science fiction reader’s permanent shelf. Limited: 1000 numbered hardcover copies From Publishers Weekly: “Egan’s talent for creating well-drawn characters shines in ‘Oracle,’ which imagines a debate between stand-ins for Alan Turing and C.S. Lewis, and ‘Zero for Conduct,’ in which a young Afghan woman invents ‘the world’s first room-temperature superconductor.’ Although demanding, this doorstopper will prove rewarding for anyone interested in technology’s role in shaping the world.” From Booklist (Starred Review): “Egan (Perihelion Summer, 2019), a master of short form science fiction, has collected twenty of what he considers the best of his short works from the past thirty years, By presenting these works in chronological order, the collection highlights the growth of his skill as a writer: readers witness his style become more elegant and subtle, his characters more nuanced and empathetic, his stories more incisive. As satisfying as each story is on its own, the greatest reward of this collection is witnessing Egan's development as a storyteller.” From Library Journal: “The author’s brand of hard sf is captivating, approachable, and not overly technical: he seems more interested in exploring the nature of identity, relationships, morality, and the occasional pathos of the human condition than the mechanics of the not-too-distant-future.” From Locus: “Egan is determined to make sense of everything—to understand the whole world as an intelligible, rational, material (and finally manipulable) realm—even if it means abandoning comfortable and comforting illusions. This is fundamental to the whole project of SF and it’s why Egan’s Best—and his Rest – is worth any number of looks.” Table of Contents:
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	62	http://www.concatenation.org/frev/incaegan.html	en	Incandescence by Greg Egan			[]	[]	[]	[ "SF", "sci fi", "science fiction", "Incandescence", "Greg Egan", "skiffy", "concatenation", "reviews", "book reviews", "SF book reviews", "SF books", "Tony Chester" ]	null	[]	null	Review of Incandescence by Greg Egan, (2008) Greg Egan, Gollancz, £12.99, pbk, 300pp, ISBN 0-575-08163-5, Tony Chester				null	Fiction Review Incandescence (2008) Greg Egan, Gollancz, £12.99, pbk, 300pp, ISBN 0-575-08163-5 It has been seven years since Egan's last novel, so to say this has been long awaited is something of an understatement. Of course, it has given Gollancz the opportunity to re-issue his previous eight books (seven novels and a collection of shorts) with similar covers to that on this new offering. I'm sure they'll look lovely on your shelves, though I'm not convinced that if you start here you'll necessarily want to pick up the rest.. You should though, especially if you like your SF good and 'hard'. As the New Scientist quote has it, "The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan." Like all authors he has his strengths and weaknesses and, in some respects, his work epitomises the perceived pros and cons of SF writing in general. SF was and still is the 'literature of ideas' and, consequently, plots (at least in hard SF) tend towards the central puzzle rather than, say, characterisation. Egan here certainly concentrates on the situation (how to survive in a deteriorating orbit near a neutron star close to galactic centre) rather than the characters. Indeed, Egan has often been criticised for having 'cardboard cut-out' characters, though I will happily defend him on that front: why should anyone expect even 'human' characters in the future to act the way that we do now? While we are short-lived (relatively speaking) it is unsurprising that we should all too often fall prey to, and express, our emotional and volatile passions; under which circumstances 'characters' will be written and explored accordingly. But Egan is writing about beings (albeit some of which may have started 'life' as organic humans) which can live for millennia in various organic or inorganic bodies, or even as data within a virtual reality, so why should they seem like us? Having said that, I do agree that sometimes Egan's characters do leave something to be desired, and I perfectly understand his critics. In the end, of course, it is up to you, dear reader: if you like hard SF and do not worry too much about the characters, then Egan is the man for you; if you like your SF, er, soft (as it were), then you should probably give him a miss. Of course, you may like both, but you can dig yourself out of that hole... So, to the plot. One million years from now the lifeforms that originated from DNA, including humans, form a meta-civilisation called the Amalgam which inhabits most of the galactic disc. However, in the core live the Aloof who deliberately have no contact with the Amalgam; but the Aloof do allow citizens of the Amalgam to cross their territory in the form of data, by way of a 'short cut' for travellers. Then the Aloof send out a message that they have discovered within their space a meteor which contains DNA fragments. Rakesh and Parantham of the Amalgam journey deep within the core to solve the mystery of how the DNA got there. Over time they discover that there must have been a world of organic beings that was destroyed, and soon they are searching for any survivors. Meanwhile, those survivors, including Roi and Zak, now live on the Splinter, a fragment of the homeworld in orbit around a neutron star, under threat of destruction on two fronts. Firstly their orbit is deteriorating and the Splinter is falling toward the neutron star, and secondly the neutron star itself is ripping apart another nearby star (all stars being 'nearby' in the core, relatively speaking) and the infalling matter from that star is buffeting the Splinter. Can Roi and Zak teach themselves and the other survivors enough physics to save the Splinter? And can Rakesh and Parantham discover their whereabouts in time to be of any help? Notwithstanding the criticisms of Egan's characters cited above, while Rakesh and Parantham are somewhat wooden, Roi and Zak are pretty well-rounded. However, there's no denying that the emphasis in this book is the good ol' SF sensawonder, with a hard SF tour of conditions at the heart of our galaxy, and Egan has a maestro's touch when it comes to explaining how the Splinter's inhabitants can teach themselves physics, even under extreme conditions. As a science-loving SF fan I have to say that I have got no problems with this book (barring a certain amount of disappointment at the end, in the (hopefully) positive sense of wanting more). So this is highly recommended, bearing in mind my comments at the beginning. Tony Chester Also see Jonathan's review of Incandescence. [Up: Fiction Reviews Index \| SF Author: Website Links \| Home Page: Concatenation] [One Page Futures Short Stories \| Recent Site Additions \| Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	58	https://elflands2ndcousin.com/tag/greg-egan/	en	The King of Elfland's Second Cousin	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=200&ts=1721845349	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=200&ts=1721845349	[ "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/definition-of-sff.png?w=94&h=94&crop=1", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0765331969&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0061120057&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0345438353&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=055359107X&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/definition-of-sff.png?w=300&h=238", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=006112009X&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1876963468&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0544003411&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20", "http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1597802271&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=thekinofelfs2-20&ServiceVersion=20070822", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/star.png", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/star.png", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/theclockworkrocket-plot-chart.png?w=247&h=251", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553297090&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B003XVYLEY&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1585676837&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B003VPWZU4&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553560735&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0765319640&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=076534825X&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://elflands2ndcousin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/theclockworkrocket-intensity.png?w=300&h=200", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553560735&camp=217145&creative=399369", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1848876807&camp=217145&creative=399373", "http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thekinofelfs2-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802271&camp=217145&creative=399373", "https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/linen/images/flw-twitter.png", "https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/linen/images/flw-rss.png", "https://i0.wp.com/www.bloggapedia.com/bp_small_images/blog-gapedia9.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Posts about Greg Egan written by Chris Gerwel	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/9d32276f9c54959ba582fb48cb864a01a4293a3c228067371997447262479f64?s=32	The King of Elfland's Second Cousin	https://elflands2ndcousin.com/tag/greg-egan/	The Limits of Wonder and Defining Speculative Fiction Much as I love genre theory, I typically steer clear of taxonomic debates. I find that genre classification tends to put the cart before the horse, to be the critical equivalent of describing an engine in terms of its color. Most such debate reduces to a collection of observations that do little to advance our understanding of how narrative mechanisms actually function. Yet over the weekend, Ian Sales posted a thought-provoking essay which diverges from this general rule. Unlike most attempts at genre taxonomy, Sales’ definition of speculative fiction tries to be systematic and comprehensive, built from a set of first principles articulated in previous essays on wonder and the source of agency in SF/F. On balance, Sales’ focus and clarity of thought make his proposed definition that rare critical beast: a critically helpful taxonomic construct. Unfortunately, Sales’ definition of speculative fiction is also flawed. Where Do Definitions Come From? There is much in Sales’ essay that I agree with, and I think the most important point he makes is this: A useful definition has to describe something intrinsic to the text, not something extra-textual. If a taxonomy is to be valid, true, and useful then it must emerge from the texts being analyzed. While I know some in the arts who look askance at the scientific method, basic logic suggests that a viable theory must be supported by repeatable observation. If we wish to define a genre, we must point to the identifiable and unique features of that genre. Romance, for example, benefits from a beautifully succinct definition: “Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.” One could likely come up with something just as elegant for mystery/crime or westerns. But it is the broad, all-encompassing categories like speculative fiction and mainstream literature whose defining characteristics become harder to pin down, and that is because the reasons we enjoy them often occlude their underlying structures. Dragons, aliens, magic, faster-than-light travel, etc. are extremely rare in mainstream literary fiction. When we read speculative fiction, they can offer us that pernicious “sense of wonder” which so often muddles critical analysis of the genre. On a superficial level, identifying speculative fiction by its devices has the simultaneous benefit of being easy and rarely incorrect. But it is a superficial and facile approach that fails to tell us anything about either how the narrative is constructed or how that construction contributes to its effects. Sales is right to point to the weakness of identifying genre based on the devices that appear in the text. Just because a book features dragons or elves does not mean it is fantasy (or rather, does not mean it isn’t science fiction). Consider the science fictional treatment of dragons in both Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (which I discussed at greater length here) and Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, or Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance’s fantastical treatments of hard science in The Book of the New Sun and Tales of the Dying Earth, respectively. As these works make clear, genre taxonomy cannot be reduced to a checklist of tropes. How such devices are used in the text and their relationships with the narrative’s characters, plots, themes, and settings have a greater significance than the mere fact of their mention. While Sales’ stated goal (to define speculative fiction using characteristics intrinsic to the text) is one with which I am in complete agreement, I fear that his definition falls wide of the mark. Of his two defining criteria (wonder and [the source of narrative] agency), fully one half is external to the text and based entirely on a reader’s subjective, individual experience of the narrative. Critically Pernicious Wonder “Sense of wonder” is a critically contentious term that seems to come in and out of vogue every generation. I personally subscribe to the belief that it does have critical value, but only insofar as one of several diagnostic tools. Its utility as a criterion for definition is limited by the fact that our mileage may vary. Sales argues – in line with reasoning by Romanian SF critic Cornel Robu – that “wonder” is centrally concerned with scale, and that science fiction fosters a sense of wonder through the actualization of scale in the reader’s perception. To be clear, this is not a bad way of thinking about wonder. But it is a very specific, highly individual, and rather limited one. In my own reading, I find that many concepts, images, devices, and even phrases can foster a sense of wonder. For me, it isn’t all about scale: It may also relate to emotional intimacy (e.g. John Crowley’s Little, Big), or spirituality (e.g. James Blish’s A Case of Conscience), or mathematical or rhetorical elegance (Greg Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket and Elizabeth Bear’s Dust, respectively). Many have written about “wonder” as touching on the sublime, verging on the transcendent, or as enabling a reader’s conceptual breakthrough. As a concept, it has descriptive value. But its own definition is imprecise, and that very imprecision stems from the term’s innate subjectivity. Wonder is a quality intrinsic to the reader’s experience, and not to the text. As a result, an epistemological definition of speculative fiction that uses wonder as one of its two legs cannot stand. “Sense of wonder” is neither a quantifiable nor an independently repeatable observation that can be made for a given text. This weakness is further supported by Sales’ own (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) equation for quantifying wonder, which itself relies on four inputs which are personal to the reader and have nothing to do with the text in question. An Alternative Definition of Speculative Fiction However, Sales’ definition does have value. I particularly appreciate his insight into the source of narrative agency. I’ve been thinking about his breakdown for the last couple of days, and I think he makes an excellent point: Science fiction and fantasy can be differentiated by the narrative text’s implied prime mover. Fantasy’s implicit prime mover is the author, while science fiction’s implicit prime mover is deterministic natural law (which is, admittedly, often conceived and communicated by the author). Of course, the author in all cases has control over both the narrative and their fictional world. However, what Sales really highlights isn’t the question of how the story is imbued with narrative agency. Rather, it is the implied author’s relationship/attitude towards their fictional reality. If the text communicates the implied author’s attitude as explicitly deterministic or naturalistic, then the work is likely to be science fictional. If the text communicates that attitude as either unexamined, theological (even given a fictional religion), or metaphysical, then the work is likely to be fantasy. Such a characterization seems to be broadly consistent with Sales’ use of “agency”, yet such a distinction is useful inasmuch as it helps us to differentiate science fiction from fantasy. However, it does little to differentiate speculative fiction from other more mainstream genres. Rather than utilize “wonder” as the definition’s second axis, I would instead suggest the centrality of the speculative/impossible to the plot. The more speculative the plot, the more likely a given work can be deemed speculative fiction. That seems somewhat tautological, but it allows us to neatly place any work of fiction along a spectrum of “speculation”. This alternative definition seems to be less susceptible to edge cases than Sales’ original: By taking into account the totality of the implied author’s relationship to their fictional reality, works like Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination can still be comfortably classified as science fiction despite their central speculative conceit going relatively unexamined. At the same time, by exploring the speculative elements’ relationship to the plot (as opposed, for example, to the theme) we can differentiate works of magic realism like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude from secondary world fantasies like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This lets us construct several precise definitions actually based on characteristics that are observable within the text: Speculative fiction is fiction where speculative elements (i.e. devices of the fantastic, scientific extrapolation, impossible conceits, etc.) are central to the narrative’s plot specifically, irrespective of their relationship to either theme or character. Fantasy is speculative fiction where the implied author’s relationship to the fictional reality is unexamined, theological, or metaphysical in nature. A fantasy’s implied author accepts the fictional reality without necessarily trying to explain it. Science fiction is speculative fiction where the implied author’s relationship to the fictional reality is deterministic or naturalistic. A science fiction’s implied author assumes and communicates an explicable fictional reality. By focusing on the relationship of a narrative’s speculative elements to its plot and the implied author’s attitude towards their fictional reality, we gain the ability to discuss the use of the fantastic and the speculative as metaphors and conceits, and to apply that discussion against narrative structure, techniques of characterization, and narrative subtext. In other words, these definitions provide us with increased analytical clarity and precision – which is what definitions are meant to provide. REVIEW: The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan Title: The Clockwork Rocket Author: Greg Egan Pub Date: June 21, 2011 Chris’ Rating (5 possible): An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like… Timescape Tau Zero Non-Stop Picoverse Red Mars Blindsight Spin Before I get into reviewing Greg Egan’s new book The Clockwork Rocket, I feel I must offer a disclaimer: I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician. The fact that I need to preface a discussion of the book with such a disclaimer should already tell you a lot about it. The Clockwork Rocket is hard science fiction, an impressive exercise in rationalist world-building that posits a universe whose physics differs significantly from our own. And while the book wins my applause for its science and world-building, I’m afraid the characters left a little to be desired. The Clockwork Rocket follows the character of Yalda, a non-human female who lives on a planet quite unlike the Earth we know. She comes from a rural farming backwater, where few people are literate (despite the fact that her species can naturally manipulate their bodies’ shape and structure with enough precision to form symbols on their skin). From the start of the book, Yalda is set apart from her neighbors. Unlike most of her siblings and cousins, she is introduced as a child who is discriminated against due to her lack of a predetermined mate and her large size. Using a child perspective character to gradually introduce the reader to some pretty complicated world-building is an old trick, but Egan pulls it off reasonably well. As Yalda learns about the physics of her world, we learn alongside her. When she becomes a teacher, we learn along with her students. The book is structured such that each chapter represents a particular event in her life, with jumps of indeterminate time between them – sometimes spanning days, other times entire years. We get to follow Yalda as she leaves the family farm, and begins to get a proper university education…still subject to her society’s discrimination and social expectation that females should be content to die giving birth to their children. By the end of the first several pages, we are absolutely certain that we are not in Kansas anymore. If the structure introduces a problem, it is that there is a colossal amount of world-building to communicate. How much world-building would that be? Well, over on his web site Egan has posted over 80,000 words (that is not a typo) of notes on the physics and math alone. They are a thing of beauty. He’s even got cool tutorial videos! However, the strategy employed and the density of the world-building both lead the first half of the book to consist of little other than one scientist explaining something to another scientist (with copious diagrams and some explanation of formula). While the explanations are intellectually interesting, the lack of emotional tension and density of the scientific material may be off-putting to some readers. From a plotting standpoint, two basic tensions are introduced. First, Yalda’s species has an interesting reproductive cycle. Females die giving birth, and if they delay reproduction for too long they risk involuntary parthenogenesis. This creates an interesting dynamic between the genders of her species, and leads to some thematic tension. Because she lacks a mate, Yalda is under particular pressure by the establishment of her society. As an independent thinker who aggressively seeks education and rejects the standard female role in her society, she challenges that establishment, and of course that establishment pushes back. It was refreshing to see that throughout the book, Yalda at no point needs to be rescued by a man. I can respect a hard SF story that puts a female scientist in jeopardy and doesn’t have her rely on an alpha male to save her. The second tension is an impending apocalypse caused by two universes (with different rules of physics) colliding. As they collide, Yalda’s world is in danger of being destroyed. As a theoretical physicist and the discoverer of her universe’s flavor of relativity, Yalda is at the heart of her species’ efforts to save themselves. Their solution – to build a rocket ship that can be taken out of time, filled with top scientists, and then re-inserted into their timeline when the scientists’ descendents have figured out a solution – is ingenious. It is really cool that Egan’s alternative rules of physics make this plausible. One would think that both the societal pressure and the risk of apocalypse would lend Yalda’s story a degree of emotional tension, but unfortunately whatever tension is produced gets subsumed by the sheer volume of diagrams and scientific explanations. The physics are fascinating – but I found that I didn’t quite care about the character as much as I would have liked to. This is especially a problem for the first half of the book, where the reader’s learning curve is very high. Once we’re grounded in the physics, the character and her problems become more engaging. But two hundred pages of world-building is a lot to plow through before we can really start investing in our perspective character. The Clockwork Rocket is not unique in this issue: much hard SF shares this problem (Kim Stanley Robinson’s classic Red Mars comes to mind). While readers used to hard SF who enjoy the intellectual challenge may enjoy this, it is not for everyone. Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket is particularly interesting when compared to Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Like Egan, Yu posits a universe with rules of physics entirely different from our own. But Yu’s book focuses on the internal and emotional experience of his everyman character. It is through his character that we understand Yu’s world-building. Egan’s strategy is to focus on the world-building first, and then have the character follow. These two different approaches yield very different reading experiences. Ultimately, I found The Clockwork Rocket reasonably satisfying. But that satisfaction was very cerebral: the book resonated intellectually with me in the same way that a particularly neat thought experiment might. Fans of hard SF will love the complexity, rigor, and comprehensiveness of Egan’s world building. However, now that Egan’s universe is introduced and his characters are left in a fairly interesting situation, I hope the next book focuses more on the characters and less on the physics. The physics are great – but alone they can’t really carry the story.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	16	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/tag/greg-egan/	en	Brainfluff	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=200&ts=1721845309	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=200&ts=1721845309	[ "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/friday-face-off-new.jpg?w=652&h=135", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts2.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts3.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dichronauts0.gif?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/emperorofthefireflies.jpg?w=174&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/mirandaandcaliban.jpg?w=198&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/afteratlas.jpg?w=192&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/luna-wolf-moon.jpg?w=197&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/wintertide.jpg?w=198&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/theforevercourt.jpg?w=196&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/scavengeralliance.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/coldwelcome.jpg?w=194&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/theloststeersman.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/heirtothenorth.jpg?w=188&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/seaofrust.jpg?w=196&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/thelastdogonearth.jpg?w=191&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/empireofdust.jpg?w=225&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/thewizardsofonce.jpg?w=200&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/whirligig.jpg?w=187&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gnomon.jpg?w=195&h=300", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts1.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/fritillary-bee-on-rudbeckia1.jpg?w=652&h=502", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/100_5474.jpg?w=141&h=188", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/100_5487.jpg?w=186&h=140", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/dichronauts.jpg?w=100&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/thefallenkingdom1.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/slouchwitch.jpg?w=100&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/theforeverwatch.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/childrenoftime.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/fledgling.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/marrow.jpg?w=92&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/the-long-way-666x1024.jpg?w=98&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/foreigner.jpg?w=93&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/footfall.jpg?w=105&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/norcrystaltears.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/embassytown.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/theclockworkrocket.jpg?w=101&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/foreigner.jpg?w=93&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/footfall.jpg?w=105&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/norcrystaltears.jpg?w=94&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/embassytown.jpg?w=99&h=150", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eternalflame.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/wake-of.jpg?w=141&h=217", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/doomsday.jpg?w=156&h=241", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1world.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/clockwork.jpg?w=133&h=197", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/glassgod.jpg?w=130&h=206", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/half-forgotten-song.jpg?w=160&h=240", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/darkeden.jpg?w=120&h=188", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/redknight.jpg?w=154&h=234", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/sister.jpg?w=140&h=221", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/advent.jpg?w=138&h=211", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/kindofvanishing.jpg?w=153&h=231", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/madscientistsdaughter.jpg?w=171&h=259", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/reason-i-jump.jpg?w=159&h=242", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/among-others1.jpg?w=156&h=244", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/clockworkrocket.jpg?w=652", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/picky-eaters-1-ebook-final-cover-1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/flame-and-blame-ebook4.png?w=185", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/mantivore-dreams2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/mantivore-prey-final-ebook.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/mantivore-warrior-cover-art-lo-res1.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-roos-plus-spaceship-3.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sjh-dying-for-space-ebook-plus-spaceship.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/sjh-breathing-space-ebook-plus-space-station-2.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sunblinded-box-set-cover.jpg?w=2000", "https://sjhigbee.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/netted-hi-res.jpg?w=200", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/netgalley-reviewer-badge.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/eighty_percent_feedback_ratio_120.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/infinitydreamsaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/bunny-hop.gif", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/liebster-award1.png", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/champions-awards.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dragonaward.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/real-neat-blog-award.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/versitle-blogger1.jpg", "https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/sunshine.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=50&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Flogo%2Fwpcom-gray-white.png", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2019-07-19T18:18:21+00:00	Posts about Greg Egan written by sjhigbee	en	https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3b8f26dbd392b6fc1bf5180e98257799bc5f1a1e65fd96c3d4ae98f69a0a0247?s=32	Brainfluff	https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/tag/greg-egan/	Last year was yet another bumper year for reading, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. As usual, I’ll list the ones that stood out for me – and we’re not talking a top ten. I completed 174 books last year, but won’t go into too much detail in this article about my overall 2017 reading experience, as today it’s all about those that gave me the tingle factor. Most will have received a perfect ten on my scoring system, however there will be a couple that didn’t. The reason they are here is because that after I’d finished reading and writing about them, they didn’t go away, but continued to linger in my thoughts. So here they are, in no particular order:- Emperor of the Fireflies – Book 2 of the Tide Dragons series by Sarah Ash This godpunk duology set within the Japanese pantheon centres around a beautiful, dark-edged myth. Ash’s lyrical prose and deft handling of this tale has stayed with me throughout the year, despite having read it last January. See my review here. Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey I absolutely fell in love with this haunting retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. While I enjoyed and admired Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed – another strong contender – this one stole my heart. The ending gave me goosebumps, while making me weep. That doesn’t happen very often. See my review here. After Atlas – Book 2 of the Planetfall series by Emma Newman While I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, Planetfall, this one blew me away. The characterisation, the horrible situation the protagonist finds himself in – it all got under my skin to the extent that I woke my husband up as I yelled in shock at a particular point in the book. I can’t wait to see where Newman goes next with this amazing series. See my review here. Wolf Moon – Book 2 of the Luna duology by Ian McDonald This depiction of an existence on the Moon where rampant capitalism holds sway hasn’t left me alone since I read this one. McDonald has called it ‘A game of domes’ and he certainly has nailed the deadly powerplays the main families indulge in with his reference to George R.R. Martin’s epic. I keep thinking about that ending… See my review here. Winter Tide – Book 1 of the Innesmouth Legacy by Ruthanna Emrys This book was a delightful surprise – I had no idea the writing would pull me into this version of Lovecraft’s monstrous world, with a strong, sympathetic protagonist who is one of the few survivors of the attack on Innesmouth years ago. I loved it and am very much looking forward to reading more in this fantastic series. See my review here. The Forever Court – Book 2 of The Knights of the Borrowed Dark trilogy by Dave Rudden I enjoyed the first book in this series, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, finding Rudden’s punchy prose style both enjoyable and memorable. But this sequel builds on the first with an engrossing adventure and some amazing characters. It’s far too good to leave just for the children. See my review here. Scavenger Alliance – Book 1 of the Exodus series by Janet Edwards I have thoroughly enjoyed all Edwards’ books – but this managed to nock up the stakes to a point I could not put it down until I’d finished reading it. I have rules about never reading or watching TV until after 5.30 pm – otherwise I’d never get anything done. I broke that rule for this book. See my review here. Cold Welcome – Book 1 of Vatta’s Peace by Elizabeth Moon This is a new spinoff series by a much-loved author which I was delighted to read – even better, it was a storming adventure that proved to be an engrossing page-turner. I remembered all over again why I love reading this author. See my review here. Dichronauts by Greg Egan No one writes different aliens as well as Greg Egan – and I loved this adventure. I’m very much hoping it turns into a series as I would love to spend more time following the fortunes of these amazing creatures. See my review here. The Lost Steersman – Book 3 of The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein This is a series I read longer ago than I care to recall – and when I saw it had appeared in Kindle, I snapped it up and reread it, something I hardly ever do. My instincts were spot on – I have thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this engrossing world and following Rowena’s adventures in this smart, cleverly written fantasy/science fiction mashup. This is the particular story that has stayed with me, though the other books in the series are just as good. See my review here. Heir to the North – Book 1 of Malessar’s Curse by Steven Poore This epic fantasy got under my skin and into my heart in a way that doesn’t often happen with this genre. I loved the clever, clever twist at the end and one of the treats in 2018 is to tuck into the sequel, The High King’s Vengeance. See my review here. Sea of Rust by Robert C. Cargill This was another amazing book that came out of the blue – I’d not read anything by this author before and was delighted by this post-apocalyptic world peopled by robots who are starting to wear out and fail. With no factories or warehouses full of spare parts anymore, the only option is to harvest those parts from other robots. See my review here. The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian J. Walker I’ve read a number of apocalyptic tales during the year, however in this version Walker triumphantly succeeds in giving us a dog’s version of a complete collapse in law and order. And the chilling results of what happens when that order is reimposed by the wrong people. See my review here. Empire of Dust – Book 1 of the Psi-Tech novels by Jacey Beford This epic science fiction adventure stood out because of the flawed protagonist and the gritty depiction of establishing a colony. I really enjoyed the world and the fact that love clearly doesn’t cure all. I’m looking forward to reading more from this talented author. See my review here. The Wizards of Once – Book 1 of The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell After her marvellous series How To Train Your Dragon, I was interested to see how she would follow it up. The writing is more lyrical, the underlying poignancy is more pronounced. My elderly Kindle didn’t like the illustrations throughout this book and part of my Christmas money is going on buying a print version of this book. Not for the grandchildren – for me. See my review here. Whirligig: Keeping the Promise – Book 1 of Shire’s Union by Richard Buxton I have to declare an interest – Richard is a former student and I had read some extracts from a very early draft. However that did not prepare me for the excellence of the writing, where this historical adventure finds two young English people from the same small village ending up in America during the Civil War. They are both caught in quite different ways and this story just kept on delivering in terms of plot twists and tension. See my review here. Gnomon by Nick Harkaway This doorstopper is extraordinary. Don’t ask me what the storyline is – other than recalling there are five main protagonists with very different and vivid voices, it’s too complicated to recall. What I do remember is that very early on I took the decision to slow right down and savour this book as reads like this don’t come along all that often. It took me 10 days to get through this one and I recall feeling sad when it came to the end. See my review here. To pare the list down to this required setting aside other books that still hurt to leave out – the likes of Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett, Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts, The Invisible Library books by Genevieve Cogman and The Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews all missed making this list by a whisker. If you force to me to choose just one of these books, I’ll probably never forgive you, but it would have to be After Atlas. What were your outstanding reads of the year? This is part of the weekly meme over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where book bloggers can share the books and blogs they have written. Last Sunday was my birthday party – held by my marvellous mother and it gave a great excuse to provide a gathering of the clan. It was a wonderful occasion with a purple theme (to match my new hair colour) and rounded off the now regular ritual of the family rounders game. Once again, we were very fortunate with the weather which was warm and sunny – ideal for a party in the garden. During the week, I’ve been enjoying Wimbledon – I’ve loved watching it since I was a teenager who played tennis for the school – and found the current heatwave a joy. It has brought back so many happy memories of other hot summers years ago. On Tuesday, my sister and I attended a talk on the history of watches at Worthing Library given by one of my writing group buddies, Geoff Alnutt – aka The Speechpainter. He covered the history of watchmaking in the last century by focusing on ten iconic wrist watches in a fascinating and informative presentation. On the way home, we stopped off to walk along the seafront and up the riverside walk in Littlehampton to admire the stunning sunset, reflected in the pond-smooth sea and river. A magical end to a lovely evening… This week-end, Oscar is staying with us, after phoning me up to tell me that he had grade As for every subject in his report – including for trying, being polite and working hard, as well as for being academically clever. My sister came over for a meal last night and we plan to have breakfast together at a local café and then walk along the beach before it becomes too crowded. This week I have read: Dichronauts by Greg Egan Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. Theo, in turn, relies on Seth for mobility, and for ordinary vision looking forwards and backwards. Like everyone else in their world, they are symbionts, depending on each other to survive. In the universe containing Seth’s world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dark cone” to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate as far as north-north-east is every bit as impossible as accelerating to the speed of light. Every living thing in Seth’s world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun’s shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates. Cities are being constantly disassembled at one edge and rebuilt at the other, with surveyors mapping safe routes ahead. But when Seth and Theo join an expedition to the edge of the habitable zone, they discover a terrifying threat This is another amazing hard science fiction offering from one of the most inventive, imaginative writers who has ever penned a futuristic story. But you really need to visit Greg Egan’s website to get a real sense of the rules that run this particular world. The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May Aileana Kameron, resurrected by ancient fae magic, returns to the world she once knew with no memory of her past and with dangerous powers she struggles to control. Desperate to break the curse that pits two factions of the fae against each other in a struggle that will decide the fate of the human and fae worlds, her only hope is hidden in an ancient book guarded by the legendary Morrigan, a faery of immense power and cruelty. To save the world and the people she loves, Aileana must learn to harness her dark new powers even as they are slowly destroying her. A gripping read that brings this engrossing YA fantasy/steampunk mash-up series to a triumphantly successful conclusion. This series is one of my favourites of the year so far. Slouch Witch – Book 1 of The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic series by Helen Harper Let’s get one thing straight – Ivy Wilde is not a heroine. In fact, she’s probably the last witch in the world who you’d call if you needed a magical helping hand, regardless of her actual abilities. If it were down to Ivy, she’d spend all day every day on her sofa where she could watch TV, munch junk food and talk to her feline familiar to her heart’s content. However, when a bureaucratic disaster ends up with Ivy as the victim of a case of mistaken identity, she’s yanked very unwillingly into Arcane Branch, the investigative department of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Her problems are quadrupled when a valuable object is stolen right from under the Order’s noses. It doesn’t exactly help that she’s been magically bound to Adeptus Exemptus Raphael Winter. He might have piercing sapphire eyes and a body which a cover model would be proud of but, as far as Ivy’s concerned, he’s a walking advertisement for the joyless perils of too much witch-work. And if he makes her go to the gym again, she’s definitely going to turn him into a frog. Himself tracked this one down – and once he’d read it, immediately commanded I do the same. He’s right. It’s sharp, funny and original with an excellent world and strong magic structure. I’m delighted to report that the sequel is being released any day now. My posts last week: Sunday Post – 2nd July 2017 NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of Eleventh Hour – Book 8 of the Kit Marlowe series by M.J. Trow Teaser Tuesday featuring The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of Sungrazer – Book 2 of the Outriders series by Jay Posey Shoot for the Moon Challenge 2017 – June Roundup Friday Face-off – All that is gold does not glitter featuring Making Money – Book 36 of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of The Fallen Kingdom – Book 3 of The Falconer series by Elizabeth May Interesting/outstanding blogs and articles that have caught my attention during the last week, in no particular order: Happy Belated Birthday Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone https://coffeeandcatsblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/happy-belated-birthday-harry-potter-and-the-philosophers-stone/ This is a lovely article celebrates the publication of this genre-changing series – and charts the impact it had on one particular family On the Science of Bibliosmia: That Enticing Book Smell https://interestingliterature.com/2017/07/07/on-the-science-of-bibliosmia-that-enticing-book-smell/ A fascinating look at the history of our relationship with books – other than reading them… On Writing – food for thought http://earthianhivemind.net/2017/07/07/writing-food-thought/ There are lots of quotes on writing, but these two that Steph has selected are particularly apt and useful. When Book Covers Fail Characters https://kristentwardowski.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/when-book-covers-fail-book-characters/ I’m fascinated by this subject – as anyone who has read my weekly Friday Face-off will know and Kristen has some interesting things to say about it. 3 Reasons Why I Love Doing Research http://melfka.com/archives/2353 An excellent article on one of the tasks all writers have to tackle – and Joanna’s love of it. Thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to visit, like and comment on my site and may you have a great week. I have a particular weakness for space operas. It’s an abiding disappointment that I’ll never make it into space – but at least I can do so vicariously with the magic of books. And these are a handful of my favourites in no particular order… The Forever Watch by David Ramirez The Noah: a city-sized ship, four hundred years into an epic voyage to another planet. In a world where deeds, and even thoughts, cannot be kept secret, a man is murdered; his body so ruined that his identity must be established from DNA evidence. Within hours, all trace of the crime is swept away, hidden as though it never happened. Hana Dempsey, a mid-level bureaucrat genetically modified to use the Noah’s telepathic internet, begins to investigate. Her search for the truth will uncover the impossible: a serial killer who has been operating on board for a lifetime… if not longer. And behind the killer lies a conspiracy centuries in the making. Generational ship science fiction provides an ideal backdrop for any kind of drama, given that it is the ultimate closed system. And because it is also entirely imaginary, it means an author can add/tweak all sorts of details designed to ramp up the tension and increase the sense of claustrophobia… So does Ramirez take full advantage of this scenario? Oh yes. This is an extraordinary tale – and the final twist took my breath away. Read the rest of my review here. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky And this is another gem that makes extensive use of the generational ship device… The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age – a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But guarding it is its creator, Dr Avrana Kern with a lethal array of weaponry, determined to fight off these refugees. For she has prepared this pristine world seeded with a very special nanovirus for a number of monkey species to be uplifted into what human beings should have turned into – instead of the battling, acquisitive creatures who destroyed Earth… Kern’s plans go awry and the species that actually becomes uplifted isn’t Kern’s monkeys, at all. In a tale of unintended consequences, it would have only taken a couple of tweaks for this to morph into a Douglas-Adams type farce. But it doesn’t, as the ship’s desperate plight becomes ever sharper and the species continues to evolve into something unintended and formidable. I love the wit and finesse with which Tchaikovsky handles this sub-genre and turns it into something original and enjoyable. Read the rest of my review here. Fledgeling – a New Liaden novel by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee Having trumpeted this post as being all about space operas, I’m now giving you a book where there is hardly any space ship action – but that is because it is the start of a long-running series, which deserves to read in the correct order. Delgado is a Safe World. That means the population is monitored – for its own good – and behaviour dangerous to society is quickly corrected. Delgado is also the home of one of the galaxy’s premier institutions of higher learning, producing both impeccable research and scholars of flair and genius. On Safe Delgado, then, Theo Waitley, daughter of Professor Kamele Waitley, latest in a long line of Waitley scholars, is “physically challenged” and on a course to being declared a Danger to Society. Theo’s clumsiness didn’t matter so much when she and her mother lived out in the suburbs with her mother’s lover, Jen Sar Kiladi. But, suddenly, Kamele leaves Jen Sar and moves herself and Theo into faculty housing, immediately becoming sucked into faculty politics. Leaving Theo adrift and shocked – and vulnerable… This coming-of-age novel is largely in fourteen-year-old Theo’s viewpoint. But it isn’t particularly aimed at the YA market, although I’d have no problem with any teenager reading it. The world is deftly realised and it took me a few pages just to absorb the strangeness and different customs, as Lee and Miller don’t hold up the pace with pages of explanation. So readers need to keep alert. However, this book is a delight. My very favourite sub-genre is accessible, enjoyable science fiction and this is a cracking example. Read the rest of my review here. Marrow by Robert Reed The ship is home to a thousand alien races and a near-immortal crew who have no knowledge of its origins or purpose. At its core lies a secret as ancient as the universe. It is about to be unleashed. This is definitely in the realm of epic space opera – with the emphasis on vastness. The ship Humankind has appropriated is immense. The population this ship supports is in the millions and the people running this ship are of the transhuman variety, in that they are all but immortal with lifespans stretching into the hundreds and thousands of years. To be able to sustain a storyline with plenty of twists and turns, and yet continue to be able to denote the sheer weirdness of the backdrop that is also key to said story takes serious writing skill. It’s one reason why science fiction is regarded with such snootiness in certain quarters – it is easy to write badly and difficult to write well. So is Reed up to the task? Oh for sure. The only slightly dodgy pov was the initial prologue when the ship is talking and that doesn’t last long. Other than that, the mix of multiple and semi omniscient viewpoint works well. I was gripped by the story and cared sufficiently about the characters, despite none of them being all that likeable – they are too alien and inhuman. But that didn’t stop me becoming completely engrossed in the twists and turns over a huge span of time. Read the rest of my review here. The Clockwork Rocket – Book 1 of The Orthogonal by Greg Egan There are degrees of science fiction – some books are long on character development and the social consequences of futuristic living, while being short on the science that underpins it, known as soft science fiction. Other books are far more concerned with the science and gismos that will actually power and run our future worlds – the hard science fiction. Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of the genre, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world, where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, don’t breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. This is one of the most exciting books to be produced in the genre for years – I cannot think of another story that equals the sheer inventive genius displayed by Egan. Readers can take on board as much or as little of the physics as they wish – but his cleverness would be beside the point if the narrative was so hampered by the long passages describing the world that we all ceased to care whether the heroine prevailed or not. However, Yalda’s story gripped me from the start and didn’t let go. Read the rest of my review here. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn’t expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that’s seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. But Rosemary isn’t the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed. Is all the buzz about this book merited? Oh yes, without a doubt. If you enjoyed Firefly then give this book a go, as it manages to recreate the same vibe that had so many of us tuning in to see what would happen next to the crew. While Rosemary is the protagonist, this tale is as much about the varied crew and their fortunes as they serve aboard the Wayfarer. Chambers manages to deftly sidestep pages of description by focusing on the fascinating different alien lifeforms peopling the ship. It’s always a big ask to depict aliens such that they seem realistic and sympathetic, without being merely humans with odd names and the occasional nifty add-on. Chambers has triumphantly succeeding in providing a range of fascinating lifeforms that explore the notions of gender and how to cope with difference, while stretching our preconceptions of parenting and family life. Read the rest of my review here. So here you have the first selection of my favourite space faring stories – are there any glaring omissions you would like to add? These are the books that have stuck in my memory as the most enjoyable or thought- provoking reads of the year. For those who don’t already know – I don’t bother to review books I dislike. In 2013 I read 115 books, didn’t complete 4 others and posted 69 reviews. The Bloody Angel – Book 4 in the Eddie LaCrosse series by Alex Bledsoe Having in a former life owned a yacht, I have very limited tolerance for tales that get the sailing wrong… So when my husband kept on recommending this book, I rather grumpily decided that I’d better read a couple of chapters to shut him up before returning to the next cool space opera beckoning. And then became hooked… Twenty years ago, a barmaid in a harbour town fell for a young sailor who turned pirate to make his fortune. But what truly became of Black Edward Tew remains a mystery – one that has just fallen into the lap of freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. For years, Eddie has kept his office above Angelina’s tavern, so when Angelina herself asks him to find out what happened to the dashing pirate who stole her heart, he can hardly say no – even though the trail is two decades old. If that sounds like a really cracking plot with plenty of opportunity for swashbuckling characters, a hatful of exciting adventures, plenty of humour and more than a slice of real heartbreak and horror – you’d be right. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis I picked up this copy of the book as an SF Masterworks because as a solid fan of many women fantasy and science fiction writers, I had never read her work and I discovered it was a Hugo Award winner. I’m so glad I did… When Kivrin Engle travels back through time to complete her doctoral thesis, due to an accident she lands in the middle of a major crisis her Faculty were struggling to avoid. Meanwhile the Oxford she left behind is laid low by a mysterious strain of influenza and, with no one willing to risk arranging her rescue, time is running out… This book, indeed, deserves to be part of the SF Masterworks series – from the moment I opened the first page I knew I was in the hands of a great writer at the top of her game. Willis sets the scene in Oxford’s near future with deft dexterity, her characters crackle with humanity and there is a bone-dry humour running through the whole story that helps to make the grim adventure Kivrin endures bearable. The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined by Salman Khan As an ex-teacher, the failure of our state education system is a subject that haunts me – and when I read this book, I was excited about its potential for helping fix our broken system. A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy; a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder’s online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents and teachers use the Khan Academy’s free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject, and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Khan suggests that instead of having a teacher deliver a lesson to a group of children in a totally arbitrary manner, they learn individually at their own pace using modern technology with the teacher acting as enabler. He also suggests that a far more creative, wide-ranging curriculum should be in place, where children undertake complex self-directed tasks in groups. A revolutionary approach to state-funded education? Absolutely. Read Salman Khan’s solutions to our educational problems – and then could someone point the Minister of Education in the direction of this book? Please?? We cannot continue to squander our most precious resource – our children. The Clockwork Rocket – Book 1 of The Orthogonal by Greg Egan Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of science fiction, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world – one where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. As he explains on his website – along with a series of diagrams – this fictional world he’s invented where light travels at differing speeds is due to changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a mathematical formula that governs the geometry of space-time. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, or breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. And highly readable into the bargain. The Glass God – Book 2 of The Magicals Anonymous by Kate Griffin Sharon Li: apprentice shaman and community support officer for the magically inclined. It wasn’t the career Sharon had in mind, but she’s getting used to running Magicals Anonymous and learning how to Be One With The City. When the Midnight Mayor goes missing, leaving only a suspiciously innocent-looking umbrella behind him, Sharon finds herself promoted. Her first task: find the Midnight Mayor. The only clues she has are a city dryad’s cryptic warning and several pairs of abandoned shoes… Sharon’s determinedly fair-minded stance is given a major workout as she comes up against a number of unpleasant nasties in her pursuit of the Midnight Mayor. Griffin hasn’t eased up one jot on some of the more revolting corners of London, as the story rolls forward with all the energy and slickness we’ve come to expect from one of the foremost fantasy Brit writers. A Half-Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb 1937. In a village on the Dorset coast, fourteen-year-old Mitzy Hatcher has endured a wild and lonely upbringing – until the arrival of renowned artist Charles Aubrey, his exotic mistress and their daughters, changes everything. Over the next three summers, Mitzy sees a future she had never thought possible, and a powerful love is kindled in her. A love that grows from innocence to obsession; from childish infatuation to something far more complex. Years later, a young man in an art gallery looks at a hastily-drawn portrait and wonders at the intensity of it. The questions he asks lead him to a Dorset village and to the truth about those fevered summers in the 1930s… Those of you familiar with The Legacy will recognise that Webb has again revisited the dual narrative, with one story unfolding back in the past and one storyline gradually progressing in the present. The past finally meets the present in an exciting and unexpected denouement – but the engine that drives this story is a lost, unloved soul who anchors all her hopes and affection on a charismatic artist. Webb apparently loosely based Charles on Augustus John, who had a reputation as a womaniser and clearly loved women’s bodies with a strong, sensual appreciation. Webb’s depiction of Mitzy’s harsh childhood, where she spends much of time scavenging the surrounding countryside for plants, herbs, fish and small animals to eat or make up potions for her mother to sell, is far from the rural idyll that soft-focused adverts use. Yet, she still manages to evoke the beauty and rhythm of the Dorset countryside – so much so, that I fell asleep with the colours of this book swirling in my head. The initial friendship of Charles’ two girls is a revelation for Mitzy, who is shunned by all the village children, except for Wilf. This particular narrative caught at my heart and as it spirals into a tailspin of obsession and the inevitable darkness, the book’s denouement was completely unexpected and shocking. Dark Eden by Chris Beckett You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the Forest’s lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie mountains so forbidding that no one has ever crossed them. The Oldest recount legends of a time when men and women made boats that could travel between worlds. One day, they will come back for you. You live in Eden. You are member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, in the warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of an alien, sunless world. You are John Redlantern, a teenager and agent of change for life in Eden. This book has a 1970’s feel about it – but with modern nuances with the story being told through a number of the most prominent characters in first person viewpoint. And if you only ever pick up a handful of science fiction books a year, make this one of that handful – this memorable and disturbing read is worth it. The Red Knight – Book 1 of The Traitor’s Son Cycle by Miles Cameron Twenty-eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild. Twenty-eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern’s jaws snaps shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip your head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men – or worse, a company of mercenaries – against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder. It requires the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it. The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he’s determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery it’s just another job. The abbey is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can’t deal with. Only it’s not just a job. It’s going to be war… Military medieval fantasy generally doesn’t do it for me. I’ve read plenty in my time, and until my husband nagged me to try this book, I’d more or less decided I wouldn’t shed any tears if I didn’t ever read any more. But this is different. For starters, Cameron knows what he’s talking about. He’s been involved in role-playing, martial arts – he’s actually jousted in tournaments… And it shows in the writing, which gripped me from the first page until the last – and gave me an insight into just how very different that world was, compared with our modern version. Sister by Rosamund Lipton When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister’s life – and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police, Beatrice’s fiancé and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost. The strong first person viewpoint and constant tension, coupled with the fine writing had me utterly engrossed, so that I gorged on the book in two hefty sittings. Though I did have to break off at one stage to find some tissues because I was weeping… The protagonist is beautifully handled as we follow her desperate search for her sister, which entails finding out a series of very uncomfortable truths about herself. Lupton is adept at braiding the surroundings, weather and cast of well depicted, vivid characters through Beatrice’s consciousness, so that she is one of the strongest and most interesting protagonists I’ve read for a while. Advent – Book 1 of The Advent Trilogy by James Treadwell For centuries it has been locked away. Locked away. Lost beneath the sea. Warded from earth, air, water, fire, scrying thought and sigh. Now magic is rising to the world once more. And a boy called Gavin, who thinks only that he is a city kid with parents who hate him, and knows only that he sees things no one else will believe, is boarding a train alone, to Cornwall. Where he steps into a different world… I’ve seen this book compared favourably to Susan Cooper, and while such hyped comparisons are often absurd, this time, I was reminded of Cooper’s threat-ridden landscape and sense of tension. Treadwell is a superb writer – the description of the ancient house, Pendurra, is outstanding. It is a hefty read and at no time does Treadwell throw his young readers any sort of ‘you’re only teenagers, so I’ve made it easier for you’ lifebelt, I’m delighted to report. This non-teenager was engrossed with the quality of the storytelling and this shifting, frightening world has stayed with me since I read it. A Kind of Vanishing by Lesley Thompson Summer 1968: the day Senator Robert Kennedy is shot, two nine-year-old girls are playing hide and seek in the ruins of a deserted village. When it is Eleanor’s turn to hide, Alice disappears. Thomson immediately plunges into the world of young girls, depicting first Eleanor’s rich interior landscape and then allowing us to access to Alice’s carefully modulated world, where her doting parents watch her every move. Thomson paints an exquisite picture of each girls’ fragilities, their aspirations and pin-sharp awareness of adult expectations. She beautifully inhabits the terrible, wonderful world of childhood – and the girls’ growing antipathy towards each other. One a noisy, rebellious tomboy living in a household where the adults only occasionally pay attention to their three children, while the other is the heart of her parents’ aspirations and already knows she needs to be neat and pretty to succeed. Neither girl trusts or like the other as they are forced to play together – until that disastrous game of hide and seek. This thriller/mystery is like nothing else I’ve read, and I’m still not sure that it fully works… but it certainly powerfully evoked the time and has stayed with me since I read it. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion… and more. But when the government grants right to the ever-increasing robot population, Finn struggles to find his place in the world, and her heart. If you’re looking for a slam-dunk, action fuelled adventure full of clear-cut baddies and heavy-tech weaponry, then don’t pick up The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. Because this offering is on the literary end of the genre, with nuanced, three-dimensional characterisation and coolly sophisticated prose that places this book in a heavily contemporary setting, due to the recent crash in civilisation – and also accounts for the sudden, huge reliance on robots, as their tireless assistance is needed to provide vital labour in rebuilding society. Not that this is the focus of the book. This story concentrates on Cat and her relationship with the world, after having been tutored by a robot for all her formative years. And, by default, Finn’s relationship with Cat also is under close examination. Because the bond between them is heart and engine of the book, it has to be pitch-perfect. And it is. Don’t expect any black and white answers – this book is beautifully complex and Cat’s life unfolds in unexpected and sometimes disturbing directions. And in common with the other books in this list – it is a story that still steals into my head when I’m not thinking of anything else in particular. The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, translated by K.A. Yoshida and David Mitchell I heard this book narrated on Radio 4 and was transfixed. Normally the radio is the background for the necessary loathed household chores I have to perform – but during that week, I sat down and listened. So it was a no-brainer to get hold of the book and read it for myself. Most books – for me – provide a really enjoyable way to escape the everyday. But there are a hatful of books that are inspirational, thought-provoking and genuinely life changing. I’m a tad allergic to books which trumpet this aspect – mostly because they’re not. However, The Reason I Jump is the real article. This remarkable book, written by Naoki Higashida when he was only thirteen, provides some answers. Severely autistic, Naoki learnt to communicate via pointing to letters on a ‘cardboard keyboard’ – and what he has to say gives an exceptional insight into an autistically-wired mind. He explains the often baffling behaviour of people with autism, invites us to share his perception of time, life, beauty and nature, and offers an unforgettable short story. Proving beyond doubt that people with autism do not lack imagination, humour or empathy. Naoki makes a heartfelt plea for our patience and compassion. Even if you don’t have anyone autistic in your life, it is worth reading – especially when you consider that every letter was pointed to and then written down by a scribe, before being translated into English. Among Others by Jo Walton After reading Tooth and Claw, I wanted to read more of Jo Walton’s books. Googling her immediately brought up Among Others, so it was a no-brainer to go and get hold of a copy. But would I find this next novel – so completely different from dragonkind set in a Victorian backdrop – equally engrossing? When Mori discovers that her mother is using black magic, she decides to intervene. The ensuing clash between mother and daughter leaves Mori bereft of her twin sister, crippled for life and unable to return to the Welsh Valleys that were her own kingdom. Mori finds solace and strength in her beloved books. But her mother is bent on revenge, and nothing and no one – not even Tolkien – can save her from the final reckoning. This is a remarkable book. I’ve never read anything quite like it and – for once – the OTT phrase on the cover by Jeff Vandermeer A wonder and a joy is absolutely spot on. For starters, there is a complete backstory that would easily fill a novel in the scenario that builds up to this book. Among Others is dealing with the aftermath. What happens next, once the protagonist has averted the End of the World at great personal cost. And make no mistake, the cost is heartbreakingly high. The writing is extraordinary in the pin-sharp description of the everyday, alongside the remarkable and Mori’s character is so compellingly realistic and nuanced, I’m still undecided whether there is a large chunk of autobiographical detail wrapped up in this book. And I don’t really care – other than to fervently hope, for her sake, there isn’t too much that is borrowed from Walton’s own life. Memorable and remarkable art invariably is a fusion of imagination and reality – and this is both a memorable and remarkable book. Certainly the most amazing book I’ve read this year. There are degrees of science fiction – some books are long on character development and the social consequences of futuristic living, while being short on the science that underpins it, known as soft science fiction. Other books are far more concerned with the science and gismos that will actually power and run our future worlds – the hard science fiction. Egan, as a physicist, has always been on the harder side of the genre, but the important difference – for me – is that he is also able to write convincing characters into the bargain. However, this time around he has produced a truly different world – one where the laws of physics as we know them no longer work. As he explains on his website – along with a series of diagrams – this fictional world he’s invented where light travels at differing speeds is due to changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a mathematical formula that governs the geometry of space-time. He calls this a Riemannian universe as opposed to the Lorentzian version we inhabit. In Egan’s world, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity simply doesn’t make sense. Further, the basic humanoid template, so prevalent in most space opera adventures, is also off the table. Egan demonstrates a head-swivelling leap of imagination by producing a race of beings who don’t look like us, don’t breed like us… It’s an awesome achievement. However, is it readable? Does it provide entertaining fiction? In Yalda’s universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. In Yalda’s universe, plants make food by emitting their own light into the night sky. As a child, Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that is entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger—and that the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilization has yet achieved. I’m not going to tie up the rest of this review by plunging any further into the science that underpins the book, fascinating though it is. This is, after all, an analysis of whether this book actually works as a piece of fiction. This is one of the most exciting books to be produced in the genre for years – I cannot think of another story that equals the sheer inventive genius displayed by Egan. Readers can take on board as much or as little of the physics as they wish – but his cleverness would be beside the point if the narrative was so hampered by the long passages describing the world that we all ceased to care whether the heroine prevailed or not. However, Yalda’s story gripped me from the start and didn’t let go. We first meet her working on her family’s farm. In a world where mothers’ bodies break down and normally divide into four to provide two sets of twins – two co’s – Yalda is different. She doesn’t have a male twin, so is larger than normal and she has also encountered a fair amount of prejudice in her short life over her unusual beginning, often regarded as a freak. We follow her adventures – both physical and intellectual – as she strives to make sense of the world around her, despite being hampered by the ever-present threat of her biological imperative. Which creates social tensions – women effectively cease to be once their children are born and some rebel against losing their lives, while the conservatives in power, inevitably male, strive to ensure that women can’t get hold of the drugs that the prevent this process. Against these social frictions looms a far more pressing problem – when the scientists observing the Hurtlers lighting up the sky come to the conclusion that they pose a major risk to their own world and decide to build a rocket to investigate the problem and see if they can fix it, before their own planet is annihilated. The rest of the novel is taken up with series of challenges posed by such a project. The concept of an interstellar ark is an oft-trodden theme within the genre, but the unique physiology of Egan’s beings immediately provides sufficient novelty – and Yalda’s strong personality certainly ensured that I kept turning the pages, completely hooked. This is a wonderful book – and yes, there are chunks of physics, complete with diagrams within the narrative. You have the option of slowing down and fully absorbing Egan’s invented work, or skimming over the scientific details and getting on with the story. One way or another, I think this ambitious and remarkable series will still be regarded as a major benchmark in science fiction for years to come and I look forward to reading the rest of the books just as soon as I can get my hands on them. 10/10
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	5	https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/exploring-the-quantum-universe-a-review-of-greg-egans-schilds-ladder.48994/	en	Exploring the Quantum Universe: A Review of Greg Egan's 'Schild's Ladder'	https://www.physicsforum…rums-logo-og.png	https://www.physicsforum…rums-logo-og.png	[ "https://www.physicsforums.com/styles/physicsforums/xenforo/logo.png", "https://www.physicsforums.com/styles/physicsforums/xenforo/logosmall.png", "https://www.physicsforums.com/styles/physicsforums/xenforo/smilies/oldschool/bugeye.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2004-10-22T12:01:51-05:00	Anyone read "Schild's Ladder" I am currently reading Schild's Ladder, an incredibly well-thought-out sci-fci book from 1961 by Greg Egan. What really...	en	https://www.physicsforum…ums_logo_192.png	Physics Forums: Science Discussion, Homework Help, Articles	https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/exploring-the-quantum-universe-a-review-of-greg-egans-schilds-ladder.48994/	Anyone read "Schild's Ladder" I am currently reading Schild's Ladder, an incredibly well-thought-out sci-fci book from 1961 by Greg Egan. What really amazes me about this guy is just how visionary and intellegent his theories were regaurding quantum physics, the state of life in the Galaxy 20,000 years from now, and a multitude of other conditions/understandings within the universe that in certain ways seem quite possible. I am wondering if anyone else has read this book, because honestly, am sometimes confused from time to time while reading through his long, often complex explanations. The whole "slowdown" experience described in chapter six for example, has me scratching my head in a few places. If you like science fiction that really explores "science" more than you're usual sci-fci/action novel, this book is for you. I don't understand all of Egan's concepts yet, but that is one of the great joys in reading his work- you really have to think and sometimes even do outside research to fully comprehend where he's coming from. Also, I don't recommend this novel for casual or easily distracted readers, because you will at times, get frusterated with his 'jumpy' writing style (at least I did in a few places). If you have read this book, I'd like to get your take on it, and maybe even some opinions on the relevence of his ideas today, i.e. the "Quantum Graph", or the QUSP. What do you think? Schild's Ladder is great, one of my favorite books, but it's not from 1961; it's only a couple of years old. Schild's Ladder, the original, is from 1970, and is a construction for doing parallel transport in General Relativity (Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, Gravitation Box 10.2). Egan adopted it as a metaphor for how to keep yourself stable over a long lifetime of radical changes. As you say the vision of the deep physics - and life! - of the universe just shows how feeble are most of the popular space operas today. Rovelli cites Schild Ladder you might be interested in what Rovelli has to say he likes the book a lot and claims it has something to do with Loop QG. he talks about it in his new book Quantum Gravity and also lists it as "Further Reading" in his article "Loop Quantum Gravity" in the November 2003 issue of Physics World. As Rovelli cites it: G Egan 2001 Schild Ladder(Gollancz, London) Must have been republished in 2001 then. Here's the link to the Physics World article http://cgpg.gravity.psu.edu/people/Ashtekar/articles/rovelli03.pdf It is the best online general audience treatment of LQG I have seen. I think I understand. Egan based his novel on an actual theory in cosmology that he himself believes may be true. That's why he can explain it in such incredible detail I suppose. To take a complicated theory like Quantum Loop Gravity and use it for the basis of a S.F. novel is really remarkable, since the fact-based theories and the entirely imagined elements (slowdown being one) blend in so well together. It implies that fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction, or as strange.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	78	https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/539651/	en	Greg Egan: Incandescence	https://www.sffchronicle…m/images/ad9.jpg		[ "https://www.sffchronicles.com/images/logo14.png", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/images/logo14.png", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/images/ad9.jpg", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/m/22/22435.jpg?1423196927", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/26/26708.jpg?1408176827", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/26/26708.jpg?1408176827", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/22/22435.jpg?1423196927", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/22/22435.jpg?1423196927", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/20/20274.jpg?1721052533", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/26/26708.jpg?1408176827", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/26/26708.jpg?1408176827", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/22/22435.jpg?1423196927", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/22/22435.jpg?1423196927", "https://www.sffchronicles.com/data/avatars/s/20/20274.jpg?1721052533" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2013-01-31T03:10:23+00:00	Incandescence is an ultra-hard SF novel told in two concise threads whose information density make them as creatively packed as any 800 page book, and...	en	/data/assets/logo/pwa-192.jpg	Science Fiction & Fantasy forum	https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/539651/	Incandescence is an ultra-hard SF novel told in two concise threads whose information density make them as creatively packed as any 800 page book, and packed far more rigorously. The first deals with Rakesh (a sort of post-human) and Parantham (basically a sentient and sometimes embodied program) leaving the Amalgam (a galactic-disk-spanning civilization of multiple races and entities) for the Aloof (a galactic-center-spanning civilization of mystery) in order to find the secrets of a rock the Aloof found which contains evidence of DNA-based life. The second deals with Roi (a multi-legged translucent almost-microscopic lifeform) being "recruited" by Zak (ditto) to learn math and physics so they can discover the nature of their world (called the Splinter) and deal with dangers to it. Since everything about the book is written as a journey from ignorance to enlightenment, much like science itself, most anything one could say about the novel would spoil it in this sense, even if it didn't spoil the ending. So all I can say is that, if a far-future high-tech exploration of the galaxy and a world-in-peril scenario of aliens at a lower level of tech trying to rise to the level necessary to save it has any interest for you, you probably want to try this book. I say this even though, for me, the answer to whether I'd be interested was a resounding "yes" but the novel, as fiction, didn't fully satisfy. It certainly was fascinating enough to make me glad I read it, regardless. Anybody else read this? Jump in and liven up the thread! And let's get one of the most important SF writers of the last quarter-century an author forum! More Egan threads to liven up: Greg Egan Greg Egan: Adam Roberts' Schizoid Review of Orthogonal --- I read this a few days ago and was hoping a sort of review might congeal but it hasn't - so I'll just note some random thoughts. (NB: Everything that follows spoils things in the sense of the conceptual journey and some of it is spoils things in the usual "give away who does and doesn't die and how it ends" sense.) The threats facing the Splinter folks and the way they face it are deeply relevant to our own issues with climate change (not to mention the random asteroid strike that may cause us to join the dinosaurs). If one is looking for "social relevance", this would be it. This is probably the single-most important perspective for our species to assimilate and the more books that address it, the better. Rakesh's and Parantham's journey reminded me of Foundation and Earth, in an odd way. The "2-3 people in a small craft hopping from place to place pursuing a mystery" structure is quite similar. There's also a trace of "Nightfall" or, maybe more pertinently, Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, when the people of the Splinter go outside and see space for the first time in their lives, much like the Nightfall people seeing stars or Vinge's spiders unnaturally forging their way through the long winter they ordinarily hibernate through. Or any number of other stories involving such unusual perspective shifts. The Zak/Roi storyline was kind of frustrating for half of its half of the book. I felt like I knew more or less what was going on but didn't get confirmation from the story that I was actually right until I finally lost my patience approaching the halfway mark. Right after that, the story finally did give me confirmation up to that point. The storyline includes Zak going from Newton to Einstein in 60 seconds. It was interesting in that much of what was covered in terms of the math and physics was familiar but it was covered from an unusual angle with different terminology so that it felt new, sort of like poetry is supposed to do for familiar experiences at times. Throughout the course of the book, Egan displays such a thorough-going materialism that many of the philosophical quandaries about software "souls" and the "identity" of egos across transformations were basically disregarded. It's just presented as a given - Rakesh is disintegrated and reintegrated as sometimes embodied information and so what? Yet there is always an awareness of the actual zest that embodiment adds and a sense that a model of the universe would have to be as big as the universe and then collapse back into that indiscernability but, given that we don't do that, the "thusness" of the actual physical universe counts for a little bit extra, too. In other words, it's a consistent viewpoint despite seeming to take a different attitude towards simulating people and simulating the universe. This book is 250 pages in hardcover (298 in a paperback edition) though it took about 375 usual pages worth of time. Either way, it is precisely what I mean when I express my dislike of really long books and how long books waste time in repetition and excessive explanation and in crawling narration without jumps and provide no additional ideas or impact for their length. Egan describes his Splinter folk obliquely, showing their social presumptions and their mental transformation and expects you to get it. (He does commit some repetition when Rakesh is experiencing things but this is from his point of view and isn't the same as spelling it out to start with.) He drops you into an unfamiliar milieu that even its inhabitants don't really understand and they and the reader figure it out more or less together. (As I say, there is a slight problem with this where Egan underdoes the cues to let the reader know they're on the right track regarding what all "rarb" and "sharq" are and which way "garm" points and what the Hub really is and so on, but the usual method is to spell it all out from the start.) It also has no problem eliding what isn't useful to describe. We've seen people get recruited to this new-fangled job so when the protagonists realize they need to recruit a bunch of folks, the chapter ends and the next chapter of that story-line picks up with the team already assembled. Similarly, when a character will need to go outside the next day to take the place of another after having briefly made the journey once, the chapter ends and the next chapter of that story-line picks up with that character on the outside. Many writers these days would describe what they did that night and how they made the climb a second time and finally get the character out on the surface after a couple dozen uninterrupted pages. There is at least one logical problem, though this is generally one of the logically tighter books around. The Splinter Folk are almost physically incapable of walking in the dark (though they eventually work around it a little) yet they fly their entire world blind through the void and, later, a third of them are blinded. Now, they had no choice in these last two events but no parallel is drawn and no point made about this must be many orders of magnitude harder than it would otherwise be.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	3	0	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/924194.The_Last_Book_in_the_Universe	en	The Last Book in the Universe	https://images-na.ssl-im…2158i/924194.jpg	https://images-na.ssl-im…2158i/924194.jpg	[ "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/siteheaderbannerimages/1717004244i/409.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327942158i/924194.jpg", "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327942158i/924194.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/nophoto/user/u_700x933.png", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1194930432p8/614778._SX200_SY200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1712344453i/42249562._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1373322264i/11592808._UX200_CR0,49,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1218738602i/1405356._UX200_CR0,7,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1675555086i/32532051._UX200_CR0,1,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1480492067i/32532774._UY200_CR20,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1680997824i/7206839._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1263253020i/388066._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1526956981i/54459079._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1479272290i/32853493._UY200_CR77,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1193174752i/67414._UX200_CR0,25,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1632933968i/62203305._UX200_CR0,88,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1411059548i/35040424._UY200_CR60,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1382954890i/21006101._UY200_CR22,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1586711775i/26168013._UY200_CR38,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1380512037i/92370._UX200_CR0,23,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1209670550i/1132683._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1218285367i/1410757._UY200_CR35,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1428276900i/4698388._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1567442371i/5910368.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1426867470i/35048086._CR10,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1225285711i/1534457.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1174433755i/33657._UX200_CR0,28,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1426713990i/35114722._UY200_CR37,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1430429735i/35053866.jpg", "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1420752023i/35048178._UY200_CR50,0,200,200_.jpg", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-apple_app_store@2x.png", "https://dryofg8nmyqjw.cloudfront.net/images/badge-google_play_store@2x.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Rodman Philbrick" ]	null	Read 1,184 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. This fast-paced action novel is set in a future where the world has been almost destroye…	en	/favicon.ico	Goodreads	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/924194.The_Last_Book_in_the_Universe	February 4, 2022 The Last Book In The Universe, Rodman Philbrick The Last Book in the Universe (2000) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Rodman Philbrick. Set in a cyberpunk dystopia, its protagonist and narrator is a teenage boy named Spaz who suffers from epilepsy. The story is set in a post-disaster, dystopic future city, appearing to be somewhere in the United States, called the Urb, which has been disturbed by an earthquake known as "The Big Shake". The Urb is plagued by poverty, thieves, gang warfare, and the use of mindprobes. These mind probes include variations such as "trendies" (mind probes about Eden). They are analogous to hard drugs and enable users to temporarily escape their harsh lives through images like movies being played in their heads. Genetically improved people, called "proovs," live in a city called Eden, with a beautiful society, food and water. Eden is separated from the Urb by the "Forbidden Zone," a deadly and dangerous minefield. Spaz is a 14-year-old boy who cannot use mindprobes because of his epilepsy and whose adoptive family has abandoned him because they feared the symptoms of his illness. Spaz runs errands for Billy Bizmo, the latch-boss (leader) of his own gang, the "Bully Bangers," in a section of the Urb. On one of his errands, Spaz is sent to "rip-off" Ryter, a very old man who possesses the lost arts of literacy and literature. Spaz soon meets Little Face, a five-year-old orphan who only says the word "chox," because he didn't learn how to speak. Spaz also meets Lanaya, a prov who charitably gives out edibles (a futuristic food) to Spaz. At first, Spaz is very hostile towards Ryter, when Spaz arrives to "rip-off" (steal) Ryter's meager possessions. Contrastingly, Ryter understands Spaz's situation and does his best to help him, offering no resistance. Eventually Spaz learns that Bean, his beloved adoptive sister, is dying of the blood sickness (leukemia). Ryter and Little Face accompany Spaz on a journey to find Bean. The trio starts by traveling through "The Pipe," a large, rustic water pipe that leads to other latches. Along the way, they pass through latches controlled by various other bosses, having adventures along the way. One of the latches is ruled by the "Monkey Boys." Spaz and company find out that the latch-leader, Mongo the Magnificent, is dying because of a probe being in his head for an extended time. Ryter convinces one of the tek bosses to take Mongo's place. In the next latch, the group sees everything burning and finds Lanaya being attacked by very hungry people. She is rescued by Spaz and Ryter and she joins them on their journey. Spaz and company start traveling towards the latch where Bean lives. Eventually, through many dangers, toils, and snares, the story's heroes find a dying Bean. Lanaya and Ryter decide to take Bean to Eden, along with Spaz and Little Face. They ride along in Lanaya's takvee to her and her "contributors" (Jin and Bree) home, which is a castle. ... عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: آخرین کتاب جهان؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هفدهم ماه مارس سال2014می��ادی عنوان: آخرین کتاب جهان؛ نویسنده: رادمن فیلبریک؛ مترجم: سمیه کرمی؛ تهران، تندیس، سال1390، در198ص؛ شابک9786001820137؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م نمیدانم اساتید لابد باید بگویند، که در عنوان اصلی کتاب این «یونیورس» را باید «کیهان» یا «کائنات» یا «گیتی» بنامیم، یا همان «جهان»، «دنیا»، «عالم»؛ «دهر» و ...؛ تا پیش از خوانش کتاب، از خیالم این بگذشت که جهان لابد همان برگردان «ورلد» باشد، اما نبود؛ صفحه ی نخست را که عنوان اصلی و مشخصات کتاب و نشر و تاریخ و شماره ها را همانجا مینویسند، لابد نگاه میکنم، شاید حواسم پرت شده، برای بارانی که شاید آن روز باریده بوده؛ یا نسیمی که از لای درز پنجره میوزیده است؛ صبح زود هم که نبوده، تا بگویم این روزها صدای چهچهه مدهوشم کرده است، برای نخستین بار اینجا، در آن بالا عنوان اصلی را که بنوشتم، شک برم داشت، دوباره به عنوان آن صفحه ی نخست نگریستم، و دیدم، همان «یونیورس» محکم سر جای خود بنشسته است، با خود گفتم بنویسم تا شما از خواندن عنوان فارسی کتاب، به اشتباه نیفتید، عنوانش همان آخرین کتاب یونیورس است؛ در این داستان سالهاست که دیگر کسی کتاب نمیخواند، کتابها و کتابخانه ها افسانه شده اند، و در تمام دنیا، تنها یک پیرمرد تکیده مانده، که قصه های پدر بزرگش را، هنوز به یاد دارد و ...؛ چکیده: در پاد آرمانشهر، مدتهاست که جز چند پیرمرد، کسی کتابها را به یاد نمی‌آورد، پیرمرد در دنیایی که در آن ذهن‌ نماها، واقعیت را برای مردم ترسیم می‌کنند، سعی دارد که یادمانهایش را بر روی کاغذ بیاورد، او کتاب را برای مردمان «آینده» می‌نویسد، مردمانی که شاید روزی، دوباره دلشان کتاب بخواهد؛ آینده، مفهومی عجیب برای «غشی» است، او که دمخور بنگرهاست، تا زمانیکه با پیرمرد روبرو نشده بود، تنها می‌توانست به زمان حال و لحظه بیندیشد؛ «غشی»، خرده ریزهای پیرمرد را برمی‌دارد، اما می‌گذارد کتابش را نگاه دارد؛ یکروز به «غشی» که به عنوان یک طفل سرراهی، زمانی برای خود، ناپدری، و نامادری‌ ای داشت، خبر می‌دهند، که خواهر ناتنی‌ اش در حال مرگ است؛ او مدتهاست که خواهرش را ندیده، چون ناپدریش از ترس اینکه دخترش هم مثل او «غشی» شود، «غشی» را طرد کرده است؛ «غشی» تصمیم می‌گیرد که به هر قیمتی شده، خواهر ناتنی‌ خویش را ببیند، اما در دنیای هراسناکی که در موردش گفتیم، سفر به جایی که خواهرش زندگی می‌کند، بسیار خطرناک است، اینجاست که «رایتر» به صورت تصادفی با «غشی» راهی سفری شگفت‌ انگیز می‌شوند؛ و ...؛ نقل از متن: (چاردیواری من کوچک و کثیف است، با یک تکه اسنفج به جای زیرانداز؛ تختخواب واقعی نیست، ولی خیلی بهتر از این است که جایی برای خوابیدن و ماندن نداشته باشم، حتا اگر درش از داخل قفل هم نشود؛ این یکی از قوانین دخمه‌هاست؛ هیچ دری نباید قفل باشد، چون بنگرها باید بتوانند هر موقع که دوست داشتند، داخل شوند؛ آن‌ها هرچیزی دلشان بخواهد می‌برند، اما معلوم نیست چرا به من اجازه دادند، تا یک دستگاه پخش سه‌ بعدی قدیمی داشته باشم، که بهتر از هیچی است؛ جز من دیگر کسی علاقه‌ ای به تماشا کردن سه بعدی‌ها ندارد؛ چرا وقتشان را با یک فیلم سه بعدی مزخرف تلف کنند، وقتی می‌توانند یکی از ذهن نماهای جدید را به خودشان فروکنند، و تمام برنامه را توی سرشان تماشا کنند، درست انگار که واقعا توی برنامه هستند؟ به هرحال، خرت و پرت‌های عمو لثه‌ ای را یک گوشه می‌اندازم، و دستگاه را روشن می‌کنم؛ پای تماشای یک فيلم سه‌ بعدی می‌نشینم، این فیلم را تا حالا حداقل ده هزار بار تماشا کردم. توی فیلم، کولی ریگینز باید از کل منظومه‌ ی شمسی عبور کند، و تمام راه را، سیاره به سیاره بجنگد، تا یک دختر خوشگل را نجات بدهد؛ دختر خیال می‌کند کولی مرده، و به همین خاطر دارد با یک پارویی ازدواج می‌کند، و این ازدواج اشتباهی بزرگی است، چون آن یارو همانی ست که دائم تلاش می‌کند، کولی بیچاره را بکشد؛ اگر وقتی این را می‌خوانید هنوز هم دستگاه‌ های پخش سه بعدی قدیمی وجود داشته باشند، حتما این فیلم را دیده‌ اید؛ اگر ندیدید، از من قبول کنید، واقعا داستان بامزه‌ ای دارد؛ معمولا غرق فیلم می‌شوم و وانمود می‌کنم درست مثل کولی ریگینز بزرگ، قوی و خوش قیافه هستم، و این طوری سرگرم میشوم، اما امروز اصل تمرکز ندارم؛ به جاش، همه‌ اش به پیرمرد فکر می‌کنم، به چیزی که درباره‌ ی آن‌هایی گفت که در آینده زندگی خواهند کرد معلوم نیست چرا، ولی مفهوم «آینده» توی کله‌ ام فرو رفته و بیرون بیا نیست؛ آینده یعنی زمانی که هنوز وجود ندارد؛ یک دنیا پر از مردمانی که هنوز به دنیا نیامده‌ اند و کارهایی می‌کنند که هیچ‌کس هنوز به فکرش نرسیده در عین حال، دائم به دختر اصلاحی فکر می‌کنم و آن چشم‌های آسمانی رنگش، انگار او با تمام چیزهایی که در پشته‌ ها رخ داده، ارتباط داشته باشد؛ گرچه می‌دانم او هیچ ارتباطی با عمو لثه‌ ای پیر که «رایتر» صدایش می‌کنند، ندارد)؛ پایان نقل تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 25/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 14/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی October 17, 2021 بطور کاملا ناخواسته، و بدون هیچ اطلاعی از محتوای این کتاب، بعد از تموم کردن کتاب فارنهایت، به سراغش اومدم و الان می‌بینم که بهترین انتخاب ممکن بوده! :)) توضیح می‌دم! فارنهایت، که خب در نقدش هم گفته بودم چطور کتابی بود و از نظر من بی‌سواد، پروژه‌ای عجله‌ای و تقریبا شکست خورده بود و نتونسته بود اونجور که باید و شاید خوب باشه! اما این کتاب، برعکس اسمش، که من فکر می‌کردم در مورد یک کتاب خاص باشه که مثلا آخرین کتاب جهانه، بعد از خوندن چند صفحه ازش، فهمیدم که به به، این هم یک کتاب آخرزمانی و پادآرمانشهریه! :)) یعنی دست سرنوشت قشنگ می‌خواست که من بعد از کتاب فارنهایت اینو بخونم تا ضعف‌ها و نچسبیدن‌های اون کتاب رو، بشوره ببره! :)) و الحق که موفق هم شد. بدون لو دادن اگر بخوام توضیح بدم، داستان آخرین کتاب جهان، در یک دنیای عجیب اتفاق می‌افته. دنیایی که بعد از یک سلسله بلایای طبیعی/انسانی، حالا غرق در خاکستر و خاک و غبار و رادیواکتیوه! دنیای متشکل از برج‌های سقوط کرده، دنیایی پر از خانه‌های ویران شده، دنیای بدون درخت و سبزه و هرگونه گیاه، دنیایی بدون رودخانه و آب جاری! دنیایی که انسان‌هاش همچون حیواناتی وحشی زندگی می‌کنن! و از همه مهم‌تر، دنیایی بدون کتاب! اگر بیشتر از این بگم، داستان رو لو دادم و هیجانش رو از اون‌هایی که می‌خوان روزی این کتاب رو بخونن گرفتم! پس کافیه... در مورد المان‌های مختلف داستان‌نویسی هم، من تخصصی ندارم، ولی در این حد می‌تونم بگم که کتاب خیلی سرراست و تمیز بود، که اگر شلوغی‌های زندگی شخصی نبود، می‌تونستم در عرض دو روز تمومش کنم. چه بسا اگر کتابخون باحوصله‌ای باشید، یک ظهر تا عصر هم بتونید تمومش کنید! ترجمه کتاب، با اینکه اشکالاتی هم داشت اما خوب بود، عالی نبود، خوب بود، قابل خوندن بود. البته کتاب دو سه جا مشکل نگارشی داشت که اون‌ها هم قابل تحمل بودن. و اما بزرگترین مشکلی که کتاب در این زمینه داشت، و میشه گفت خیلی خطای آماتوری هم هست، نوشتن اسم غلط نویسنده‌اس! چه روی جلد و چه در شناسنامه کتاب... به زبان انگلیسی اگر دقت کنین، نویسنده اسمش رادمن هست، که روی جلد و داخل شناسنامه نوشته شده رودهن!!!!! هر چیز دیگه‌ای بگم، از طنز ماجرا کم میکنه!!!! در کل، خیلی دوستش داشتم، بسیار بیشتر از فارنهایت! :)) من امتیاز پنج ستاره رو فقط به شاهکارها می‌دم و از دید من، این کتاب شاهکار نبود. چهار ستاره براش کافیه. توصیه می‌کنم بخونیدش... March 24, 2021 الكتب هي ذاكرة العالم.. الصلة التي تربط بين البشر وتاريخ الانسانية يتسبب زلزال شديد في تدمير العالم وانقسامه إلى جزئين جزء يحتكر الرفاهية والتكنولوجيا الفائقة والآخر يسوده الخراب والدمار والصراع وتبدأ رحلة مليئة بالصعوبات بينهما يقوم بها بطل الرواية بصحبة العجوز رايتر تفاصيل الشخصيات جميلة.. خاصةً رايتر الذي يسجل في كتاب كل ما في ذاكرته من معلومات عن الحياة والأدب والحضارة في الماضي لم يعد أحد يقرأ الكتب أو حتى يتذ��رها لكنه مصمم على الكتابة ليحفظ ذاكرة الكون للناس في المستقبل رواية خيالية لطيفة تحكي الواقع, ومكتوبة بأسلوب جميل ومشوق September 24, 2008 ANOTHER NEW FAVE! It starts out pretty slowly, but the ending is remarkable. Another book that shows how sad the world would be without books. Indulges the passion for books. August 29, 2018 The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick is a book far in a possible future, a thousand years after the great "shake". There are genetically engineered people who are designed for health and intelligence and live in a special lush area called Eden. Everyone else lives under grey skies, in a concrete world, trying to get by. Gangs control areas and it is deadly to cross the leader of the your boss or to cross into another zone. No health care, care for orphans, etc. This is about a guy that gets word his foster sister is dying and he wants to see her one last time. The trip ends up with a orphan boy, an old man, an enhanced girl, and himself crossing many zones. Lots of suspense and action. A very terrifying look at what life could be like but with a glimmer of hope too. February 6, 2017 Good science fiction introduction for adolescents, but stealing too many ideas from other authors to be a worthwhile read for more experienced readers. Atwood, Bradbury, Orwell and Co. just do it a lot better! It is a nice idea to have the protagonist carry the last book in his head as a story to be told later, when people appreciate books again, but it is far too close to the ending scene of Fahrenheit 451, in which all refugees wander around reciting lost books to themselves. The genetically improved human race brings you back to Brave New World with Alphas and Betas and Gammas. And of course the Newspeak invented for this novel is not that new at all. We can draw from endless sources, beginning with 1984 and A Clockwork Orange,... Here you are cancelled when you die, in The Giver you are released, in Never Let Me Go you complete. All the same euphemisms for passing... Nevertheless, it is a good read for middle schoolers. January 24, 2023 There are many reasons that I gave this book four stars. One, the main characters. Spaz is very sympathetic. He has weaknesses but mostly strengths. He sees the truth about himself and the others around him, but he's also cynical and skeptical when he should be. There is nothing about him that I didn't like or that came off as unrealistic or unlikely. Ryter is a perfect hero: he follows Spaz but isn't a Sancho Panza; he's more like a whispering voice in the head of Don Quixote. He sacrifices in order to save others. He is wise but also has flaws and gaps in his knowledge. Otherwise, he would be too perfect. Second, the narrative technique. At first, I felt lost by the jargon and the slang. That's the point, though. The reader should feel disoriented upon being thrust into this world that comes from our own but that is hardly recognizable. The further along the narrative progresses, the more that is revealed to the reader, and the more the reader becomes accustomed to words like "splatgun" and "mindprobe," "proov" and "takvee." These words become recognizable and connected to an image the deeper the reader becomes immersed in Spaz's world, the Urb and Eden. Third, the plot and theme. Anything that has to do with the importance of reading, writing, and words is special to me. I've always been a reader, and I've been writing stories since I was seven years old. I read the Bible every day. Words matter, they last, and there's nobody that can dispute that. The book is action-packed. There isn't a dull moment, yet it's not the action that matters. The words matter, especially the last word: "Yes." Despite all the "stuff" that happens in the novel, the most important thing is that the book ends with a word of affirmation, with a hope of the future, with the idea that because words continue on, people continue on. To me, that's one of the most powerful messages that a book can have. A book about reading and writing, a book that promotes the importance of words, will pretty much always get a four-star rating from me. The only things I didn't like about this book, that I thought were unrealistic, were the dialogue between Lanaya and her "contributors," which was choppy and awkward, and the scene in Stadium, which was also awkward and somewhat abrupt. Other than these small things, I think the book is nearly perfect. *************************************************************************** Interesting. Above, the only two things I didn't like about the book, well, I don't agree with my assessment of those things at all upon this reread. I think that Lanaya and her contributors' dialogue was spot-on for the relationship that they have, and I think the scene in Stadium is well-done. I have no clue what I was looking for or expecting differently. Still, I'm keeping my four-star rating because I find some things in the book a little cheesy, like the names (Mongo) and the blatant characterization of the people in the Urb as animals. I get it, but it could have been done more subtly than having them called the Monkey Gang and then having the mob at the end literally be animalistic. Otherwise, I still find this book nearly perfect. What struck me the most this time in reading the book in preparation to teach it for Children's Literature, a 200-level English class, is the social commentary. I love that there are social and class issues explored and that the differences seen between the proovs and the normals are boiled down to ignorance. Philbrick really explores what makes us human and how genetically altering people doesn't make them better. He also shows us the difference between science put to good use and science that is used frivolously. I hope my students like this book. It doesn't feel outdated to me since it's dystopian, but I'm not sure how they'll take some of the language and the weird animal-human scenes. We'll see!! Addendum on 1/23/23: I don’t know what I was talking about AGAIN because after class discussion last semester, the animal scenes make perfect sense. When you dehumanize people and force them to rely on technology that is literally a drug and alters their mind, of COURSE, they’re going to act like animals, and of COURSE, it’s going to be blatant. My students loved this book, and we had great discussions about it. Also, Y2K anxiety—Philbrick was right. I’m teaching it again this semester, and I can’t wait. Based on the first two days, I think these students will have a lot to say about it! August 20, 2008 We listened to this as a family on a trip to Lake Powell, and we all liked it a lot. It first grabbed and held our attention because the hero is epileptic, as is one of our sons. How often does epilepsy play a part in saving the world? It does in this book :-) Thank goodness for authors who can incorporate teens illnesses into stories in a positive light without preaching. That bit of the story may mean nothing to most readers, but it was a nice boost for our family. The reader was that same guy who was the translator/writer in Saving Private Ryan, and is now the twitchy scientist on LOST. He projects an overwhelmed, confused sense in his delivery, and it works well. It's set in a bleak, futuristic society, and his style and voice are a good match for the teen-age narrator. He reads all the voices, and does well with them. It feels like a huge accomplishment to find a book and reader that will entertain two adults, an 18 year old, a 15 year old and a 9 year old. When I checked this out, I also checked out seven other books on CD. We tried out all of them and didn't make it even two chapters into any of the others. In contrast, when we reached our hotel, we kept driving around so that we could hear the last chapter of this book. May 25, 2017 چرا من عاشق داستان های پسا آخرالزمانی هستم؟! به نظرم خیلی جالبه که ببینی نویسنده ها چه سناریوهای مختلفی برای پایان جهان در ن��ر میگیرن یا آخرین ارزش های انسانی که حفظ میشه چیا هستن آخرین کتاب جهان هم از همین سبک هست، با ویژگی های مخصوص به خودش؛ داستان روایتگر زندگی یک خواهر و برادر هست که برای مدتی از هم جدا شدن اما با دریافت پیام کمک از طرف خواهر، پسر راهی دنیای دیوانه میشه تا جون خواهرش نجات بده کتاب بسیار احساسی و زیبا و در عین حال بسیار هیجان انگیزه امیدوارم از مطالعه اش لذت ببرید October 2, 2019 So much slang. Just so much. Some was good, some was bad, but there was a lot. I was not the right audience for The Last Book In The Universe. Unlike Riordan where I can enjoy the ridiculousness even though I’m well above the target audience age, this was written super simply with no whimsy or even particularly good writing so it made the age gap quite obvious. Good world-building or world tearing apart? I could imagine the smoke and the dirt and the complete lack of proper shelter. I could visualize it better than in some dystopian/apocalyptic movies I’ve seen so that’s a huge plus. I can absolutely imagine everyone teching out with videos injected into their brains. It’s basically Ready Player One but with even crappier shelter. It reminded me of Mad Max but with... for the full review please visit https://www.literarydragonreviews.web... January 14, 2015 This book was ok; I think if kids enjoy sci-fi then this is probably a good choice, but it felt dated, even though it's only 8 years old. There's a lot of word play that was interesting, and a lot of mature themes that would make an excellent adult book--it just didn't translate so well to a younger audience. A library consultant just lost his job because, after reading this book to sixth graders, someone objected to the book being included in an elementary school library. Instead of defending the book (as he should and could have), he refused to talk with his bosses about it until they had read the book, and he was fired as a result of this stubborness (IMHO) and other issues, apparently. Is the book appropriate for sixth graders? (Skip this paragraph for sort-of spoilers!) Sure, if they're mature enough to handle mind-probes, continual threats, and a short but graphic scene of a main character getting killed. Sure, if they can even "get" the point of the story. (resume reading here!) The language is easy, which makes it automatically look "easy" enough for sixth-graders to read. I'm just not sure it's all that great a read. Does it belong in an elementary school library? I wouldn't want a second grader who reads at a higher level to get their hands on it, that's for sure. But having sixth graders and first graders together in one school makes it tricky. I'd totally put this in a middle school or junior high school library that had sixth graders, so are we dumbing down the content for districts that put these kids with younger grades? I don't know. I guess it could be an interesting enough book, but I wasn't superbly impressed. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. August 9, 2018 Very interesting story. In a world where no one reads anymore and everyone gets information through brain probes there is Spaz, an epileptic boy that has lost his family unit, now survives by being an errand boy for the Bangers gang. "Stealing is my job" he says. But when he receives a secret message from his foster father informing him that his foster sister (whom he feels is like a blood sister to him) is deathly ill and wishes to see him, all bets are off. He must travel to the other side of the Urb across territories of three other gangs in order to get to her. With the help of an old gummy named Ryter and a proov named Lanaya and a little kid in tow, they set off for a greater adventure than they could have imagined. Okay my first question has got to be who ripped off who exactly. This book parallels with verbiage aspects and storyline so close to the book Ready Player One that it is uncanny. considering this book has a copyright of 2000 where I was Ready Player One has a copyright of 2011 I would have to say that answers that question. Perhaps this book was the inspiration for the other, I don't know. The book itself is written in a very easy to understand manner. It is obviously written to be read by young adults and teenagers as well as perhaps preteens. The plot is very to the point as the book really does not have the girth to go into too much detail. With that in mind the author makes up for it very well in their language and imagination. The names the author uses for things resemble names that we would use regularly but are slightly different and give it that extra feel love dystopian future. All in all this was a very enjoyable read. This was referred to me by a very good friend (Hi Holly! 🤘🏻). I would definitely recommend this book to anybody who likes interesting dystopian novels and younger readers such as preteen and up. October 26, 2017 The book The Last Book in The Universe is in a dystopian setting and is really good book. This book contains a lot stealing, doing bad things, and futuristic events in which there is new technology but not just for anybody. The only people that had that type of technology were the perfect people. Also, if you like books about saving and caring for people than this is your book because there is a person who saves their sibling (don't want to spoil anything ) and it gets really intense. The book tells us that the protagonist which is Spaz Boy has a mental illness called Epilepsy and it tells us the rough and hard times he goes through. This book has a lot of action and problems which makes it really interesting in how people in the future still have conflicts and problems in society. This book also can relate to other dystopian setting books that all have problems in society and how society still in the future separate some people from others. This means that in the future it would be the same with conflicts and various drama problems. Also, it has people that fight but then get back together and that’s what makes the book a review of four stars. This book also has a lot of mystery and can make you want to read more and more once you find clues of what might happen. For example SPOILER ALERT** in the end they stop stealing from old people and return to their family. That’s what makes this book unique and special. Although the ending can get a bit exciting, the book is sad, has a lot of action, and is set in a dystopian setting so if you like all of those genres in a book than The Last Book in The Universe is your book I recommend you to read this amazing book. April 1, 2016 Philbrick has written a decent addition to the utopia/dystopia genre. The best parts of this book are the fast pace and the surprising ending. Philbrick's dystopian world also has some compelling aspects. For this book to get four or five stars, I would want to see better description. In general, I think the writer could have added more depth to the characters. I would recommend this book to fifth and sixth grade readers who enjoy the utopia/dystopia genre. May 14, 2014 بسیار از خوندن این کتاب لذت بردم و بعد از مدتی توانستم کتابی پیدا کنم که به سختی زمین بگذارمش... از اوایل کتاب که ماجرای اصلی آغاز می شود، تا درست انتهای آن مدام باید منتظر یک اتفاق تازه بود و این یعنی هیجان. البته من کلا آثاری که مربوط به آینده و در واقع آخرالزمانی باشد را می پسندم و این هم یک نمونه ی خوب از آنها بود. Read September 12, 2015 مشخص است که پیرمرد دیوانه شده است ولی دلم نمی آید این را به او بگویم. اما می دانم قهرمان واقعی این سفر کیست و آن شخص من یا حتا لانایای شجاع نیست. آن شخص، پیرمرد ریش سفیدی ست که عصای پیاده روی به دست دارد و قلبی بسیار بزرگ. قلب بزرگش نمی گذارد این فکر را کنار بگذارد که می شود دنیا را با نوشتنِ_ کتاب تغییر داد، کتابی که هرگز کسی آن را نخواهد خواند!! June 21, 2012 This is a captivating futuristic novel where it's author, Rodman Philbrick, does a masterful job of engaging the reader through its characters and plot. "If you're reading this, it must be a thousand years from now. Because nobody around here reads anymore. Why bother, when you can just probe it?" From these very first sentences of the book, the reader is pulled in to this fascinating story. The story tells of a journey taken by Spaz in a post-apocalyptic world (as a result of "the big shake", or earthquake). He starts on his journey to reunite with his younger sister after he finds out that she is gravely ill. However, this journey will be difficult and dangerous as he has to cross three zones that are ruled by powerful latch bosses. He is accompanied by Ryter, an old man that he tried to steal from in the beginning of the story and one of the last few people remaining who can read and write, and a very young boy named Little Face, who communicates through gestures and sounds. As they move from one zone to another, they run into trouble but are helped by a young proov girl (a genetically improved human). They finally reach Spaz's sister, Bean, and realize that the only way to save her from death is to take her to Eden, where the Proovs live. The only problem is that normals (people who have not been genetically improved) are not accepted in Eden. And so the plot thickens. The author does an exceptional job of depicting two worlds, the Urb (where the normals live) and Eden, and how each has its own strengths and weaknesses. What I find interesting is how the themes of addiction, abandonment, poverty, and violence in this futuristic world are the same themes that we see in our world today. At the end of the book, there is a glossary of words that are used throughout the book which helps the reader to understand some of the slang being spoken by the characters. The well-described scenes and adventurous plot will appeal to a variety of readers, and is suitable for students grades 6-12. This book lends itself to activities such as compare+contrast, cause/effect, and the 5 steps of the writing process to name a few. This is a great book for students who want to read a book filled suspense and adventure. The book is also available via CD and is read by Jeremy Davies (who has been in movies such as "Twister" and "Saving Private Ryan"). I tried reading the book while listening to the audio CD, however the audio CD was a bit too slow for my pace. Another excellent complimentary book would be "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. This book also deals with the same subject of a futuristic utopian society. March 3, 2010 Kalo ditanya sejak kapan suka science fiction-kind-of books? I'll say sejak baca bukunya Scott Westerfeld yg judulnya Uglies. Tadinya kurang begitu suka dengan ide membaca buku science fiction, secara yang ada dalam pikiran adalah cerita yang mengada-ada, dan menggunakan bahasa scitific yang aneh dan njlimet. Tapi surprisingly, I like them. And I like this book a lot. Setting cerita adalah di masa depan. Jauhhhh setelah terjadi gempa yang menghancurkan seluruh dunia dan hanya beberapa hal dari masa lalu yang tertinggal. Manusia terbagi menjadi dua jenis: normal dan sempurna. Manusia normal tinggal di reruntuhan yang di sebut Urb, dengan langit kelam abu-abu dan berlaku seperti kriminal untuk mendapatkan makanan, bahkan sebagian berlaku seperti hewan. Sementara manusia sempurna yang gen nya sudah disempurnakan, tinggal di Eden; tempat tinggal seperti surga, dengan langit biru dan rumput hijau. Spaz boy adalah pengidap epilesi. Spaz bukan manusia sempurna, bukan juga manusia normal. Dia dianggap lebih rendah dari manusia akibat penyakitnya itu. Bahkan Spaz dibuang dari keluarganya. Suatu hari Spaz mendapat berita bahwa adiknya menderita sakit parah dan ingin bertemu dengannya. Spaz memutuskan untuk menempuh perjalanan berbahaya pulang kembali ke rumah yang dulu mengusirnya untuk menemui Bean, sang adik. Ditemani seorang penulis tua dan bocah ingusan yang hanya bisa mengatakan satu kata: 'chox', Spaz menghadapi berbagai kejadian bahaya dalam perjalanan mereka. Di tengah perjalanan mereka membantu dan dibantu oleh Lanaya, seorang gadis yang berasal dari Eden. Semua hal tentang Lanaya adalah cantik dan pintar. Tidak hanya berhasil menyelamatkan mereka, Lanaya juga akhirnya bisa membantu Spaz mencapai apa yang menjadi tujuan awalnya berpetualang: yaitu menyelamatkan Bean. Novel ini berawal dari cerita pendek yang ditulis untuk antologi Tomorrowland. A very good science fiction :) August 31, 2010 Such an interesting premise - a future without books. A future where everything you want to think or dream about is shot into your brain with a needle. When I first heard the idea behind this book, I was intrigued. I checked it out and read it that same day (it's a really easy read and I sped through it at lightning speed). However, the book did not live up to its premise, at least to me. It was okay, and I can see how others would enjoy it more, but to me, it just wasn't my cup of tea. There was a lot of slang, a lot of violence, and the storyline seemed forced, like the author had come up with a really cool setting for a story (a post-apocalyptic world) and then had to come up with a story to fit into that setting. It just didn't gel for me. I've always enjoyed apocalyptic stories (I think it's a fascinating look into how the author thinks, and I've always loved to play the 'what if' game) so I enjoyed that portion of the book. I think that the book just tried to fit too much in too small a space in order to keep from being overly long and scaring off its target audience. But in the process, the storyline felt under-developed and simply didn't do anything for me. If the author had spent more time building the story and the characters, that would have gone a long way with me. IMHO. March 12, 2009 Think of Farenheit 451, 1984, Alas Babylon & Z is for Zachariah. Mr. Philbrick quotes various authors throughout this story w/a surprise ending. I found it interesting of his description of the near future when no one reads. WOW! September 13, 2015 من اجمل الكتب التي قراتها على الاطلاق تتحدث عن الكتاب الاخير الذي يدونه البطل سماغ والذي يعيش في عالم انقسم ع نفسه نتيجة سياسات مدمرة .. قراتها متعبه وممتعه صعبه الا يتعلق قلبك بما يحدث وبما لا تتمنى ان يحدث .. اعتب عليها قلة صفحاتها .. واتمنى حقا ان يتغير العالم للافضل والا ينتكس هكذا Read August 11, 2011 I really enjoyed this story of a grim futuristic world sharply divided between the "normals" in Urb and the "proovs" in Eden. Lots of comparisons could be made here - for example with "The Giver" especially in the aspect of old man/mentor passing on knowledge to a younger man. The story was violent but did not use bad language. Speaking of language, do not let the strange vocabulary in the first chapter throw you off. The slang words help make this universe convincing. The words are consistent throughout and are clever ("googan" means buffoon or silly person). I really liked the richness the new words added to this distopia. The story is suitable for middle school, but it deals with deep topics: leadership, compassion, policial power, mob rule, the dangers of removing oneself from reality, isolation and elitism, and more. There were a few holes for me: SPOILER at the begining, Spaz references mindprobes which supposedly have been recently disabled. Also could Ryter's grandfather have seen the Grand Canyon? Does the tremendous devastation of the Big Shake only go back three generations? However, I think younger readers will be touched by the story of a damaged, shrinking young man whose is transformed through the friendship of a wise, old man and his own love for his foster-sister and his determination to reach her. June 10, 2015 CAUTION: NEVER READ THIS BOOK. Why? First of all, the cover of the book is super wierd. Second, the book that Ryter is writing in doesn't seem that important at all and does not affect the plot at all, and if it did, it would be by a microscopic amount. Third, at the beggining the author is constantly having to explain what these stupid words he made up mean, and that just happens to be one of my MANY pet peeves. Explain words a couple times, that is fine, but the author, Rodman Philbrick Just lengthens it all out. Some people aren't sensitive to this stuff, but who is doing this review. Me? Or you? I also have some problems about when they were visiting the masters, to decide if they would be banished or not. I was mainly confused about why the proovs were there. I thought that the masters were designed to make every decision, and the other people weren't. In that case, shouldn't it just be the masters deciding? The only reason why I liked this book is the name Lanaya (a girl that is a proov and a hero of the book designed to be a master). Who I recommend this to: NOBODY!!! This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. November 24, 2008 This book struck me as an interesting book. It takes place 200 years after the "shake." It was this huge earthquake that apparently was world wide and destroyed if not everything the most important thing on earth, a pipe with the width of a football field and the length around the world that held all of the earths water supply. The shake killed a lot of the population. So what it really did was mess up the earth and man-kind is struggling for it's survival. Over time man-kind forgot reading and writing and slowly became uncivilized. There is, one place that still has hope for man-kind. It is called Eden and there are perfect people called proovs and they know everything. Spaz, the main character lives out a normal life until a messenger tells of his half sister, Bean, is sick and she want to see him. On the way to see Bean, Spaz encounters Ryter, the only person outside of Eden who knows how to read and write. The rest of the story has a lot of drama and Spaz learns more about his past. I'll let you figure out the rest by reading The Last Book in The Universe. October 18, 2011 I was twice recommended this book by students and finally decided I had time to squeeze it in to the reading queue. It's a bit like other dystopian teen books, only it's shorter and written for a slightly younger crowd. It uses its own lingo which is pretty easy to figure out... To kill someone is to cancel them. An old person is a gummy. The Big Shake seems to be an earthquake that changed the world and led to things as they are at least where Spaz lives. Spaz is a boy who is also our protagonist and suffers from epilepsy, hence the nickname. His world is called the Urb, short for suburbs, perhaps? Within the Urb are latches and each is ruled by a different crime boss and has its own dangers. He works as a street thug for the Bangers, but he once had a family and a younger sister who he loved. It's his connection to Bean, his little sister, which brings him on the journey of a lifetime and teaches him about hope, courage, and something he's never considered before -- a future. I'd recommend this one! April 1, 2016 This book was about a boy whose name was Spaz Boy but they call him that since he has no mom or dad.He was adopted and lived with a nice family with a really nice sister but soon they kicked him out of their home. He had to go live in the Urb where he had to steal and do many bad things to bring and suit a guy named Billy Bizmo who. While Spaz was ripping off people he found two amazing friends Ryter and Little Face. These two amazing friends help Spaz save his sister's life(Bean) and they went to many adventures. I really liked this book because this book because it is dystopia book and this is saying how many people imagen the perfect world but really that perfect world because a nightmare. I also liked the book because this was really showing the difference it many places and how some places may be amazing and beautiful while some are just a trajity.I would recommend this book to many people especially to the ones that believe that violence and stealing is good to show them how those things can really change the world and the environment. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. June 11, 2015 I think this is an amazing book for so many reasons but one of the things that I like the most about it is the adventurous aspect that the author puts in to the book so well. Another thing I like is how well the world after the big shake is described and how it changes every part of the book. I also like how heroic and brave Spaz is in the book even though he doesn't know it. Spaz is also respectable for his determination and the importance of his sister bean to him. The addition of Ryter was very necessary because without him this story simply wouldn't be possible or as exciting. This is because it gives Spaz more of a motivation to keep on going and Ryter's wisdom and knowing of things helps a lot on their trip to Bean. June 10, 2015 This book. I wasn't interested in it in the beginning, but when they had to rescue Spaz' sister, Bean, boy I got really into the book. This book had many surprises, from Little Face staying in Eden, or from Ryter(one of the main characters) dying, to Loddi Gets beating Veda Bleak( Vandals vs Assassins). But the most surprising moment is when Billy Bizmo, one of the Latch bosses tells Spaz that he's his son. I would recommend this book to people that like action/adventure books or fiction books. This book, i liked it alot near the end, and I hope that the people that read this book also liked it too. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. June 10, 2015 This book was very intense and very interesting because it started out so boring and then it started to gain action. The action made it very interesting. I like how Spaz does whatever it takes him to get to his sister because she is very sick. Then her sister gets better because they take her to Eden. Then they had Bean at Eden and she got better, not improved but better. Then the bosses got mad at Spaz for entering Eden and they wanted him to leave.I would recommend this book to everybody because this book is really good because it is like they have different social classes. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	98	http://www.concatenation.org/frev/incaegan.html	en	Incandescence by Greg Egan			[]	[]	[]	[ "SF", "sci fi", "science fiction", "Incandescence", "Greg Egan", "skiffy", "concatenation", "reviews", "book reviews", "SF book reviews", "SF books", "Tony Chester" ]	null	[]	null	Review of Incandescence by Greg Egan, (2008) Greg Egan, Gollancz, £12.99, pbk, 300pp, ISBN 0-575-08163-5, Tony Chester				null	Fiction Review Incandescence (2008) Greg Egan, Gollancz, £12.99, pbk, 300pp, ISBN 0-575-08163-5 It has been seven years since Egan's last novel, so to say this has been long awaited is something of an understatement. Of course, it has given Gollancz the opportunity to re-issue his previous eight books (seven novels and a collection of shorts) with similar covers to that on this new offering. I'm sure they'll look lovely on your shelves, though I'm not convinced that if you start here you'll necessarily want to pick up the rest.. You should though, especially if you like your SF good and 'hard'. As the New Scientist quote has it, "The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan." Like all authors he has his strengths and weaknesses and, in some respects, his work epitomises the perceived pros and cons of SF writing in general. SF was and still is the 'literature of ideas' and, consequently, plots (at least in hard SF) tend towards the central puzzle rather than, say, characterisation. Egan here certainly concentrates on the situation (how to survive in a deteriorating orbit near a neutron star close to galactic centre) rather than the characters. Indeed, Egan has often been criticised for having 'cardboard cut-out' characters, though I will happily defend him on that front: why should anyone expect even 'human' characters in the future to act the way that we do now? While we are short-lived (relatively speaking) it is unsurprising that we should all too often fall prey to, and express, our emotional and volatile passions; under which circumstances 'characters' will be written and explored accordingly. But Egan is writing about beings (albeit some of which may have started 'life' as organic humans) which can live for millennia in various organic or inorganic bodies, or even as data within a virtual reality, so why should they seem like us? Having said that, I do agree that sometimes Egan's characters do leave something to be desired, and I perfectly understand his critics. In the end, of course, it is up to you, dear reader: if you like hard SF and do not worry too much about the characters, then Egan is the man for you; if you like your SF, er, soft (as it were), then you should probably give him a miss. Of course, you may like both, but you can dig yourself out of that hole... So, to the plot. One million years from now the lifeforms that originated from DNA, including humans, form a meta-civilisation called the Amalgam which inhabits most of the galactic disc. However, in the core live the Aloof who deliberately have no contact with the Amalgam; but the Aloof do allow citizens of the Amalgam to cross their territory in the form of data, by way of a 'short cut' for travellers. Then the Aloof send out a message that they have discovered within their space a meteor which contains DNA fragments. Rakesh and Parantham of the Amalgam journey deep within the core to solve the mystery of how the DNA got there. Over time they discover that there must have been a world of organic beings that was destroyed, and soon they are searching for any survivors. Meanwhile, those survivors, including Roi and Zak, now live on the Splinter, a fragment of the homeworld in orbit around a neutron star, under threat of destruction on two fronts. Firstly their orbit is deteriorating and the Splinter is falling toward the neutron star, and secondly the neutron star itself is ripping apart another nearby star (all stars being 'nearby' in the core, relatively speaking) and the infalling matter from that star is buffeting the Splinter. Can Roi and Zak teach themselves and the other survivors enough physics to save the Splinter? And can Rakesh and Parantham discover their whereabouts in time to be of any help? Notwithstanding the criticisms of Egan's characters cited above, while Rakesh and Parantham are somewhat wooden, Roi and Zak are pretty well-rounded. However, there's no denying that the emphasis in this book is the good ol' SF sensawonder, with a hard SF tour of conditions at the heart of our galaxy, and Egan has a maestro's touch when it comes to explaining how the Splinter's inhabitants can teach themselves physics, even under extreme conditions. As a science-loving SF fan I have to say that I have got no problems with this book (barring a certain amount of disappointment at the end, in the (hopefully) positive sense of wanting more). So this is highly recommended, bearing in mind my comments at the beginning. Tony Chester Also see Jonathan's review of Incandescence. [Up: Fiction Reviews Index \| SF Author: Website Links \| Home Page: Concatenation] [One Page Futures Short Stories \| Recent Site Additions \| Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	15	https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2012/09/guest-post-orthogonal-universe-by-greg.html	en	Fantasy Book Critic: GUEST POST: "The Orthogonal Universe" by Greg Egan	https://blogger.googleus…k-no-nu/Fig1.png	https://blogger.googleus…k-no-nu/Fig1.png	[ "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK5d8ZKwiB0iVVchyphenhyphenwFhPK8GbYDA7WgDI8CXMRmZOyizxlY99jjNyCj08xQlMEeHnk7VtwHzXaotPhnGFgnkqJ_bipN7bq6ZdwEkSBkfdiqKhb_gXfDThEhSDHrtVcBqG1sKORJuAAGwt5/s400/Fig1.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yVWGJQyTSXwutPrq2VQD8I_3jZPT_jJJOB6wFcf2UYkr9e3WgjbJ2psAtnOmK97EkkJyCMgallwVvxSiRCvhrAKH4EWeuMZ0sRX-txVIGSfjuc8ThLf4-oh9rnTyFy_GMu4nQetEeTyN/s400/Fig2.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxM7SodRf6hDzB24DiUL6fIMZTxZ6dWN4Q8zNVhV8JLmhyx3QuTTXZb37f0wsuk1Zp78H7DUX6gQDJnwQzrW5l2fOYhdzbRgbPdakoOfJWOT2duNwKSj6IIEE1X5rtvGi08Y4v294hTHwF/s400/Fig3.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWd6pOYU3YnRWbZFuB65yfGEFEqvZwL9jtNe5xW2h6iyrOyz7LKgUAZ3mQB0zsnFw1mkNXBYGwrBxPfHxrTm8pj0WwiaBbdKdupdW3BsY0ey5vhqvpsrorACDseCmbv5S_1k86thuMdVZB/s400/Fig4.png", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwri374NwbH4epdej6vvpgGqvrKAFSIsgUuS28pLSZB8DvYRLGRaUemq4W3NiCSRt20CbeVn04PAFpYjsuFHY6iBS73jLbbdCVkW-oji52yY93fR-5x9PfZZn2cCcDiRQz6LdSuYK6Civa/s400/Fig5.png", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vJDvOOuIERGBlC572GiENSZ-L0s-Vs2EHqAadYfCKfyBsq9UsfbeoDBaX5eY5IIjpXmTobxkd2Tuf5QqoOdhgKqR-rqhHlqclHQYRCVw=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u6CQjsSOIZVPJlq2gJgTUOB5tjdhXb-s2YWGafhnbfeSJQ_ZZBhESHiyn9cMwpii95naMl3zh08XtuvA73QbQ9A4dluFIS9xfzbe0VESE=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vGUvVTQAJ5qr6-1rA8DYsNc22x6l7V52uUYsHEZ09sSNNxqLtZEa4z97o1XoTKdsXSyCrI49iB9pQOyP_foYyzxtIUVNX_y0IR9u8Upsw=s0-d", "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vJDvOOuIERGBlC572GiENSZ-L0s-Vs2EHqAadYfCKfyBsq9UsfbeoDBaX5eY5IIjpXmTobxkd2Tuf5QqoOdhgKqR-rqhHlqclHQYRCVw=s0-d", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTtVg0uJDxIn7LOx9nzew9kJPnRyPpORDsLoO0n2YQlBgit4_AwEbKm74RZFP1Jn81_mbzPVEdqTJFWUn6MIx17rhkD__2GM0dc6RSyC6ez5wue-DvXw2F-nJrwe2TiG8/s45-c/2013-New-Year-party-2.jpg", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/blogger_logo_round_35.png", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://www.blogger.com/img/blogger_logo_round_35.png", "https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcehqa7oaPxCySWqdsxNdpQxksiz_sK_1_3RgsfuOpcNmIgHPNrPE-8DKrbu_XWA_8MlIDHXxkGKOKrcZI2OR42MJ8i-yFqbkUT2BL7i2ui37jg7YeyN8HfP0j6xKiDYQLycmjRsAMBmSMhlVF_bau-AtJgPF2fAvWgkskIeRox_yc5tJo1RpKcoRBP4k/w453-h151/1500x500.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7SnMS7iOFCZOEDzaGdgikScKcFHgRfBO3VMiFJrTywgRbvuYXyWTyaBOjb5fCqAa1ajppINPJdE3_8Rv2c5eddeH96MUWiGVAEBbE0Qy9L3D4CK1x02F5SLnhQMzyLE-0ro4DilSbQ9xEfv42V1pIC91IDB-vChYbSCjJDYTjlgntUtg1CF2ghwW4_Qw/s1000/71NhYZXp3KL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicx9SW1suIpHdUP0huEjg__vjdge4ZgpugYJ7qLfQyCOZyNrFArNxaXyA83-Azu-Gg99TjWQVglqc33vb2K4gfIwsa7Qw0FqNGONLveI42c8G5MLmXVSWm_-s6pXqDbsKpeodAiY1cXuptnhM3eqKr1hIPFdPv2vmkQ4jJGpXOVZG2bqZCbBB0jSFtAhU-/s2700/Thrill%20Switch_Cover.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuqwOTWo-Jc5FMsd6Nvg_KHs1qG7NGXdQCq8jfiKeq0vul54Mzdwhie7qLpVCMsuTm-IXBfpZ-tWCUxUDa9ZbO4FwF1JiHmEvIUDJbjjdrrPfBmOMysNBgzGzEsErPLtO2DDgQokZw6hQt1Tj4-J-7De4fHam6YuegwcFLMuD-tsc1Yk-yvj_h5f2rxQ0f/s466/Atrocity%20Engine_cover.webp", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEityfg3vV0hD1SDGQ8oNIGg5OPVdXRfk7RnSaUXGK_nY4nqIt8lWlIscDyHHy8Mw0w7sTfJJj4yrcuaSQzfCk4C8-U-O3e67fZbqwFAf4Yw-D0Kr-eBCQUmVFLahGrkJGmIJdpB2XhXifah3VmDeTP6jXJ2cKFQpYX1jyxOTWhyphenhyphenQAPwx-KKlV8WtCV5AMY/s924/179911444.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYOtHzmZPvbjTrY331jRB6LU2SNZBacUKNE7KzMkecuMwNusad_sS6U_3IpyBNmS1iLB0UvZSQt0hpxofst4Sc_vsuPrVZrHPtK3hyJtGLVecBmMSA5szitFV8_Hly9NWVG2II4qTvPTsT46yreQd7hlnUIE9njfevTUbJ7I5wQ6qjSF1b9IEBU61V0w/s1200/DTG.jpg", "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmWdRAB_zHXRqCDoMYGkwjvyQWjPp3_z-nUr66yoTRGAcSaN9KIRt2lwAjwqqVzc5hyphenhyphenflliI9syinrtZTvqhHDsfrkv70iuJSFhGE0B4fDMIU9NDv6jF0CLLvOdpCXdYBnwpGGVM_1jFU-e2eFtBcDggqzQXHylSEQ9CoubSi7mAzAalK7-fvI6TIekhK/s2049/the-book-of-doors-by-gareth-brown.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Speculative fiction book reviews.		https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/favicon.ico		https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2012/09/guest-post-orthogonal-universe-by-greg.html
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	42	https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/2019/07/02/the-view-through-a-wormhole/	en	The View Through a Wormhole	https://theastoundingana…_1920.jpg?w=1200	https://theastoundingana…_1920.jpg?w=1200	[ "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/cropped-aff-covers1.jpg", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/black-3698081_1920.jpg?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes1-1.png?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes2.gif?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes3.gif?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes4.gif?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes5.gif?w=840", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wormholes6.gif?w=840", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/eea34a1562f10cf89034dcdcbf0d83d7afb4b4ad65d18f48735c1fc7fb5caa04?s=56&d=identicon&r=G", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/terror-at-the-crossroads-cover.jpg?w=881", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-url-header-aff.png?w=50", "https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-url-header-aff.png?w=50", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Emily Hockaday" ]	2019-07-02T00:00:00	by Greg Egan If you looked through a wormhole, what would you see? There are many possible answers to that question, ranging from “Whatever’s on the other side,” to “Nobody has even proved that wormholes exist!” So let me narrow it down a bit. In my story “The Slipway,” [in the July/August issue] astronomers…	en	https://theastoundingana…der-aff.png?w=32	The Astounding Analog Companion	https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/2019/07/02/the-view-through-a-wormhole/	by Greg Egan If you looked through a wormhole, what would you see? There are many possible answers to that question, ranging from “Whatever’s on the other side,” to “Nobody has even proved that wormholes exist!” So let me narrow it down a bit. In my story “The Slipway,” [in the July/August issue] astronomers notice a small circle in the sky that appears to contain hundreds of stars that weren’t there before. One potential explanation for this baffling phenomenon is that they’re looking at a newly created wormhole, and are peering through it into another region of space. To test this idea, they will need to ask what they might expect to see, if they really are looking at an example of the kind of wormhole that has been studied by physicists for decades. In real life, no one has ever seen a wormhole, but as a theoretical possibility they have a long history. In the 1980s, Kip Thorne famously developed a model for a traversable wormhole, prompted by Carl Sagan, who needed some means for the protagonist of his novel Contact to take an interstellar journey. In fact, the very same model had already been explored in 1973 by two other physicists (working independently of each other), Homer Ellis and K. A. Bronnikov. This kind of wormhole has two spherical mouths, arbitrarily far from each other in space, that are connected by an internal bridge whose length is unrelated to the ordinary distance between the mouths. To keep the wormhole from pinching closed, the particular kind of curved spacetime it contains needs to be maintained by the presence of an exotic form of matter, with a negative energy density. We will sidestep the issue of whether matter like that could ever really be found, or manufactured, even by an advanced civilization, and concentrate on the question: what would such a thing look like? If we assume the material component is either transparent or has been concentrated in a way that keeps it from blocking the view (perhaps restricted to a slender framework of girders, like the struts in a geodesic dome), then of course we wouldn’t expect to see the wormhole itself. We would see through it, to the other side. But although “Whatever’s on the other side” remains a valid answer, we can sharpen the question further. Suppose the wormhole leads to another location in our own Universe, sufficiently close that the background of distant galaxies is more or less the same as it is for us. Given that we can observe galaxies billions of light-years away, this is not a huge restriction: even if the wormhole led to the Andromeda Galaxy, two and a half million light-years from the Milky Way, then if we were able to look past the local stars into deep space, the backdrop would be essentially the same from either vantage. But we want to know how this backdrop will appear when we compare our ordinary view of it to the view we see through the wormhole. Will it be like staring at a spherical TV screen, showing a broadcast from Andromeda? Like gazing into the crystal ball from The Wizard of Oz? The wormholes studied by Ellis, Bronnikov, and Thorne are spherically symmetrical. This means that a light ray that plunges straight toward one mouth of the wormhole, aimed at the center of the apparent sphere, must emerge from the other mouth in the same manner, only it will be traveling away from the sphere, not toward it. This sounds a bit like the way light would reflect off a perfect mirror-ball—an actual polished sphere, not the disco kind with lots of small, flat faces—except for the fact that the “reflected” light does not come back to us, but emerges, as if reflected, at the far end of the wormhole. We can draw a picture of these light rays, showing how they would enter one mouth of the wormhole and leave the other. Here we are supposing that we simply have two regions of perfectly flat space that have been cut and joined to each other, so as soon as you cross into one sphere, you immediately emerge from the other. In fact, the solutions to the equations of General Relativity discovered by Ellis and the others would make things a little more complex than this, predicting a curved “throat” inside the wormhole and a curved region in the space around each mouth. But we will gloss over those details, and just treat the wormhole as a kind of splice. Light that is initially converging toward one mouth of the wormhole ends up diverging from the other mouth. This effect, where rays that are coming together are spread apart, is also produced by concave lenses, the kind that are in glasses that correct for short-sightedness. So we would expect looking through a spherical wormhole to be a bit like looking through a thick, concave lens. So far, so good, but before we can determine what the cosmic backdrop will look like through a wormhole, there is a missing ingredient we need to address. We have drawn a whole lot of light rays entering one mouth of the wormhole, then emerging from the other mouth. But which ray, exactly, matches up with which? Should the rays entering at each position on the first sphere emerge from the corresponding position at the other mouth? Since we’re assuming that the wormhole mouths are both in the same universe, and indeed are close enough that any local observers could orient themselves by a shared set of beacons chosen from the distant galaxies, this proposal isn’t meaningless. But if we made this choice, how would things turn out? In the animation above, the incoming and outgoing rays have been color-coded so we can follow them through the wormhole. (The hues here are for identification purposes only, and are not meant to imply any kind of gravitational red shift or blue shift.) As well as the collection of light rays, we have shown two identical objects passing through the wormhole: two cutouts of the letter “R” with their front side painted black and the opposite side painted red. One of them is spinning, to make the different colors of the two sides visible, and to show that, when they start out, the black side reads like a normal “R,” while the red side is reversed. You can see that if we join up the two mouths of the wormhole this way, the objects we send through it will emerge as mirror images of themselves! Our cutout letters, after passing through the wormhole, have reversed black sides, while it is their red sides that read like the normal letter. This might just sound like an amusing novelty: travel to Andromeda, and your left hand becomes your right. But there are strong indications from particle physics that if we could produce a geometrical transformation like this, it would also convert matter entering the wormhole into anti-matter when it emerged. That would not be so much fun. We don’t really know how wormholes could form, but if they were constructed by technological means this would amount to a major design flaw, and if they were created by some natural process, it would certainly lead to spectacular cosmic fireworks, as all the interstellar hydrogen drifting through was converted to anti-hydrogen. So, is this alarming consequence inevitable? Luckily, the answer is no. Our naive idea of simply matching up the corresponding points on the wormhole mouths has led to a situation where their “mirror-like” behavior has led to an actual mirror-inversion of every traveler. But as anyone who has played around with mirrors knows, the easiest way to turn a mirror image back into the original is with another mirror. Of course we don’t want to throw a second wormhole into the mix. Rather, we want to match up the points on the two spheres, geometrically, as if the correspondence were produced by a reflection in some mirror. Then the reflection associated with the way the two mouths are matched up to each other, and the reflection associated with the way light “bounces off” one mouth and emerges from the other, will cancel each other out. A reflection in which mirror, though? It would be nice to make a choice here that wasn’t completely arbitrary. One possibility would be to pick a plane for the mirror that lies midway between the two wormhole mouths. The result would then be something like this: If you examine the two patterns of matching colors in this second animation, you’ll see that they are indeed the mirror image of each other, with the mirror in question the gray line that bisects the picture. And this abstract “reflection” really does cancel out the effect on objects passing through the wormhole. Our cutout letters emerge with the black side reading normally. One other choice we could make is to identify every point on one wormhole mouth with the diametrically opposite point on the other mouth: its antipode. This is not a pure reflection: rather, it arises as a combination of a reflection and a rotation, but it is, in a sense, the least arbitrary choice of all, since it does not require us even to choose a particular mirror plane. What would this look like? Here, if you concentrate on the non-spinning “R” that enters the first wormhole mouth from the left, you’ll see it emerge from the other wormhole mouth at the diametrically opposite point, with its red side showing now instead of its black side. But since this swapping of the sides is accompanied by a mirror reversal of the shape, the two effects cancel out, and as a three-dimensional object, the cutout that emerges is geometrically identical to the one that went in. Now we are finally in a position to match up the light rays across a whole sphere, and see what the end result would look like. The animation above shows the view as we circumnavigate a wormhole that is matched up with the other mouth via a reflection in the plane midway between the two. (Instead of a backdrop of galaxies, we have drawn a backdrop of text, which is easier to compare between the views.) When we are looking in the direction of the distant wormhole mouth (the “m” in “my vow”), we see light that enters its far side and emerges on the near side of our local wormhole mouth, with its direction unchanged. If we move 180 degrees around the wormhole and look back the other way (the “q” in “quartz”), for similar reasons the light will also reach us with its direction unaltered. But if we look in any direction parallel to the plane of the imaginary mirror that we used to identify the wormholes (such as the “j” in “judge”), the light that reaches us through the wormhole will come from the opposite point in the sky to the direction we are looking. If, instead, the two wormhole mouths are identified by matching every point to its antipode, the light from the distant galaxies that comes to us through the wormhole (at least at the very center of the view) will show us exactly the same galaxy that we’d see if we were looking in the same direction and the wormhole was absent. However, the view as a whole is rotated around the center by 180 degrees. So, the upshot is that we can’t predict exactly how the cosmic backdrop would appear through a wormhole, without knowing precisely how the two mouths of the wormhole match up with each other. But we can predict a range of possible views that correspond to the different ways the wormhole could be joined up, given the restriction that it doesn’t turn everyone who steps through it into antimatter. As for the particular wormhole in “The Slipway,” you’ll need to read the story to discover just what view it gives rise to. But I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick tour of the geometry that governs what we might, or might not, see, if a circle in the sky ever starts showing us stars that were not there the night before.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	2	https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/greg-egan/	en	Greg Egan Books In Order	https://www.addall.com/b…oks-in-order.jpg	https://www.addall.com/b…oks-in-order.jpg	[ "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/logo-addall-2.png", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/logo-addall-2.png", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order.jpg 1280w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-768x432.jpg 768w", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51zFk8SlulL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51zFk8SlulL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/512GMK1DM5L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/512GMK1DM5L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714M01KTXSL._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714M01KTXSL._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TAGU3ASzL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TAGU3ASzL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fWaN8T7mL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fWaN8T7mL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Hd%2BGOvsXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Hd%2BGOvsXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513PAC2QZAL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513PAC2QZAL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41G5Uaf6jYL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41G5Uaf6jYL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51W1XKC91KL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51W1XKC91KL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51BCXZB26DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51BCXZB26DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SHxfnejfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SHxfnejfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51K-NsaOIfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51K-NsaOIfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510vP-+dufL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510vP-+dufL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41DsBJpdCHL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41DsBJpdCHL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vUZf-KHML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vUZf-KHML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510dnmpyJBL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510dnmpyJBL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516Xvn-UmbL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516Xvn-UmbL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41t0oXnRYXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41t0oXnRYXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OrevlIi9L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OrevlIi9L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ApXUKKOvL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ApXUKKOvL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714CXWMGK8L._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714CXWMGK8L._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51S%2BPpba7DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51S%2BPpba7DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515XjwAit3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515XjwAit3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514WDyaFl3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514WDyaFl3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61UCHiFcBqL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61UCHiFcBqL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61IF9ule3fL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61IF9ule3fL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jpMns4bdL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jpMns4bdL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41yLfufJs3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41yLfufJs3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61SCRMxMPKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61SCRMxMPKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51D+dfJJCKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51D+dfJJCKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ur5kPB1pL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ur5kPB1pL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21KUPAyyLgL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21KUPAyyLgL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21H9SX0RRML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21H9SX0RRML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510WTSZS0GL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510WTSZS0GL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513eCQpu9OL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513eCQpu9OL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Editorial" ]	2022-03-24T20:23:12-07:00	It causes riots and religions. It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscrapers. And it's all because of the impenetrable gray shield that	en		Books In Order	https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/greg-egan/	Subjective Cosmology Cycle Books In Publication Order Orthogonal Books In Publication Order Standalone Novels In Publication Order Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order Short Story Collections In Publication Order The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Books In Publication Order The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Books In Publication Order The Year’s Best Science Fiction Books In Publication Order Anthologies In Publication Order Subjective Cosmology Cycle Book Covers Orthogonal Book Covers Standalone Novels Book Covers Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers Short Story Collections Book Covers The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Book Covers The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Book Covers The Year’s Best Science Fiction Book Covers Anthologies Book Covers Greg Egan Books Overview Related Authors
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	54	https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/my-sci-fi-novel-recommendations-888	en	My sci-fi novel recommendations	https://substackcdn.com/…153_720x900.jpeg	https://substackcdn.com/…153_720x900.jpeg	[ "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_96,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F04281755-2cd6-42e5-a496-e69153abebb2_281x281.png", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_120,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6687963e-d467-4aa3-8559-2e632b0a8153_720x900.jpeg", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_80,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89fd964a-586f-461a-9f5a-ea4587d45728_397x441.png", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_120,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6687963e-d467-4aa3-8559-2e632b0a8153_720x900.jpeg", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6687963e-d467-4aa3-8559-2e632b0a8153_720x900.jpeg", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_120,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6687963e-d467-4aa3-8559-2e632b0a8153_720x900.jpeg", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_64,h_64,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2Fimg%2Favatars%2Flogged-out.png", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_66,h_66,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0de48750-d347-40bf-952a-b45e9136cd19_144x144.png", "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_66,h_66,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2Fimg%2Favatars%2Fpurple.png", "https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=592988465671886&ev=PageView&noscript=1" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Noah Smith" ]	2023-12-24T10:43:04+00:00	A repost with some updates, just in time for the holidays.	en	https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa242bd04-28e0-4418-8968-e96e069a8358%2Ffavicon.ico		https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/my-sci-fi-novel-recommendations-888	For some reason, a bunch of people have recently been asking me for science fiction recommendations. So I thought I’d repost my list of sci-fi favorites, along with a few additions from my list of underrated sci-fi and fantasy. I don’t claim that this is a comprehensive guide to the genre, or that these are the best books ever written, but they’re my personal favorites. I hope you find something fun on the list! Happy holidays to everyone. The Zones of Thought books, by Vernor Vinge This is the series that inspired the name of my podcast with Brad, so it should probably go first. A Fire Upon the Deep, the first book in this series, is some of the wildest, most titanic space opera you’ll ever read, while also managing to be extremely nerdy and chock full of fun references (the most entertaining being a galactic communications network suspiciously similar to Usenet). The sequel, A Deepness in the Sky, is actually the much better-written book, and just might be my favorite sci-fi novel of all time. It’s actually a paean to the marvels of 20th century science, disguised as a gripping tale about a space war against interstellar mind-controlling fascist Belgians. And the swashbuckling explorer/entrepreneur/messiah Pham Nuwen is one of the great sci-fi protagonists of all time. Read this if you like: Space adventure, aliens, capitalism, computer geekery The Vorkosigan saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold This might be the greatest sci-fi book series of all time. It’s basically the story of a liberal family on a conservative planet (loosely based on Russia), trying to reform their society from within. But it also features quite a lot of exciting space adventure, since when the protagonists aren’t trying to advance the cause of gentle 90s-style liberalism, they’re gallivanting around the galaxy foiling the evil plots of star empires and mercenaries and gangsters and terrorists. What sets the Vorkosigan saga apart is not just the unique characters (Tyrion Lannister is almost certainly loosely based on Miles Vorkosigan), the fleshed-out world, and the extremely well-paced plotting. This is perhaps the most idealistic, optimistic science fiction I’ve ever read — basically this series is to books what Star Trek: The Next Generation is to TV shows. Most speculative universes are places I enjoy reading about; Bujold’s is one I would actually want to live in. Start with either Barrayar or The Warrior’s Apprentice. But make sure to read Borders of Infinity and Mirror Dance, which together are the peak of the series. Read this if you like: Fun space adventure, heartwarming stuff Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood If the Vorkosigan Saga envisions technology making humanity better, Oryx and Crake envisions the exact opposite. This is a biopunk dystopia apocalypse story about a future where capitalism and alienating technology and good old human cruelty have combined to make everyone just bad. And then one mad genius decides to do something about it. I have to say, if there’s one sci-fi villain I personally identify with, it’s Crake. One other thing about this book: Surprisingly few authors can do really authentic cross-gender characters, but Atwood just nails it. Read this if you like: Biopunk, near-future dystopia, the apocalypse, anti-capitalism Hyperion + The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons Dan Simmons loves classical literature, and the Hyperion books are basically him rolling all of the classics of 20th century sci-fi into one sprawling epic, then sprinkling it with a dash of old British poetry. Almost every subgenre is represented here — space opera, cyberpunk, time travel, horror, ecofiction, etc. And yet it’s not just an ode to the classics, as Simmons comes up with quite a few original and far-out ideas of his own. It’s very difficult to describe the story — the first book is a take-off on the Canterbury Tales, the second brings all the separate stories together. You just have to read it. Anyway, this is one of the all-time classics, for good reason. (Note: I’m not as much of a fan of the Endymion sequels.) Read this if you like: Literally any sci-fi, classic British poetry Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson I think of this book as sort of the sci-fi capstone of the American Century (maybe along with the TV series Babylon 5). It’s a tale of how We Won The War, because we are the people who believe in Science and Technology and Freedom and manly men who do manly things! It’s about how you can be an awkward nerd or an ass-kicking jock and still be ok! If you want to know how America saw itself at the end of the 1990s, read this book. But, beyond all that, this is just a really amazing book. It’s over 1000 pages long, crammed with nerdy goodness like cryptography, hacking, the invention of the computer, and so on. It also has some of the best actual writing in any sci-fi book I’ve ever read, with layers of subtlety and deep characterization that you’ll miss if you just read it as a rambling geeky adventure story. Cryptonomicon will take a month of your time, but it’s worth it. Read this if you like: Historical fiction, cryptography, computer geeks, America Kindred, by Octavia Butler In addition to being my favorite time travel book, this is also the best novel I’ve read about slavery. Which makes it a hard book to read, but well worth it. The basic plot is that a Black woman from the 70s gets sent back in time to save and protect her ancestor. Only, problem…her ancestor is a White slaveowner rapist. It’s a story about how the past takes a piece out of us that we never get back. Anyway, Butler is an amazing writer, and you should probably read everything she ever wrote, but this book made an especially powerful impression on me. Read this if you like: Time travel, historical fiction Schismatrix Plus, by Bruce Sterling This book gets lumped in with cyberpunk, but it’s really not cyberpunk. Instead, it’s a wild, episodic journey around a future Solar System in the middle of a technological Singularity. The protagonist, whom I identify with pretty deeply, is just a guy who goes around finding one thing after another to get involved with — always looking to sidestep the onrushing future and find the next cool trip. The sheer breadth of far-out cool sci-fi ideas and cultures he encounters on his rambling journey makes this feel like multiple books in one. This setting also somehow reminds me of Austin, Texas back in the 80s and 90s — the sort of Wild West feeling combined with techno-optimism and plenty of weirdos. Kind of a Slacker in space. Which makes sense, because Bruce Sterling is from Texas. Read this if you like: Posthumanism, weirdos, space Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow What would society look like if we solved all our problems and had to create new ones for ourselves? Probably a lot like Canadian hipster society. This short book — almost a novella, really — is about a post-scarcity society where people are increasingly filled with ineffable ennui. It’s also widely credited with inspiring Facebook’s “like” button (and by extension, much of modern social media). It’s also the source of my favorite quote about human culture: “This place is not a historical preserve…it’s a ride.” Read this if you like: Near-future utopia, Canadian hipsters The Machineries of Empire series, by Yoon Ha Lee This is some far-out, wacky stuff. Imagine a universe where the laws of physics can be changed into anything you want, depending on which calendar people use. It’s a place where anything can happen, and frequently does. This series, written in the 2010s, really resurrects the psychedelic 60s sci-fi of Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delany. It’s just a nonstop wild ride. Read this if you like: vengeance, space opera, LSD All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders Quite simply, All the Birds in the Sky is one of the most beautiful novels ever written. It defies genre classification — it’s a picaresque, surrealistic sci-fi/fantasy book that’s really just about human relationships and love and friendship and pain. It’s the story of a mad scientist and a witch who become friends growing up in a small conservative 1980s American town. In the second half of the book (spoiler!!), after a falling-out, the protagonists both end up in 2000s San Francisco — the mad scientist in a sci-fi version of the startup world, the witch in a fantasy version of SF’s literary underground scene. (Among other things, All the Birds depicts the soul and culture and feeling of San Francisco better than any other book I’ve read.) Eventually the world must be saved, but ultimately the human relationships that the characters form are the most important thing. If I had to pick one book to be the “great American novel”, at least as far as the last half century is concerned, this might be it. Read this if you like: Sci-fi fantasy mashups, humor, love, crying on your couch Permutation City, by Greg Egan Greg Egan once solved an important outstanding math problem together with some random anime fan from a forum — and it was about permutations! That has nothing to do with this book except the coincidental relationship to the title, but it’s really cool. Anyway, Permutation City is the most mind-blowing science fiction book I have ever read, which changed the way I think about human nature, personality, and reality. If you want to have your brain blown right out the back of your skull, read this book! The actual subject matter is personality upload, and not much happens except that people discover the true nature of reality, life, death, individuality, time, and consciousness. Oh, and every chapter title is an anagram (i.e. a permutation) of the book title — and they all at least sort of make sense. Did I mention Greg Egan is smart? Read this book if you like: Singularity sci-fi, metaphysics Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick Yes, it’s Blade Runner, but really it’s not. Both the movie and the book upon which the movie is loosely based are about the theme of what separates human beings from robots, but they approach the question in entirely different ways. The book basically advances the idea that being human is about caring about things that you know will never care about you back. It’s not a neon-drenched cyberpunk future — it’s a dying world in the wake of a nuclear holocaust where people’s only solace is robot pets and weird cults and creepy TV shows. It’s possibly the bleakest book I’ve ever read — bleaker than 1984, bleaker than Oryx and Crake. But it’s also strangely beautiful and inspirational. Personally, I like it a lot better than the movie. Read this if you like: Post-apocalyptic fiction, robots Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang Ted Chiang might be the greatest sci-fi short story writer of our time. One of the stories in this excellent collection was adapted into the movie Arrival. Anyway, the stories are all really great, and you should read them. They’re high-concept stuff that also manage to have excellent characters. Read this if you like: Short stories, high-concept sci-fi The Uplift Saga, by David Brin This classic series (start with Startide Rising and then move on to The Uplift War) is all about the destiny of humanity. I’ve long believed that instead of seeing humanity as having fallen from a past state of greatness or grace, we should venerate our ancestors’ long, hard climb up out of the muck of animal existence. This series focuses on dolphins and chimpanzees that humans have reengineered to have human-level intelligence, who now have to help humans fight a desperate war against religious alien fanatics. It’s a fun romp, but also a deep meditation on history, ancestry, and collective purpose. The Uplift books have probably inspired my personal philosophy more than any other sci-fi novels. Read this if you like: Space opera, animals Remembrance of Earth’s Past, by Liu Cixin From China’s Cultural Revolution to a war against godlike aliens to an apocalyptic cult to a guy traveling around with his imaginary girlfriend, this series — beginning with the acclaimed Three Body — is one of the most sprawling and multifaceted sci-fi epics ever written. The theme of the book is whether human beings deserve to live. In fact, I’ve only read the first two, which are both excellent in completely different ways. Despite their epic scope, the books often take time out to tell small, human stories, sometimes with a dash of magical realism. Really, there’s just nothing like this series in existence. Read this if you like: Sweeping epics, aliens, China Metaplanetary + Superluminal, by Tony Daniel In the early 2000s, there was a small boom in “posthuman” space opera fiction where the characters can upload their personalities. Titles like Revelation Space and Singularity Sky got a fair amount of attention, but my favorite entry in the genre is nearly unknown. Tony Daniel wrote a pair of books called Metaplanetary and Superluminal that were supposed to be part of a longer series, but, well, no one read them so he quit. But those books were truly excellent. Daniel’s depiction of distributed uploaded personalities and virtual worlds is one of the most intuitively believable I’ve read. I especially like the concept of a “pellicle” — a distributed cloud of devices that contains small subcomponents of your personality that you only occasionally use. And the books contain a human warmth that’s largely missing from the genre, as well as a wry sense of humor (1990s Usenet geeks have uploaded themselves into cloud-like spaceships so they can continue their esoteric forum debates, and at one point our heroes are condemned to a forgotten digital prison known as Microsoft Windows). I wish this series had continued, but just these two books are worth reading in and of themselves. Read this if you like: Space opera, posthumanism Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami Battle Royale is one of my favorite movies of all time. The book it’s adapted from is also really excellent, for mostly different reasons. Set in an alternate timeline in which Japan wins WW2 and becomes a totalitarian nightmare state, Battle Royale follows a class of teenagers who are put on an island and forced to fight each other to the death. If that sounds like it was the inspiration for The Hunger Games, it’s because it is. But Battle Royale is infinitely better. The most amazing thing about this book is how it manages to make each kid a deep, realistic, fleshed-out character (usually before they are unceremoniously killed). But it also evinces a deeply humanistic philosophy of society inspired by the Japanese socialist and communist movements. Read this if you like: Dystopia, thrillers, Japanese stuff Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle What would happen if a giant asteroid hit the Earth and knocked us back to a pre-industrial civilization? Lucifer’s Hammer is the best book I know of with this sort of plot. It’s very grounded in the 80s, so it might seem a bit dated (no internet!), but the ways in which it depicts society breaking down are all too horrifyingly realistic. There are few books that will make you appreciate the value of modern industrial society as much as this one. The politics are fairly Reaganite-conservative, typical of the era. Read this if you like: Disaster fiction Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler Bloomberg actually let me write a column about this book! It’s about a future America that’s falling apart for no particular reason, and a girl who fights against despair and social disintegration by fixating on the idea of interstellar exploration. The defiant optimism in the face of calamity is definitely something the world could use right now. The saga of poor people trying to escape a dying Los Angeles is also among the more gripping plots I’ve read. Read this if you like: Near-future dystopia Babel-17, by Samuel Delany You should really read everything Samuel Delany every wrote. This is his most accessible and arguably his best book (sorry, Dhalgren fans!). It’s a fun space opera adventure set in a universe where language exerts incredibly strong control over human thought and society. What if star empires rose and fell depending on whether languages had a mechanism for describing yourself in first person? That’s the kind of far-out wild stuff that Delay specializes in. Read this if you like: Space adventure, far-out stuff The Alliance-Union Universe, by C.J. Cherryh Two of the books in this series — Downbelow Station and Cyteen — won Hugo awards., but there are a ton of other solid novels in the series. The Alliance-Union books are a space opera saga that sprawls across space and time, featuring interstellar wars, weird planets with alien races, and all the usual space-opera goodness. The characters are different from book to book, so it’s really more of a universe than a series. What really sets Cherryh’s writing apart is the plotting. I want to call it “cramped”, but that sounds like a bad word; instead, these books are cramped in a fun way. They’re usually about people forced to live and work in extremely close and stressful situations, usually with people they don’t get along with. The tension this creates is what makes the books fun. Read this if you like: Antiheroes, plot twists, aliens The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin The ultimate work of social sci-fi, The Dispossessed is ostensibly about the invention of faster-than-light communication, but really it’s about anarchism. From a kibbutz-like moon where anarcho-communists have abolished property rights to an industrial world where anarchist street movements provide the only real check on government tyranny, The Dispossessed explores how utopian ideologies can make society better even if they never quite work. Read this if you like: Social sci-fi, anarchism Burning Chrome, by William Gibson I love everything William Gibson ever wrote, and of course Neuromancer is the classic, but for some reason it’s this collection of short stories that really defines the cyberpunk genre in my mind. There’s no purer, more distilled cyberpunk in existence than the titular story, “Burning Chrome”. But every story is just pure gold. Read this if you like: Short stories, cyberpunk Nexus, by Ramez Naam The world has not yet reckoned with the importance of neurotechnology, but when it does, I hope people will realize that Ramez Naam was among the first to sketch out the awe-inspiring possibilities. Nexus is a fast-paced thriller with plenty of gun battles and international plots and evil techno-gods vs. peaceful techno-hippie communes and other fun stuff. It’s also one of the most visionary pieces of techno-futurism I’ve read. I love books that blow your mind while also delivering a good yarn, and this is one of them. Read the sequels too, of course. Read this if you like: Cyberpunk, thrillers Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner Written in the 1960s, this just might be the most accurate future-predicting novel of all time. So much about our present — inequality, urban unrest, random mass killings, genetic engineering, the U.S.-China rivalry — is in this book. The only big thing it whiffed on was population growth (it projected a world rapidly running out of space). Anyway, for a dose of eerily prophetic fun 60s sci-fi, check out this book Read this if you like: Near-future dystopia The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi Probably the archetypical climate fiction book. The Windup Girl envisions a world that hasn’t collapsed, but where climate change is just slowly making everything harder and everyone poorer. And in this world of scarcity, modern pro-social behavior has largely gone out the window, in favor of scrabbling selfishness. It’s a dark meditation on how resource limits bring out the worst in humanity. Read this if you like: Ecofiction, near-future dystopia Anathem, by Neal Stephenson This is a novel about grad school! It’s set in a world where universities are monastic, quasi-religious institutions, and how some students from one of these institutions help save the world when some very powerful aliens show up and start doing mean stuff. Anyway, this is one of the most creative sci-fi novels I’ve read, really defying any sort of established genre and making up a bunch of tropes out of whole cloth. The ending, while supremely satisfying, is also a beautiful joke about Neal Stephenson’s legendary inability to write a satisfying ending. Read this if you like: Nerdiness, stories about grad school, alien invasion The Neverness Cycle, by David Zindell This is some seriously far-out sci-fi, right up there in weirdness with Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny. It’s posthuman space opera before posthuman space opera became a popular thing. But it’s just far weirder than other tales in that genre. Just look at the summary from Amazon: Mallory Ringess becomes a pilot of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame. His quest to find the Elder Eddas – nothing less than the secret of life embroidered in humanity’s oldest DNA – will lead him from Neverness’s streets of colored ice into the deadly manifold: the “space beneath space” whose topology writhes and twists with hideous complexity like a nest of psychedelic snakes. I promise that this summary utterly fails to convey the weirdness of these books, but you can get a taste of it — the main city is one where people ice-skate everywhere, space pilots fly by proving theorems in their head, and so on. There are lots of weird things that get mentioned but never explained, such as an order of people called “autists” who try to intentionally cultivate autism, and whom I assume are like the people who used to hang out on the LessWrong forums. But the books also do have an emotional core — they’re really about father-son relationships. Read this if you like: Far-out stuff, space opera, daddy issues, the 1970s The Martian, by Andy Weir The “hardest” of hard sci-fi, The Martian almost entirely relies on real science (except for an unrealistic storm used as a plot device at the beginning). It’s a smart, funny, gripping, harrowing tale of survival. Better, in my opinion, than the movie adaptation. Read this if you like: Survival stories, hard sci-fi, astronauts A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick The ultimate science fiction about drugs. Philip K. Dick really nails the drug culture with this one (a subject about which he had all too much first-hand experience). If you ever needed a reason not to get into drugs, this book will give you one. But it’s also a great book about the security state, universal surveillance, and the subjective nature of reality. Read this if you like: Near-future dystopia Blindsight, by Peter Watts Blindsight is about very very scary aliens, but also about the nature of consciousness. I love books that combine nifty sci-fi with mind-bending philosophy with a readable, gripping plot. Read this if you like: Aliens, philosophy, horror 1984, by George Orwell If you haven’t read the greatest dystopian novel of all time, well then, read it. And then try to think of how we can make sure our world doesn’t end up like this. Read this if you like: A boot, stamping on a human face, forever. Bonus: A few fantasy picks The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander Until recently, I had thought that every kid in America grew up reading The Chronicles of Prydain, just like Narnia and Lord of the Rings. Apparently I was wrong; in recent weeks, I’ve discovered that almost no one I know has read Prydain. Well, it’s time to rectify that. The Prydain books are children’s fantasy, full of the usual wizards and monsters and fairies, but the themes are surprisingly mature; the series is all about coming of age, what it really means to be a hero, etc. As the protagonist, Taran, grows from a boy to a man, the series transitions from fun and improbable adventures to difficult choices and bittersweet endings. In my opinion, the writing of these books is better than Narnia, but the life lessons and social values are what really set them apart. David Roberts wrote a good review of the series on Vox back in 2017. I don’t know if I’d call Prydain the “greatest fantasy series ever written” — Lord of the Rings is hard to beat. But it’s up there, and for some reason it’s been almost forgotten. Also, the character Gurgi is the best sidekick ever created. Read this if you like: Heroism, adventure, life lessons The Cycle of Fire, by Janny Wurts The 80s were really the best decade for fantasy, in my opinion; you can find so many hidden gems just by going back and reading 80s stuff. And one of the very best is Janny Wurts’ Cycle of Fire series. The basic plot is that humanity is constantly under siege by a whole lot of demons and their various henchmen, and our only real defense is the powers of a very small number of extremely powerful wizards. Since one of those wizards has recently died, humanity is in trouble, and the next generation of super-wizards must be discovered and trained. The Cycle of Fire is great because it has everything a fantasy series ought to have — a beautifully fleshed-out world, protagonists you can really sympathize with, a creative magic system, breathless fast-paced action, looming evil that’s about to destroy the world, dastardly antagonists, and so on. And sailing. Lots and lots of sailing. It also has a fun sci-fi tie-in (no spoilers!), and it also manages to pull off that most elusive of feats — a highly satisfying ending. Read this if you like: Wizards, constant tension, sailing The Dark Border series, by Paul Edwin Zimmer These books are probably the most obscure items on the list — I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone else who has even read these (other than my mom, who recommended them). They came out in the early 1980s (the best fantasy decade!), and basically sank into instant and complete obscurity. They’re so obscure that Amazon doesn’t even list the titles correctly. But they’re amazing books! The setting is a Tolkienesque world that’s locked in a sort of fantasy Cold War, where the human world is guarded by powerful beings called Hasturs (a name cribbed from the works of the far more popular Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was the author’s sister) and various magical warriors. The forces of evil — basically, Cthulhu-style extradimensional monsters — maintain their half of the world in a truly hellish state where everyone is always trying to enslave and/or eat everyone else. Essentially the books document a series of skirmishes in this never-ending Cold War. There are four books in the series — The Lost Prince and King Chondos’ Ride, which are two halves of one main story, a fun side story called Ingulf the Mad, and a sequel called A Gathering of Heroes that’s far inferior to the other books and frankly can be safely skipped. Read this if you like: Swordfights, monsters, dwarves Tales of the Ketty Jay, by Chris Wooding If you like the TV shows Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, or Outlaw Star, you’re going to love the Ketty Jay series. It’s basically the same setup — a mismatched crew of down-on-their luck quasi-pirates with shady backstories, flying around doing quasi-legal things as they slowly become friends and realize they also have to save the world. Only instead of a spaceship, this story is on an airship — it’s British steampunk fantasy. Given the popularity of Firefly etc., I’m not sure why Wooding’s series never got that famous, because the quality is just as good. The Ketty Jay series starts strong and gets better — the second book is the best, the third is a little too heavy on the action sequences, and the fourth one is an emotionally satisfying and appropriately wild ending. Fortunately all the books are now available as audiobooks, so you can listen to someone read them in an appropriately British accent. Read this if you like: Steampunk, airships, lovable crews of rogues The Mirror of Her Dreams + A Man Rides Through, by Stephen R. Donaldson This two-book series is actually called “Mordant’s Need”, but I think that’s a silly name. The books themselves, however, are far from silly, and in fact are excellent! Donaldson is much better known for his other books, especially the Thomas Covenant series. But Mordant’s Need (sigh) is actually his best series by far, in my opinion. This is “portal fantasy” — a woman from our world gets pulled into a fantasy world. Portal fantasy is still very common in anime, but has mostly been forgotten in American fantasy literature. That’s too bad! And The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through are right at the top of that subgenre. In fact, the fantasy world in these books is based on portals — the only form of magic is “imaging”, the ability to make mirrors that function as gateways between worlds. The protagonist, a woman named Terisa, gets pulled from our world and finds herself in the middle of a runup to a war. The characters in this series are endearing, the action is fun, and the magic is very cool and original. But what I really like most about this series is the plot, which is based on the frustration of living a government that simply won’t wake up and recognize the titanic threats bearing down on it. Reminds me a bit of my own country. Read this if you like: Romance, the 1980s The Lyonesse trilogy, by Jack Vance Jack Vance is probably best known for his voluminous sci-fi novels and his Dying Earth series, which helped to inspire Dungeons and Dragons. And all those books are excellent. But in fact my favorite Vance books are the forgotten fantasy novels of the Lyonesse trilogy — Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc. (Annoyingly, this series also doesn’t have its own Amazon page — here’s Goodreads.) This series takes place in a Europe-inspired lost continent. The plot is very fairy-tale — an evil king locking a princess in a garden, a child reared by fairies, and so on. But it’s written in Vance’s trademark laconic, terse, insouciant style, which makes it more like a picaresque adult fantasy. And it’s peppered with weird 1980s stuff — alternate dimensions filled with bizarre energy beings, and so on. As with many Vance tales, it’s an unambiguous morality play — the good guys are simple honest folk who just want to live their lives, the bad guys are scheming sociopaths who eventually get the perfect comeuppance. My favorite character is the young, impetuous, overconfident wizard Shimrod. Anyway, the Lyonesse series is yet another lost gem of the 1980s. Read this if you like: Tongue-in-cheek humor, justice, adventure A few other favorites (because I don’t have time to write infinite book blurbs): Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny: Space travelers turning themselves into gods on an alien world The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi: A posthuman picaresque romp through a very weird solar system Worlds of Exile and Illusion, by Ursula K. LeGuin: Short stories that are deeper than you realize at first Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge: A prophetic novel from the mid-2000s that sketches out a future for augmented reality, AI, online education, anti-aging, and more Neuromancer, by William Gibson: The classic cyberpunk novel, but really a meditation on depression, drug addiction, and regret Have Space Suit, Will Travel, by Robert Heinlein: Starts off as very “hard” sci-fi about space suits, and ends up with fun aliens The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein: A libertarian revolution on the moon Nova, by Samuel Delany: Yet another great Delany space opera The Cadwal Chronicles, by Jack Vance: An overlooked gem in the Vance oeuvre, featuring all of the essential Vance elements The Caves of Steel + The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov: The first books in the famous Robot Series Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson: A sci-fi novel about…art appreciation? Invisible Planets, by Hannu Rajaniemi: Beautifully touching and romantic short stories Ubik, by Philip K. Dick: The most mind-bending of PKD’s novels The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: The all-time classic of sci-fi humor Even Greater Mistakes, by Charlie Jane Anders: Probably the most beautiful short story collection I have ever read (includes some realist fiction) The Peace War + Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge: A strangely depressing but also enjoyably weird meditation on the alienation caused by high technology Makers, by Cory Doctorow: A tale of a tech startup boom and bust (with a prescient warning about long-term drug side effects) The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway: Delightful post-apocalyptic weirdness with the best plot twist I’ve ever read The Expanse, by James S.A. Corey: A wonderful near-future space opera with lots of attention to the realistic details of space travel (and also a wonderful TV series) Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir: A more cosmic, far-out “puzzle sci-fi” story in the style of The Martian, with most of the same strengths The Death Gate Cycle, by Maragaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: A criminally underrated fantasy series with lots of world-hopping and several types of wizard The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper: Another classic children’s fantasy series that not enough people seem to have read Schild’s Ladder, by Greg Egan: A thoughtful meditation on the intersection of science and love Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany: I know I have a lot of Delany on this list, but Dhalgren is just too epically weird to leave out. The Lies of Locke Lamora: A great urban fantasy set in a sort of Renaissance Venice, featuring two wisecracking con men buddies. The Riyria series: A long-running fantasy series that is far more laid-back and chilled-out than your typical epic fantasy fare. Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer, by Garth Nix: A very entertaining picaresque series of stories about some guys who go around killing gods.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	1	3	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan	en	Greg Egan	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2001-11-07T22:08:44+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan	Australian science fiction author and mathematician Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961)[1] is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Locus Award. Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Western Australia.[2][3][4] He published his first work in 1983.[5] He 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 uploading, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism to religion. He often deals with complex technical material, like new physics and epistemology. He is a Hugo Award winner (with eight other works shortlisted for the Hugos) and has also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.[6] His early stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror. Egan's short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including regular appearances in Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction. In 2002, Egan co-authored two papers about Riemannian 10j symbols, spin networks appearing in Riemannian quantum gravity, together with John Baez and Dan Christensen. Spin networks also play a central role in his novel Schild's Ladder released the same year. In 2014, Egan conjectured a generalization of the Grace–Danielsson inequality about the relation of the radii of two spheres and the distance of their respective centres to fit a simplex between them to also hold in higher dimensions, which later became known as the Egan conjecture. A proof of the inequality being sufficient was published by him in 2014 under a blog post of John Baez. They were lost due to a rearrangement of the website, but the central parts were copied into the original blog post. Further comments by Greg Egan on 16 April 2018 concern the search for a generalized conjecture involving ellipsoids.[7] A proof of the inequality also being necessary was published by Sergei Drozdov on 16 October 2023 on ArXiv.[8] In 2018, Egan described a construction of superpermutations, thus giving an upper bound to their minimum length. On 27 February 2019, using ideas developed by Robin Houston and others, Egan produced a superpermutation of seven symbols of length 5906, breaking previous records.[9][10] As of 2015, Egan lives in Perth. He is a vegetarian[2][11] and an atheist.[12] Egan does not attend science fiction conventions,[13] does not sign books, and has stated that he appears in no photographs on the web,[14] though both SF fan sites and Google Search have at times mistakenly represented photos of other people with the same name as those of the writer.[15] Permutation City: John W. Campbell Memorial Award (1995)[6] Oceanic: Hugo Award, Locus Award, Asimov's Readers' Award (1999)[6] Distress: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis as Best Foreign Fiction (2000) Egan's work has won the Japanese Seiun Award for best translated fiction seven times.[6] Teranesia was named the winner of the 2000 Ditmar Award for best novel, but Egan declined the award.[6] An Unusual Angle (1983), ISBN 0-909106-12-6 Quarantine (1992), ISBN 0-7126-9870-1 Permutation City (1994), ISBN 1-85798-174-X Distress (1995), ISBN 1-85798-286-X Diaspora (1997), ISBN 1-85798-438-2 Teranesia (1999), ISBN 0-575-06854-X Schild's Ladder (2002), ISBN 0-575-07068-4 Incandescence (2008), ISBN 978-1-59780-128-7 Zendegi (2010), ISBN 978-1-59780-174-4 Dichronauts (2017), ISBN 978-1597808927 Perihelion Summer (2019), ISBN 978-1-250-31378-2 The Book of All Skies (2021), ISBN 978-1-922240-38-5 Scale (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-44-6 Morphotrophic (2024), ISBN 978-1-922240-51-4 Main article: Orthogonal (series) The Clockwork Rocket (2011), ISBN 978-1-59780-227-7 The Eternal Flame (2012), ISBN 978-1-59780-293-2 The Arrows of Time (2013), ISBN 978-0-575-10576-8 Axiomatic (1995), ISBN 1-85798-281-9 Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995), ISBN 0-646-23230-4 Luminous (1998), ISBN 1-85798-551-6 Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008), ISBN 978-1-59606-155-2 Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009), ISBN 978-1-59606-240-5 Oceanic (2009), ISBN 978-0-575-08652-4 The Best of Greg Egan (2019), ISBN 978-1-59606-942-8 Instantiation (2020), ISBN 978-1-922240-39-2 Sleep and The Soul (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-47-7 Phoresis and Other Journeys (2023), ISBN 978-1-922240-50-7 Diaspora: "Orphanogenesis" in Interzone issue 123, September 1997[41] An Efficient Algorithm for the Riemannian 10j Symbols by Dan Christensen and Greg Egan[42] Asymptotics of 10j Symbols by John Baez, Dan Christensen and Greg Egan[43] Conic-Helical Orbits of Planets around Binary Stars do not Exist by Greg Egan[44] The production of a short film inspired by the story "Axiomatic" commenced in 2015,[45] and the film was released online in October 2017.[46]
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	55	https://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/	en	Greg Egan: Interview	https://s12331.pcdn.co/w…utation-city.jpg	https://s12331.pcdn.co/w…utation-city.jpg	[ "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rlemay-clear-normal1.png", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rlemay-clear-normal1.png", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/incandescence.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/neuromancer-feature-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/primal-hunter-feature-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/vernor-vinge-featured-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/red-god-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/olympian-affair-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/song-of-the-mysteries-1024-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/red-god-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/01-The-Eye-of-the-World-outside-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/monster-hunter-siege-2-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mt-char-1-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/sleeping-giants-1024-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/monster-hunter-siege-2-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ninefox-gambit-1-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/game-of-thrones-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/artemis-1024px-80x90.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/vernor-vinge-featured-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/song-of-the-mysteries-1024-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/red-god-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/monster-hunter-siege-2-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/artemis-1024px-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/game-of-thrones-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/wizard-of-earthsea-2-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/primal-hunter-feature-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/olympian-affair-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/01-The-Eye-of-the-World-outside-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/monster-hunter-siege-2-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mt-char-1-100x60.jpg", "https://s12331.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rlemay-clear-normal1.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Renai LeMay" ]	2009-10-30T09:59:56+00:00	Greg Egan is one of Australia's top science fiction authors, with seven novels and a slew of collections and short stories under his belt.	en	https://s12331.pcdn.co/w…/rl-favicon1.png	Renai LeMay	https://rlemay.com.au/greg-egan-the-big-interview/	Greg Egan is one of Australia’s top science fiction authors, with seven novels and a slew of collections and short stories under his belt. His 1998 novella Oceanic won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Egan’s work is usually referred to as “hard” sci-fi, which is a sub-section of the genre which often focuses on scientific accuracy or detail. It’s easy to understand why the author can bring this approach to his writing when you realise that he holds a Mathematics degree from the University of Western Australia and has a second career as a software developer. However, as the best sci-fi authors do, he also has a focus on showing the implications for humans of the technology that he writes about. His books are available widely, and watch out for his next novel Zendegi, which is due out in mid-2010. When doing research about Egan we also found several other interviews going back quite a ways; one with Piffle, with Eidolon, and a short one about Incandescence. There is also a lengthy rant on Tor.com from Jon Evans wondering why Egan isn’t considered a superstar of the genre. The easy answer is that many people do consider him so :) From your website it looks like you have two new books upcoming: Zendegi and Orthogonal. What can you let slip about their current status and subject matter? Zendegi is set in Iran in the very near future; the first part of the novel takes place in 2012. The ultimate focus of the story involves brain mapping and virtual reality, but the backgrounds of all the characters are entwined with the Iranian pro-democracy movement in various ways. It’s due to be published in mid-2010. Orthogonal is a novel I’m working on right now; it’s set in a universe with laws of physics that are different from our own. One small change in a fundamental equation — just turning a minus sign into a plus sign — leads to some incredibly rich variations in everything from the way biology works to the relativistic effects of space travel. Do you have any other writing projects on the boil? No, Orthogonal is taking up all of my time right now. There was a fairly large gap between your 2002 book Schild’s Ladder and 2008’s Incandescence. Why so large a gap between books? In 2002, I got involved with the refugee support movement, trying to help some of the asylum seekers who were in long-term detention in Australia. It really was a disgraceful situation; many people were locked up for three or four years, and some for as long as seven. That ended up monopolising my attention for about four years, so I didn’t get much writing done. And though the current Australian government has been much better than the last one, in recent weeks the whole issue has been turned into an hysterical, politicised mess once more. We love the notice on your website about photographs of you. In addition, you’ve been described as a famously reclusive author. What’s the background to your approach there? Photographs of your friends and family mean something to you, because they remind you of people you’ve interacted with face-to-face for years. A photograph of someone like an author, even if you happen to like their books, is utterly meaningless. Actually, the bizarre situation which the note on my web page addresses — the fact that some idiots have been stealing photos from the web sites of other people called “Greg Egan”, and putting them on SF sites as photos of me — only proves the point. At one stage, about two dozen SF sites had a picture of the same professor of engineering from Monash University that they were representing as a photo of me. But apart from being incredibly rude to this man whose photo they’d stolen, what difference did it make to any reader that this picture wasn’t actually me? None at all. As for being “reclusive”, that’s pretty funny; I spend my time with people whose company I enjoy. If there are authors who genuinely enjoy spending their long weekends at SF conventions, that’s fine, but I’d be bored out of my skull. Your work is often described as “hard” science fiction, in that it is characterised by an emphasis on scientific accuracy. And yet it often also focuses on what might be termed an exploration of how technology has the potential to change what it means to be human (a classic sci-fi trope). Is there a tension between the two ideas, and if so, how do you negotiate it? I’m interested in science as a subject in its own right, just as much as I’m interested in the effects of technology on the human condition. In many things I write the two will be combined, but even then it’s important to try to describe the science accurately. In a novel such as Incandescence, though, the entire point is understanding the science, and it really doesn’t bother me in the least that it’s not an exploration of the human condition. There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is. Australian readers such as myself get a little thrill whenever we pick up a local mention in your books; it’s rare that our country features at all in sci-fi/fantasy literature. What’s your opinion of the state of the Australian sci-fi literature scene, and what can be done to boost it? Writers should just write to the best of their ability; everything else follows from that. Computer science is advancing rapidly, yet not always in the arenas which earlier sci-fi writers thought it would. In particular, we appear to have quite a few barriers in the area of artificial intelligence. Are you personally disappointed by this, or happy to remain in a world where humans are relatively alone for a little bit longer? I can’t say I’m disappointed, or surprised, that we don’t have artificial intelligence yet. I’ve written things where conscious software is created in the near future, but it’s usually in the form of direct copies of human minds, so it’s more a matter of us migrating from our bodies than creating a new form of intelligence from scratch. At the moment we’re so far away from creating any kind of conscious software that it’s hard to know which prospects are realistic, and which are pure fantasy. When we do finally grope our way towards some tangible results, I hope we proceed slowly and carefully, because this has the potential to lead to a lot of suffering. The present generation of humans emerged out of hundreds of millions of years of animals tearing each other’s throats out, and tens of thousands of years of people being prey to famine and disease. We might aspire to do much better than that, but creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that’s happy with its own place in the world is an incredibly daunting prospect. What methods do you use to keep up to date on mathematical and scientific theory, and to research it for your writing? I read a lot of general science, and more specialised journal papers and textbooks in areas that I’m focusing on. What current technologies most fascinate you when you think about their future potential? Brain mapping is going to be an immensely interesting and important field. In practical terms, it will lead to all kinds of assistive technology for people with disabilities, and in the longer term it’s going to shed light on the nature of every mental process. I usually find your books easy to get into right from the first few chapters. But some sections have attracted criticism from reviewers for what has been described as lengthy technical exposition. How would you respond to this criticism? People with no interest in science are very well catered for in science fiction; 99 percent of SF is written for them. I make no apology for contributing to the 1 percent that treats science as something of interest in its own right. Lastly, in my household we are also vegetarians. What is your favourite vegetarian meal? Eggplant parmigiana.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	43	https://www.sfsite.com/06b/di274.htm	en	The SF Site Featured Review: Dark Integers and Other Stories			[ "https://www.sfsite.com/images/views.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redserch.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redhome.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redcont.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redndex.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gra/0806/di.jpg", "https://www.sfsite.com/images/pastleft.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redserch.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redcont.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redndex.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redus.gif", "https://www.sfsite.com/gif/redrite.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "Dark Integers and Other Stories", "Greg Egan", "review", "science fiction", "SF", "scifi", "sci-fi", "books" ]	null	[ "Rodger Turner" ]	null	The Home Page for Science Fiction and Fantasy				null	Advertisement Greg Egan had been missing in action, as it were, for several years, devoting his energies to a very worthy cause, the refugee problem in Australia. (A story that seems derived at least in part from that experience is "Lost Continents" in the new anthology The Starry Rift.) But beginning a couple of years ago he has returned with a bevy of first-rate stories. Dark Integers collects three of these new stories, along with two older stories: his Hugo winner, "Oceanic," as well as "Luminous," the prequel to this collection's title piece. There is plenty of other new Egan out there, but this book serves as a good sampling, and as a sort of link between the old Egan and the new. (The two writers are, it turns out, pretty similar!) Egan's reputation, first and foremost, is as one of today's preeminent "idea men" of SF. His fiction is built around scientific or sociological ideas -- that is to say, on speculation. Particular areas of interest seem to be mathematics, physics, and the workings of the brain (and indeed all of these ideas are often interconnected). Egan eagerly uses concepts from the cutting edges of these fields, and speculates beyond the cutting edge -- sometimes, as he has admitted, a bit implausibly. (And there is nothing wrong with some of that in SF!) As such his fiction has an aspect of didactisim in the pure sense -- didact as teacher -- so that reading his stories can be quite literally an education in whatever notion he is exploring. (Sometimes he even offers help with essays (even in one case an online game) further explicating his ideas.) Now this is all very well, but pure didacticism is rarely sufficient to motivate a story, and one of Egan's problems throughout his career has been to match plots and characters to his ideas. Mind you, Egan has often solved this problem -- sometimes by telling stories in which the ideas really do carry the whole thing off without elaboration; and in other cases by finding a plot which enhances the central idea. In this vein it is interesting to contrast the paired stories "Luminous" (1995) and "Dark Integers" (2007). The earlier story opens with the narrator, Bruno, in a fleapit in Shanghai, with a woman wielding a scalpel and cutting open his arm. It's a thriller-style opening -- Bruno and his friend Alison are on the run from an outfit called Industrial Algebra, which wants a secret that Bruno has hidden in a chip in his arm. But the heart of the story is of course the nature of that secret, which concerns an almost unbelievable discovery he and Alison have made: that elsewhere in the "universe" (if that's the right word) mathematical axioms are different from ours. Worse, understanding the different axioms can be dangerous -- both to "our universe" and "theirs" -- the imposition of "our" mathematical truth is destructive to them and vice versa. "Luminous" is fascinating for that reason, but for me it didn't quite sell this idea, and the thrillerish material wasn't convincingly integrated. In "Dark Integers," set years later, Bruno and Alison and the Chinese mathematician Yuen, the only people in on the secret, have been maintaining a sort of DMZ between the two universes with the help of someone in the other universe. But now there are hints that someone else may have stumbled on this mathematical curiosity -- which could be very dangerous to the other universe. And likewise very dangerous to us, if they choose to retaliate. The story concerns attempts to explain some new notions about the maths behind this idea -- interesting notions but not that easy to follow. But the state of hopeless war implied between two incompatible universes is depressing as described, and in the end that's what ultimately drives things: not so much the idea, though that remains fascinatingly loopy, but the sad political reality that Egan derives from the underlying state of affairs. The other older story in the book is "Oceanic," which won the Hugo for Best Novella of 1998. Here I think Egan succeeds again in marrying character with idea -- perhaps in part because the central idea is more sociological than mathematical. It is set on another world -- apparently one colonized by humans millennia before -- and it concerns a young man who believes in God -- as does everyone (nearly) on the planet. The arc of the story brings him to question this belief -- a traditional enough arc -- but his questioning is driven eventually by a realization that his religious experiences -- very real in themselves -- can be proven to be biochemically induced. All this is very involving in the context of the story, though I have long felt that the implication -- that the same applies to religious experiences on present-day Earth -- while intriguing is not in any sense proven by this story, so that the whole thing seems nearly irrelevant (in the way, I confess, that much SF is often called irrelevant). The other new stories don't seem quite as successful to me as "Dark Integers" (or for that matter "Oceanic" on its own terms). And I think one reason is that in neither case is there that much of an attempt to construct plot and/or characters to carry the burden of the central idea. In a sense this is understandable -- when done poorly it can backfire as I've suggested with "Luminous" -- but still the stories come off just that bit uninvolving as a result. Even so, there is enough sparkle and imagination in the SFnal core to make the stories well worth your time. "Riding the Crocodile" is about a posthuman couple trying to cap a very long life by contacting the mysterious civilization called the Aloof in the Galaxy's core. The portrayal of the far future posthuman culture is intriguing, and the notion of the Aloof comes off pretty well, but never did I quite care. Finally, "Glory" opens with a spectacular hard SF coup in describing a pair of researchers being sent to a distant star. In the body of the story they serve as archaeologists of mathematics, trying to discover a long-lost theorem discovered by a vanished alien culture. All interesting enough, and well executed, but again it didn't quite ignite my imagination.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	14	https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/egan_greg	en	SFE: Egan, Greg	https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/favicon.ico	https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/favicon.ico	[ "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/static/img/sfe.png", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/static/img/logo.png", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/images/icon-gal.gif", "https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/Egan-Oceanic.jpg", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/images/VitMan.gif", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/images/Paypal-Donate.gif", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/static/img/external.gif", "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/static/img/external.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Welcome to the fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.	en	favicon.ico		null	Egan, Greg Entry updated 3 June 2024. Tagged: Author. (1961- ) Australian author whose first novel, An Unusual Angle (1983), is a lightly surreal and science-fictional coming-of-age narrative. In the same year he began publishing work of clear genre interest with the Hard SF story "Artifact" (in Dreamworks, anth 1983, ed David King). Some other early shorts were fantasy; since the late 1980s, though, he has increasingly concentrated on sharply written sf with an emphasis on Biology (including neuropsychology), Cybernetics and latterly hard Physics. Notable short works from near the end of the twentieth century are assembled in two collections, Axiomatic (coll 1995) and Luminous (coll 1998); the best of these stories – tales like "The Caress" (January 1990 Asimov's) and "Learning to Be Me" (July 1990 Interzone) – are among the finest of their period. "Learning to Be Me", for instance, embeds radical speculations about the nature of consciousness and Identity in a compact tale of a life both ordinary and fractured by the process of Upload. "Reasons to Be Cheerful" (April 1997 Interzone) is a particularly effective story of an adolescent whose surgery for a brain tumour leads to the placing of his own emotional reactions under voluntary control, making him question the roots of volition and affect. If there was one criticism to be levelled at Egan's earlier works, it was that he tended to privilege exposition of a concept over characterization. Later stories such as "Oceanic" (August 1998 Asimov's), which won a Hugo, and "Oracle" (July 2000 Asimov's) manage to accommodate both, "Oracle" interestingly featuring fictionalized versions of C S Lewis and Alan Turing (see Icons). These and others appear in his collection Oceanic (coll 2009), most of whose contents were previously assembled in the two books Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008) and Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009). Egan's early short work raised considerable expectations for the first volume in the loose Subjective Cosmology, the Hard SF novel Quarantine (1992), which effectively, and literally, encapsulates a Near-Future private-eye plot, of the sort familiar to readers of Cyberpunk, within a solar system now enclosed by a vast enigmatic Bubble that hides the Stars. The unfoldings of the plot, and of its implications about human identity in a world (or complex of Parallel Worlds) controllable at the quantum level through Computer-augmented brain functions, is extremely intricate; this multifacetedness also marks the next volume, Permutation City (1994), which searchingly examines the implications – in terms involving Mathematics, Computer science and Cosmology – behind the construction of binding Virtual Realities. Permutation City won the John W Campbell Memorial Award. Distress (1995) features multiple themes including exploration of Near-Future "Frankenscience" excesses, a quasi-Utopia on an artificial Island, and an unusual view of the anthropic principle in Cosmology. The final volume of the sequence, Diaspora (1997), features a cosmic Disaster that destroys the minority of Far-Future humanity which prefers to remain embodied in flesh upon Earth; the Uploaded and AI survivors scatter to explore an extraordinary range of higher Dimensions and their associated Mathematics. Teranesia (1999) is an example of the more character-focused Egan, with a particular emphasis on biological Evolution and sexuality (see Sex). By contrast, Schild's Ladder (2002) tends almost to the abstract in its depiction of an expanding region of the universe governed by an alternate set of physical laws – at first seeming to be a purely destructive transformation of space itself, but in fact offering a rich new environment for life on a subatomic scale (see Great and Small), explorable by similarly scaled human Avatars. After a hiatus of several years – during which he worked as an advocate for refugees arriving in Australia, an experience informing his bitter "Lost Continent" (in The Starry Rift, anth 2008, ed Jonathan Strahan) – Egan returned to publishing fiction from 2007. The first novel that appeared as a result, Incandescence (2008), has some of the flaws of Schild's Ladder, but shows Egan's imagination still at full stretch with its story of Conceptual Breakthrough by dwellers in a Space Habitat closely orbiting a Black Hole, who possess only a medieval level of Technology but to save themselves from Disaster must develop deep understanding of Gravity and general Relativity. Relativity and other aspects of Physics are dramatically altered in the Alternate Cosmos of the Orthogonal sequence, comprising The Clockwork Rocket (2011), The Eternal Flame (2012) and The Arrows of Time (2013), much of the action set on a Generation Starship. The Book of All Skies (2021) places a quest for something like Transcendence on a planet only properly describable as an exercise in topology, being sliced into a continuous climbing spiral that pilgrims may mount, encountering as they advance to new levels in the spiral (see Archipelago), a Babel of new perspectives. A core concern of almost all Egan's fiction is the philosophical role of science and scientific inquiry in human society and psychology. Along with Ted Chiang, he is perhaps science fiction's most rigorous and challenging author of speculations. Egan maintains a useful online index of Interzone magazine. [JC/GS/DRL/KB] see also: Aphelion; Australia; Basilisks; Ditmar Award; Eidolon; Fermi Paradox; Interzone; Locus Award; Meme; Pariah Elite; Psi Powers; Seiun Award; Time Out of Sequence. Gregory Mark Egan born Perth, Western Australia: 20 August 1961 works series Subjective Cosmology Quarantine (London: Legend, 1992) [Subjective Cosmology: hb/Peter Gudynas] Permutation City (London: Millennium, 1994) [Subjective Cosmology: hb/Chris Moore] Distress (London: Millennium, 1995) [Subjective Cosmology: hb/Image Bank] Diaspora (London: Millennium, 1997) [Subjective Cosmology: hb/uncredited] Orthogonal Orthogonal: Book One: The Clockwork Rocket (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2011) [Orthogonal: hb/Cody Tilson] Orthogonal: Book Two: The Eternal Flame (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2012) [Orthogonal: hb/Cody Tilson] Orthogonal: Book Three: The Arrows of Time (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2013) [Orthogonal: hb/Cody Tilson] individual titles An Unusual Angle (Melbourne, Victoria: Norstrilia Press, 1983) [hb/Cozzolino Hughes] Teranesia (London: Victor Gollancz, 1999) [hb/photographic: Yasuo Seki] Schild's Ladder (London: Gollancz, 2002) [hb/blacksheep] Incandescence (London: Gollancz, 2008) [hb/Sue Michniewicz] Zendegi (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2010) [hb/Michael Ellis] Dichronauts (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2017) [hb/Justinas Vitkus] Perihelion Summer (New York: Tor.com, 2019) [pb/Drive Communications] Dispersion (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2020) [hb/David Ho] The Book of All Skies (Pacific Grove, California: Greg Egan, 2021) [pb/] Scale (Perth, Western Australia: Greg Egan, 2023) [hb/] Morphotrophic (Perth, Western Australia: Greg Egan, 2024) [hb/] collections and stories Axiomatic (London: Millennium, 1995) [coll: hb/photographic: Science Photo Library] Our Lady of Chernobyl (Parramatta, New South Wales: MirrorDanse Books, 1995) [coll: illus/hb/Shaun Tan] Luminous (London: Millennium, 1998) [coll: pb/photographic] Oceanic (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared August 1998 Asimov's: na/] Our Lady of Chernobyl (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared May 1994 Interzone: na/] Mister Volition (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared first appeared October 1995 Interzone: na/] Chaff (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared first appeared December 1993 Interzone: na/] The Planck Dive (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared first appeared February 1998 Asimov's: na/] Transition Dreams (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared first appeared October 1993 Interzone: na/] Mitochondrial Eve (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared first appeared February 1995 Interzone: na/] Reasons to Be Cheerful (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared April 1997 Interzone: na/] Luminous (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared September 1995 Asimov's: na/] Silver Fire (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared December 1995 Interzone: na/] Cocoon (no place given: Fictionwise, 2001) [story: ebook: first appeared May 1994 Asimov's: na/] Dark Integers and Other Stories (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2008) [coll: hb/Steve Montiglio] Phoresis (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2009) [coll: hb/Gregory Manchess] Crystal Nights and Other Stories (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2009) [coll: hb/Steve Montiglio] Oceanic (London: Gollancz, 2009) [omni of the above two, less one story: hb/Sue Michniewicz] The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2016) [chap: first appeared December 2015 Asimov's: hb/Dominic Harman] The Best of Greg Egan (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2019) [coll: hb/David Ho] Instantiation (Pacific Grove, California: Greg Egan, 2020) [coll: pb/] Sleep and the Soul (Perth, Western Australia: Greg Egan, 2023) [coll: hb/] about the author Karen Burnham. Greg Egan (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2014) [nonfiction: in the publisher's Modern Masters of Science Fiction series: pb/Percolator: hb/nonpictorial] links Greg Egan Greg Egan's Interzone Index Internet Speculative Fiction Database Picture Gallery previous versions of this entry Internet Archive
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	0	76	http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/egan/index.htm	en	David Brin's Uplift Universe			[ "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/egan/uplift1as.jpg", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/egan/lumas.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/egan/uplift5as.jpg", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.vavatch.co.uk/images/star2.gif", "http://www.hit.stats4all.com/asp/hit.asp?sSiteName=adrianhon" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null					null	Up until reading Diaspora, I'd neatly categorised Greg Egan into 'Genetic engineering' and 'Post-cyberpunk metacomputation' (my phrase; do you like it?). To some extent, Diaspora falls into both categories - Egan can't be failed for expounding on new novel forms of life or the possibilities of simulating systems, and in this novel he combines the two, with new novel forms of life being simulated on other new novel forms of life. To this, he adds a healthy dose of hard-physics-SF. It seems fashionable these days for hard-SF authors to think up ever more grand galaxy, universe and metaverse spanning sagas. At first I read Asimov and Clarke - travelling between planets, let alone stars was good enough for me. I received a sharp shock after reading Baxter's Xeelee Universe series, where I was introduced to the complexities of four dimensional hyperspheres and hypercubes, time travel and inter-universe travel. Egan's Permutation City sent my head spinning with its self-assembling simulations lying upon self-assembling simulations. But Diaspora... well, Diaspora attempts to out-do them all. It starts off small (that's small in a relative sense) with a description of life in a Polis - basically, a computer running simulations of human beings at extremely fast speeds. For those of you who are going to write off these simulations as not really being sentient, think about it - a sufficiently detailed simulation is not actually simulating the human being - it actually is a copy of the human being. In this not-too-distant future (only a thousand years from now, would you credit it) there exist two other human 'forms' of life - Gleisner robots, which are essentially immortal androids simulating human beings, and Fleshers. The Gleisner robots are different from the Polis-dwellers in two important ways. Firstly, they have to interact with the physical world - there's no flying about in cyberspace for them. Secondly, they run at 'real time' - in other words, they live at the same speed as normal humans, or 'Fleshers'. Polis-dwellers, on the other hand, live subjectively thousands of times faster than 'Fleshers'. So one second for a Flesher would be about over a thousand seconds for a Polis-dweller. Got that? Because that's the easy bit. Early in the novel, Gleisner researchers discover that two binary neutron stars, that weren't due to collide for, well, a long time, are about to collide in four days. So, in four days time, the solar system would be hit by a gamma-ray burster. This wouldn't affect the Polis dwellers, since their computers that run them are buried far underground, but it'd pretty much kill off all the Fleshers, due to the intense radiation. The Gleisners, being robots, would be able to rough it out. So the Polis dwellers go and warn the Fleshers. To avoid summarising the whole story, the Gleisners decide to take jaunt off to the source of the gamma-ray bursters to found out what's going on since they blew up so early, and check out some of the closer stars with planets. Not to be left out, the Polis dwellers go and clone their programs and send off essentially computers with sensors and manufacturing systems to loads of stars as well. They find all sorts of weird and wonderful life forms, and it wouldn't be a true Greg Egan book if they didn't find some kind of life form that was a 'simulation' - which they do. Eventually, they come across a 'strange' planet (go and read the book yourself!), and find a way to travel to other universes. From there on, with talk of 5 physical dimensions, the whole book is reduced to incomprehensible physics and universe hopping, and I basically lost the plot. Well, no, I didn't, but I thought it got a little boring after that. That's not to say the Polis dwellers don't have any adventures - of course they do. But the latter part of the book didn't do much for me. I don't know what all this fuss of universe hopping is about - Stephen Baxter used in in Time, and it didn't do anything for me there, either. In my unprofessional and ignorant opinion, universe hopping should be only used sparingly, not as some sort of plot device (Baxter used it to great effect in his Xeelee Universe series) So, that's the book. But is it any good? you ask. In a manner of speaking, I suppose. If you like Greg Egan books, the more abstract novels that deal with ideas and physics, yes, you'll like this. If you want good characterisation, people you can identify with and a plot with a strong sense of direction, you will not like this at all. The plot goes all over the shop, and it's anticlimatic in places. The start of the book itself is a little strange, and I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea for Greg to begin with such an abstract set of ideas - it took a while for me to get my head around exactly what was going on. After the first chapter though, the book gets into a good stride. The problem, though, is that Greg has split Diaspora into several 'acts', each involving slightly different people. It's a good way of encompassing a large timeline and showing all the points of view, but it means that you never really identify with any of the characters - and that's hard enough when you're dealing with people who are bits of software code. All in all, Diaspora was a good effort to show the reader a vast epic involving incredible new paradigms of life (simulations, simulations of simulations ad infinitum), but it just wasn't quite good enough. Greg Egan has written some other excellent stuff though - Luminous, his collection of short stories, is brilliant, and Permutation City isn't too bad either. (BTW: It's pronounced 'Di-aspora', not 'Diyah-spora') This has to be my favourite Greg Egan novel so far, which doesn't really say that much seeing as it's only really a collection of short stories. Chaff, the first short story, is a great start for the collection. Reminding me of a fairly average story called the 'Deus Machine', our protagonist descends into the horribly genetically engineered jungle of Colombia to assassinate someone. The ideas of how the jungle is controlled by rogue biotech scientists, and its extremely cool adaptive self-defence mechanisms are pretty damn good. Mitochondrial Eve adheres to the usual formula of some apathetic scientist making a discovery that manages to destroy the foundations of some wild, crazy yet ubiquitous and popular religion. Egan throws in a pinch of physics, a bit of evolutionary biology and you've got a fairly solid short story, but nothing special. The story of the book's title, Luminous, is unsurprisingly the best. Describing a problem where the laws of mathematics might actually be self-contradictory (by the way they formed originally in the universe), Egan manages to weave a plot of suspense and action in as well, as various nefarious agencies try to take control of the (idea? concept? meme?) for themselves, to change the rules of mathematics for themselves. It's just about plausible, in that far-out 'Egan way' that only Egan can manage, but it's a good story. Probably the most uninteresting of the lot, Mr Volition didn't grab me at all. It moved very slowly, and Egan didn't manage to present his concepts particularly clearly. It basically involves a piece of technology causing someone to question which part of his brain determines who he really is. Boring. Cocoon is good stuff. One of the longer stories in the collection, it comes close to the standard of Luminous. It's a typical detective story, with an interesting idea of a biotech company developing a bolster to the barrier between foetus and mother, preventing nasty chemicals getting to the baby. Predictably, there's a twist in the tale, and the 'cocoon' of the story inevitably holds some significance to the protagonist. In fact, the lengthy description of the protagonist's situation (he's gay) is almost screaming out 'Here is an important plot point - don't forget me!'. Still, it's good reading. Transition Dreams folds quite well into the whole Diaspora/ Permutation City universe, with its talk of downloading personlities and Gleisner Robots. Fairly short, it's a good taster of Egan's obsession into the realms of simulations being so accurate that they are the real thing. Not bad, but not amazing. Silver Fire is another good story, again, quite long. Involving someone on the track of a deadly new virus, it also delves into the social problems of the time it describes. I quite enjoyed this, and found his insight into the fact that 'kids these days' are turning away from religion, yes, but they're into something far more frightening - spirituality. Perhaps the least scientific of the lot, maybe predictably I didn't enjoy Reasons to be Cheerful that much at all. Essentially, during the course of an operation, a boy is stripped of his ability to feel happiness. He gets it back, eventually (in a way, of course) and the story talks about how he deals with it. I think Egan was trying to make a point with this story, saying 'I can write other stuff apart from science fiction, you know', but I found that the story was spun out a little too long, and dragged quite badly in places. Better luck next time, eh? Our Lady of Chernobyl? Meh. Quite unmemorable, this story lacked a strong sense of direction. I wasn't entirely sure what was exactly going on, and I got a little confused in parts. This might have been due to the fact that I read the story a little too quickly, but still, I can't remember enjoying it too much. I'd already read The Planck Dive off the internet before I bought this book, and I found it mildly engaging. It involved a little too much physics for my taste, although I suppose you probably like that sort of thing if you want to read Egan in the first place. To his credit, Egan does introduce a new element into the mixture with the appearance of positively backward-thinking, luddite and condescending characters barging their way in. Not bad. All in all, Luminous is a collection of stories that are mildly dull at worst, and very enjoyable at best. If you average them out, you come out with a slightly above-average novel, but that's just it - it's only above average. There are better books I can think of buying. However, if you like Egan's style of writing (hard SF, lots of science, lots of biotech) then you'll like this collection. It's a good introduction to Egan, at least, showing off all the various types of SF he's attempted so far. Originally, I'd given this book four gold stars. I'm not entirely sure why I did this, so I downgraded it to just four stars. At the moment, I'm thinking that even that might be a bit generous - sure, I enjoyed it at the time, but I generally enjoy reading any SF book at the time, as long as it's not terrible. I could give it a paltry three stars (good), but in reflection I think that would be a little unfair considering the quality of the better stories in the collection.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	80	https://logosconcarne.com/2019/08/17/greg-egan-quarantine/	en	Greg Egan: Quarantine	https://logosconcarne.co…n-quarantine.png	https://logosconcarne.co…n-quarantine.png	[ "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/egan-quarantine.png?w=490", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=60&d=retro&r=R", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70d0fae9e4a7102ba06f8cfef5ca33f0ec0fd20a180cad3241228d373eed02f9?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8a838754050aa945ee9754173b83d3428f4d70ca9892dd016a7bce90c83a541c?s=32&d=retro&r=R", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=32", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=32", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=32", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=32", "https://i0.wp.com/logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/larson-x.png?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1", "https://i0.wp.com/logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/torus-earth-1.png?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/babylon-anime.png?w=200&h=200&crop=1", "https://i0.wp.com/logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/rick-oshay-3.jpg?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/elephant.jpg?w=200&h=200&crop=1", "https://i0.wp.com/logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/invincible-baseball-1.png?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/noether-symmetry.png?w=200&h=200&crop=1", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/bloch-hdr.png?w=200&h=200&crop=1", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/click-me.png", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/afootnotetoplato.png", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/deal-with-it.png", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/the-hard-core-coder.png", "https://logosconcarne.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/sleep-bent-prod.png", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=50", "https://logosconcarne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-logo-1.png?w=50", "https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?v=noscript" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2019-08-17T00:00:00	Last week I read Quarantine (Greg Egan, 1992), a science fiction novel that explores one of the more vexing conundrums in basic physics: the measurement problem. Egan's stories (novels and shorts) often explore some specific aspect of physics (sometimes by positing a counterfactual reality, as in the Orthogonal series). In Quarantine, Egan posits that the…	en	https://logosconcarne.co…-logo-1.png?w=32	Logos con carne	https://logosconcarne.com/2019/08/17/greg-egan-quarantine/	Last week I read Quarantine (Greg Egan, 1992), a science fiction novel that explores one of the more vexing conundrums in basic physics: the measurement problem. Egan’s stories (novels and shorts) often explore some specific aspect of physics (sometimes by positing a counterfactual reality, as in the Orthogonal series). In Quarantine, Egan posits that the human mind, due to a specific set of neural pathways, is the only thing in reality that collapses the wave-function, the only thing that truly measures anything. All matter, until observed by a mind, exists in quantum superposition. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to explore how this ties into the plot without spoiling it, so I’ll have to tread lightly. FWIW, I’m a fan of hard SF, and of Egan’s work in particular, so I was predisposed to enjoy the story (and I did). As with a lot of hard SF, it’s more about the exploring the ideas than about plot and character. I have no pretensions that I’m a literary critic. I’m just an avid reader who likes to kick back and enjoy a good story with interesting ideas. Egan almost always delivers on that front. I’m in no position to judge the quality of his writing. If I have any criticism at all, it’s that sometimes his stories end in a way that I find unsatisfying, usually because the scope of the story suddenly expands into something that reaches for grandiose. (His novel Distress hit me especially hard that way. I rather disliked how that one ended.) § § The measurement problem is a quantum mechanics question involving how potential futures become real in the present. A question that expresses that problem involves the infamous cat of Schrödinger: what causes said cat to be quick or dead? Specifically, what counts as a “measurement” of the radioactive atom? When a decay particle hits the detector, is that enough to collapse the superposition between the atom decaying and the atom not decaying? There are billions of atoms in the detector; does the decay particle’s interaction with them collapse the wave-function? (My guess, along with many others, is yes, this is where the collapse happens, but no one can say exactly why. I lean towards a theory that involves gravity.) How about the circuitry the detector activates to smash the poison vial? That larger system has many times more atoms; is it enough to collapse the wave-function? How about the cat? Is a living creature enough? Does it have to be a human? In Quarantine, it requires an observer with a brain. During a key info dump, one character says: “Ah. Existing computers, definitely not. Collapsing the wave function is a specific physical process — not an automatic by-product of a certain degree of intelligence, or self-awareness, or whatever — and computers simply haven’t been designed to do it … although no doubt some will be, in the future. “As for cats … my guess would be that they do it, but I’m not exactly an expert on comparative neuro-physiology, so don’t take my word for it. It may be years before anyone gets around to finding out exactly which species do and don’t. The speaker goes on to mention questions about how the trait evolved and what the universe was like before the trait evolved. Note that, for Egan, a single human looking (or the cat itself) really does collapse the wave-function. It is not the case that the system is now in superposition relative to someone outside the lab who has not observed anything. (In contrast to certain thought experiments that claim this is true.) § § Quarantine starts off as private eye story. The plot begins in 2067 when Nick Stavrianos, former cop, now a PI, is hired by an anonymous client to find Laura Andrews, who vanished mysteriously from a special needs care clinic. Laura was born with severe brain damage — large parts of her brain’s wiring aren’t connected. Her motor functions are largely intact, but the experts attending her say she understands the world at about the level of a six-month-old child. When the story begins, Earth has been cut off from the stars since 2034 by The Bubble, which suddenly appeared out beyond Pluto (at about twice the distance to the ninth planet). The Bubble, which has all the characteristics of a black hole event horizon, hides the stars and locks humanity inside. No one knows the how, why, or who, of The Bubble. § Nick comes to find out Laura has “vanished” from her room twice before. The first time she was found on the grounds of the clinic, the second time a few kilometers away. In both cases, “just wandering about, with the same bland dumb innocent expression on her face as always.” This third time, she hasn’t been found, and Nick comes to discover that she was, indeed, kidnapped this time. Why she was kidnapped, what she means, who’s involved, and what The Bubble has to do with anything, are all points that would spoil the story if I got into them. I wasn’t disappointed by the ending although it does get a little vague once the story is told and Egan needs to wrap things up. (There is some debate about what actually happened at the very end.) I’m not sure what else would have made it any better, though. Idea stories don’t have the driving narrative arc that demands a satisfying ending. [See the novel’s Wiki entry for more plot details if interested.] § § By 2067 technology has progressed to using highly modified Endamoeba to carry nano-machines from the nasal cavity into the brain where the nanites perform engineered “mods” on the brain’s wiring in order to grant new skills. Nick, a former cop, has a series of special mods: “P1 can manipulate the user’s biochemistry, P2 augments sensory processing, P4 is a collection of physical reflexes, P5 enhances temporal and spatial judgement, P6 is responsible for coding and communications…” And P3 “eliminates distractions and makes it easier to focus the attention” — very useful for surveillance or guard duty. Nick has a variety of other mods to help him be a PI. He can, for example, receive encrypted messages that only his brain can decode. The contents of such a message appear as a memory to Nick. The story also gets into loyalty mods, which cannot only enforce loyal behavior, but also make the subject desire nothing more than to be loyal and to resist any attempts to undo the mod. These mods are generally permanent, anyway. The nanites code the changes with special “keep off” proteins that any other nanites are required to respect. (There are also (illegal) “puppet” mods that allow someone to control a person like a puppet.) § Other than that, and the ability to re-shape the body as easily as the mind (also using nanites), technology is pretty much as we know it now. There are no flying cars or laser weapons (let alone transporters or replicators). There don’t appear to be conscious computers, and we haven’t solved consciousness to the point of uploading (a frequent part of Egan’s work). § § For Apple iBooks, I gave it four stars (out of five). In my personal rating system, I give it a medium Ah! (neither strong nor weak). Definitely recommended for Egan fans and perhaps hard SF fans in general. Also a fun read for those interested in quantum mechanics as it really does explore some of the inherent issues. I should point out that Egan (on his website) says: My 1992 novel Quarantine centred on a tongue-in-cheek, science-fictional resolution of that controversy, with a hypothesis that was chosen solely for its technological and existential ramifications, not because I considered it plausible. I said as much in interviews at the time. However, the world is full of misinformation about quantum mechanics, and while nobody would mistake Quarantine for a textbook on the subject, over the years I’ve often looked back and winced at some scientific flaws in the novel that go beyond the mere implausibility of its central premise. So just take it as a fun read with some interesting ideas. Stay uncollapsed, my friends! ∇
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	38	http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/diaspora.htm	en	an infinity plus review			[ "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/iplogo.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/bignonfiction.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/homebut.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/fictionbut.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/nonfictionbut.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/otherbut.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/a2zbut.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/div.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/1by1.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/1by1.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/diaspora.jpg", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/divsmall.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/divsmall.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/1by1.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/div.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/botleft.gif", "http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/images/botright.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Diaspora - a review. Egan seems to have a mind full of impossible knots - which he then goes out of his way to describe and untie for his audience... as far as ideas are concerned he is flying in a sky on his own.				null	Diaspora by Greg Egan (Millennium, £16.99, 295 pages, hardcover; trade paperback also available at £9.99; published September 1997. Mass market paperback published 6 July 1998, 376 pages, £6.99.) For the first sixty pages, this book could have been compared to two different people - neither of whom actually figure in the plot. I am speaking metaphorically. The first one would undoubtedly have been male: a dilapidated, crusty old academic; a man possessed of a genuine love for matters geometrical ("That was the heart of the contradiction! Every vertex needed angles totalling 360 degrees around it, in order to lie flat... while every flat, Euclidean triangle supplied just 180 degrees. Half as much."). This mad professor knows everything about his chosen subject, and goes to great lengths to punt his savvy from reader to reader. Greg Egan needs to pass on a good deal of mathematical information. Unfortunately (and largely because of such extrapolations), the other spectral figure present for the first sixty pages is a baby, born dangerously premature; fighting for breath, for existence. For approximately one-sixth of the novel, it doesn't look like the poor child will make it. Given all of this, the fact that the reader continues is a triumph of hope over evidence. Were it not for the fact that I had read a fair amount of Egan's shorter fiction, and liked it; and were it not for the fact that I had long since regarded Egan as one of the genre's high-flying ideas men, I might have lost hope myself - and merely stumbled on for the sake of professional duty. So while it is certainly true that this section of the book is slow, and quite possibly in the wrong place, one must persevere. The work gets better. It begins in the year 2975. Life has evolved, or diversified rather, into three broad groups: there are "fleshers" (sort of present-day human hand-me-downs, the closest to modern day man); there are "Gleisner robots" (machines with human brains); and there are "polises" (computers containing the software made up of uncountable numbers of human personalities). The following extract might help to define more clearly the strengths and weaknesses of each of these biological factions: "Yatima recalled scenes from the library of fleshers involved in simple tasks: repairing machinery, preparing food, braiding each other's hair. Gleisners were even more dextrous, when the right software was in charge. Konishi citizens retained the ancestral neural wiring for fine control of their icons' hands - linked to the language centres, for gestural purposes - but all the highly evolved systems for manipulating physical objects had been ditched as superfluous." Yatima is one of the main players in Diaspora: the result of an experiment in something called the Konishi polis. Yatima's opinion, towards the end of the first sixty pages, reflects what the reader has been thinking: "Polis citizens... were creatures of mathematics; it lay at the heart of everything they were, and everything they could become." It is Yatima's task to explore the Coalition of Polises. Along with a friend called Inoshiro, she visits a healthy community of "fleshers" in the enclave of Atlanta, where she is informed by a great "neuroembryologist" all about "bridgers" and about how "some species of exuberants have changed so much that they can't communicate with anyone else any more. Different groups have rushed off in their own directions, trying out new kinds of minds - and now they can barely make sense of each other, even with software intermediaries." After twenty-one years have passed, it becomes known that the Earth will be drenched, fairly soon, in a tide of gamma rays which has been created by the collision of stars. This catastrophe is set to occur (and how's this for premature ejaculation!) a full seven million years too early. On returning to Atlanta to let the fleshers know they're soon to be pulverized ("the ground is frozen, and the rain's about to turn into nitric acid"), Yatima and Inoshiro are greeted with a good deal of derision. Harsh words, however, are far from the worst of their problems. Why do the stars collide so long before the expected time? This is what the survivors of the catastrophe try to ascertain. One thousand polises are sent off into space (the diaspora of the title) in order to find the answer. More problems are immediately imminent, however, when it becomes clear that more danger is nigh and that the only chance of escape is to disappear into an unseeable, unknowable universe. Greg Egan, as I mentioned before, is a real ideas man. Even the distancing effect of "ve" and "ver" serves more of a purpose than one believes at first it will. Egan seems to have a mind full of impossible knots - which he then goes out of his way to describe and untie for his audience. In this novel he goes for the very big picture. A few years ago I watched a then-recently made documentary about the religious order called the Amish. They mistrust technology and live in communities into which the twentieth century has scarcely intruded. On camera a young Amish child asked, with conspiratorial wonder, if it was true: had somebody really landed on the moon? That epoch from twenty-five or so years earlier was still only a whispered rumour in the Amish camps - or at least among the younger generations there. Having finished Diaspora I wondered what that same child might have made of some of the brain-churning conceits in this interesting novel. Assuming, of course, that the child could read. Egan has scattered his new seeds now; as far as ideas are concerned he is flying in a sky on his own. But I wish he'd worked a little more on making those opening pages swing harder. Review by David Mathew. Elsewhere in infinity plus:
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	4	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)	en	Diaspora (novel)	https://upload.wikimedia…DiasporaEgan.jpg	https://upload.wikimedia…DiasporaEgan.jpg	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/77/DiasporaEgan.jpg/220px-DiasporaEgan.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Book_collection.jpg/32px-Book_collection.jpg", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2003-08-14T22:49:23+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)	1997 novel by Greg Egan Diaspora is a hard science fiction novel by the Australian writer Greg Egan which first appeared in print in 1997. It originated as the short story "Wang's Carpets" which originally appeared in the Greg Bear-edited anthology New Legends (Legend, London, 1995). The story appears as a chapter of the novel. An appended glossary explains many of the specialist terms in the novel. Egan invents several new theories of physics, beginning with Kozuch Theory, the dominant physics paradigm for nearly nine hundred years before the beginning of the novel. Kozuch Theory treats elementary particles as semi-point-like wormholes, whose properties can be explained entirely in terms of their geometries in six dimensions. Certain assumptions common to Egan's works inform the plot. This novel's setting is a posthuman future, in which transhumanism long ago (during the mid 21st century) became the default philosophy embraced by the vast majority of human cultures. Most of the characters choose a neutral gender; Keri Hulme's gender-neutral pronouns "ve", "vis", and "ver" are used for them. By 2975 CE (Universal Time), the year in which the novel begins, humanity has "speciated" into three distinct groupings: fleshers, biological societies consisting of statics, the original, naturally-evolving race of Homo sapiens, and a wide variety of exuberant derivatives, who have modified their genes beyond the static baseline. These include enhancements such as disease resistance, life extension, intelligence amplification, and the ability to allow selected transhumans to thrive in new environments, such as the sea. There even exists a subculture (the dream apes) whose ancestors bred out the capacity for speech and some of the higher brain-functions, apparently in order to attain a primal innocence and rapport with nature. In contrast to 21st-century society prior to the novel's "Introdus" event, the vast profusion of qualitatively different types of fleshers has made any sort of global civilisation impossible. This divergence has prompted the development of a culture of "Bridgers" who modify their own minds to form a chain of intermediates between exuberant strains. gleisner robots, individual software-based intelligences housed inside artificial anthropoid, or flesher-shaped, physical bodies (from a design by a corporation named Gleisner[1]) who interact with the world in flesher-paced "real time", a trait which they regard as important, as they consider the polis citizens too remote and solipsistic. The gleisners live in space, mostly in the asteroid belt, and in various other places in the Solar System; Egan implies that they long ago agreed to leave Earth to the fleshers to avoid conflict. They eventually implement a program of interstellar exploration using a fleet of 63 ships, targeting the nearest 21 stars. the citizens, intelligence as disembodied computer software running entirely within simulated reality-based communities known as polises.[2] These represent the majority by far of "humanity" in the novel, followed in a distant second place by the gleisners. Together with vast networks of sensors, probes, drones and satellites throughout the Solar system, they collectively make up the Coalition of Polises, the backbone and bulk of human civilisation. They interact primarily in virtual environments called scapes, through the use of avatars or icons. The citizens of the Coalition view the gleisners and their colonial aspirations as puerile and ultimately futile, believing that only "bacteria with spaceships. . . knowing no better and having no choice" would attempt to deface the galaxy with mass colonisation, especially if virtual realities afford limitless possibilities at a small fraction of the total resource-consumption. Diaspora focuses in large part on the nature of life and intelligence in a post-human context, and questions the meaning of life and the meaning of desires. If, for instance, the meaning of human life and human desires is bound up with ancestral human biology ("to spread one's genes"), then what meaning do lives and desires have, and what serves as the basis of values when biology no longer forms a part of life? Diaspora begins with a description of "orphanogenesis", the birthing of a citizen without any ancestors (the majority of citizens descend from fleshers uploaded at some point), and the subsequent upbringing of the newborn Yatima within Konishi polis. Yatima matures within a few real-time days, because citizens' subjective time runs about 800 times as rapidly as flesher and gleisner time. Early on, Yatima and a friend, Inoshiro, use abandoned gleisner bodies to visit a Bridger colony near the ruins of Atlanta on Earth. Years later, the gleisner Karpal, using a gravitational-wave detector, determines that a binary neutron star system in the constellation of Lacerta has collapsed, releasing a huge burst of energy. Previous predictions portrayed the system's stable orbit as likely to last for another seven million years. By analysing irregularities in the orbit, Karpal discovers that the devastating burst of energy will reach Earth within the next four days. Yatima and Inoshiro return to Earth to urge the fleshers—gathered in a conference—either to migrate to the polises or at least to shelter themselves. Many fleshers reject this advice, or fail fully to appreciate its urgency quickly enough. Stirred up by a paranoid Static diplomat, many fleshers suspect that Yatima and Inoshiro have come to trick or coerce them into "Introdus", or mass-migration into the polises, involving masses of virus-sized nanomachines that dismantle a human body and record the brain's information states as it is chemically converted into a crystalline computer. The gamma ray burst reaches Earth shortly after the conference, destroying the atmosphere and causing a mass extinction. The gleisners and the Coalition of Polises survive the burst, thanks to cosmic radiation hardening. Over the next few years, Yatima and other citizens and gleisners attempt to rescue any surviving fleshers from slow suffocation, starvation, or poisoning by offering to upload them into the polises. The novel's title itself refers to a quest undertaken by most of the inhabitants of Carter-Zimmerman ("C-Z"), a polis devoted to physics and understanding the cosmos, along with volunteers from throughout the Coalition of Polises. The Diaspora consists of a collection of one thousand clones (physical copies of the polis hardware) of C-Z polis, deployed toward stars in all directions in the hope of gathering as much data as possible in order to revise the long-held classical understanding of Kozuch Theory, which had failed to predict the Lacerta event. The bulk of the novel follows this expedition, rotating back and forth between different cloned instances of the same cast of main characters as different C-Z clones make discoveries along the way, relaying information to one another over hundreds of light years—and finally between several universes. Yatima[3] appears as an Orphan, a personality formed by the Konishi polis conceptory rather than by a parent or parents. A central character in the novel, ve usually takes the iconic form of an African herdsman in a purple robe. Yatima exhibits a deep love of mathematics and a desire to explore the unknown. Blanca also inhabits the Konishi polis, and is one of the first three people that Yatima meets. Ve is a physicist and scape-architect, acknowledged throughout the Coalition of Polises as an expert on Kozuch Theory. Vis usual icon is a featureless black silhouette. Inoshiro, another of Yatima's earliest friends, is a native of Konishi but a frequent visitor to Ashton-Laval, a polis of great artistic merit. Ve proudly considers verself delinquent. Inoshiro frequently attempts to attract Yatima away from philosophical Konishi and into more aesthetic and avant-garde pursuits. Inoshiro originates the idea of visiting the fleshers of Atlanta in ancient gleisner bodies. Later, traumatized by the deaths of most of the fleshers in the Lacerta Event, ve adopts a new outlook (a preprogrammed set of self-reinforcing beliefs installed directly into a citizen’s mind) that makes ver no longer care about the physical world. Yatima discovers this and attempts to convince Inoshiro to accompany ver in emigrating to Carter-Zimmerman polis where tangible bodies are the norm, but this outlook has made Inoshiro unwilling to do so. Before and after the Lacerta Event, vis icon has pewter-grey metallic skin. Gabriel, Yatima's third early friend, is Blanca's lover and another great physicist. He differs from most polis citizens in having chosen for himself a specific (though non-functional) gender, a trait considered eccentric and perhaps perverted by many citizens of the Coalition. His icon is covered in short golden-brown fur. Karpal, a gleisner astronomer who lives on the surface of the Moon, first discovers the collapse of Lac G-1 in Lacerta. He later leaves his robotic body and gleisner society to transmigrate to the Carter-Zimmerman polis, seeking a more profound understanding of physics, unavailable to creatures whose minds remain programmed to think of things in terms of their bodies. Orlando Venetti is originally a leader of the Bridger colony of Atlanta; he and his mate Liana Zabini first welcome Inoshiro and Yatima upon their arrival in gleisner form. In the Lacerta Event, Liana dies but the visitors from Konishi rescue Orlando and bring him into the polis. He joins the Diaspora and, thanks to his Bridger training, he makes the first interactive contact with an alien intelligence. Before joining the Diaspora he creates a son, Paolo, who ultimately joins Yatima in exploring higher-dimensional spacetime on the trail of the "Transmuters". Radiya is Yatima's first mentor in abstract mathematics and in exploration of the "Truth Mines", Konishi’s metaphoric representation of the world of mathematical theorems. Vis icon is a fleshless skeleton made of twigs and branches, with a skull carved from a knotted stump. Hermann is a member of the original 21st-century Introdus, who joins the Diaspora. Ve describes verself as vis own great-great-grandchild because ve has reinvented vis own personality so many times during vis long life. Vis eccentricity is reflected in vis icon, a segmented worm with six flesher-shaped feet attached to elbow-jointed legs, based on the curl-up from the work of M. C. Escher. The Star Puppies, a group of Carter-Zimmerman citizens, elect to stay conscious, in real time, for the duration of their spaceflight in the Diaspora (most others enter a state of suspension). The Puppies take the form of space-evolved creatures dwelling in a scape representing the hull of the spacecraft, employing personality outlooks (software which accentuates specific moods and values) to ensure they feel constant joy in, and at, the universe around them and retain their sanity. Humanity began transferring itself into the polises (the Introdus) in the late 21st century UT, when the technology became feasible to effect the nanoscale transmutation of human brains into functionally indistinguishable molecular computer systems. Many polises exist, though the novel mentions only a few. Though their physical infrastructure is not described, they apparently are hardware-based supercomputers of varying size (one of the full C-Z polis clones is briefly mentioned as roughly ten centimeters long) and unknown computational ability, all probably hidden in safe places. Konishi polis, at least, lies buried deep beneath the Siberian tundra, and is multiply backed up throughout the solar system. Each polis has a distinct character, encapsulated in a "charter" which defines its goals, philosophies, and attitudes to other polises and to the external world. Citizens are expected to heed the charter of the polis they "live" in; should they begin to disagree with the charter, they can always migrate to a polis which appears more amenable to them. The most prominent differences between the various polises, at least in the novel, involves their attitudes toward the physical world. Polis societies range from those who wish to experience the real world of normal time and space to the wholly solipsistic who live their entire lives in esoteric, isolated virtuality. The citizens of Konishi polis seem to concern themselves mostly with abstract mathematics and esoteric philosophical pursuits, and generally show little interest in the physical world. They use visual icons for social purposes, but regard simulated physical interaction as a violation of individual autonomy. After the Lacerta Event, Yatima emigrates from Konishi to Carter-Zimmerman polis, which rejects the solipsism exemplified by Konishi and embraces the study of the physical universe as of paramount importance. Given the Lacerta Event, which suggests that the universe has the capability of unleashing unknown extreme dangers, Yatima has begun to share this viewpoint. For internal dating and time standards the polises use CST (Coalition Standard Time), measured in tau elapsed since the adoption of the system on January 1, 2065 (UT). The novel begins at CST date 23 387 025 000 000. CST defines one tau as the amount of time in which a polis citizen can experience the passage of one second of subjective time; this elastic value changes with improvements in polis hardware. In the period of the novel a polis citizen's mind can operate at a maximum speed of about 800 times that of a flesher's mind, so 1 tau equals approximately 1.25 millisecond. By the beginning of the novel, the Coalition of Polises has existed for over 741 subjective millennia (during 910 years of flesher time), of which about 98.3% has occurred since the last major Coalition-wide polis hardware upgrade in UT 2750. Nothing compels citizens to experience time at such a high rate; they can equally choose to "rush", meaning to experience consciousness at a speed slower than the maximum the polis hardware can maintain. Citizens can therefore experience consciousness at the same speed as a human flesher would, or slower, or even freeze their conscious state for a set time or until a previously determined event occurs. Citizens in Lokhande Polis have opted to experience consciousness so slowly that they can witness continental drift and geological erosion. The polises measure distance, an arbitrary value within their virtual scapes, in "delta", which Egan does not fully explain, although the glossary indicates that citizens' icons are generally about 2 delta high, implying that one delta represents (roughly) one meter. Delta may also be fractionalised, and there is no largest or smallest distance as defined in delta. Almost all polis citizens, except for those who specifically elect otherwise, experience the world through two sensory modalities: Linear and Gestalt, which Egan describes as distant descendants of hearing and seeing, respectively. Linear conveys information quantitatively, as a string or strings of information formulated with a language hardwired into the mind of almost all Citizens. Citizens may "speak" to one another in Linear by sending streams of data back and forth, from mind to mind — either private conversations carried on between a specific subset of intended participants, or public announcements accessible to all involved in a conversation or otherwise "listening in". Gestalt conveys information qualitatively, and data sent or received about anything arrives all at once for interpretation by the mind of the Citizen in all its aspects simultaneously, resulting in an experience of immediacy. A citizen need not consciously consider the information sent (as in Linear): Gestalt operates rather entirely or almost entirely subconsciously. Citizens use Gestalt to create icons for themselves — "visual" representations within Scapes (Gestalt "areas" or "spaces"). Citizens also use Gestalt to convey Tags: packages of information described as like an odour or essence, which any other Citizens within a range of several delta (or who happen to "read" for specific Tags) can gather. Each Citizen has a unique Tag which identifies them as a particular person, regardless of their other appearances, and citizens may emit Tags for other purposes as well, as when Citizens need to convey and understand arbitrary information instantly. Early in the novel, for instance, Yatima learns about an asteroid in the real world by reading its tags subconsciously, which precisely inform ver about its properties such as mass, velocity, rotation, composition, emission spectra, and other such data discernible to the Coalition's satellite network. Later on Earth, however, when ve and Inoshiro inhabit derelict Gleisner bodies, Yatima must remind verself that Fleshers are real people, even though they lack tags identifying themselves as such. Novels portal Permutation City Simulated reality "The Planck Dive" Author's website Orphanogenesis, the first chapter of the novel, available for free download Diaspora title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	59	https://lithub.com/in-praise-of-the-info-dump-a-literary-case-for-hard-science-fiction/	en	In Praise of the Info Dump: A Literary Case for Hard Science Fiction	https://s26162.pcdn.co/w…omen-writers.jpg	https://s26162.pcdn.co/w…omen-writers.jpg	[ "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/themes/rigel/images/social_logo.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/science-fiction-and-fantasy-women-writers.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/image0-100x100.jpeg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Lit-Hub-web-ad-300x300-D-light-1.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/USA-pride-and-prejudice-USA-USA-150x150.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/books-1-150x150.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/best-books-copy-150x150.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/secondhalf2024-copy-150x150.jpg", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/bookmarks-logo.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-rec.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/crime-reads-logo-black.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-rec.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lb-content-widgets/img/lazy-sq.png", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Skateboarders-300x300.jpeg", "https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-sPcTBQa5YQLu3.gif", "https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/lithub-subscriber-drive/img/donate-the-tote3.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	2021-08-11T08:50:19+00:00	It was August, and I was in the middle of a cross-country road trip. After driving all day, I would settle into my sleeping bag at night with a headlamp to read Greg Egan’s Diaspora, a road novel o…	en	https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/favicon.ico	Literary Hub	https://lithub.com/in-praise-of-the-info-dump-a-literary-case-for-hard-science-fiction/	It was August, and I was in the middle of a cross-country road trip. After driving all day, I would settle into my sleeping bag at night with a headlamp to read Greg Egan’s Diaspora, a road novel of sorts about the search for interstellar life. Diaspora was my first foray into the subgenre of hard science fiction. It had renewed my awareness that, as earthlings, our lives are subject to physical and chemical laws over which we exert no control—a feeling literature rarely provokes in me. Realism, after all, subordinates the physical in favor of the psychological, creating an illusory, human-centric world. Watching the earth change slowly from behind a bug-splattered windshield, I began to wonder: what does realism risk when it reduces the planet we inhabit to background noise? Article continues below Hard science fiction, according to its most basic definition, arranges the conventions of science fiction in such a way that they could plausibly happen in the real world. Readers encounter monsters, but only if the monsters live according to durable biological precepts. They encounter futuristic technology, but only if it functions according to observable natural laws. To characterize this subgenre as realist or anti-realist is to miss the point: rather, its relationship to the real is fraught. Diaspora tells the story of Yatima, a genderless artificial intelligence and a “citizen” belonging to the virtual city-state of Konishi. It begins in 2975, the year of Yatima’s birth. Unlike the other denizens of Konishi, Yatima does not resemble the offspring of “parent” citizens. Instead, Yatima is a random combination of archived human genetic traits, an ontological experiment designed to trial a unique set of genomic data. Yatima is an orphan, in other words. Watching the earth change slowly from behind a bug-splattered windshield, I began to wonder: what does realism risk when it reduces the planet we inhabit to background noise? Diaspora resembles literary narratives about orphanhood to a surprising degree. Novels like Bleak House or Jane Eyre resolve when the orphan-hero, once a foundling with no understanding of the world or its rules, assimilates into the matrix of bourgeois values that undergirds society. To establish these value systems, literary texts often employ legalistic discourse to negotiate anything from inheritances to romantic entanglements. Bleak House is a book about a lawsuit after all. It’s but one mimetic trick for making the real world intelligible in a fictional text—few subjects are as recognizably “real” as contract law and private property. Likewise, Diaspora’s adventure into deep space serves to illustrate Yatima’s understanding of the self and its relationship to society. But hard science fiction puts mimesis to different ends. The discourses it employs to establish authority are not familiar in the usual sense, but specialized vocabularies understood by relatively few readers. If hard science fiction has a reputation for being difficult, it’s principally for this reason. It asks readers to learn in order to understand. We can think of the genre, then, as an extensible, even multidisciplinary mode of literary writing that uses expert discourse not to ground its narratives in the real, but to push the boundaries of the possible. Article continues below For his part, Egan employs a heady mixture of biology, computer science, mathematics, and physics to make Yatima’s world intelligible to the reader. The opening chapter, which narrates the formation of Yatima’s consciousness, is a dizzying example of this language. Yatima’s existence, like all Konishi citizens, is forged in the “conceptory,” a “non-sentient software, as ancient as Konishi polis itself.” The conceptory creates new citizens from a “mind seed,” a genomic sequence of “instruction codes” cobbled together from human DNA nine hundred years ago. The mind seed of Konishi consists of a billion strings of code partitioned into subprograms. When the mind seed initiates, fifteen million of these subprograms interact, filling in the data fields to create a unique identity. “Orphanogenesis”—the process by which orphans are generated—is birth by algorithm. Although they don’t “exist” in the proper sense, the citizens of Konishi do live a certain type of life. They argue with one another, become involved romantically, and have falling outs. They even struggle to negotiate their proximity to embodiment and to the humans, known as “fleshers,” who still dwell on Earth’s surface. This struggle deepens when an errant blast of cosmic energy causes the extinction of the fleshers and severs Konishi’s tenuous connection to humanity for good. In the wake of this tragedy, many of Yatima’s fellow citizens forsake biological life altogether, reprogramming their software to value only pleasure and solipsistic pursuits. Yatima, dismayed by their solipsism, rejects Konishi and joins a group of citizens aboard the Diaspora, an interstellar spacecraft dispatched to discover life in other star systems. Their mission is to forewarn distant beings about the likelihood of extinction. What they find in deep space is even more alien than they imagined. Hard science fiction, according to its most basic definition, arranges the conventions of science fiction in such a way that they could plausibly happen in the real world. In one of the novel’s most impressive chapters, the Diaspora’s spacefarers observe a new lifeform on a distant planet they name Orpheus. At first, it resembles a massive carpet of interlocking cells. But they soon discover its true complexity: The carpet was not a colony of single-celled creatures. Nor was it a multicellular organism. It was a single organism, a two-dimensional polymer weighing twenty-five thousand [tons]. A giant sheet of folded polysaccharide, a complex mesh of interlinked pentose and hexose sugars hung like alkyl and amide side chains. A bit like a plant cell wall, except that this polymer was far stronger than cellulose, and the surface area was twenty orders of magnitude greater. Article continues below Undoubtedly a work of the imagination, Egan couches his description of this organism in the technical and very much “real” language of plant biology. But to say that the events of Diaspora could actually happen is an exaggeration, opening fissures in the definition of the genre. What distinguishes this genre isn’t so much plotting, characters, or concepts, but its special relationship to information. In a certain sense, an effective piece of hard science fiction comprises one world-sized info dump. Expert discourse is simply the most efficient delivery mechanism for this volume of information. Maligned almost universally in fiction workshops, the info dump is a device that supplies a sizable amount of background information or other narrative material in order to make a story intelligible to the reader. Egan is a master of the trick. Yatima’s birth, an enormously complicated process that takes place in the first three pages of Diaspora, may be the most magnificent info dump I’ve ever read. In another memorable passage, a citizen named Orlando alters his perception to accommodate five visual dimensions. Looking into space from the viewing deck of the Diaspora, Orlando sees stars “below the horizon—not through the ground, but around it, as if he was standing on a narrow, jutting cliff, or a sharp pillar.” His eyes behave like “two eyecircles, one above the other, suddenly made spherical, their axes still confined to the swivel within their planar world but their lenses, their pupils, their field of view, protruding beyond it.” His vision exceeds “its ordinary field in two orthogonal directions,” somehow both sideways and vertical at the same time. When he attempts to connect the extra planes, he finds that they meet at a single point. “Planes were supposed to intersect along lines,” Egan writes, “but these ones refused to oblige.” What distinguishes this genre isn’t so much plotting, characters, or concepts, but its special relationship to information. Info dumps like this one break a cardinal rule of literary fiction: they don’t really “show” us anything about the character. But that’s not the point at all. If we can imagine how it might feel to see in five dimensions, in accordance with the actual laws of our universe, then in a very real sense Egan has expanded the mechanics of subjectivity. It’s hard for me to imagine a more impressive literary feat. Article continues below Back on Earth, I found myself at a roadside overlook above the Sandhills of Nebraska. Windswept dunes rolled along for miles in every direction, their valleys full of water and their slopes blanketed with blue-green prairie grasses. Like many writers, I’ve made an incessant habit out of cataloguing places I might one day write about. But it felt absurd to search for material here: these dunes bore no relation to me, or to anything other than the simple fact that they’d been left behind thousands of years ago, like slug trails in the wake of departing glaciers, and now I happened to be here to witness it. The Sandhills began long before we showed up and they’ll continue long after we’re gone. Still, it was impossible not to wonder, what sorts of things happen here? What does one need to know in order to know the Sandhills? How can we extend the real into fiction? When writers turn away from the rules of society—the “soft” parameters of reality—and toward the physical, the biological, the geological—the “hard” parameters of reality—they invite a whole new dimension into the real. Long, slow processes like the shifting of tectonic plates and natural selection are perhaps as germane to realism as the virtual psychology that dominates literature. If we’re to create fiction that confronts a new awareness of hard problems, like diminishing biodiversity, climate change, and even the specter of societal collapse, then I suspect literary writers have much to learn from their genre counterparts. As the real becomes more and more frightening, we may be forced to take shelter, like Egan’s simulacra, in the realm of the possible.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	18	https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Z/Hatchet.html	en	Anatomy of a Hatchet Job — Greg Egan	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	https://www.gregegan.net/images/egan.ico	[ "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validHTML.png", "https://www.gregegan.net/images/validCSS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "Greg Egan", "science fiction" ]	null	[]	null	Anatomy of a Hatchet Job by Greg Egan	en	../../images/egan.ico		https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/Z/Hatchet.html	In the two decades or so during which I’ve been a professionally published author, my work has received many generous and perceptive reviews, alongside a number with precisely the opposite qualities. I’m grateful for the first kind, and not greatly surprised by the second. As with the wider population, the people who read, write, edit and review science fiction include a significant proportion with no knowledge of, or interest in, the universe they inhabit — and within that group, a smaller but still substantial number who treat any such interest with contempt. Given that much of what I write is coming from the position that mathematics and the natural sciences are intrinsically interesting, and are as suitable as the central concerns of fiction as anything else, when the result is reviewed by someone who has about as much passion for these things as I have for opera or baseball, a clash of expectations is inevitable. Of course, I find it easy to arrange my life to avoid opera and baseball, whereas professional science fiction reviewers might not always have the luxury of choice. In rare cases, the result can be a gracious admission by the reviewer that they’re in no position to say anything relevant about the work – much as I’d have nothing to say, myself, if I’d been mistakenly assigned to review Elke Neidhardt’s Adelaide production of the Ring Cycle (don’t worry, I had no idea there’d been any such thing until a spot of Googling a few seconds ago) or to give a running commentary on this year’s World Series championship. More often, though, human nature being what it is, a reviewer in this situation will be obliged by their ego to start hallucinating genre-spanning competence, and will emit various kinds of bluster or venom as compensation for the unwelcome experience they’ve been forced to endure. This can be entertaining at times. The various spiritual heirs of A.H. Trelawney Ross have convinced themselves that the particular set of half-digested factoids in their possession perfectly delineates the proper amount of science that can be known by a truly civilised person and discussed in polite company — where “polite company” might mean “among Doctor Who fans down the pub” or “in the English Department common room” or whatever particular social milieu the reviewer identifies with most strongly. Anything else is beyond the pale, and the heirs of AHTR have developed a whole elaborate demonology to deal with work that oversteps these boundaries, and the people who want to foist too much science into the brains of pure and decent science fiction readers. These days there’s often ranting about “nerds” and “geeks” – terms that the world would be better off without, though I have to admit there’s something gloriously awful, in a Love And Death on Long Island kind of way, when would-be sophisticates who spend half their time discussing Joyce or Sophocles switch to a vocabulary whose current usage was largely forged in the supremely inane universe of American high school cliques. Of all the reviews of Incandescence rendered irrelevant by hostility or carelessness, one stands out from the rest. In fact, I believe this particular review is probably the first genuine hatchet job I’ve ever received. There is no precise, generally accepted definition of the term hatchet job, so I’m going to feel free to specify my own. The distinguishing quality, I’d contend, is not the intensity of the review’s invective, but rather the degree to which the reviewer attempts to bolster their position by mounting culpably weak arguments against pretty much everything in the book. No matter how much the reviewer loathes the book, if they possess the self-discipline (and the logical and rhetorical skills) to state the reasons for their verdict honestly and precisely, the result is not a hatchet job; it’s simply a negative review, and there are no circumstances when a reviewer is not entitled to write a negative review. A hatchet job results only when the reviewer is so unsatisfied with the actual reasons for their loathing that they start scrabbling around desperately and finding fault with everything in sight, regardless of merit. Of course, there might be books where everything from the typeface to the character’s names really is worthy of derision, but a good rule of thumb remains: if the reviewer employs special pleading – appealing to tendentious “rules” or logically spurious arguments that not only lack general support, but that even the very same person would be unlikely to invoke in any other case – you have a hatchet job. The remainder of this essay won’t make much sense unless you read the review in question by Adam Roberts, on the Strange Horizons web site. First, Roberts tells us that the central flaw of Incandescence is that “everything is explained all the time all the way through”. It’s certainly true that nothing that is known to the protagonists is withheld from the reader, and Roberts – who makes it plain that he has no knowledge of or interest in science – finds a transparent, unobfuscated view over the shoulders of characters who are struggling to uncover the nature of their world enough to bore him out of his skull. Roberts would prefer a long, convoluted narrative strip-tease, as in Lost (which for all its virtues is not many people’s model of judicious revelatory pacing); he’s entitled to his preferences, of course, but the irony is that the reader ends Incandescence knowing several crucial things that remain hidden from the protagonists. No doubt Roberts would be uninterested in these revelations too, but from his comments it seems unlikely that he was ever aware of them. So far, so ordinary; an heir of A.H. Trelawney Ross collides with a book “to which adheres the odour of fourth-form school physics labs”, proclaims in scandalised tones that “the novel’s real interest is the process of enquiry itself” (emphasis in the original), and declares with pompous finality: Science is the enemy of mystery. Fiction, however, requires a degree of negative capability immiscible with the scientific method. In short, Roberts has as much of a good time as I’d have at the Bayreuth Festival, and as little worth reporting about the experience. The mystery is why he bought the ticket in the first place; a previous encounter with Schild’s Ladder should have warned off any but the most masochistic of science-haters. What turns the review into a hatchet job, though, is that Roberts seeks to shore up his negative opinion of the book by finding as many other things to complain about as he can. This is where a penchant for special pleading comes in handy. The Amalgam, Roberts tells us, is a “rather dental name”. But even this lame bitchiness is a distinctive form of contrivance; it’s a common strategy in populist anti-intellectualism to pretend that a term has only one, maximally mundane, meaning. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Roberts to apply the same rule to Christopher Priest’s corpus. I was waiting for him to show some consistency and declare that the Splinter was “rather wooden” ... but it turns out he’s written an entire novel with that title; obviously, grounds to suspend the rule. Roberts makes a stab at trying to insist that the narrative of the Splinter should have been stripped of phrases like “a whirlwind tour of history” or “armed with the map of weights” when the Splinter has neither whirlwinds nor armies. The endpoint of such a strategy would be to leave virtually nothing of the English language behind, since the vast majority of English etymology ultimately refers to objects that do not exist in the Splinter. Roberts realises his suggestion is untenable and backs away, but then decides that the policy I’ve actually adopted of translating alien thoughts and words into ordinary English should have turned four of the directions used by the Splinterites into “north”, “south”, “west” and “east”. If Roberts had given a moment’s serious thought to this framing issue – as opposed to just groping around for things to which he could object – he would have understood why the Splinterites’ direction words could not be translated into the English compass points. Zak has come to realise that the Splinter is moving in a circle around a distant point, the Hub. Once this celestial geometry has been spelt out to us, we might usefully visualise the situation by imagining the Splinter’s orbit as the equator of a vast sphere, to which we attach analogous directions to those we attach to the surface of the Earth. But that’s not how ordinary Splinterites think. To the Splinterites before Zak, the concepts shomal, junub, rarb and sharq refer solely to the pattern of weights, because they know about nothing else; if these terms had been presented to the reader instead as north, south, east and west, it would have strongly suggested either of two false things: that the Splinterites had some pre-existing concept of their world lying on an orbit-embracing sphere, or — even more confusingly to the reader – that the sphere spanned by these directions was the Splinter itself, and if you kept going east in the Splinter you would, as on the Earth, end up where you started. On the Splinter, if you keep going rarb you hit the Incandescence. A few reviewers complained that they had trouble keeping straight the physical meanings of the Splinterites’ directions. This leaves me wondering if they’ve really never encountered a book before that benefits from being read with a pad of paper and a pen beside it, or whether they’re just so hung up on the idea that only non-fiction should be accompanied by note-taking and diagram-scribbling that it never even occurred to them to do this. I realise that some people do much of their reading with one hand on a strap in a crowded bus or train carriage, but books simply don’t come with a guarantee that they can be properly enjoyed under such conditions. Roberts goes on to tell us how ugly he finds the choice of direction words; I don’t expect someone with his limited cultural horizons to recognise the joke behind them, but the hundreds of millions of humans who would might raise an eyebrow at the claim of ugliness. (I’ve transliterated as “rarb” a word that is usually rendered “gharb”, but you can imagine how Roberts would have gagged on that. And be prepared for some he-couldn’t-possibly-have-meant-that moments if you Google “junub”; a more common transliteration is “janoub”.) Roberts picks some desperate nits about jelly babies and rice surviving into the far future. If he’d taken a stand and declared his unshakeable conviction that not one of our descendants would indulge in such arbitrary and meaningless pleasures as eating chilli and rice after the year X, I wouldn’t agree with him, but at least he would have stated a basis on which the events in the book were supposed to be so improbable and anachronistic. As it is, he’s just tossing peanuts, padding out the review with gripes in the hope that it will seem more substantial than it is. But the pinnacle of desperation comes close to the end, when Roberts quotes some unexceptionable passages from the book describing Roi’s mating with a few male Splinterites. His problem is that most readers of the review would find nothing wrong with these scenes, so he goes on – surreally – to invent a parodic excerpt from Henry James’s The Golden Bowl, in which human sex is described in comically clinical detail. Yes, these are the heights to which possessing a PhD in English will elevate your critical powers: if passage A doesn’t actually ring false just invent something that does, and pretend that the two are equivalent. Any high school student or undergraduate who tried this in an essay would be failed. Roi’s species does not attach the same emotional and cultural values to mating as humans do. As Roberts understands perfectly well, most of what makes his invented passage so ridiculous actually turns on those values. Without the misdirection of his faux-James, the suggestion that Roi wouldn’t ponder the mechanics of the mating process loses all force; once she emerges from the buzz of cooperation, she is alert, inquisitive and reflective about everything around her, and there is nothing to compel her to treat this any differently. That it is the raw world around her that passes constantly through Roi’s mind is what Roberts really can’t bear; to him, such an engagement with reality is unspeakably vulgar and trivial. It’s his right to feel that way, and to share his feelings with anyone who’s interested, but it’s a shame he can’t summon up the courage of his convictions and present this response without the adornment of contrived arguments, special pleading, and rhetorical strategies as laughably dishonest and incompetent as those on display here.
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	34	https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/greg-egan/	en	Greg Egan Books In Order	https://www.addall.com/b…oks-in-order.jpg	https://www.addall.com/b…oks-in-order.jpg	[ "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/logo-addall-2.png", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/logo-addall-2.png", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order.jpg 1280w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order-768x432.jpg 768w", "https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/books-in-order.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51zFk8SlulL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51zFk8SlulL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/512GMK1DM5L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/512GMK1DM5L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714M01KTXSL._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714M01KTXSL._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TAGU3ASzL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TAGU3ASzL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fWaN8T7mL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fWaN8T7mL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Hd%2BGOvsXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Hd%2BGOvsXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513PAC2QZAL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513PAC2QZAL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41G5Uaf6jYL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41G5Uaf6jYL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51W1XKC91KL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51W1XKC91KL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51BCXZB26DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51BCXZB26DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SHxfnejfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SHxfnejfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51K-NsaOIfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51K-NsaOIfL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510vP-+dufL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510vP-+dufL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41DsBJpdCHL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41DsBJpdCHL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vUZf-KHML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vUZf-KHML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510dnmpyJBL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510dnmpyJBL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516Xvn-UmbL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516Xvn-UmbL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41t0oXnRYXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41t0oXnRYXL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OrevlIi9L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OrevlIi9L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ApXUKKOvL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ApXUKKOvL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714CXWMGK8L._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714CXWMGK8L._SL250_.gif", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51S%2BPpba7DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51S%2BPpba7DL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515XjwAit3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515XjwAit3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514WDyaFl3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514WDyaFl3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61UCHiFcBqL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61UCHiFcBqL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61IF9ule3fL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61IF9ule3fL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jpMns4bdL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jpMns4bdL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41yLfufJs3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41yLfufJs3L._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61SCRMxMPKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61SCRMxMPKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51D+dfJJCKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51D+dfJJCKL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ur5kPB1pL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ur5kPB1pL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21KUPAyyLgL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21KUPAyyLgL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21H9SX0RRML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21H9SX0RRML._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510WTSZS0GL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510WTSZS0GL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513eCQpu9OL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513eCQpu9OL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UkYNxYNoL._SL250_.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg", "https://www.addall.com/images/bookcover.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Editorial" ]	2022-03-24T20:23:12-07:00	It causes riots and religions. It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscrapers. And it's all because of the impenetrable gray shield that	en		Books In Order	https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/greg-egan/	Subjective Cosmology Cycle Books In Publication Order Orthogonal Books In Publication Order Standalone Novels In Publication Order Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order Short Story Collections In Publication Order The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Books In Publication Order The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Books In Publication Order The Year’s Best Science Fiction Books In Publication Order Anthologies In Publication Order Subjective Cosmology Cycle Book Covers Orthogonal Book Covers Standalone Novels Book Covers Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers Short Story Collections Book Covers The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Book Covers The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Book Covers The Year’s Best Science Fiction Book Covers Anthologies Book Covers Greg Egan Books Overview Related Authors
wrong_mix_domainrange_publicationDate_00043	FactBench	2	22	https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/greg-egan/	en	Book Series In Order	https://www.bookseriesin…o-facebook-1.png	https://www.bookseriesin…o-facebook-1.png	[ "https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/wp-content/themes/bsio/images/logo.png", "https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/images/bn-banner.png", "https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/flashpoint.png", "https://forms.aweber.com/form/displays.htm?id=7GzM7BwMzIxM", "https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/images/suggestion.png", "https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/images/nick-petrie-drifter.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Graeme" ]	2016-11-29T18:10:24+00:00	Complete order of Greg Egan books in Publication Order and Chronological Order.		//www.bookseriesinorder.com/favicon.png	Book Series in Order	https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/greg-egan/	Greg Egan Books In Order Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Publication Order of Subjective Cosmology Cycle Books Publication Order of Orthogonal Books Publication Order of Standalone Novels Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Publication Order of Short Story Collections Publication Order of Anthologies Greg Egan is an Australian bestselling science fiction writer and a retired programmer born on 20th August 1961. Egan graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor degree in mathematics. In 1983 he released his first writing, and most of his early writing featured strong elements of supernatural horror. His genre of specialty is hardcore science fiction genres with quantum ontology and mathematics themes inclusive of the essence of consciousness. In addition to the above themes he also specializes in other topics such as posthumanism, genetics, sexuality, simulated reality, artificial intelligence, mind uploading and some perception of rational realism being greater than religion. He is also popularly known for the way he deals with complicated technical things such as epistemology and inventive physics in precisely defined manner. Awards Greg Egan has won several awards including Hugo Award, and eight of his published novels have been shortlisted several times for the same award. Other awards claimed by the Australian author include John W C Memorial Award and Kurd Lebowitz’s-Preis Award (2000) for the novel Distress for being the best Fiction novel of the year. Greg Egan is also a multiple winner of the Seiun Award. Additionally, his novel Teranesia was listed the winner of the Ditmar Award in the year 2000 for being the best book of the year, unfortunately, the author rejected the award. Books Written Greg Egan writings include nine published novels; the first book Unusual Angle published in 1983, followed by Quarantine of 1992. Zendegi is the last on the book list and was released in 2010. In 2011, Clockwork Rocket was published and was the first book of the orthogonal trilogy. In 2012, The Eternal Flame was released as a sequel to the series and in 2013; The Arrows of Time was released as the last book in the trilogy. The author has also published several collections such as Axiomatic of 1995, Dark Integers (2008), Luminous (1998), Crystal Nights (2009), and Oceanic of 2009. Greg Egan has also written other numerous short fiction works such as Only Connect, Yeyuka, and Worthless among many others. Apart from novel and collection writing, Egan has published various academic papers such as An Efficient Algorithm………. Riemannian 10j Symbols & Asymptotic of 10j Symbols in conjunction with Dan Christensen. The novel Axiomatic inspired the filming of a short movie that commenced airing in 2015. Description of 2 Early Books Quarantine: novel themed in hard science fiction genre and focuses within a detective fiction framework. The book explores the impacts of Copenhagen view on Quantum Mechanics which the author admits that the concept was chosen for its entertainment value rather than its likelihood probability of being true. The novel storyline is set shortly( 2034-2080) when the solar system has been covered by an impermeable dome known as the Bubble. This bubble-like shield permits no light to enter through the solar system, and as a consequence, the light from neither the star nor the stars can be seen in the sky. In the novel, constant human observation of the universe resulted in a decrease of potentiality and diversity of the universe. For example, by making the world uninhabitable by beings, those have always relied on the stars as their home. The novel suggests that the bubble was formed to act as a barrier to prevent humans from causing massive destruction to the entire of the universe by observation processes. The protagonist is tasked with a case to investigate the case of a missing lady from the psychiatric institute which lands him to Ensemble- an organization developing a wave function to collapse the Eigenstate mod. The Eigenstate mod makes a person to stop being an observer “via” quantum mechanics and consequently exist in a superposition of several states simultaneously. The story narrator/protagonist is forcefully put under control of Ensemble through a force installment of a “Loyalty mod” which makes him loyal to the organization. The narrator later meets the “Canon” a group of other Ensemble Loyalists who have secretly discovered that their “masters” have failed to specify what the canon should be loyal to, except the organization name itself. Now working with the canon, the narrator successfully manages to steal the Eigenstate mod. The hope of the entire humanity relies on one rogue member of the canon who infects the whole humanity with the software to bring freedom to the rest of the humanity. In a way, the author tries to put out the idea of what we become when we try to change ourselves. Permutation City is the second book in the Subjective Cosmology series by Greg Egan. It is a science fiction book that describes the events that take place in the mid 21st century when medical and computer technology have advanced such that it is possible to scan a human brain and create a copy of a brain that runs as a copy of the original person. However, due to its high nature, this process is almost inaccessible to some people. An insurance salesperson Paul Durham provides protection to copies produced. In 2050, he begins to promise immortality to the copies in a virtual world known as Permutation City. This world will have limitless supplies and will never be shut down. In this way, Paul bases his claim on a theory that the entire universe is made from arbitrary bits of info drawn from distinct places and time and placed in an organized manner by an observer. Through his theory, he claims that this would be achievable mainly through a computer program. With the aid of Maria Deluca, a software programmer, Paul Durham manages to create Permutation City with success, and after 7000 years he manages to reawaken Maria’s copy. The duo manages to discover that the planet they created has formed intelligent life form- insect-like organisms. They try to approach the creatures but the creatures do not agree with their story of having been built by a computer program. Permutation City, therefore, is at risk when a copy of the universe begins to reprobate the permutation city computer program and redesign it in relation to Lambertian theory of life. Now Durham must work against time to create a copy of the Permutation city to save the city and the residents in an almost impossible ordeal. Surprisingly reclusive, camera-shy, and a non-participant in science fiction conferences, Greg Egan is a quinquagenarian Australian author with an exclusive focus on the science fiction and fantasy genres. His work encompasses various aspects including but not limited to metaphysical science like ontology, sexual orientation, intelligent machines, philosophical aspects of naturalism and consciousness and post-humanist, simulation hypothesis, and mind uploading. Greg Egan is the kind of writer who prefers to keep quiet and let his accomplishments speak and front for him. The bibliography of Egan is extensive and comprehensive. His work ranges from series of books (trilogies) to standalone books and novellas to collections to anthologies to tens of short stories. What’s more, he has also teamed up with other famed writers and co-authored academic papers. Greg Egan: Private Life You might not know how Greg Egan looks like because there are no archived photos of him. However, read on about his personal life and you will be content with who this man of letters is. Meet Greg Egan. His birth name is Gregory Mark Egan. Incidentally, he has truncated his first name as Greg and adopted his family name in his work. Egan was born on August 201, 1961 in Perth, located in Western Australia. He is an alumnus of the University of Western Australia; he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the said institution in 1982. Other than writing science fiction, Egan is also a computer programmer. Greg Egan: Formative Years and Early Publishing Career Greg Egan, whose niche is mostly science fiction, debuted in 1983 with the book titled An Unusual Angle. He has been publishing consistently since then, albeit within the confines of both science fiction and fantasy. The Clockwork Rocket: A Summary Greg Egan has authored two trilogies namely Subjective Cosmology Cycle and Orthogonal; the latter has an omnibus. Incidentally, these two trilogies have all the hallmarks of a series. However, Egan discredits the opinion that it is a series. Even then he accepts that, thematically, it resembles a series. Most sources have shelved it as a series. Among the most famous works of Greg Egan is the Orthogonal. The first book in the Orthogonal “series” of books was published in June 2011 titled The Clockwork Rocket. This book is shelved as science fiction. Yalda, who is a female character, is the featured protagonist in the Clockwork Rocket penned by Greg Egan. The book is set in a planet located in a far-flung universe where the fauna and flora contained therein are different– biologically, physically, socially, and the law of physics– from those in planet Earth. The most notable aspect is that, unlike Earth, there is neither sunlight nor natural heat in that universe; this prompts them to produce their own light and heat. Unlike earthlings, the inhabitants of that universe also give birth through binary fusion. Egan traces Yalda’s life from her formative years to her position as a scholar. A similarity between that universe and Earth is the possibility of an impending doom. The turning point in this book is the odd meteors (Hurtlers) which Yalda has sighted hurtling towards their planet. It is obvious that their planetary system and their world in particular are facing a dangerous situation. The inhabitants are angling for saving their world; however, the problem is Yalda’s civilization lack the wherewithal to tackle the issue. In their alien wisdom, their best bet is a super-fast spacecraft bound for other advanced civilizations out there in the cosmos. The space trip will transcend generations but their subsequent descendants will acquire scientific knowledge and go back to save the other aliens. The Eternal Flame: A Summary The second book in the Orthogonal “series” published by Greg Egan was published in August 2012 titled The Eternal Flame and it is classified under the science fiction. This book is a continuation on the aspects contained in the Clockwork Rocket. The featured protagonists are Tamara and Carlo, an astronomer and biologist, respectively. Peerless, which is the name of the spacecraft carrying the astronomers look for advanced extraterrestrial know-how, can pass through the cosmos within a time-frame transcending generations and still manage to go back just two years later. But the alien astronomers overlooked two things–the fuel needed for the space voyage and the overpopulation in the spacecraft. These two aspects overlooked put a damper in their mission. Greg Egan: Awards Won and Nominations Sci-fi author Greg Egan has won several awards and been nominated for other impressive ones. In 1995, Greg Egan won the John W Campbell Memorial Award, under the Best Novel category, by virtue of his 1993 book titled Permutation City; this book was also nominated for the Philip K Dick Award under the Best Book section. In 1995, the 1994 short story titled Cocoon was nominated for the Hugo Award under the Best Novelette category. In 1996, a short story titled Luminous which Greg Egan had published in 1995 was nominated for the Hugo Award in the Best Novelette group; furthermore, the short story was, in 1999, nominated for the British Fantasy Society awards in the Best Collection group. Oceanic is a short story published by Egan in 1998 and, in 1999, it won him a Hugo Award in the Best Novella category. The Planck Dive, which was published in 1998, made Greg Egan a nominee for the Hugo Award in the Best Novelette category. The 1999 short story titled Border Guards also featured among the Hugo Award nominees in the Best Novelette category. Another work which has also been nominated for a notable award is the 2002 standalone novel titled Schild’s Ladder; this was among the nominees for the Prometheus Award, in the Best Novel category. Greg Egan: Current Life and Opinion Articles Needless to say, little is known about the personal life of Greg Egan. This is because he has never appeared in the news, stays away from conferences involving science fiction writers, and gives scant credence to book signings. However, according to his opinion articles, it is known that he was living in Perth by 2005, practices vegetarianism, and has been actively lobbying against the immigration detention policy practiced by the Australian Government. Book Series In Order » Authors » Greg Egan
410	dbpedia	2	7	https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/archery-101-olympic-history-records-and-results	en	Olympic archery history: Records, past winners, best moments, year-by-year results	https://images.nbcolympi…cheryhistory.jpg	https://images.nbcolympi…cheryhistory.jpg	[ "http://examplecom.112.2O7.net/b/ss/examplecom/1/H.20.3--NS/0/9170696" ]	[]	[]	[ "Olympics 101", "Archery", "", "", "", "", "" ]	null	[ "NBC Olympics" ]	2024-06-04T12:23:00	Recapping the most essential highlights from Olympic archery history, from the event's origin and timeline to all the most iconic moments and athletes, a comprehensive list of year-by-year results and the current records for archery ahead of the 2024 Games in Paris.	en	/themes/custom/rings/images/favicon-16x16.png	NBC Olympics	https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/archery-101-olympic-history-records-and-results	Tokyo, 2020 Turkey's Mete Gazoz, who didn't have any great results in world championships or the Olympics before Tokyo, won gold at the 2020 Games. He beat Italy's Mauro Nespoli, who claimed silver, while Furukawa Takaharu (JPN) bested Chinese Taipei's Tang Chih-Chun in the bronze-medal match. An San (KOR), who made her Olympic debut at age 20 at the Tokyo Games, won gold in the women's competition. Russia's Elena Osipova claimed silver and Italy's Lucilla Boari the bronze. In the men's team tournament, South Kora won gold, Chinese Tapei earned silver and Japan was awarded bronze. For the women's team tournament, South Korea won gold, Russia took silver and Germany left with bronze. The mixed teams event made its debut at the Tokyo Olympics. South Korea continued its dominance in the sport by winning gold, the Netherlands earned silver and Mexico took home the bronze medal. Rio, 2016 Korea continued its dominance in archery at the Rio Olympics: all four gold medals (and one bronze) went to Korean athletes. Ku Bon-Chan won the men's individual competition and Chang Hye-Jin won the women's. The U.S. left with a silver medal in the men's team event and Brady Ellison took bronze in the men's individual competition. South Korea's four gold medals made archery the country's most successful Olympic sport, overtaking short-track speed skating at the Olympic Winter Games. London, 2012 The set system debuted in the men's and women's individual competition. Oh Jin-Hyek of South Korea took gold in the men's individual final defeating Japan's Takaharu Furukawa 7-1. Italy won the men's team event by defeating the United States team of Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminski and Jacob Wukie 219-218. South Korea added to its archery medal count in the women's events as Ki Bo-Bae won the individual event and South Korea's women's team won gold. The Mexican duo of Aida Roman and Mariana Avitia recorded silver and bronze respectively in the women's individual event while American Khatuna Lorig finished fourth. Beijing, 2008 Ukraine's Viktor Ruban took men's individual gold and South Korea claimed men's team gold. The South Korean women's team set an Olympic record in the ranking round on day one of the Games. The next day they set a world record in their quarterfinals against Italy and also won the gold medal, stretching the South Korean women's Olympic domination to 20 years. The women's individual winner was Zhang Juanjuan of China, who took the gold by overcoming the top-three world-ranked archers. Athens, 2004 A narrow 237-235 loss by the men's team to Ukraine in the bronze medal match and the women's team's loss to Greece in the first round prevented the United States from earning a medal in either the team or individual competition for only the second time since the sport's Olympic introduction in 1976. The men's and women's teams from South Korea each earned gold. Sydney, 2000 The Sydney Games saw Australia win its first-ever Olympic medal in archery as Simon Fairweather edged American Vic Wunderle 113-106 in the men's individual final. Wunderle, Butch Johnson and Rod White clinched team bronze for the U.S. Atlanta, 1996 In Atlanta, 21-year-old Justin Huish -- who sometimes practiced at home by shooting from across the street, up his driveway, and through his garage door toward a target in his backyard -- became an instant celebrity. Sporting a ponytail and backward baseball cap, the carefree Californian ranked No. 24 in the world won gold by beating Sweden's Magnus Petersson 112-107 in the final. The next day, Huish and the American men won the team competition, defeating South Korea. Barcelona, 1992 Excluding the boycotted 1980 Games, Americans had accounted for the past four men's individual Olympic champions. But the U.S. run ended in Barcelona, where France's Sebastien Flute upset Chung Jae-Hun of South Korea to win gold. In fact, the American men didn't get near an archery podium at the 1992 Games; Jay Barrs finished a U.S.-best seventh individually, and the team placed sixth. Seoul, 1988 American Jay Barrs, known for listening to heavy metal music between rounds, won the men's individual gold with a late surge on the final day of competition in Seoul, defeating South Korean Park Sung-Soo 338-336. Barrs also helped the USA men's squad to a silver in the debut of the team competition. Los Angeles, 1984 At El Dorado Park in Long Beach, Calif., Darrell Pace obliterated the 1984 Olympic archery competition. He had the title wrapped up after the third of four days of shooting and was so confident he took a lunch break midway through the final day to meet the press. Teammate Rick McKinney won silver, 52 points back. Montreal, 1976 In Montreal, the United States matched its Munich sweep of the archery gold medals when Darrell Pace set a world record en route to the men's title, and Luann Ryon, competing in her first international tournament, won the women's event. Munich, 1972 Fifty-two years after its last appearance at the 1920 Games, archery returned to the Olympics with men's and women's individual events. U.S. men entered Munich having won every individual world title since 1967 and every team championship since 1957. Reigning world champion John Williams, an 18-year-old army private, won the gold, setting a world record for total score and a single-round world record despite once completely missing the target. Doreen Wilber, 42, a housewife from Jefferson, Iowa, scored an upset by winning gold in Munich. No American woman had won a world crown since 1962. Wilber set a world record in the process and became the second-oldest woman to win an Olympic archery event. Antwerp, 1920 After the 1912 Olympic program didn't include archery, and the 1916 Games were canceled, the sport was brought back in 1920 because of great Belgian interest. However, only three countries participated - Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The host country dominated, with Hubert van Innis, 54, raising his career total to six golds and three silvers. Van Innis' victories came in events that involved shooting at a bird-shaped target on poles. These events were discontinued after 1920. London, 1908 Charlotte "Lottie" Dod, sister of men's gold medalist William Dod placed second in London to British teammate Sybil "Queenie" Newall in the National Round. Dod, an accomplished athlete, previously had won five Wimbledon singles titles in the late 1800s, a British Ladies golf crown and a place on the national field hockey team. She also was a national-caliber figure skater and once sledded down Switzerland's famed Cresta Run. William Dod, who was born to a wealthy family and never worked or attended school, won the York Round competition on his 41st birthday. The British newcomer had not taken an interest in the sport until after he turned 39. Two days later, when his sister Lottie took silver in archery, the Dods became the first brother and sister Olympic medalists. St. Louis, 1904 The archery program was expanded in 1904 to include three women's events. As with several other sports at the St. Louis Games, only Americans competed. In the women's competition, Lida Howell won three gold medals.
410	dbpedia	3	41	https://www.nbcboston.com/paris-2024-summer-olympics/meet-new-englands-athletes-heading-to-this-years-olympics/3430094/	en	Meet New England's athletes competing at this year's Olympics	https://media.nbcboston.…ity=85&strip=all	https://media.nbcboston.…ity=85&strip=all	[ "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/04/WBTS-Dgtl-Oly-On-Dark.png?fit=432%2C120&quality=85&strip=all&w=144&h=40", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/01/GettyImages-493053558-blue.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3000%2C1003&w=400&h=114&crop=1", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/01/NBC_PARIS2024_RGB_FRAMELESS_1C_WHITE-1.png?fit=2000%2C2000&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=320%2C180&quality=85&strip=all 320w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=400%2C225&quality=85&strip=all 400w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=500%2C281&quality=85&strip=all 500w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=600%2C338&quality=85&strip=all 600w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=850%2C478&quality=85&strip=all 850w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/New-England-Olympians-thumbnail-072224.png?resize=1200%2C675&quality=85&strip=all 1200w, ", "https://media.nbcnewyork.com/assets/editorial/national/images/cta-eye-icon.png", "https://media.nbcnewyork.com/assets/editorial/national/images/cta-mail-icon.png", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/GettyImages-2157647237-e1721164353993.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=4925%2C2774&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/07/web-240719-nadal-gauff-alcaraz.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2250%2C1265&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/02/GettyImages-1608321692.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=2734%2C1851&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://www.nbcboston.com/wp-content/themes/nbc-station/client/src/images/olympics-logos/olympics-paris-2024.png", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/04/Boston-web@3x.png?fit=699%2C72&quality=85&strip=all", "https://nbcu.tmsimg.com/assets/p25308628_b_h10_aa.jpg?w=960&h=540", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/08/GettyImages-1482077825.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=100%2C56", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2023/01/police-lights-mclean.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=100%2C56", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2021/05/GettyImages-1277314725.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&crop=0px%2C37px%2C2000px%2C1125px&resize=100%2C56", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/06/proctor.png?resize=100%2C56&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/08/tornadowatch2.png?resize=100%2C56&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/04/WBTS-Dgtl-Oly-On-Light.png?fit=432%2C120&quality=85&strip=all", "https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035083&cv=2.0&cj=1", "https://media.nbcboston.com/2024/04/WBTS-Dgtl-Oly-On-Light.png?fit=432%2C120&quality=85&strip=all" ]	[]	[]	[ "2024 Paris Olympics" ]	null	[ "Jessie Castellano" ]	2024-07-22T18:22:36	With the Paris Olympics kicking off in just under one week, get to know the Team USA athletes that have ties to New England	en	https://media.nbcboston.…ity=85&strip=all	NBC Boston	https://www.nbcboston.com/paris-2024-summer-olympics/meet-new-englands-athletes-heading-to-this-years-olympics/3430094/	New England is well-represented at the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer. Dozens of athletes from the region are competing in a variety of sports. Here's a comprehensive list. Archery After watching the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Jennifer Mucino-Fernandez began her career in archery. Mucino-Fernandez was born in Massachusetts and raised in Mexico City, but she came back to the U.S. to train for the Olympics. Nearly eight years after that, she competed in the 2020 Olympic Games. And now at 21 years old, Mucino-Fernandez will compete in Paris. Artistic Swimming Ruby Remati, an Ohio State junior, will compete in her first Olympic Games this year. The artistic swimmer helped her team sweep each category at the 2023 championship as a freshman. She's originally from Andover, Massachusetts, but is also an Australian citizen. She said she owes most of her involvement to her sport to her parents, although she admits the sparkles caught her attention to the sport as a child. Badminton Jennie Gai was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, but now calls California home. She will compete in the mixed doubles event. Gai and her partner, Vinson Chiu, took home silver medals in the 2024 Pan Am Individual Championships and the 2023 Pan American Games. Basketball Olympic gold medalist, Napheesa Collier, was raised by her father from Sierra Leone and mother from Eugene, Missouri. And she recently became a parent, as well, to a daughter named Mila. The basketball star attended UConn and later was the sixth overall pick in the 2019 WNBA draft, signing with the Minnesota Lynx. After a sensational season, was named the 2019 Rookie of the Year. Breanna Stewart will be competing in her third Olympic Games later this month. After leading her alma mater to four straight championships, she was pick No. 1 in the first round of the 2016 WNBA draft. She now plays for New York Liberty. Dubbed "Stewie" by her friends and fans, the athlete only lost five games in her entire college career. Diana Taurasi is a veteran in the world of women's professional basketball. As a senior at UConn nearly 20 years ago, she first got called up to the senior national team. She was the No. 1 WNBA pick back in 2004 and has played for the Phoenix Mercury as a guard ever since. Taurasi will be looking for a sixth gold medal this Olympic season. After winning this years NBA championships, the Boston Celtics have a lot to celebrate. But competition hasn't stopped as three of their players are heading to Paris. Jayson Tatum was born in Missouri and became one of the best basketball players in the country during his high school years. He played one collegiate season at Duke University before being drafted as third pick overall to the Boston Celtics in 2017. He finished third for the Rookie of the Year Award, and in his third season, he earned his first All-Star Game appearance. Now, seven years later, Tatum is a large part of the Celtics' success. Derrick White, the Celtics' point guard, was selected 29th overall to the San Antonio Spurs in the 2017 NBA draft. In 2022, he was traded to the Celtics, where he developed into a top scoring option on a team with such elite scorers as Tatum and Jaylen Brown. He is originally from Colorado and transferred to University of Colorado Boulder during his college career. Jrue Holiday will be competing in his second Olympic Games later this month. Holiday helped Team USA win gold at the 2020 Olympics. Originally from the West Coast, Holiday is a UCLA alum. He began his NBA career with the Philadelphia 76ers after being drafted in the first round in 2009. Now, Holiday is a central figure for the Celtics and helped the team to victory in the NBA championship. This will be the first Olympics for Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas, who grew up watching the Games. The Pennsylvania native attended Maryland and in 2014 she was drafted no. 4 overall in 2014 by the New York Liberty, then traded to the Connecticut Sun the same day. Cycling Kristen Faulkner started cycling after graduating from Harvard University in 2016 and nearly eight years later will head to her first Olympic Games. Faulkner, who is originally from Alaska, was a collegiate rower for two years and even holds Harvard's school record for 2k erg time for lightweight women. In high school, she competed as a varsity runner, swimmer and rower. Diving This will be the third Olympics for Jessica Parratto. In 2020, she gained a silver medal for the 10-meter platform synchro. The diver got into the sport when she was only 5 years old, and growing up, she trained seven hours a day. She moved to Indianapolis from New Hampshire and has since become one of the top 10-meter platform divers in the country. Fencing Fencers with New England connections are travelling to Paris for the Olympic Games and they all have ties to Harvard University. Eli Dershwitz is last year's World Champion fencer, a two-time Olympian and a Pan American champion. In 2014, he became the youngest man to hold the U.S. Senior Saber Championship title. He graduated from Harvard University in 2019. Dershwitz followed his brother Phil into fencing, but also has a twin sister Sally. In addition to fencing, he enjoys basketball, soccer and tennis. Filip Dolegiewicz will head to Paris this summer as Team USA's men saber replacement athlete. Dolegiewicz is not the only Olympian in his family. His uncle, Antoni Zajkowski won silver at the 1972 Olympic Games. The Harvard graduate was the 2022 NCAA men's saber champion and a member of the USA Cadet National Team for saber. Another Harvard fencer, Colin Heathcock will head to the Olympic Games this summer. Heathcock said he began fencing at a young age after he and his brother tested out other sports. The 18-year-old recently won bronze in the 2023 World Championships for men's saber team. Mitchell Saron graduated from Harvard University in 2023 and is set to compete in his first Olympics in Paris. But this won't be Saron's first time competing on the world stage. The 23-year-old won bronze at last years World Championships and grabbed 16th place in the individual sabre competition. Before that, the fencer competed at the World Junior Championships in Verona and Torun in 2018 and 2019. Lauren Scruggs says she followed in her brother's foot steps and began fencing. After years of competing, Scruggs ended up at Harvard University, and despite her coach's confidence in her, she was in disbelief when she found out she would be competing in the Paris Olympics, according to her school's newspaper. The fencer has attended three World Championships and won gold for foil back in 2019. Elizabeth Tartakovsky, a New Jersey native who attended Harvard University, first took an interest in fencing in 2008, when she watched as her great uncle, Ukrainian-born Yury Gelman, coached Team USA in the Beijing Olympics. Her older sister, Gabby Tartakovsky, competed for Harvard before her. She grew up speaking Russian at home and is still fluent in the language. In her USA Fencing profile, she says the sport is "the perfect mix of athleticism, creativity, and strategy." Competing in saber, she won a bronze medal in 2023 Tashkent World Cup. Field Hockey Alexandra Hammel, originally from Duxbury and a Boston University alum, is the only Massachusetts woman on Team USA's field hockey team. From her early athletic career, Hammel received countless player of the week and year awards and was then named to U.S. national teams. Now, she will compete in her first ever Olympic Games in Paris. Karlie Kisha will compete in her first Olympic Games later this summer. The field hockey star graduated from University of Connecticut in 2018. Following her graduation, Kisha was named to the U.S. Women's National Team a number of times and has competed and won medals in several Pan American games. Beth Yeager started playing field hockey at 11 years old. She currently attends Princeton University and will graduate next year with a degree in economics. In her first two seasons of collegiate play, Yeager was named as a Division I First-Team All-American. Her best words of advice are, "Choice not chance determines your destiny." Gymnastics Stephen Nedoroscik earned a spot for the Paris Olympic team after falling short of the spot four years ago. The Worcester native attended Penn State and graduated in 2020. He said his favorite thing about gymnastics is "seeing hard work pay off." His four U.S. pommel horse titles are tied for the most in U.S. history Fred Richard heads to the Paris Olympics after his exciting year in 2023 as an all-around bronze medalist and the 2021 and 2022 Junior Pan American Champion. Richard, originally from Stoughton, became the first man to win a world gymnastics championship all around medal in 13 years. The 20 year old gymnast feels that his purpose is to grow and diversify the sport. Modern Pentathlon Jess Davis grew up in Bethlehem, Connecticut, with athletes all around her. Her mother is a former equestrian and her father is a former triathlete. In high school, she competed in track and field in the pole vault, triple jump and long jump events. She went on to compete at Central Connecticut State University while getting her degree in exercise science. She was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in the women's Modern Pentathlon in 2023 and was the first American to qualify for the same event for this Olympic Games. Rowing New England has no shortage of rowers travelling to the 2024 Olympics. William Bender qualified for the Paris Olympics after winning gold in a pair event at the Olympic Trials. Bender is no stranger to a medal though. The rower won gold at the 2023 US Rowing Senior National Team Trials and bronze at the 2021 IRA National Championships. He is originally from Norwich, Vermont and recently graduated from Dartmouth College. Oliver Bub, a 2020 graduate of Dartmouth College, was the other half of Bender's pair at the Olympic Trials. Rowing runs in Bub's family as both of his parents rowed at Boston University. Bub is originally from Westport, Connecticut. He holds several gold and bronze distinctions for his performances at the 2023 US Rowing National Selection Regatta, the 2023 US Rowing Winter Speed Order and the 2021 US Rowing Summer National Championships. Olivia Coffey will head to the Paris Olympics this summer for her second Olympic Games. The Harvard alum won fourth place in Tokyo. Coffey is following in her father's footsteps, as he was an Olympic silver medalist in the 1976 Games. She has previously won five medals at World Championships. Chris Carlson, originally from Bedford, New Hampshire, has been named to six national teams in his career. But 2024 will be his first Olympic Games. He rowed for Marist University before transferring to the University of Washington. Liam Corrigan will compete in his second Olympic Games. After picking up rowing in high school, the Harvard grad fell in love with the sport and competed in the 2014 Youth Olympic Games. He won fourth place in Tokyo and silver at the 2023 World Championship. Corrigan is originally from Old Lyme, Connecticut and earned a master's degree in financial economics at Oxford University following his graduation from Harvard University. Star rower Clark Dean is set to compete in his second Olympics, after taking fifth place in 2020. Dean, a Harvard alum, was named to the Academic All-Ivy League Team in 2023 and became the first U.S. rower to win the world title in the junior men's single in 40 years. Emily Delleman, a resident of Craftsbury, Vermont, will compete in her first Olympic Games this summer. Delleman competed in Stanford University, where she was named an All-American in 2019 and 2020. She recently won the 2024 World Rowing Final Olympic and Paralympic qualification regatta and placed ninth at the 2022 World Championships. Margaret Hedeman, originally from Concord, Massachusetts, began rowing 10 years ago at Community Rowing, Inc. on the Charles River in Boston. She graduated from Yale University last year as a three-time CRCA Scholar Athlete. She made the 2023 First-Team All-Ivy. Some of her accolades include silver at the 2023 World Championships, gold at the 2022 World U23 Championships, Yale's 2019 Chris Ernst Award and 2023 Anne Warner Award. Henry Hollingsworth, a native of Dover, Massachusetts, and a Brown University alum, will compete in his first Olympic Games this summer. Rowing is a family affair for Hollingsworth, as he followed several family members into the sport. He even has other Olympians in his family. His cousin, Andrew Reed, rowed in Tokyo 2020. Growing up, Grace Joyce played soccer, but switched to rowing after her sister convinced her to try out for their high school team. She is originally from Illinois and attended University of Wisconsin. But she now resides in Craftsbury, Vermont. The Olympian took home 11th place at last year's World Championship. Emily Kallfez followed the same path as her parents when she began rowing. Both of them rowed in college. Kallfez attended Princeton University and was named US Rowing's U23 Female Athlete of the Year in 2018 and 2019 amid her great success as a four-time Ivy League champion. She's originally from Jamestown, Rhode Island. Daisy Mazzio-Manson, who grew up in Wellesley, was exposed to rowing by her parents. She graduated from Yale in 2020, where she was named First-Team All-Ivy in 2018 and 2019. Mazzio-Manson won silver at the 2023 World Championships and has a number of top-three finishes at national and world rowing events. Northeastern alum Jacob Plihal has been on five national teams, but this will be his first Olympic Games. He placed 14th at the 2022 World Championships and has been nominated to the IRA All-American team three times. The 28-year-old said his parents are his personal heroes due to their support. Pieter Quinton rowed at Harvard before transferring to the University of Washington. He will make his Olympic debut in Paris, but has been on five national teams throughout his rowing career. He finished fourth and sixth at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships. Molly Reckford will compete in her second Olympics this summer, after taking fifth place in the lightweight double sculls in Tokyo. Reckford credits her love of sport to her grandparents. Her grandfather, Bill Spencer, was a two-time Olympian and a Team USA Biathlon coach. She walked onto Dartmouth University's rowing team, where she graduated in 2015. Kelsey Reelick began her rowing career in New Zealand in 2005. She is originally from Brookfield, Connecticut and graduated from Princeton University in 2014. Reelick competed in the World Championships in 2022 and 2023, finishing fourth. Nick Rusher is a no stranger to Olympic rowing, as both his parents rowed in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. He finished fourth at the 2022 World Championships. He is originally from Wisconsin but graduated from Yale University in 2023. Regina Salmons doubles as a rower and a writer. In college, she was editor in chief of a magazine and chaired a poetry group. Paris will be her second time competing for Team USA as an Olympian. Her performance in the Eight in 2020 gave her a fourth place distinction. Michelle Sechser, a resident of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, heads to Paris for her second Olympic Games. She began rowing at age 14 in California and pursued her dream after attending graduate school at the University of Tulsa. She placed fifth in Tokyo for the lightweight double sculls and has earned three medals at several World Championships. Harvard alum Christian Tabash discovered rowing after watching the 2008 Olympics and his father suggested it after he didn't make his high school's basketball team. Paris 2024 will be his first Olympic Games. Kristi Wagner will be a second-time Olympian this summer. In 2020, the rower gained a fifth place spot in the double sculls event. Wagner learned to row in middle school and continued to row for her Weston high school all four years until attending Yale University. She was given bronze honors for her performance at the 2023 World Championships. The Paralympic events will begin at the end of August. Originally from Andover, Emelie Eldracher was introduced to rowing in her freshman year of high school. During her high school years at Phillips Academy, the Paralympian competed in crew and springboard diving. She's a two-time World Championship participant and won silver in the PR3 mixed four with coxswain at the 2023 championships. Alex Flynn discovered rowing because he "needed something to do after school." He currently attends Tufts University and has competed in two world championships, where he won silver in 2023. He will be competing in the Paralympic games. Saige Harper grew up in and around water and began rowing when a family member suggested it to her. She competitively swam for 15 years before beginning her rowing career. Most recently, she took home gold at the 2023 Para Rowing Regatta to Paris. She's originally from Easthampton and attends Sacred Heart University. Ben Washburne didn't always only focus on rowing. He played water polo in high school. The Paralympian grew up in Madison, Connecticut and recently graduated from Williams College. The rower has multiple silver and gold distinctions from World and IRA National Championships, as well as winning the 2023 Para Rowing Regatta to Paris. Rugby Five rugby players from New England will be competing for Team USA in this Olympic Games. Madison Hughes will compete in his third Olympics this summer. He and his team ranked in the top 10 at Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016. Hughes started playing rugby at 7 years old and has continued since then. He served as team captain at Dartmouth College. In his free time, Hughes plays other spots, like golf, and enjoys reading. Kristi Kirshe only began playing rugby at 23 years old. She played soccer at Williams College. She is originally from Franklin and also competed in the 2020 Olympics. Sarah Levy fell in love with rugby at Northeastern University, where she graduated in 2018. Levy was raised in Southern California, but originally born in Cape Town, where a family member Louis Babrow played with the Springboks, the South African national rugby team, according to her alma mater's website. This will be Levy's Olympic debut, but has been playing at the highest level since college for the New York Rugby Club. Ilona Maher will be embarking on her second Olympic Games this month. Following in the footsteps of her father, who played rugby at Saint Michael's College, Maher began playing at 17 years old. The Olympian is originally from Burlington, Vermont, and attended Quinnipiac University. On the side, she spreads body positivity through her presence on social media. Dartmouth alum Ariana Ramsey started playing rugby during her sophomore year of high school. But that is not the only sport she played. The Olympian cheered for six years and ran track for four years. This will be Ramsey's second Olympic Games. As a member of Team USA, Ramsey helped the 2020 team clinch sixth place in Tokyo. Sailing Ian Barrows grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he began sailing. His older brother competed in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Barrows competed in sailing high school and internationally before attending Yale University. Some of his career highlights include competing in the Pan American games, the World Championships, World Cup and the Class World Championships. Tufts grad David Liebenberg will compete in his first Olympics in Paris. Originally from California, he's competed in many World Championships and finished in fifth place in 2010. Stuart McNay, born in Boston and raised in Providence, will embark on his fifth Olympic Games this summer. After graduating from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in architecture, McNay competed in the Beijing Olympics and has competed in every summer Olympics since. In addition, McNay is a two-time sailing All American at his alma mater and a three-time U.S. National Champion. When he's not setting his sails, McNay likes to play soccer and basketball and read, according to his Team USA profile. Erika Reineke is a 12-time U.S. Sailing Team athlete and the first person to win four Singlehanded National Championships during her collegiate career at Boston College. Reineke began sailing at 8 years old and is not the only person in her family to take up the sport. Her sister, Sophia, also sails. She competed at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships and won gold at the 2023 Pan American Games. Maggie Shea grew up sailing on Lake Michigan. She's competed and medaled in several World Championships and placed 11th in the Tokyo Olympics. She graduated from Connecticut College in 2011 and crewed for Sally Barkow on Team Magenta 32 in 2016. Shooting Ada Korkhin was shown air pistol shooting by her father at 9 years old, but she didn't start competing in sport pistol until she was 12 years old, according to her Team USA profile. The 19-year-old is from Brookline and competed in the 2022 and 2023 Junior World Championships. Three-time Olympian Keith Sanderson was born in Plymouth and began shooting in 1996 in the U.S. Marine Corps matches. He is a member of the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program and a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has placed fifth, 14th and 10th in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games and won a bronze medal in the 2010 World Championships. Soccer Alyssa Naeher has competed in two Olympic Games and helped her team bringing home bronze in Tokyo 2020. Naeher told NBC10 Boston that she was inspired to pursue soccer at 11 years old. She grew up in Connecticut and attended Penn State. Miles Robinson, originally from Arlington, Massachusetts, grew an interest in soccer watching his sister play. The centre-back attended Syracuse University and currently plays for FC Cincinnati. Some of his career highlights include scoring his first international goal in 2021 against Trinidad and Tobago and scoring a game-winning goal against Mexico in 2021. Sports Climbing Jesse Grupper started climbing at six years old and began climbing competitively at 9 years old. He is originally from New Jersey and graduated from Tufts University in 2019. One of Grupper's hobbies to collect outdoor climbing adventures in places like South Africa and France, according to his Team USA profile. He finished 19th in last year's World Championship and has competed in the 2023 Pan American Games, as well as the 2022 and 2023 World Cup competitions. Swimming Kate Douglass is set to compete in her second Olympic Games at 22 years old. In 2016, she qualified for the trials in four events: 50 free, 100 breast, 200 breast and 200 IM. In 2020, she won bronze for Team USA in the women's 200 meter individual medley. She is originally from Pelham, New York, and attended the University of Virginia. But she has ties to New England, as she trained at Chelsea Piers Aquatic Club in Stamford, Connecticut, in high school. Paris will be the second time Kieran Smith competes for Team USA at the Olympic Games. The 24-year-old brought home a bronze medal for the team in Tokyo for the 400 meter freestyle. He also came in fourth in the 4 x 200 meter relay and sixth in the 200 meter freestyle. The Olympian is originally from Ridgefield, Connecticut, and graduated from the University of Florida in 2022, where he was named the SEC's "Male Swimmer of the Year" during the 2019-2020 season. Track and Field Femita Ayanbeku is an two-time Paralympic athlete whose competed at the 2016 and 2020 Paralympics. Now she is looking qualify for Paris. She's also a World bronze medalist. Ayanbeku is originally from the city of Boston and sought her education at American International College in Springfield. The athlete started a non-profit organization called Limb-it-less Creations, which creates awareness and support for the amputee community, according to her Team USA profile. Graham Blanks is an incoming senior at Harvard University and will compete in his first Olympic Games after coming in fourth place at the Olympic Trials. He holds the 2023 Indoor Ivy League Championship titles in the mile and the 3000 meter run. He placed sixth at the 2022 NCAA Cross Country Championships and second place in the 2023 NCAA Outdoor 5000 meter run. Alexis Holmes will head to Paris for Olympic debut this summer. She is originally from Camden, Connecticut, and attended high school at Cheshire Academy before going to the University of Kentucky. The 400 meter runner helped her 4 x 400 meter relay team win gold at the 2023 World Championship. Emily Mackay, a runner for New Balance Boston, qualified for the 2024 Olympics in the 1500 meter with a second place finish. The Binghamton University grad holds the third best time in the 1500 meter run in women's track and field history. She has competed and medaled at the World Championships and the Pan American Games. Elle Purrier St. Pierre, a New England native from Montgomery, Vermont, and a University of New Hampshire grad, will compete in her second Olympic Games this summer. The long distance runner grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont and was a three-time Vermont Gatorade Cross Country Athlete of the Year in high school. She clinched 10th place in the 1500 meter run at the 2020 Olympics and earned a silver medal for the 3000 meter run at the 2022 World Championships. Emily Sisson will be a second time Olympian this summer, but in a different event. The long-distance runner competed in the 10K race in Tokyo 2020. Sisson is originally from Wisconsin, but studied at Providence College and now resides in Rhode Island. Just two years after her Olympic finish, Sisson smashed the American marathon record, which she still holds. Gabby Thomas is a two-time Olympic medalist with one in bronze and one in silver. Tokyo 2020 was her first Olympic Games, where she ran the 200 meter dash and 4 x 100 meter relay. Thomas grew up in Northampton and attended Harvard University gaining a degree in neurobiology and global health. Growing up, she also played soccer and softball. Triathlon Kirsten Kasper, a North Andover native, is an all around athlete. She was a state champion in swimming, cross country and track and field in high school. She went on to compete in cross country at Georgetown University and was introduced to the triathlon in 2014. She medaled at the World Championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Wheelchair Tennis Casey Ratzlaff is the assistant coach for the men's tennis team at Dartmouth University. But that doesn't mean he has stopped competing himself. Before Paris, Ratzlafff was a Paralympic wheelchair tennis athlete in Tokyo. He has also been a World Cup team member and a two-time Junior World Cup team champion.
410	dbpedia	3	16	https://olympics.com/en/video/best-of-atlanta-1996/	en	Best of Atlanta 1996	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_twitter_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/dxe38dbsdsub1f18xdx2	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_twitter_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/dxe38dbsdsub1f18xdx2	[ "https://olympics.com/images/static/b2p-images/logo_white-v2.svg", "https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_16-9_640/f_auto/t_lqip/v1538355600/primary/dxe38dbsdsub1f18xdx2", "https://olympics.com/en/images/static/b2p-badges/app-store-en.svg", "https://olympics.com/en/images/static/b2p-badges/google-play-en.svg" ]	[ "https://vod.olympicchannel.com/NBCR_-_OCS_Prod/445/132/GIOC-2IOCMS24E005-_E21020101_master_1613756264669.m3u8" ]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	View the Olympic video: Best of Atlanta 1996 from the Atlanta 1996 gallery, plus get access to similar videos and galleries.	en	/images/static/favicon/apple-touch-icon-16x16.png		https://olympics.com/en/video/best-of-atlanta-1996/	At the Atlanta Games, for the first time, every single National Olympic Committee recognised at the time is represented.Â Watch all the highlights here!
410	dbpedia	1	35	https://www.history.com/topics/sports/modern-olympic-games-timeline	en	The Modern Summer Olympic Games: A Timeline	https://assets.editorial…mmerolympics.jpg	https://assets.editorial…mmerolympics.jpg	[ "https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=3005002&cs_ucfr=1&cv=3.6&cj=1", "https://www.history.com/assets/images/history/logo.svg", "https://www.history.com/assets/images/history/logo.svg", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=640&height=426.66666666666663&crop=640%3A426.66666666666663%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 640w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=750&height=500&crop=750%3A500%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 750w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=828&height=552&crop=828%3A552%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 828w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=1080&height=540&crop=1080%3A540%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1080w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=1248&height=624&crop=1248%3A624%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1248w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=1920&height=960&crop=1920%3A960%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1920w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=2048&height=1024&crop=2048%3A1024%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2048w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/summerolympics.jpg?width=3840&height=1920&crop=3840%3A1920%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 3840w", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/history-article-default.desktop.jpg", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/history-article-default.desktop.jpg", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/history-article-default.desktop.jpg", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-1256364640.jpg?width=1080&height=719&crop=1080%3A719%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-1256364640.jpg?width=2048&height=1364&crop=2048%3A1364%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-462781908.jpg?width=1080&height=1478&crop=1080%3A1478%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-462781908.jpg?width=2048&height=2802&crop=2048%3A2802%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-2667570.jpg?width=1080&height=831&crop=1080%3A831%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-2667570.jpg?width=2048&height=1576&crop=2048%3A1576%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/05/gettyimages-1215883677.jpg?width=1080&height=720&crop=1080%3A720%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/05/gettyimages-1215883677.jpg?width=2048&height=1366&crop=2048%3A1366%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/1948-team-gettyimages-1275144217.jpg?width=640&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/1948-team-gettyimages-1275144217.jpg?width=828&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/07/Larisa-Latynina-GettyImages-180572884.jpg?width=1080&height=608&crop=1080%3A608%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/07/Larisa-Latynina-GettyImages-180572884.jpg?width=2048&height=1152&crop=2048%3A1152%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/perfect-10-gettyimages-515120030.jpg?width=1080&height=608&crop=1080%3A608%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/perfect-10-gettyimages-515120030.jpg?width=2048&height=1152&crop=2048%3A1152%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/08/marylou.jpg?width=1080&height=609&crop=1080%3A609%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/08/marylou.jpg?width=2048&height=1154&crop=2048%3A1154%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/strug-gettyimages-1296498.jpg?width=1080&height=608&crop=1080%3A608%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/strug-gettyimages-1296498.jpg?width=2048&height=1152&crop=2048%3A1152%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/biles-2-2016-gettyimages-588635142.jpg?width=1080&height=608&crop=1080%3A608%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/06/biles-2-2016-gettyimages-588635142.jpg?width=2048&height=1152&crop=2048%3A1152%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/strug-gettyimages-1296498.jpg?width=1080&height=608&crop=1080%3A608%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/strug-gettyimages-1296498.jpg?width=2048&height=1152&crop=2048%3A1152%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-149969936.jpg?width=1080&height=712&crop=1080%3A712%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 1x, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2021/07/gettyimages-149969936.jpg?width=2048&height=1350&crop=2048%3A1350%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp 2x", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=16&quality=75&auto=webp 16w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=32&quality=75&auto=webp 32w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=48&quality=75&auto=webp 48w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=64&quality=75&auto=webp 64w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=96&quality=75&auto=webp 96w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=128&quality=75&auto=webp 128w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=256&quality=75&auto=webp 256w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=392&quality=75&auto=webp 392w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=640&quality=75&auto=webp 640w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=750&quality=75&auto=webp 750w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=828&quality=75&auto=webp 828w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=1080&quality=75&auto=webp 1080w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=1248&quality=75&auto=webp 1248w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp 1920w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=2048&quality=75&auto=webp 2048w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2023/06/The_First_Olympics_3840x2160_NT-scaled-1.jpg?width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp 3840w", "https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=16&quality=75&auto=webp 16w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=32&quality=75&auto=webp 32w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=48&quality=75&auto=webp 48w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=64&quality=75&auto=webp 64w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=96&quality=75&auto=webp 96w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=128&quality=75&auto=webp 128w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=256&quality=75&auto=webp 256w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=392&quality=75&auto=webp 392w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=640&quality=75&auto=webp 640w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=750&quality=75&auto=webp 750w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=828&quality=75&auto=webp 828w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=1080&quality=75&auto=webp 1080w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=1248&quality=75&auto=webp 1248w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp 1920w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=2048&quality=75&auto=webp 2048w, https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2024/06/IHBANNER-1.jpg?width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp 3840w" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Amanda Onion", "History.com Editors" ]	2021-07-19T17:22:49+00:00	From Athens to Tokyo, the Games have crossed five continents, withstood boycotts and were only canceled three times due to two World Wars. See a timeline of notable moments in Summer Olympic Games history.	en	https://www.history.com/…e-touch-icon.png	HISTORY	https://www.history.com/topics/sports/modern-olympic-games-timeline	Modern Olympic history is full of heart-thumping victories and painful defeats. But a look back at the 28 Summer Games that have taken place since 1896 also offer a snapshot of geopolitics, a shift in women’s rights and the state of global affairs. From Athens to Rio, in the last 125 years, the Games have crossed five continents, added and removed events, withstood boycotts and were only canceled three times due to two World Wars. Below is a timeline of notable moments in Summer Olympic Games history. April 6-15, 1896: Athens After a 1,500-year hiatus, the Games return to Athens, the ancient birthplace of the Olympic Games, where 14 nations are represented by all-male athletes. The highlight of the first modern Olympics is the marathon, won by Greece's Spyridon Louis. With 43 events, including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, cycling, weightlifting, wrestling, tennis, fencing and more, the track and field events take place in a renovated Panathenaic Stadium, which dates back to 330 B.C. American James Connolly takes home the first gold medal of the competition, winning the triple jump. Connolly goes on to win silver in the high jump and bronze in the long jump. May 20-October 28, 1900: Paris Held as part of the Paris World’s Fair, the 1900 Games span five months, with 20 events and 24 countries represented. Because events are so spread out, many athletes and officials don't even realize they are competing in the Olympics. But the 1900 Games introduce several new sports, including rugby, golf, cricket and croquet (the only year croquet is played), as well as equestrian events, archery and soccer. Swimming races take place in the Seine River and five sports—tennis, polo, soccer, rowing and tug of war—include athletes from differing nations playing on the same teams. It’s also the first time women participate, with 22 competing (along with 975 men). American Alvin Kraenzlein shines during the Paris Games when he takes gold in four track and field events. July 1-November 23, 1904: St. Louis Also tied to the World’s Fair, the 1904 Games are held in St. Louis over several months, with just 12 countries represented and U.S. athletes accounting for almost 85 percent of participants. Of the approximately 100 sports offered, women are only allowed to compete in archery and it’s the first time freestyle wrestling, the decathlon, boxing and dumbbells are added. American gymnast George Eyser, who competes using a wooden leg, makes headlines for snagging six medals, three of them gold. The 1904 marathon is among the Games’ most infamous. Runners slog through 90-degree heat on a busy, dusty road. By the end, more than half of the runners withdraw from exhaustion. The eventual winner, Thomas Hicks, is fed egg whites, strychnine and brandy and is carried across the finish line. April 27-October 31, 1908: London Relocated to London with little notice after Rome is forced to cancel, following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the 1908 Olympics marks the longest Games in history. Twenty-two nations compete in events over a six-month period. For the first time, swimming and diving competitions are held in a pool. The Games also see the introduction of field hockey, indoor tennis, and motorboating. Although the Games are well-organized and feature a new emphasis on officiating, they are not without controversy. Several Irish athletes boycott the Games rather than participate as British crown subjects. Ralph Rose, an American shot-putter, refuses to dip the U.S. flag in salute of the king. And Finnish athletes protest Russian rule in their country. In the grueling marathon event, Italian runner Dorando Pietri collapses near the finish line but wins the hearts of spectators. May 5-July 22, 1912: Stockholm The first Asian country to participate, Japan joins the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, which includes athletes from 28 nations representing all five continents and features the debut of women's swimming and diving and the modern pentathlon. Finnish long-distance star Hannes Kolehmainen, one of the "Flying Finns," wins three golds in the 5,000-, 10,000- and 12,000-meter runs. And American Jim Thorpe, a future pro football and baseball star, becomes a household name after winning gold in the pentathlon and decathlon and taking fourth in the high jump and seventh in the long jump. But controversy surrounds Thorpe: He’s disqualified for playing for a resort baseball team a few years before the Games, a violation of IOC rules (the medals were restored in 1982, nearly three decades after his death). The 1912 Games are noted as the first time electronic timing is used, a public address system, the only time boxing doesn't take place (Swedish law banned it) and the first time an athlete dies during the Games (Francisco Lazzaro, of Portugal, during the marathon). 1916: Berlin: Canceled With World War I raging, the 1916 Olympics, slated to take place in Berlin, are canceled. April 20-September 12, 1920: Antwerp Following the devastation from World War I, Antwerp, Belgium is awarded the Games, and Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey are not invited. The newly-formed Soviet Union does not attend. With some 2,600 athletes (about 60 of whom are women) from 29 countries competing in 156 events, the five-ring Olympic flag debuts during the Opening Ceremony. American Ethelda Bleibtrey wins all three women's swimming events, Italian Nedo Nadi takes gold in five of six fencing competitions and Swede Oscar Swahn snags silver in the team double-shot running deer event at age 72, making him the oldest medalist in Olympic history. May 4-July 27, 1924: Paris During the Paris Games, some 3,000 athletes (135 women) from 44 nations participate in 126 events with 1,000-plus reporters on site. Olympic firsts include the first standard 50-meter pool with marked lanes, the first formal closing ceremony and the first time athletes are housed in an Olympic village. It also marks the last time tennis is played for 64 years. American swimmer and future "Tarzan" actor Johnny Weissmuller takes three gold medals and a bronze in water polo, "Flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi wins five golds in track and field and British runner Eric Liddell, later immortalized in the Academy Award-winning film "Chariots of Fire," wins gold in the 400-meter dash and bronze in the 200, while his teammate, Harold Abrahams, also a focus of the movie, wins the 100-meter dash. May 17-August 12, 1928: Amsterdam The 1928 Amsterdam Olympics feature 2,883 athletes from 46 nations (Panama, Malta and Rhodesia join) competing in 109 events. It's the first time the Olympic Flame is lit in a cauldron and the start of the tradition of Greece leading the Parade of Nations during the Opening Ceremony, with the host team closing the procession. Germany returns to the Games for the first time in 16 years and it’s the first time women's track and field and women's gymnastics are added. Henry Pearce, an Australian rower, earns gold despite stopping part-way through his quarter-final race to let a duck family pass by. Weissmuller returns with two gold medals and Japan's Mikio Oda becomes the first Asian gold medalist when he wins the triple jump. July 30-August 14, 1932: Los Angeles In the midst of the Great Depression, the 1932 Los Angeles Games includes teams from 37 nations with just 1,334 athletes taking part in 117 events. Despite the timing, 100,000 spectators attend the Opening Ceremony at the Coliseum stadium, the size and quality of which would become the new standard in Olympic Games. The 1932 Games also begin the traditions of a shortened 16-day schedule (previous Games lasted a minimum of 79 days; they have lasted 15 to 18 days since) and the recognition of medal winners on a podium. The 1932 Games do not feature soccer but do include the first race-walk competition. Among only 126 women participating in a maximum of three events each, American Babe Didrikson wins two golds and a silver in track and field and Helene Madison wins three swimming gold medals. August 1-16, 1936: Berlin With the Nazi Party in power since 1933, controversy swirls around the 1936 summer Games held in Berlin, with Adolf Hiltler providing the official opening. Although several countries, including the United States, threaten to boycott the Games, none officially do so, although many Jewish athletes choose to boycott as individuals. During the Games, anti-Jewish signs are temporarily removed as the Nazi regime wages a propaganda campaign to show a falsely tolerant Germany. Nearly 4,000 athletes from 49 nations compete in 129 events, with basketball, field handball and canoeing making debuts. The first Olympic torch relay takes place, with a lit torch carried from Olympia, Greece to Berlin. It’s also the first time the Games are broadcast on television. Despite the racist Nazi agenda, Black American athlete Jesse Owens is the standout of the Games as he picks up four gold medals in track and field. American Marjorie Gestring becomes the youngest female to win gold at age 13 in the springboard diving competition. 1940: Tokyo: Canceled Set to take place in Tokyo, a first for a non-Western country, Japan's award to host the Games is forfeited with its invasion of China and the Sino-Japanese War. Helsinki, Finland is ready to step in, but with Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland and the onset of World War II, the 1940 Olympic Games are canceled. 1944: London: Canceled Awarded to London, the 1944 Games are also canceled due to World War II. July 29-August 14, 1948: London The Olympics return after a 12-year hiatus, with London hosting teams from 59 countries. Most events are held at a converted Wembley Stadium, as the city, still in post-war recovery, has little time or funding to construct new facilities. Japan and Germany are not invited because of their roles in the war, and the Soviet Union chooses not to attend. But several nations, including Puerto Rico, Syria, Burma and Lebanon, make their Olympic debuts. The 1948 Games mark the first time starting blocks are used in sprint competitions and see the first covered pool. It’s also the first time the Games are televised in homes, though it was rare for Brits to own TVs at the time. American Bob Mathias wins in the decathlon at the age of 17, making him the youngest winner of a men's event (a record that endures today). Dutch runner Fanny Blankers-Koen becomes the first woman to win four gold medals in a single Olympics. July 19-August 3, 1952: Helsinki Israel makes its Olympic debut at the Helsinki Games, as does the Soviet Union as a communist nation. The United States edges out the USSR 76-71 in the medal count during the first Games of the Cold War era, and the Soviet gymnastics team begins its four-decade medal streak. A record 5,000 athletes representing 69 nations attend, and women are allowed to compete with men in mixed equestrian events. The standout of the Games is Emil Zátopek, a Czech runner who wins three golds—in the 5,000-meter, 10,000-meter and the marathon, a race he ran for the first time ever. November 22-December 8, 1956: Melbourne Held in Oceania for the first time, the Melbourne Olympics take place later in the year to coincide with summer in Australia. It’s also the first time the Games are boycotted: the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland refuse to attend in protest of the Soviet invasion of Hungary (Hungary does attend the Games). China also boycotts because Taiwan is participating as its own nation. Equestrian competitions are held in Stockholm in June because of Australia’s strict quarantine restrictions for animals, the only time events have been held in different cities and at different times. East and West Germany compete under one flag, and, for the first time, athletes from different teams enter the Closing Ceremony mingled together, rather than alphabetically, as a symbol of unity. The American men's basketball team dominates the competition, and the so-called "Blood in the Water" water polo match between the USSR and Hungary leads to a near riot. Hungary goes on to win the gold in the event. August 25-September 11, 1960: Rome Held on the banks of the Tiber, Rome hosts its first modern Olympic Games with events taking place in historical locations, including the Caracalla Baths and Basilica of Maxentius. Televised in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan, the first Olympic Anthem debuts and approximately 5,300 athletes (611 women) compete for 83 countries. Ethiopia's Abebe Bikilaran becomes the first Black African gold medal winner when he wins the marathon—running it barefoot. American runner Wilma Rudolph scores three gold medals. And Cassius Clay shoots to pre-“The Greatest” fame, taking first in the light-heavyweight boxing category. October 10-24, 1964: Tokyo With Emperor Hirohito providing the official opening, Tokyo's hosting of the Games signals the first time the event is held in Asia. Awarded the canceled 1940 Games, Japan's 1964 Olympics are the first to broadcast around the globe and feature the debuts of men's judo and volleyball for both men and women, as well as the use of the hand-held stopwatch and a fiberglass pole vaulting pole. Hiroshima native Yoshinori Sakai, born on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped, lights the Olympic cauldron. Also making headlines: Native American Billy Mills comes from behind to win the 10,000-meter run, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila wins a second gold in the marathon, the first athlete to win the race twice, and the Japanese top the Soviets in women's volleyball. October 12-27, 1968: Mexico City The 1968 Olympics mark the first time the Games are held in Latin America. The Mexico City Olympics are also the first to see a woman light the cauldron (Enriqueta Basilio, a Mexican hurdler). With more than 5,500 athletes from 112 teams competing, the Games require gender testing and doping tests of winners for the first time. It’s also the first time electronic scores become standard. Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska wins four golds and two silvers. American Bob Beamon sets a long-jump Olympic record that has yet to be topped. And George Foreman earns the super heavyweight gold boxing medal for Team USA. The high altitude of Mexico City, at almost 7,400 feet, is controversial (sprinters smash world records while long-distance times are significantly slower). But perhaps the most iconic image from the 1968 Games is the protest made by Black Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medal winners in the 200 meters. At the podium, Smith and Carlos raise black-gloved fists with their heads hung down during the playing of the "Star-Spangled Banner." They are suspended and ordered to leave the Games. August 26-September 10, 1972: Munich The Munich Olympics are the largest yet, with 7,000 athletes from 121 nations competing in a record 195 events. American swimmer Mark Spitz shines with seven gold medals and seven world records. New sports include kayaking, slalom canoeing and men's indoor handball. Archery makes its first appearance in 52 years and Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut steals the hearts of fans. But that is all overshadowed by a September 5 terrorist attack that saw eight Palestinian members of the group Black September storm the Olympic Village, killing two members of the Israeli team and taking nine others hostage. The massacre ends with all nine Israeli hostages, five terrorists and one policeman dead. Officials suspend the Games for 34 hours before continuing. July 17-August 1, 1976: Montreal Hosted for the first time in Canada, the Montreal Olympics add women's basketball, handball and rowing to the competitions. The most notable performances come from 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci who scores the first perfect 10 in Olympic history—then proceeds to earn six more, plus three gold medals. Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner) shatters the decathlon record, winning gold. Edwin Moses wins the 400 hurdles and Sugar Ray Leonard, Leon Spinks and Michael Spinks reign in the boxing arena. But also making headlines is a boycott by more than 20 mostly African nations. Led by Tanzania, the protest is against the IOC for allowing New Zealand to compete, despite the fact that its rugby team, the famed All Blacks, had toured apartheid South Africa, which was under a global athletics embargo. The ban leads to $1 million in Canadian dollar refunds and keeps top track and field teams from participating. July 19-August 3, 1980: Moscow Nearly 70 countries boycott the 1980 Olympics, held in Moscow, in a protest led by the United States and President Jimmy Carter against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While some athletes from boycotting countries still participate under the Olympic flag, Carter states that any American athletes traveling to the Games would forfeit their passports. The boycott leads to the fewest number of participating countries since 1956, with 80 nations attending. July 28-August 12, 1984: Los Angeles In retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, a Soviet-led boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics keeps 14 Eastern Bloc nations from participating. But the boycott has little effect on the success of the Olympics, which net a $223 million profit and attract a record-setting 140 nations. U.S. President Ronald Reagan gives the official opening of the Games and fans cheer as Americans Joan Benoit wins the first women's marathon. Carl Lewis takes home four gold medals in track and field events. And gymnast Mary Lou Retton scores a perfect 10 to clinch the women's all-around. New sports added include the women's cycling road race, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and the women's 3,000-meter. That last race grabs headlines when U.S. runner Mary Decker is clipped by South African runner Zola Budd, running for Great Britain. The image of Decker crying in pain and frustration is one of the most iconic in Olympic history. September 17-October 2, 1988: Seoul A boycott by North Korea, joined by Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, for not being allowed to co-host the Games doesn't slow the Seoul Olympics, with a record 159 nations competing. Notable names from the 1988 Games include Americans Greg Louganis, who wins double gold in diving, and Matt Biondi, who wins seven medals, including five golds. American sprinters Florence Griffith Joyner wins three golds, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee takes gold in the long jump and heptathlon. German swimmer Kristin Otto sets an Olympic women's record with six golds. Table tennis is added and tennis returns after being absent for 64 years. Pros are allowed to compete in tennis and Germany's Steffi Graf wins gold. But the event is not without scandal. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson is disqualified after testing positive for steroids, a controversial boxing decision is made against a South Korean athlete and reports of poor residents being ousted from their homes to make the city look better for travelers makes headlines. July 25-August 9, 1992: Barcelona The Barcelona Games kick off with the now-iconic image of Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo lighting the Olympic torch with his arrow during the Opening Ceremony. It serves as a spectacular start to the Games that feature a reunified Germany competing as one nation, the USSR splintered into 15 countries with the fall of the Soviet Union and the return of South Africa, following the end of apartheid. Baseball is officially made a medal-winning sport and badminton and women's judo debut. Crowds cheer Belarusian Gymnast Vitaly Scherbo, American sprinters Carl Lewis and Gail Devers, boxer Oscar de la Hoya and swimmers Janet Evans and Summer Sanders. Spain's Carlos Front, an 11-year-old coxswain, becomes the youngest to compete in the Games in 92 years. But, really, the 1992 Games were all about the "Dream Team," the U.S. men's basketball roster with superstars such as Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who easily win gold. July 19-August 9, 1996: Atlanta For as much as there was to celebrate at the Atlanta Games—the attendance of all 197 invited nations, more than 10,300 athletes participating in 271 events, a memorable Opening Ceremony with President Bill Clinton giving the official opening and Muhammad Ali lighting the torch—the Games are marred by a terrorist attack at the Centennial Olympic Park. A pipe bomb in a backpack explodes, leaving two dead and 110 injured. Security guard Richard Jewell is first thought a hero, then considered a prime suspect and is eventually cleared. The actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, isn't captured until 2003. Sports added to the Games in 1996 include beach volleyball, women's soccer, mountain biking, lightweight rowing and softball. Pros are allowed to compete in cycling and soccer. The U.S. women are a dominating force, taking gold in basketball, soccer, softball and gymnastics. And in swimming, Amy Van Dyken wins four golds, a first for an American woman. September 15-October 1, 2000: Sydney With a return to Australia, 10,600-plus athletes from 199 teams compete in the 2000 Games. North and South Korea march under one flag and it’s the first time EPO detection and blood tests are used. American track star Marion Jones wins five medals in 2000, but loses them in 2007 after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. Newly added sports include taekwondo and the triathlon and women compete in weightlifting and the modern pentathlon for the first time. Perhaps the breakout star of the Olympics is a teenager: At age 17, Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe breaks his own world record to win the 400-meter freestyle. He also takes gold in two relays and wins two silvers. August 13-29, 2004: Athens A return to Athens, the birthplace of the Games, features 201 teams, a record number, in an Olympics that honors both the present and past. The marathon traces the 1896 route from Marathon to the Panathenaic Stadium. New sports include women's wrestling and new teams attending include Kiribati and Timor Leste. While several athletes face doping charges, American swimmer Michael Phelps sets a single-Olympics record with eight medals, including six gold. The U.S. softball team crushes the competition, outscoring all opponents 51-1 and the Argentinian men's soccer team gives up zero goals as it cruises to victory. In an upset, the U.S. men's basketball team is defeated by Argentina (led by NBA star Manu Ginobili) and has to settle for bronze. German kayaker Birgit Fischer becomes the first Olympian to win two medals in five different Games. August 8-24, 2008: Beijing The Beijing Games, a first for China, sets a new bar for the Opening Ceremony, with a reported $10 million-plus price tag, 15,000 performers and spectacular special effects. More than 130 Olympic records and 40 world records are shattered, with events held in both state-of-the-art facilities and ancient areas. With a record 204 teams competing, several nations, including Afghanistan, Mongolia, Togo and Panama win their first gold medals. BMX and the 10-kilometer swimming marathon are newly added and the biggest standouts of the Games are American swimmer Michael Phelps, who wins a whopping eight gold medals, and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who wins three golds in the 100- and 200-meters and the 4X100 relay. July 27-August 12, 2012: London Held in Great Britain for the third time, the London Games include at least one female competitor from every delegation with Saudi Arabia entering women for the first time and Team USA consisting of more women and than men. Sports added include women's boxing and tennis mixed doubles, while baseball and softball are cut from the lineup. Notable wins go to Usain Bolt, who earns three more gold medals for Jamaica, American Missy Franklin who, at 17, snags four golds and a bronze, Michael Phelps, whose four golds and two silvers make him the most decorated Olympian ever and the victorious U.S. women's gymnastics team, led by Gabby Douglas. South Africa's Oscar Pistorius makes history as the first amputee to compete in the Games—he is eliminated in the 400-meter semifinal. August 5-21, 2016: Rio The first Olympics hosted in South America get off to a rocky start in Rio de Janeiro as Brazil faces a growing number of Zika virus cases and construction delays, but they still give fans plenty to cheer about. First-time events include women's rugby and returning after long hiatus are golf (112 years) and men's rugby (92 years). Among the headlines: Ibtihaj Muhammad, a U.S. fencer, becomes the first American athlete to compete in the Games in a hijab, more than 100 Russians are banned for doping, Jamaican Usain Bolt adds three more gold medals to his collection, U.S. gymnast Simone Biles wows with four golds of her own, including individual and team all-around, plus a bronze, and swimmer Michael Phelps brings another five gold medals to Team USA, while teammate Katie Ledecky, at age 19, comes home with four golds and a silver. Venus Williams, Kerri Walsh Jennings and Alison Felix are also American standouts. July 23-August 8, 2021: Tokyo The Tokyo Games were originally scheduled to take place in July and August 2020 but were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the Olympic Games kick off on July 23, 2021, these Olympics are unlike any other. Two weeks before the Games were set to begin, a state of emergency was declared in Tokyo due to an uptick in coronavirus cases. The Olympic organizing committee decides to ban spectators from events and all athletes are tested regularly and adhere to social distancing measures. Some athletes test positive for the virus ahead of the Games, including American tennis hopeful Cori "Coco" Gauff, players on the South African soccer team and an alternate for the U.S. women's gymnastics team. Even though the Tokyo Games begin in July 2021, they are officially referred to as Tokyo 2020. Sources Olympics.com, International Olympic Committee The Olympics: A Guide to Reference Sources, Library of Congress “The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Strangest Ever,” Smithsonian Magazine “3 sporting trailblazers light up Stockholm Olympics in 1912,” Associated Press “A look back at Olympics that never were: 1916, '40 and '44,” ABC News "Paris Olympics in 1924 set stage for Hollywood endings," Associated Press “The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936,” U.S. Holocaust Museum "Déjà Vu All Over Again: Tokyo and Another Lost Olympics," Sports Illustrated “At the Olympics in Bombed-Out London, She Forever Changed Women’s Sports,” The New York Times
410	dbpedia	0	79	https://en.yna.co.kr/	en	Yonhap News Agency	https://r.yna.co.kr/glob…200x800_en01.jpg	https://r.yna.co.kr/glob…200x800_en01.jpg	[ "https://img6.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/10/PYH2024081003390004200_P2.jpg", "https://img6.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/08/10/AEN20240810000700315_01_i_T2.jpg", "https://img3.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/08/09/AEN20240809007300315_01_i_T2.jpg", "https://img6.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/06/07/PYH2024060700390031500_T2.jpg", "https://img6.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/08/PYH2024080804890001300_P2.jpg", "https://img4.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/07/16/PYH2024071611730031500_P2.jpg", "https://img4.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/08/09/AEN20240809005000320_01_i_P2.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/en/home/v01/img/img_ytb_kn01.jpg", "https://img3.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/08/09/AEN20240809003700320_01_i_P2.jpg", "https://img0.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/05/PYH2024080514670031500_P2.jpg", "https://img9.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/08/05/AEN20240805004400320_01_i_P2.jpg", "https://img2.yna.co.kr/template/en/20240802/en_10_20240802180109_P2.gif", "https://img6.yna.co.kr/photo/etc/af/2024/07/18/PAF20240718193401009_P2.jpg", "https://img3.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/07/23/AEN20240723008851315_03_i_P2.jpg", "https://img9.yna.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2024/07/18/AEN20240718009700320_07_i_P2.jpg", "https://img1.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/09/PYH2024080913320031500_P2.jpg", "https://img4.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/09/PYH2024080913350031500_P2.jpg", "https://img3.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/09/PYH2024080910730031500_P2.jpg", "https://img9.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2024/08/09/PYH2024080904740031500_P2.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/global/home/v01/img/@temp/img_footer_bnr07.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/en/home/v01/img/img_footer_bnr01.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/global/home/v01/img/@temp/img_footer_bnr02.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/global/home/v01/img/@temp/img_footer_bnr03.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/global/home/v01/img/@temp/img_footer_bnr04.jpg", "https://r.yna.co.kr/global/home/v01/img/@temp/img_footer_bnr06.jpg", "https://img4.yna.co.kr/template/en/20240207/en_3511_20240207171258_P4.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "www.facebook.com" ]	null	Yonhap news articles produced by building a network covering domestic supplies in various newspapers, broadcasting and government departments, major institutions, major corporations, media ,K-pop, K-wave, Hallyu, Korean Wave, Korean pop, Korean pop culture, Korean culture, Korean idol, Korean movies, Internet media and international agreements of the Republic of Korea.	en	https://r.yna.co.kr/global/favicon.ico	Yonhap News Agency	https://en.yna.co.kr/	North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to bring victims of recent heavy downpours to the capital city of Pyongyang to take care of them without outside help, state media said ... South Korea and the United States will hold their sixth round of negotiations in Washington next week to determine Seoul's share of the cost for stationing the 28,500-strong U.S. F... Almost fully charged electric vehicles will be discouraged from entering apartment underground parking garages to prevent overcharging that is often blamed for EV fires, the Seoul ...
410	dbpedia	2	37	https://patch.com/connecticut/across-ct/olympic-gold-medalist-connecticut-resident-butch-johnson-dies-68	en	Olympic Gold Medalist, Connecticut Resident Butch Johnson Dies At 68	https://patch.com/img/cd…_31003130400.jpg	https://patch.com/img/cd…_31003130400.jpg	[ "https://cdn.patchcdn.com/assets/layout/icons/logo/logo.svg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/profile_pics/pearl-100th-1-copy___06014956567.jpg?width=64", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/badges/verified-patch-staff.svg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/20240531/124316/styles/patch_image/public/butch-johnson-2017-gold-key___31003130400.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/20240531/123252/styles/raw/public/processed_images/Butch%20and%20Theresa%20Johnson.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/22729282/20240809/064503/styles/patch_image/public/patch-stock-diner-breakfast-pancakes-eggs-food-booth___09184418016.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/21821499/20240809/030908/styles/patch_image/public/jamesrmartin-irs-tax-form-1040-shutterstock-1018857577___09150556026.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/22729282/20240809/123422/styles/patch_image/public/thunderstorm-and-shutter___09123119953.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/footer_patch_logo.png", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/apple_appstore.png", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/google_play.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Tim Jensen" ]	2024-05-31T10:50:31+00:00	Olympic Gold Medalist, Connecticut Resident Butch Johnson Dies At 68 - Across Connecticut, CT - The unexpected death of the 5-time Olympic archer and 1996 team gold medalist was announced this week by USA Archery.	en	https://cdn.patchcdn.com/assets/layout/icons/logo/favicon.ico	Across Connecticut, CT Patch	https://patch.com/connecticut/across-ct/olympic-gold-medalist-connecticut-resident-butch-johnson-dies-68	The unexpected death of the 5-time Olympic archer and 1996 team gold medalist was announced this week by USA Archery. WOODSTOCK, CT — Richard "Butch" Johnson, a resident of Woodstock who traveled the world competing in five consecutive Olympic Games and won a gold medal with the 1996 U.S. archery team in Atlanta, has passed away, according to an announcement from USA Archery. He was 68. A synopsis of his story posted by a family friend indicates Johnson had been living for several years with a blood cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Recently, his symptoms progressed, forcing removal of his spleen last week. His recovery was complicated by his leukemia, leading to a stroke from which he could not recover, and he died late Monday night. Beginning in Barcelona in 1992, Johnson represented his country in each Olympiad through the 2008 Games in Beijing. He teamed with Justin Huish and Rod White in Atlanta to capture the men's recurve team gold medal, the lone gold ever won by Team USA. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, the team of Johnson, White and Vic Wunderle took home the bronze medal. Other international success was achieved with team gold medals at the Pan American Games in 1999 (Winnipeg) and 2007 (Rio de Janeiro), and a team bronze medal at the 1999 World Championships in Riom, France. Individually, Johnson won both silver and bronze medals at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina. He placed second at the 2012 National Target Championships in Hamilton, Ohio, and earned the silver medal that same year at the Hoyt World Open. "Butch was an icon in the sport, matching a unique technique approach with elite success and unrivalled longevity as the USA Archery’s most-capped Olympian," World Archery secretary general Tom Dielen said. "His impact went beyond the shooting line to the many archers he coached and mentored. My condolences go to his wife Teresa, his family and the archery community in the USA." A 2012 feature story on npr.org illustrated Johnson's humility and lack of ego, despite all his success. The article revealed, "He keeps his medals in a cabinet under the kitchen sink.," and also described the red-headed athlete as "tall and broad-shouldered, and he doesn't say much." The last point became clearly evident in 2017, when he was accorded one of the state's most prestigious sports awards, the Gold Key, by the Connecticut Sports Writers' Alliance (now the Connecticut Sports Media Alliance). As part of a group of honorees which included recent Pro Football Hall of Fame electee Dwight Freeney, Johnson set what is believed to be an unofficial record for shortest time at the podium since the Gold Key Dinner debuted in 1940. His acceptance speech lasted 34 seconds. Funeral arrangements are not yet complete. Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
410	dbpedia	3	82	https://marinmagazine.com/explore/7-u-s-athletes-to-watch-at-the-summer-olympics/	en	7 U.S. Athletes to Watch at the Summer Olympics	https://marinmagazine.co…ans-to-watch.png	https://marinmagazine.co…ans-to-watch.png	[ "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Marin_Magazine_Cover_August_2024.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Marin_Magazine_Cover_August_2024.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Olympians-to-watch-770x440.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Simone_Biles-513x770.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Katie_Ledecky-578x770.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/John-John-Florence-770x770.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Megan_Rapinoe-616x770.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Serena_Williams_-617x770.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Donaven-Brazier.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Brady-Ellison.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Ian-Larned-Marin-Intern-e1623099435936.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Surfing_PS_A23W1057_Credit_Sachi_-Cunningham-f-340x192.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Surfer-Water-sport-trends-2021-1-340x192.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Olympic-Rings-Bay-Area-Past-Olympians-340x192.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Hikes_Hill-88-340x192.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/etude-winery-feature-320x182.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Amy-Tan-bird-book-320x182.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1.new-in-town-cocktails-mill-valley-piazza-dangelo-credit-piazzadangelo-320x182.jpeg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/data-import/391ede49/BalslevLynda_102814_067_FEATURED-320x182.jpg", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://marinmagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png", "https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-QTmaDXBDzGASS.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Jessica Dlugosz" ]	2021-07-19T22:09:17+00:00	We can’t wait to watch all of our favorite competitions. We’ve put together a list of athletes to look out for in this year’s Summer Olympics.	en	https://marinmagazine.co…arin-M-32x32.jpg	Marin Magazine	https://marinmagazine.com/explore/7-u-s-athletes-to-watch-at-the-summer-olympics/	At last, the 2020 Summer Olympics are happening, set to take place in Tokyo beginning on July 23, and we can’t wait to watch all of our favorite competitions. We’ve put together a list of athletes to look out for in this year’s Summer Olympics. Simone Biles Gymnastics Biles is looking to continue her Olympic dominance this year. She has the opportunity to be the first woman to win back-to-back all around gymnastics titles since 1968. Biles could also become the first U.S. woman in any sport to win five gold medals at a single Olympic games. Katie Ledecky Freestyle Swimming Ledecky is another athlete to watch, as the women’s world record holder in 400-, 800-, and 1,500-meter freestyle swimming attempts to win five gold medals. Ledecky won her first gold medal in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London at the age of 15. She followed this with four gold medals in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Like Biles, Ledecky is attempting to be the first female U.S. athlete to win five gold medals in the Olympics. John John Florence Surfing Florence is one of the few U.S. surfers competing in this year’s Olympics. As the sport makes its Olympic debut, Florence is hoping for success after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in 2019. The 28-year old Hawaiian native beat out surf legend Kelly Slater to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. Megan Rapinoe Soccer U.S. Women’s soccer star, Rapinoe is preparing to win her second Olympic gold medal with the U.S. Rapinoe was arguably the most important member of the U.S. team who won the Women’s World Cup in 2019. Rapinoe and the team are looking for a rebound after losing in the quarterfinal round in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Serena Williams Tennis Four-time Olympic gold medalist Williams will enter the 2021 Summer Olympics with the goal of passing her sister, Venus Williams for most Olympic titles won. Williams is also in pursuit of leading the world in Grand Slam titles. While she has won 23, she needs one more to tie the current record. Donavan Brazier Running Fresh off a gold medal in the 2019 Track and Field world championship, Brazier has emerged as the 800-meter gold medal favorite in the Tokyo Olympics. Brazier is the first American to win a world title for the 800-meter event. Brady Ellison Archery Ellison has been riding high as the number-one ranked archer in the world in 2019. The three-time Olympic medalist’s goal this year is to finally capture a gold medal. The last time an American won an Olympic gold in archery was in 1996. More from Marin: Best Water Practices to Keep You Safe on the Bay Champions On the Field and Off: 10 Most Inspiring Athletes Where to Play in Marin: The Best Places to Explore, Youth Sports Groups and Playgrounds Ian Larned is an intern at Marin Magazine. Born and raised in San Francisco, he attended Marin Academy in San Rafael and is currently a rising Junior at Colorado College majoring in Economics, Business and Society with a minor in Journalism. He enjoys playing sports or doing anything outdoors.
410	dbpedia	2	21	https://www.worldarchery.sport/news/92781/olympic-history-archery-1900-games-paris-2008-games-beijing	en	The Olympic History of Archery: From the 1900 Games in Paris to the 2008 Games in Beijing	https://www.worldarchery.sport/themes/custom/wa_radix/favicon.ico	https://www.worldarchery.sport/themes/custom/wa_radix/favicon.ico	[ "https://www.worldarchery.sport/themes/custom/wa_radix/images/logo-small.svg", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/user/photo/logo_wa.jpg?itok=6MmwcUs0", "https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/CompetitionLogos/?Id=446", "https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/Flags/GBR-L.png", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/8.4.24%20%20MENS%200256.jpg?itok=oGTnjaSw", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_8018.jpg?h=653eb249&itok=RhmrSkaC", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_7454.jpg?h=eff11171&itok=0TU5h9ON", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_3606.jpg?h=13111395&itok=rKqKe25T", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_2183.jpg?h=8ba26d87&itok=DJEpAtv8", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_6938.jpg?h=eec1bd66&itok=aIDweK0S", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/https/photos.smugmug.com/OLYMPIC-GAMES/PARIS-2024/31-JULY-ELIMINATIONS/i-h87q7NV/0/LKxHrwS3zQTmmgtRK3XGFDkK9gNP2LqtVvLPvngdw/X5/DA6_6974-X5.jpg?h=00d7a0a6&itok=MPcntKOg", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_8729.jpg?h=f7dd05fc&itok=0agfn52Y", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_1x/public/2024-08/R3X_1678.jpg?h=f3882ae0&itok=qnOO59hd", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2023-02/HYU_Logo_Horizontal_Blue_RGB_1.png?itok=bBi5YgkO", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-05/sportoto.png?itok=b24bR5S0", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2023-02/Errea_logo-orizzontale.png?itok=hvnThwpK", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2023-02/sponsor_turkish_airlines_web_1500px_2021.png?itok=M_VBob6S", "https://www.worldarchery.sport/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2023-02/SNG-2.png?itok=iyZn_eoS" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "World Archery" ]	2012-05-14T20:08:00+01:00	The Olympic history of archery competition began at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. In order to fully enjoy the exciting 2012 London Olympic archery competition, we should glance back through history to observe how the rules of archery have evolved over the last 100 years.	en	/themes/custom/wa_radix/favicon.ico	World Archery	https://www.worldarchery.sport/news/92781/olympic-history-archery-1900-games-paris-2008-games-beijing	The Olympic history of archery competition began at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. In order to fully enjoy the exciting 2012 London Olympic archery competition, we should glance back through history to observe how the rules of archery have evolved over the last 100 years. The first archery competition at the Paris 1900 Olympic Games lasted 44 days and had an extensive programme: six individual and five team target events, two events for pole archery (popinjay) and six events for crossbow. From late May to August, the competitors began with the team competition and followed by the elimination round for the individual medal matches. In the crossbow competition, athletes either shot at regular targets or competed in the popinjay division. The popinjay competition was interesting: at the top of a pole there was a bird (plastic tube with feathers) that was part of the target. The popinjay competition had two competition formats of play in the Olympics. There were four target events of which one consisted at shooting on a target with a golden ring. The target events had a distance of 33 and 50 metres. At the end of the Paris Olympic competition, four gold medals were awarded to the French team and two were bestowed upon the Belgian team. Henri HEROUIN (FRA) won the two competitions at 50 metres. Starting a brilliant Olympic career, Belgian archer Hubert VAN INNIS won two Olympic gold medals, at 30 metres, and one silver medal in Paris (plus one silver from an "international" competition). A special feature of the Paris Olympic Games was that the medal was rectangular. Ever since 1900, the medals have been round. At the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games, there were three divisions and the American competition rules were used. In the men’s competition, athletes competed in the Double York Round and Double American Round. There were four competition distances: 100, 80, 60, and 50 yards (100 yards are 91.44 metres). At each distance, archers were to shoot a unique number of arrows, ranging from 24 arrows to 72 arrows. The 1904 St. Louis Games were the first Games in which women competed in any sport, and archery was the first Olympic sport to admit women competitors. The women shot in the Double Columbia and Double National Rounds. The Double Columbia Round was composed of three distances: 50, 40, and 30 yards. The Double National Round was shot at 50 and 60 yards. All of the medallists at the St. Louis Games were American. According to reports, it included Reverend Galen SPENCER from the Potomac Archers (Washington), who won the team gold at age 64, making him the oldest American to ever win an Olympic gold medal. Samuel DUVALL from the Cincinnati Archers also competed. At age 68, he won a team silver medal, setting a record as the oldest American to ever participate, or win a medal, in the Olympic Games. At the 1908 London Olympics, the men’s events comprised of the Double York Round and the Continental Round. The women’s event was the Double National Round. The London competition was held on a dedicated archery venue for the first time. Two siblings, William and Charlotte DOD, won medals. Charlotte was a world class athlete in many sports at the time, including archery, field hockey, golf, ice skating and tennis, in which she won five Wimbledon titles (first one at age 15). At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, archery was not on the Olympic programme. The 1916 Berlin Olympic Games were not held because of World War I. The International Olympic Committee moved its headquarters to neutral Switzerland in 1915. At the 1920 Antwerp Olympic Games, archery was readmitted to the Olympic programme. The competition consisted of 10 events of which there were four popinjay events. The popinjay competition was shot at 31 metres and at the top of the popinjay target there were two birds of different sizes. There were only six popinjay competitors. The target competition comprised of three individual events and three team events. Shooting distances were 28, 33, and 50 metres. At age 54, Hubert VAN INNIS returned to the Games, not only as an athlete but also helping the organisation. In Antwerp, he won two individual gold medals, one individual silver medal, two team gold medals, and one team silver medal. Overall, between Paris 1900 and Antwerp 1920, he won six gold and three silver Olympic medals, making him the most decorated athlete in archery Olympic history. To note, he later on competed at the first World Archery Championships in 1933 in London. At age 67, he finished 4th in the individual event, won the 50 metres competition and helped his Belgian compatriots win the team title! He competed in the world championships until 1936! Antwerp marked the first time that there was head-to-head competition in the individual target events. An interesting piece of trivia from these Games was that the top target score was 9 points and the target had only nine rings. After the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920, archery no longer figured in the Olympic Games until 1972. The reason behind this absence was that there was no standardisation amongst international archery regulations. Different countries adopted their own rules and, as a result, the rules had to be amended for each Olympic Games. This led to the creation of the international federation in 1931: the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l'Arc (FITA). One of the reasons it took so long to be put back on the programme is that the International Archery Federation insisted on having a women’s competition. After 50 years of FITA trying to make archery an Olympic sport, archery was re-introduced into Olympic competition at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The competition took place under Double FITA Round rules, whereby every competitor shot 288 arrows and the winner was determined by the highest total scores for men and women. There were only individual events. These regulations were used at all Olympic Games between 1972 in Munich and 1984 in Los Angeles. At the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, the single FITA Qualification Round of 144 arrows was introduced. After the Qualification Round, the top 24 competitors continued and the top 8 shot the Medal Round. This type of competition was known as the Grand FITA Round. In 1988 the Games held team events, then there were four gold medals overall for archery. The 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games welcomed the Olympic Round regulations, where, for the first time in Olympic history, archery featured exciting head-to-head competition and single elimination matches. Since the 1992 Olympic Games, basic competition rules have not changed significantly. Small amendments to the qualification and elimination rounds, such as the number of arrows, the shooting time limit, and the shooting sequence were incorporated into the individual events over the years. Team event rules also changed. For the 2012 London Olympic Games, the individual archery rules have changed by adjusting the set point match. This new individual rule is exciting: the change often time keeps the suspense of the match until the end. The team competition rules, however, remain unchanged leading up to the 2012 Games. We anticipate that archery will be the most exciting sport of all at the London Olympic Games. We should not forget the path that led us to where we are today. Although archery ceased being an Olympic sport for 50 years in the mid of the last century, it came back as ever strong featuring talented men and women, some winning Olympic medals at a very young age others making an incredibly long career. Another special archery fact: the Olympic host nation has always won a gold medal except for Greece at the 2004 Athens Games since 1980. As the host nation for the 2012 Games Great Britain is for sure preparing a strong team to look for "their" gold medal. World Archery is dedicated to making the sport as passionate and spectacular as possible and we are looking forward to another great archery showcase in one of the most extraordinary venue, the Lord’s Cricket Ground, that will become the Home of Archery during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Host Nation Gold Medallists for Olympic Archery since 1980: Host City Gender Gold Medallist Nation Event 1980 Moscow Women Keto LOSABERIDZE URS Individual 1984 Los Angeles Men Darrell PACE USA Individual 1988 Seoul Men Women Women CHUN In-Soo, LEE Han-Sup, PARK Sung-Soo KIM Soo-Nyung, WANG Hee-Kyung, YUN Young-Sook KIM Soo-Nyung KOR KOR KOR Team Team Individual 1992 Barcelona Men Juan Carlos HOLGADO, Alfonso MENENDEZ, Antonio VAZQUEZ ESP Team 1996 Atlanta Men Men Justin HUISH, Butch JOHNSON, Rod WHITE Justin HUISH USA USA Team Individual 2000 Sydney Men Simon FAIRWEATHER AUS Individual 2008 Beijing Women ZHANG Juan Juan CHN Individual KIM Soo Nyung World Archery Communication
410	dbpedia	0	38	https://archivalarchery.org/L1/naa_releases.htm	en	NArchival Archery Releases			[ "http://www.archivalarchery.org/images/logo.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/images/usaarchery.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/images/classic_125.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/images/usparalympics.jpg", "http://www.archivalarchery.org/images/fita.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/images/ipc.gif", "http://www.archivalarchery.org/images/Texasflag1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/L1/naa_releases_files/image002.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif", "https://archivalarchery.org/_themes/texasarcherynew/arrowline1.gif" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null					null	"New Archer of the Year" awards are given to the top finishers among those archers who have been shooting for less than one year. The New Archers of the Year for 2003 are as follows: Men's Recurve - Adrian Choriw (ACCC), Men's Compound - Whalen Rozelle (Stanford), Women's Recurve - Rebecca Popp (Columbia), Women's Compound - Nichole Kimball (JMU) A A&M University captured their eighth consecutive national team title. The collegiate Coach of the Year Award went to Frank Thomas, one of TAMU's coaches. For a complete listing of all FITA results, please visit: http://www.achivalarchery.org/Results/usiac/2003/usiac2003.htm Butch Johnson Wins Gold at European Grand Prix in Croatia by Mary Beth Vorwerk - USA Archery FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 13, 2003 POREC, CROATIA - Three-time Olympian and 1996 Olympic gold medallist, Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), captured gold for the USA in the Individual Senior Recurve Men's competition at the European Grand Prix this past Saturday. The European Grand Prix was held May 4-10 in Porec, Croatia. Johnson took first place overall after placing 11th on the ranking round FITA with a total score of 1321. He beat out Viktor Ruban of Ukraine in the gold medal match 111 to 104. Ruban shot a score of 1316 and was ranked 16th going into the elimination rounds. Australia's David Barnes, who Johnson defeated in the semi-finals, won the bronze medal. Barnes was the 2nd seed, finishing the FITA with a score of 1343. "We are very pleased with Butch's success," said U.S. Men's Coach, Tom Parrish. "It's interesting that when he was introduced for the semi-final match the announcer said, 'and shooting on target number three, a legend in archery, Richard Johnson'. Obviously the legend lives on." Finishing in the fifth spot for the U.S. was Jason McKittrick (Moores Hill, Ind.) who shot 1317 on the FITA. McKittrick was defeated by his teammate, Johnson, in the quarterfinal round 114 to 112. Chris Shull (Chula Vista, Calif.) finished in 35th place and shot a 1293 on the FITA. In the Senior Recurve Women's event, Poland's Iwona Marcinkiewicz won the gold, while Evangelia Psarra of Greece took the silver. Yulia Lobzhenidze of Ukraine won the bronze. For the U.S., Jennifer Nichols (Cheyenne, Wyo.) shot a score of 1292 and finished sixth overall. 2000 Olympian, Karen Scavotto (Chula Vista, Calif.), shot a 1293 and took 16th place. Roxanne Reimann (Manchester, Conn.) shot a 1244 and finished 44th. Two-time Olympian, Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.), shot a 1235 and finished in 69th place. In Men's Senior Recurve team competition, Ukraine finished first beating out the Netherlands. Taking the bronze was Sweden and the U.S. team of Shull, McKittrick and Johnson finished 12th. Taking home the gold for the Senior Women's team event was also Ukraine. Turkey took second and Poland finished third. Nichols, Scavotto and Reimann finished in the 8th spot for the U.S. "Every time we get a chance to shoot in a large international event it's a valuable experience for us," said Parrish. "The team round was disappointing, but overall we had some positive results in Croatia. Some of our archers shot personal best distance scores and in the elimination rounds, Jennifer, Jason and Butch, in particular, did very well." Each year there are three European Grand Prix Events. This year, the U.S. will attend two out of the three tournaments. The next European Grand Prix the U.S. will send a team to is in Antalya, Turkey June 17-21 For a complete set of European Grand Prix (Croatia) results, please visit The US ARCHERY WEBSITE or the FITA Website. Coaching Staff Selected for Pan Am and Olympic Games By Mary Beth Vorwerk - USA Archery FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 1, 2003 COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - USA Archery has officially announced the Coaching Staff for the 2003 Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Tom Parrish (Austin, A) will serve as the Men's Coach for the Pan Am Games and Cindy Bevilacqua (West Chester, Pa.) will be the Women's Coach. Two-time Olympic Coach (1996 and 2000), Lloyd Brown, (San Diego, Calif.) will serve as Team Leader for the 2003 Pan Am Games. The 2004 Olympic Coaching Staff will include Men's Coach, Frank Thomas (College Station, A) and Women's Coach, Sheri Rhodes (Sacramento, Calif.), who was also the 1988 Olympic Coach. The Team Leader for the 2004 Olympics will be Tom Green (Wilton, Calif.). Tom Parrish has the ingredients to take the 2003 Men's Pan American Team to the top and is well prepared for the position. His most recent accomplishments include: Head Coach for the U.S. Archery Team at the World University Archery Championships in Chonburi, Thailand in July of 2002 and Men's Team Coach for the U.S. Archery Team at the European Grand Prix in Erlangen, Germany in May of 2002. Parrish was named the National Archery Association (NAA), National Coach of the Year in 2001 and he was also Head Coach for the U.S. Archery Team at the World Indoor Championships in Florence, Italy in March of 2001. Parrish has been the lead coach for the Men's Gold Track program since 2000. He will also serve as the Men's Head Coach of the U.S. Archery Team at the European Grand Prix in Porec, Croatia May 4-10. Cindy Bevilacqua has proven herself as a successful women's archery coach during international events over the past few years. Bevilacqua is familiar with the top women archers through her work with the Gold Track program. She was the 2001-2003 Women's Gold Track Program Coach, the 2002 Women's Coach at the European Grand Prix in Croatia and Turkey, the 2002 Team Coach for the Jr. World team at the Junior World Championships in the Czech Republic. Bevilacqua has also served as Head Coach for several Jr. World Indoor Teams. With his extensive coaching experience, Lloyd Brown will be a tremendous asset to the Pan American Staff in the role of Team Leader. He was the coach for the 2000 Olympics, 1999 Pan Americans Games, 1999 World Target Championships, 1997 World Target Championships, 1996 Olympics, 1995 World Target Championships, 1994 Jr. World Championships, 1993 World Target Championships and the 1993 Jr. World Championships. Brown is currently the USA Archery Resident Athlete Coach in Chula Vista, Calif. and a member of the Coaches Development Committee. As the Men's Coach for the 2004 Olympic Games, Frank Thomas will bring with him a vast amount of experience as an archery coach. He has been working with the men's Gold Track Program for the past two years, he has prior experience as a U.S. team coach, which includes the 1997 World Target Championships, 1997 Russian Grand Prix, 1998 German Grand Prix, 1999 Pan American Games, 2001 Turkish Grand Prix, 2002 Croatian Grand Prix, 2002 Turkish Grand Prix (where he led the men's team to a victory over Korea) and the 2002 Pan American Qualifier. Thomas will also serve as the Men's Head Coach of the U.S. Archery Team at the European Grand Prix in Antalya, Turkey June 17-21. Sheri Rhodes has a tremendous amount of experience in coaching archery teams. She has proven success as a U.S. team coach, which includes: the World Target Championships in 1983, 1991, 1993 and 1997; the Pan American Games in 1987 and 1985; the Olympic Games in 1988 and numerous other indoor championships and Grand Prix events. Rhodes was one of the initiators of the Women's Fast Track Program and has been the head coach for the Women's Gold Track Program for the past three years. She will also serve as the Women's Head Coach of the U.S. Archery Team at the European Grand Prix in Porec, Croatia May 4-10 and Antalya, Turkey June 17-21. Tom Green is one of the best and most experienced team leaders in the NAA. Green has been a team leader since 1987 and has participated in numerous USA Archery Team (USAT) camps, Olympic festivals, Championship of the America's, the Pan American Games, Grand Prix events (most recently the 2001 Korean Invitational and the 2002 Croatian Grand Prix), World Field Championships and World Target Championships. Green is also a Level 4 coach and has been a FITA judge since 1995. Archery competition for the Pan American Games will be August 12-16, 2003 in Santo Domingo and the competition for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens will be August 15-21, 2004. For more information, please visit www.usarchery.org. Resident Athletes Come out Strong at A Shootout By Mary Beth Vorwerk - USA Archery FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 29, 2003 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS - The winds stayed away this year making weather conditions ideal for the 2003 A Shootout, which was held April 26-27 at A A&M University (TAMU) in College Station, A. The TAMU Archers hosted the event for the 135 archers who participated. Weather conditions for the tournament was sunny and nice, with temperatures in the low 80's and very little wind except early on Saturday and during the final rounds on Sunday. This was a welcome change from the heat and high winds that challenged the archers at last year's tournament. This was the second of five United States Archery Team (USAT) qualifying events that will determine who will be part of the 2003-2004 USAT. The Arizona Cup, which was held April 11-14 in Phoenix, Ariz., was the first of the qualifying events. The Gold Cup is the third qualifying tournament and will take place May 23-25 in Bloomfield, N.J. For Recurve archers, the World/Pan Am Trials in Chula Vista, Calif. June 4-8 and the 119th National Target Championships, which are being held in Reading, Pa. July 28 - Aug. 1 also count as a USAT qualifier. For Compound shooters, the National Indoor Championships, which were held in February and March, and the National Field Championships that are taking place June 13-15 in Tippecanoe, Ohio can also be used as a USAT qualifier. In the Men's Recurve division, Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.) was the top qualifier with a score of 1304 on the FITA round, followed by Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), Jason McKittrick (Moores Hill, Ind.) and Chris Shull (Chula Vista, Calif.) respectively, all three shooting 1292. In the Elimination Rounds, competition for the bronze medal matched a couple of "Guys." Sixth seed Guy Krueger (Olympic Training Center resident athlete in Chula Vista, Calif.) defeated 16th seed Guy Gerig (Deer Park, N.Y.) in a tiebreaker shootoff after tying with a score of 107 each. In the Finals, 7th seed, Staten Holmes (San Antonio, A) defeated 4th seed, Chris Shull (Chula Vista, Calif.), by a score of 106 to 101, to take the gold. Shull, who is also a resident athlete at the Chula Vista OTC, took home the silver medal. Fourth seed, Hyo Jung Kim (Korean archer now residing in A) defeated 2nd seed, Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.) by a score of 104 to 93, to take the gold in the Women's Recurve Division. Chula Vista OTC resident athlete and 3rd seed, Karen Scavatto, won the bronze medal match with a 100 to 99 squeaker over Marie-Pier Beaudet of Canada. The Gold Medal match in the Men's Compound Division paired Kevin Eldredge (5th seed and the mayor of Hatch, Utah) against 6th seed Jake Hall (Templeton, Calif.). Eldredge won by a score of 109 to 100 taking home the gold. The bronze medal match was won by top seed Matt Cleland (Swanton, Ohio) over 2nd seed Jeff Krienke (Covington, La.) 107 to 104. The Women's Compound Final was a pressure packed match between the top two seeds, Aya LaBrie (Aurora, Colo.) and Mary Zorn, a student at A A&M University. LaBrie finished one point ahead of Zorn on the FITA ranking round (1359 to 1358). LaBrie won the gold medal match by a score of 112 to 106. This is LaBrie's 2nd win of the 2003 season. Earlier in April she won the Arizona Cup event. The bronze match was between Sally Wunderle (Peoria, IL) and Jamie Van Natta (Toledo, Ohio). The 5th seed Wunderle defeated the 3rd seed Van Natta, 109 to 107. For complete results, please visit the A A&M Archery Web site at: http://recsports.tamu.edu/archery. Archery Team Selected at Arizona Cup for Croatia Grand Prix by Mary Beth Vorwerk - USA Archery FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 17, 2003 Phoenix, Ariz. - Approximately 300 archers including Olympians, national champions and world record holders from nine countries competed at the Arizona Cup April 11-14 at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility in Phoenix, Ariz. The Arizona Cup is a national ranking event and one of five qualifying events for membership to the United States Archery Team (USAT). The event featured many of archery's top Recurve and Compound shooters from the U.S., Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Netherlands and Mexico. Winning the 2003 Arizona Cup in the Men's Recurve division was seventh seed Dennis Bager of Denmark. He defeated the number four seed and Olympic bronze medalist, Wietse van Alten of the Netherlands, 109 -104 in the final. Van Alten defeated Vic Wunderle of the U.S., 115 - 103 in one semi-final and Bager defeated third seed, Joe McGlyn of the U.S., 108 -103 in the other semi-final. McGlyn took the bronze by a score of 109 - 102 over Wunderle. Wunderle, the 2000 Olympic silver medalist, had the high score on the FITA round and went into the elimination rounds seeded first. Rod White, another U.S. Olympian (team gold medalist in 1996), was seeded second, but lost to Bager in the quarterfinals. The Women's Recurve winner was third seed, Hyo Jung Kim of Korea. Kim tied with top seed Jennifer Nichols of the U.S. in the final, 102 -102, but won the one-arrow shoot-off by a score of 8 to 5. To make the final, Nichols defeated U.S. teammate Kathie Loesch, 110 - 107 and Kim defeated second seed Karen Scavatto of the U.S., 102-98. Scavatto went on to win the bronze match over Loesch, 106 - 98. In the Men's Compound division, 1st seed Dave Cousins of the U.S. won his 5th consecutive Arizona Cup with a score of 113, defeating the number six seed, Braden Gellenthien of the U.S., who shot a 108 in the final. Gellenthien finished with the silver medal and fifth seed Stewart Bowman shot a 114 to defeat number two seed Shane Hamilton of the U.S. and take the bronze. Hamilton finished with a score of 107. The Women's Compound winner was number one seed, Aya LaBrie of the U.S. who shot a 108 and defeated eighth seeded Becky Pearson in the final, taking home the gold. Pearson finished with a score of 104 and walked away with a silver medal. Amber Dawson of the U.S. was the number four seed and finished in third with a score of 110, taking home the bronze. Third seed Maxine Bots took fourth place with a score of 99. Following the Arizona Cup, a team consisting of four men and four women Recurve archers was selected to represent the U.S. at the European Grand Prix in Croatia, which will be held May 4-10. A new ranking was just completed that included the 2003 Arizona Cup. For this ranking period, the top four Recurve men and top four Recurve women, with their current match averages in parenthesis, include, for the men, Vic Wunderle (166.59), Butch Johnson (166.35), Joe McGlyn (165.36) and Jason McKittrick (163.92). Joe McGlyn will be unable to attend the Croatian Grand Prix, so the 5th ranked archer, Chris Shull (162.00) will round out the four-person team. For the women, Jennifer Nichols (158.91), Karen Scavatto (158.37), Jessica Carleton (154.78), and Kathie Loesch (154.53) will represent the U.S. in Croatia. Jessica Carleton is unable to attend, therefore the 5th place person, Roxanne Reimann (154.26) will compete for the U.S. women. Each year there are three European Grand Prix Events. This year, the U.S. will attend two out of the three tournaments. The European Grand Prix will take place in Porec, Croatia May 4-10, Evry, France May 27-31 and Antalya, Turkey June 17-21. The U.S. will send teams to Croatia and Turkey. Tom Parrish will serve as the men's coach in Croatia and Sheri Rhodes will serve as the women's coach. The U.S. World Recurve Team will attend the Grand Prix in Turkey and that team will be determined in June at the World Trials in Chula Vista, Calif. Sheri Rhodes will be the women's coach in Turkey, and Frank Thomas will be the men's coach. The USA Archery Grand Prix Teams are determined by the rolling ranking. The rolling ranking is a system of ranking used for Recurve archers, which calculates each archer's 18 arrow match average from their best four tournaments within a ranking period. There are generally 4-6 ranking periods throughout the calendar year. The rolling ranking is a part of the Special Athlete Support Program (SASP). For a full explanation of the SASP, please visit www.usarchery.org. National Archery Association Reorganizes Colorado Springs, Colo., April 7, 2003 - The National Archery Association (NAA) has officially announced a restructuring of the National Office Staff. With the recent addition of the High Performance Director (HPD), the majority of the responsibilities originally held by the NArchival Archery Director of Programs will now be assumed by the HPD. A new administrative assistant position to the HPD will be created in the coming months. We wish to say farewell to Catherine Spears who has held the Director of Programs position since February 1, 2001. Catherine has made tremendous advances in the Junior Archery Olympic Development (JOAD) Program. Her passion for archery and youth has made a definite impact in the archery grassroots effort. We wish Catherine great success in her future endeavors. For further information, please contact the NArchival Archery National Office at 719.866.4476. High Performance Director (HPD) NamedCOLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., March 4, 2003 - USA Archery announced today that Tom Parrish (Austin, A) has officially been named as the High Performance Director (HPD). Parrish joins USA Archery from the University of A at Austin where he served as a Specialist in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education. Parrish has served as the head coach for several USA Archery teams over the past couple of years. In 2002, was the head coach for the USA Archery Team at the World University Championships and the European Grand Prix. Parrish also served as head coach for the USA Archery Team at the European Grand Prix in 2001 and was head coach for the 2001 World Indoor Championships. That year, Parrish was named the National Archery Association (NAA) National Coach of the Year and the NArchival Archery College Division National Coach of the Year. He has also been the head coach for the University of A Archery Team from 1997- present. "We are very excited to have Tom Parrish join the USA Archery staff," said Brad Camp, Executive Director of USA Archery. "With his experience as a coach, we have great confidence that Tom will do an excellent job in improving our elite programs and athlete performance." As the HPD, Parrish will be responsible for coaching and coaching development for USA Archery. He will assume responsibility for many of the programs within USA Archery. Parrish will continue to serve as the Chair of the Coaches Development Committee (CDC), a role he has served in as a volunteer since 1999. He has been a member of the CDC since 1996. His primary responsibilities at USA Archery will be geared toward elite programs and athletes, ensuring continued medal performance in international and Olympic competitions. "This is a tremendous opportunity for me to continue serving the sport I love," said Parrish. "USA Archery is facing some challenges, but those challenges provide an opportunity for positive change. I'm excited about the possibilities and about working with other devoted members of the archery community." Parrish begins his duties with USA Archery immediately and will relocate to Colorado Springs in May. JR USAT CAMP ANNOUNCED 2/14/2003 Jr USAT member and coaches, The date for the 2003 JR USAT camp is set for May 17-23 of this year. The NArchival Archery will provide your room and board. You will be responsible for your own travel. I will be sending out information to all of you that will need to filled out and sent back to myself and MJ Rogers. There is transportation from the Airport to the OTC and back. I think you will enjoy the coaches that have been selected by the Coaches Development Committee. They are: Bob Towne, Wayne McCullough, Jackie Fiala, Neil Foster, and Lloyd Brown. There are four female archers who have been invited at their expense to this camp. They did not meet all the requirements of the Jr. USAT but were in the top five in their category. They are Lindsey Carmichael, Marie Deragnaucourt, Justine McCullough, and Corrine Yohann. Please welcome them to the camp in May. Email is the way the coaches will get in touch with everyone with a schedule for the week and any other information that they want to send out. If you notice an email that is outdated or wrong, please email me, and if you know of an email for Brad Rega or Thomas Nealy please let me know. For now I will call them and snail mail them. Once again Congratulations! I think we have another GREAT group of archers and am proud of each one of you. I have also asked that Ron Carmichael and Ted Hard post the camp dates on their web sites. Please join me in thanking them for everything they do for our sport! Best Regards, Catherine Spears Director of Programs NAA/USA Archery 719-866-4681 719-632-4733 Fax Promoting the Future of Target Archery FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Desirae Freiherr, USA Archery, 719.866.4621 Sept. 9, 2002 World Field Archery Championship begin Tuesday Canberra, Australia - The World Field Archery Championships will begin Tuesday, Sept. 10 and will continue through Saturday, Sept. 14th in Canberra, Australia. Twenty-two countries and 160 archers will compete for the World Field title. The following archers will represent the United States: Female Recurve: Janet Barrs (Sandy, Utah), Erika Aya La Brie (Aurora, Colo.), Kristin Milchanowski (Ft. Worth, A) Female Compound: Susan Thompson (Douglasville, Ga.), Glenda Merrill (Bend, Oregon), Nancy Zorn (Warrensville, Ill.) Female Barebow: Kathy Greene (Tucson, Ariz.), Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Haiwaii), Kristine Ehrich (Austin, A) Male Recurve: Jay Barrs (Sandy, Utah), Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, NY), Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah) Male Compound: Dave Cousins (Standish, Maine), Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah), Jeff Button (Cottage Grove, Wis.) Male Barebow: Mark Applegate (Grass Valley, Calif.), Skip Trafford (Tucson, Ariz.), Harold Rush (Payson, Ariz.) Coaches: MJ Rogers, Ginger Hopwood Team Leader: Tom Green Field archery is unique from competitive target archery in the fact that distances vary from 10 meters to 65 meters and some targets are set at unmarked distances. Each course varies and target is different. Competitors will shoot uphill and downhill. Archers must be able to accurately estimate the distance and size of the target and will be challenged by terrain, weather and international competition. Results will be available daily at http://www.canberraarchery.com.au/fieldresults.htm>. and http://www.usarchery.org. Please contact Desirae Freiherr at 719.866.4621 or mailto:dfreiherr@usarchery.org with any additional questions. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 27, 2002 CONTACT: Desirae Freiherr (719) 866-4621 Mens team Advances at XV Golden Arrow Grand Prix Tournament in Turkey Antalya, Turkey - All four U.S. recurve men archers have advanced at the 2002 Golden Arrow Grand Prix in Antalya, Turkey in the 70m qualification round. The U.S. women will shoot later today. The elimination round will begin on Friday and conclude on Saturday. The highest qualifier for the U.S. was Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) who placed 8th with a score of 663 in the 72-arrow qualifying round. Richard Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.) also qualified in 11th place with a score of 660. Chris Shull (College Station, A) placed 32nd with a score of 640 and Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind.) finished two points behind Shull in 37th place with a score of 638. The top 64 archers in each category will compete in the elimination rounds. The women will compete Thursday afternoon to determine who will move on. Archers are competing among top athletes from 25 countries. This event is the Operation Gold event for U.S. archers. For complete results, please see http://www.turkisharchery.org/m_o_2.html. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2002 CONTACT: Desirae Freiherr (719) 866-4621 Jay Barrs Claims Ninth Consecutive National Field Archery Title Spokane, Wash. Jay Barrs (Sandy, Utah) captured his ninth consecutive and 14th career United States Field Archery Championship on Saturday in the mens Recurve Bow category. The event was held in Spokane, Washington. Barrs, a 1988 Olympic gold and silver medalist, compiled a two-day total of 672. Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah) was second with a score of 646, while Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.) placed third with a total of 641. The mens compound division was divided by a slim two-point margin. The mens Compound Bow title was won by Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah) with a score of 712. Defending champion, Dave Cousins (Standish, Maine) placed second with 711 points. Jeff Button (Cottage Grove, Wis.) was third with 710 points. In the womens Recurve Bow division, Janet Barrs (Sandy, Utah) captured her sixth consecutive national championship, and seventh overall title, with a score of 605. Aya La Brie (Sun Prarie, Wis.) placed second with a score of 564. Kristin Michalnowski (Ft. Worth, A) finished third with 541 points. Nancy Zorn (Warrensville, Ill.) won the title in the womens Compound Bow division with a score of 684. Susan Thompson (Stony Point, N.Y.) placed second with 683 points, and Jahna Davis- Nunn (Helena, Mont.) was third with a total of 678. The mens Barebow title was claimed by Mark Applegate (Grass Valley, Calif.) with 595 total points. Skip Trafford (Tucson, Ariz.) placed second with a score of 569, followed by Harold Rush (Payson, Ariz.) with 558 points. Womens Barebow archer, Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Hawaii) with 464 total points. Kathy Greene (Tucson, Ariz.) placed second with a score of 455, followed by Kristine Ehrich (Austin, A) with 445 points. For complete results, please visit www.usarchery.org. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2002 CONTACT: Desirae Freiherr (719) 866-4621 2002 World Field Archery Team named Colorado Springs, Colo. The National Archery Association of the United States has selected the 2002 World Field Archery Team which will compete in this years World Championships in Canberra, Australia, Sept.9-14. The team was selected during the World Field Trials held June 23 in Spokane, Wash. The top three male and female compound, recurve and barebow archers were named to the team. Nine of the 18 team members were also members of previous U.S. World Field Teams. Mark Applegate, Janet Barrs, Jay Barrs, Jeff Button, Dave Cousins, Mark Gerard, Kathy Greene, Phyllis Shipman and Skip Trafford are among the athletes who have(sic). The following athletes have been named the 2002 U.S. World Field Team and will have the opportunity to compete with top international field archers in Australia: Female Recurve: Janet Barrs (Sandy, Utah) Erika Aya La Brie Kristin Milchanowski (Ft. Worth, A) Male Recurve: Jay Barrs (Sandy, Utah) Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, NY) Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah) Female Compound: Susan Thompson (Stony Point, NY) Glenda Merrill (Bend, Oregon) Nancy Zorn (Warrensville, Ill.) Male Compound: Dave Cousins (Standish, Maine) Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah) Jeff Button (Cottage Grove, Wis.) Female Barebow: Kathy Greene (Tucson, Ariz.) Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Hawaii) Kristine Ehrich (Austin, A) Male Barebow: Mark Applegate (Grass Valley, Calif.) Skip Trafford (Tucson, Ariz.) Harold Rush (Payson, Ariz.) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Desirae Freiherr, USA Archery 719.866.4621 Thirty-two archers named to 2002 Junior World Team Chula Vista, Calif. Thirty-two archers were named to the 2002 Junior World Team following the completion of the Junior World Team Trials June 8-9, 2002 in Chula Vista Calif. These archers from the U.S. will compete against other top youth participants from around the world in Nymburk, Czech Republic, August 5-11, in the Junior World Outdoor Target Championships. Windy and cool conditions did not affect the performance of the approximately 100 youth archers. Junior archers (men and women 16 to 18 years of age) and Cadet archers (men and women 14 to 16 years of age) competed for the opportunity to attend this international event. In addition to selection of a world team, Cadet compound archer, Braden Gellenthien, (Hudson, Mass.) achieved a world record score of 349 in the 70-meter FITA round. His world record topped the previous record of 343 shot by Kevin Tatatyn of Canada. Archers will be joined with National Archery Association staff who will assist competitors throughout their travel and competition. Coaches for the 2002 Jr. World Team are Bob Romero (Los Cruces, N.M.), Randi Smith (Salt Lake City, Utah), Kevin Eldredge (Hatch, Utah) and Cindy Bevilacqua (West Chester, Pa.). Team leaders are Lloyd Brown (San Diego, Calif.) and Larry Skinner (Chula Vista, Calif.). For the most updated results available, please visit www.usarchery.org. For information about the Junior World Outdoor Target Championships, please visit: http://archery.czarc.com/junchamp2002/. Junior Category Men Recurve Team Members: 1. Nathan McCullough, Colorado Springs, Colo. 2. Tyler Benner, Manheim, Pa. 3. Tim Meyers, Ft. Worth,A 4. Ted Harden II, Tempe, Ariz. Women Recurve Team Members: 1. Amy Green, Caventry, Conn. 2. Corrinne Yohann, Fon du Lac, Wis. 3. Marleigh Bogumil, Pittston TWP, PA 4. Marie DeRegnaucourt, Rockford, Mich. Men Compound Team Members: 1. Eric Miller, El Cajan, Calif. 2. Jake Hall, Templeton, Calif. 3. Shane Hamilton, Yankton, S.D. 4. Cassidy Miller, Charlotte, MI Women Compound Team Members: 1. Jessica Grant, Phoenix, Ariz. 2. Nicole Hamner, Winthrop, Maine 3. Brenda Temperley, East Dubuque, Ill. 4. Shawnda Heath, Kingman, Kan. Cadet Category Men Recurve Cadet Team Members: 1. Dane Peterson, Gardner, Ill. 2. Jonathan Miller, Naperville, Ill. 3. Kevin Barker, Victoria, A 4. Jake Misenheimer, Benbrook, A Women Recurve Cadet Team Members: 1. Danielle McCullough, Colorado Springs, Colo. 2. Gina Marie Chiechi, Riverton, Utah 3. Kendra Harvey, Rio Rancho, N.M. 4. Sage Adams, Helotes, A Men Compound Cadet Team Members: 1. Braden Gellenthien , Hudson, Mass. 2. David Roth, Lowell, Mich. 3. Jedd Greshock, Shenandoah, Pa. 4. Thomas Nealy Women Compound Cadet Team Members: 1. Erika Anschutz, Grand Island, Neb. 2. Kandice Spurlock, Santa Claus, Ind. 3. Mary Taylor, Taunton, Mass. 4. Jessica Mattson, Canton, Mich. For Immediate Release Contact: Desirae Freiherr 719.866.4621 May 1,2002 USA Archery President Miller will lead international youth archery committee Colorado Springs, Colo. - The National Archery Association (NAA) proudly announces that Mark Miller, president of the NAA, will represent the USA as Chairman of the new Junior Ad-Hoc Committee for FITA (the international governing body of archery). His appointment to the committee will influence youth archers worldwide by creating standards for junior archery programs around the world. . Jim Easton, president of FITA, developed an international committee to determine the best practices of youth archery programs around the world. The committee will collect information and recognize the methodologies of successful junior archery organizations worldwide with the intent of creating international consistency in regulations, equipment, coaching and competition. Millers goals for the committee are to ensure the safety of youth archers, to encourage retention by keeping youth interested and involved in archery throughout their lifetime, and to increase participation of new archers. I am honored and excited to lead this committee that encourages youth shooting around the world, Miller said. This is a great opportunity to contribute to archery by encouraging lifetime participation from youth throughout adulthood. Miller has a strong background with youth archery. His selection was due, in part, to 10 years of involvement with his childrens participation in the Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) Program, experience with the Chicago Land JOAD and his leadership in the NAA. Mark Miller's appointment as Chairman of the Junior Ad Hoc Committee of FITA should help align the U.S. JOAD program with other nations. It will also give the USA. an unique opportunity to share details of the successful JOAD program with other FITA member countries, said Rick Mack, Executive Director of the NAA. There are currently three people managing the committee. Assisting Miller are Pirkka Elovirrta from Finland and Thierry Zintx from Belgium. For more information about this please call the NArchival Archery at 719.866.4576 or e-mail at info@usarchery.org. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2002 CONTACT: Desirae Freiherr 719.866.4621 Reading, Pennsylvania selected to host National Target Championships and U.S. Grand Prix 2003-2005 Colorado Springs, Colo. The National Archery Association (NAA) of the United States Board of Governors (BOG) has chosen Reading, Pennsylvania as the site for the 2003-2005 National Target Championships. The National Target Championships will be held at the 55-acre Cacoosing Creek Park in Spring Township. The Berks County Sports Commission, a division of Reading & Berks County Visitors Bureau, bid on the event and met criteria for field size, accommodations, transportation, facility use and volunteer support. The Chairman of Berks County Sports Commission, Ted Kolva, Jr. stated, "we look forward to welcoming the National Archery Association and their National Championship to our community, and to extending hospitality in true Berks County fashion. We are very excited about developing a strong relationship with the NArchival Archery and their participants over the next three years." According to the Reading & Berks County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Reading has a history of hosting successful events. Some events Reading has hosted include the Don King Middle Weight Boxing Championships, the LPGA Betsy King Classic and the Pennsylvania State Archery Championships. Jaime Lochman, Reading & Berks County Visitors Bureau said, "on behalf of Reading & Berks County Visitors Bureau and Berks County Sports Commission, I would like to extend a sincere appreciation to the NArchival Archery for selecting Berks County, Pennsylvania to host the National Archery Championships." Dates for the 2003-2005 National Target Championships have not been determined. Please visit www.usarchery.org for updates. Any questions about the NArchival Archery or the National Target Championships should be directed to Desirae Freiherr 719.866.4621. For more information on Berks County, please contact Jaime Lochman at 800-443-6610 ext. 11 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Seven countries to compete in the 2002 Arizona Cup Target Championships Phoenix, Ariz. - Past Olympians, national champions and world record holders from seven countries will compete Friday, April 12th through Monday, April 15 in 2002 Arizona Cup Target Championships at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility in Phoenix, Ariz. The Arizona Cup is a national ranking event and one of five qualifying events for membership to the United States Archery Team. The Arizona Cup will feature many of archerys top recurve and compound athletes. 194 competitors are expected to shoot for the title. Archers from seven countries will compete in this internationally recognized event. The United States welcomes archers from Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom. Anticipated USAT and Junior USAT members are Braden Gellenthien, Roger Hoyle, Richard Johnson, Jason McKittrick, Joseph McGlyn, Dave Cousins, John Burkett, Ted Harden II, Cassidy Miller, Richard Freitas, Ruth Rowe, Roxanne Reimann, Jessica Paterson, Chris Shull, Jeff McNail, Jessica Carleton, Jennifer Nichols, Dawn Chudy, Ashley Kamuf, Sally Wunderle, Jessica Grant, Mary Zorn, Amber Dawson. Past Olympians competing will include Janet Dykman, Vic Wunderle, Jay Barrs and Karen Scavotto. Arizona Archery out of Phoenix, Ariz. will be hosting this event. For more information about the Arizona Cup please visit www.arizonacup.com or contact Mike Koistinen: mdkvlk@msn.com (602) 861.0102. Contact: Desirae Freiherr, USA Archery Date: April 12 April 15 Phone: 719.866.4621 Email:mailto:dfreiherr@usarchery.org 04/11/2002 Announcement from NArchival Archery President, Mark Miller On Wednesday, April 10, the NArchival Archery Executive Director, Rick Mack informed me that he would be resigning from the NAA, effective at the end of April. Rick is pursuing a new career opportunity that will allow him to spend more time with his family. Please join me in wishing Rick well and thanking him for his contributions and hard work on behalf of the NArchival Archery and the sport of Archery. We will begin a search for Rick's replacement as soon as possible. In the meantime, I have conferred with the NArchival Archery Board of Governors and we decided to ask Catherine McCullough, Director of Programs, to assume responsibility for the National Office and the staff until the search is completed and the new Executive Director reports to work. I am pleased to announce that Catherine has agreed to take on this challenge. She will need a great deal of support from the Board and the membership, and I urge you to help however you can. I am also pleased to announce that Chris McCartney, former Director of Programs has agreed to temporarily rejoin the staff and backfill many of the duties that Catherine will need to delegate in her new role. Chris has been doing part-time work for the NArchival Archery recently, but will soon take on a full-time schedule at the office. Welcome home, Chris. While change is always difficult, we are fortunate to have such great talent available. Please join in me in thanking Catherine, Chris and the rest of the staff for stepping up to these challenges. Again, I know we all give them our best possible support. 03/12/2002 The following article was provided to the NGBs by the USOC with a recommendation that it be distributed, particularly to athletes. Hopefully this is not a problem in Archery, but it's worth a heads-up nonetheless. Please feel free to pass it on. - Rick Mack _____________________________________________________________________ Reuters Doping Linked to Brain Blood Clot in Cyclist By Amy Norton March 6, 2002 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The banned performance-enhancing substance EPO is already known as one of the most dangerous forms of doping in sport, and now a new case report adds to the evidence. In the February issue of Neurology, Spanish physicians describe the case of a professional cyclist who developed a blood clot in his brain after regular use of an EPO-containing "drug cocktail." The 26-year-old athlete was also using the muscle-building human growth hormone--also banned from sport--along with high doses of vitamins A and E. Growth hormone can increase red blood cell mass and elevate blood pressure in the brain, but the EPO probably caused the patient's clot, Dr. Jose Manuel Martinez Lage, lead author on the report, told Reuters Health. poetin, or EPO as it is commonly known, is a lab-created version of the natural hormone erythropoietin. This hormone helps spur the production of red blood cells, and EPO is used in medicine to treat some cases of severe anemia. The substance has become a favorite among endurance athletes including distance cyclists and runners because the increase in red blood cells allows more oxygen to be delivered to working muscles. But this boost in blood cells can also thicken the blood to the point of increasing the user's risk of heart attack or stroke. EPO use has been blamed in the deaths of around 20 European cyclists since the late 1980s. According to Lage and his colleagues at the Clinica Universitaria de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, their case illustrates how EPO, in combination with other factors such as dehydration from heavy exertion, can have "serious side effects" in healthy individuals. The patient first came to them with a headache that had persisted for 2 months and worsened during a competition the previous week. He admitted to using EPO every couple of days for the past 3 months, along with the growth hormone and vitamins. Brain scans revealed the blood clot, and the patient was treated successfully with blood-thinning drugs over several months. Rick Mack Executive Director USA Archery phone: 719-866-4550 fax: 719-632-4733 e-mail: rmack@usarchery.org JUNIOR and SENIOR USAT NAMED (8/24/2001) Due to length, this is a separate page FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 23, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 578-4621 Karen Scavotto Places Fifth at European Grand Prix Archery Tournament in Turkey Antalya Turkey 2000 Olympian Karen Scavotto (Enfield, Conn.) finished in fifth place on Friday at the XIV Golden Arrow Grand Prix Tournament in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday. The tournament is a FITA world-ranking event. Scavotto lost to eventual gold-medalist Chang-Sook Chung of Korea in the quarterfinals. Chung went on to defeat countrywoman Hey-Youn Park in the gold-medal match, while Anna Karasiova of Belarus captured the bronze in the field of 87 women. Scovottos teammates, Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.) and Jessica Carleton (Redford, Mich.), finished 26th and 28th, respectively. In the mens division, Richard Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.) was the highest U.S. finisher in 33rd place, followed by Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) in 37th and Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.) in 51st position in the 106-man field. Korea swept the individual medals with Hee-Sik Lim winning the gold, Sung-Nam Kim taking the silver and Won-Jong Choi capturing the bronze medal. In Saturdays team round, Korea won the gold in the womens division. Russia took the silver and Poland earned the bronze medal. The mens team round saw Ukraine defeat Belgium in the gold-medal match, while Korea won the bronze medal. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 578-4621 Karen Scavotto Reaches Final Eight at European Grand Prix Archery Tournament in Turkey Antalya Turkey 2000 Olympian Karen Scavotto (Enfield, Conn.) was the only U.S. archer to advance to the final eight at the XIV Golden Arrow Grand Prix Tournament in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday. The individual quarterfinals, semi-finals and finals will be held on Friday. The tournament is a FITA world-ranking event Scavotto, seeded ninth after Wednesdays qualification round, opened with a 154-149 win over the 56th seed, Estelle Duplouy of France. She then beat 41st-seeded Katja Brix Poulsen of Denmark, 154-150, and eighth-seeded Katerina Serdyuk of Ukraine, 155-153 to reach the quarterfinals where shell face top-seeded Chang-Sook Chung of Korea on Friday. Scovottos teammates, Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.) and Jessica Carleton (Redford, Mich.), were both ousted in the second round on Thursday. Dykman, seeded 25th, defeated the 40th seed, Agnes Bablee of France, 162-160, then lost to Serdyuk, 151-148. Carleton, the 42nd seed, edged 23rd-seeded Swetlana Jigjitova of Russia, 146-145 in the opening round before dropping a 153-147 decision to 10th-seeded Margarita Galinovskaia. All three of the U.S. mens team members were eliminated in the first round on Thursday. Richard Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), seeded third after the elimination round, was upset 166-164 by Ukraines Pavlo Bekkar, the 62nd seed. Also upset was 10th-seeded Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) on a tiebreaker against the 55th seed, Miika Aulio of Finland. Aulio won the tiebreaker after both archers shot scores of 161. Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.), the 51st seed, lost to 2000 Olympic bronze medallist and 14th seed Wietse Van Alten of the Netherlands, 165-156. Following Fridays individual finals, the tournament concludes on Saturday with the team round in which the U.S. men are seeded fourth and the U.S. women are seeded seventh. DATE: June 20, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 578-4621 DATE: June 20, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 578-4621 Qualification Round Completed at Third Leg of European Grand Prix in Turkey; Butch Johnson is top U.S. Qualifier in 3rd Place Antalya, Turkey Richard Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.) placed third in the qualification round to lead the U.S. team at the third leg of the European Grand Prix in Antalya, Turkey on Wednesday. The tournament is a world-ranking event. Johnson, a three-time Olympian who won team gold in 1996 and team bronze in 2000, turned in a qualifying round score of 1330 in the mens division. 2000 Olympic silver medallist Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) was 10th with a total of 1314, and Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.) posted a score of 1251 to place 51st in the field of 106. Michele Frangilli of Italy was the top qualifier with a score of 1345. The U.S. men will be seeded fourth for the team round on Saturday. The U.S. womens team was led by 2000 Olympic Team member Karen Scavotto (Enfield, Conn.) in ninth place with a score of 1291. Scavotto was followed by 2000 Olympic teammate Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.) in 25th place with 1273 points, and Jessica Carleton (Redman, Mich.) in 42nd place with a total of 1256. Koreas Chang Sook Chung led the qualifying round with a score of 1335. The U.S. women earned the seventh seed for Saturdays team round. The tournament continues with the individual elimination rounds on Thursday and Friday, and concludes with the team round on Saturday. DATE: June 5, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 310-9002 Sixteen Archers Earn Spots on World Championship Team Flushing, N.Y. The National Archery Association selected its 16-member World Championship Team on Tuesday at the World Target Trials in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The top four archers in each of the four divisions mens recurve, womens recurve, mens compound, womens compound qualified for the World Target Championships in Beijing China, September 15-22. Olympic silver medalist Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) led the mens recurve bow division with 3,859 points. It marks the second straight World Championship Team for Wunderle. Joining him on the mens recurve team are Richard "Butch" Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), Jay Barrs (Salt Lake City, Utah) and Guy Krueger (Blessing,A/A A&M). Johnson makes his third straight World Team and Barrs qualifies for his fifth overall, having been on the 1987, 1989, 1995 and 1999 squads. Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A) was the top qualifier in the womens recurve bow field with 3,539 points. Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), a teammate of Loeschs on the 1999 World Championship Team, placed second while Janet Dykman (El Monte Calif.) and Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.) round out the team. For Dykman, it is her seventh consecutive World Championship Team. In the mens compound bow division, Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho) led the field with 4,006 points, followed by defending World Champion Dave Cousins (West Jordan, Utah), Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah) and Logan Wildes father, Dee Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho). Logan Wilde, Cousins and Dee Wilde were teammates on the last World Championship Team in 1999. Dee Wilde also won the 1997 World Target Championships. The four womens compound bow team members will all be making their first appearance at a World Target Championship. The top three qualifiers were all teenagers, led by 18-year old Christie Bisco (Raymond, Maine) with 3,422 points. She was followed closely by 17-year old Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.) with 3,420 points, and 15-year old Marleigh Bogumil (Pittston Twp, Pa.) with 3,401 points. Nancy Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.) rounds out the squad. The final results of Tuesdays portion of the trials are as follows: MENS RECURVE BOW 1.Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 3859 2.Richard "Butch" Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), 3831 3.Jay Barrs (Salt Lake City, Utah), 3752 4.Guy Krueger (Blessing, A/A A&M), 3741 5.Chris Shull (Columbus, Ohio/A A&M), 3717 6.Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind.), 3652 7.Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.), 3604 8.Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.), 3561 WOMENS RECURVE BOW 1.Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A), 3539 2.Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), 3403 3.Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.), 3355 4.Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.), 3335 5.Jessica Peterson (Malibu, Calif.), 3273 6.Dawn Chudy (Media, Pa./A A&M) 3237 7.Ruth Rowe (McLean, Va.), 3203 8.Tara Robey (Gahanna, Ohio), 3197 MENS COMPOUND BOW 1.Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 4006 2.Dave Cousins (West Jordan, Utah), 4003 3.Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah), 3998 4.Dee Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 3945 5.Rich Freitas (San Leandro, Calif.), 3915 6.Kevin Eldredge (Hatch, Utah), 3891 7.Reo Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 3875 8.Jeff McNail (Sandy, Utah), 3862 WOMENS COMPOUND BOW 1.Christie Bisco (Raymond, Maine), 3422 2.Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.), 3420 3.Marleigh Bogumil (Pittston Twp, Pa.), 3401 4.Nancy Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 3380 5.Mary Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 3355 6.Jamie Van Natta (Maumee, Ohio), 3347 7.Michelle Ragsdale (New Richmond, Wis.), 3345 8.Sally Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 3320 Back to TOP DATE: June 4, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 310-9002 Field Narrowed at Archery World Target Trials in New York City Flushing, N.Y. The field of competitors was narrowed to eight in each of the four divisions following Mondays competition at the Archery World Target Trials in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Olympic silver medalist Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) leads the mens recurve bow division with 3,092 points. Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A) heads the womens recurve bow field with 2,806 points. In the compound bow divisions, Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho) and Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.) lead the mens and womens fields, respectively. Wilde has 3,226 points and Dawson has 2,685 points. The 16-person team (top four in each division) will be selected at the end of Tuesdays competition and will compete at the World Championships in Beijing, China in September. The results through Monday are as follows: MENS RECURVE BOW (top 8 advance to Tuesdays competition) 1.Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 3092 2.Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), 3082 3.Jay Barrs (Salt Lake City, Utah), 3030 4.Guy Krueger (Blessing, A/A A&M), 3015 5.Chris Shull (Columbus, Ohio/A A&M), 2989 6.Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind.), 2964 7.Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.), 2918 8.Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.), 2872 9.Ted Holland (Westminster, Colo.), 2868 10.Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah), 2850 11.Guy Gerig (Deer Park, N.Y.), 2850 12.Jerry Pylypchuk (Bloomfield, N.J.), 2797 13.Brian Funston (Brier, Wash.), 2770 14.Alan Roe (Columbia, Conn.), 2767 15.George Tekmitchov (Salt Lake City, Utah), 2735 16.Steve Nielsen (Brooklyn, N.Y.), 2666 WOMENS RECURVE BOW (top 8 advance to Tuesdays competition) 1.Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A), 2806 2.Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), 2739 3.Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.), 2660 4.Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.), 2654 5.Dawn Chudy (Evans City, Pa.), 2609 6.Jessica Peterson (Malibu, Calif.), 2598 7.Ruth Rowe (McLean, Va.), 2596 8.Tara Robey (Gahanna, Ohio), 2551 9.Roxanne Reimann (Manchester, Conn.), 253 10.Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Hawaii), 2525 11.Amy Green (Forest Grove, Ore.), 2523 12.Lorinda Cohen (Angola, N.Y.), 2444 13.Lori Cieslinski (Davison, Mich.), 2429 14.Stephanie White (Yorktown, Ind.), 2345 MENS COMPOUND BOW (top 8 advance to Tuesdays competition) 1.Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 3226 2.Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah), 3220 3.Dave Cousins (West Jordan, Utah), 3216 4.Dee Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 3178 5.Kevin Eldredge (Hatch, Utah), 3148 6.Rich Freitas (San Leandro, Calif.), 3137 7.Jeff McNail (Sandy, Utah), 3127 8.Reo Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 3125 9.Gary Studt (Brookville, Ind.), 3121 10.Perry Harpring (Brookville, Ind.), 3118 11.Matt Cleland (Swanton, Ohio), 3113 12.Adam Wheatcroft (Clarkston, Mich./James Madison), 3107 13.David Butler (Half Moon Bay, Calif.), 3105 14.Martin Lotz (Walla Walls, Wash.), 3086 15.Bryan Helland (New Hope, Minn.), 3069 16.Tony Bianes (Rock Tavern, N.Y.), 3060 WOMENS COMPOUND BOW (top 8 advance to Tuesdays competition) 1.Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.), 2685 2.Christie Bisco (Raymond, Maine), 2666 3.Michelle Ragsdale (New Richmond, Wis.), 2662 4.Marleigh Bogumil (Pittston Twp, Pa.), 2642 5.Nancy Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 2636 6.Sally Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 2635 7.Mary Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 2626 8.Jamie Van Natta (Maumee, Ohio), 2615 9.Ashley Kamuf (Dale, Ind.), 2601 10.Diane Watson (Tampa, Fla.), 2596 11.Diane Hooper (Lockport, Ill.), 2593 12.Brenda Hopkins (West Jordan, Utah), 2592 The format for Tuesday is as follows: Tuesday, June 5: Each of the eight archers in all divisions will face the other seven archers in their division in a 12-arrow head-to-head match. The winners of each match will have their full match score added to their cumulative point total. The losers of each match will have their match score, less 10 points, added to their cumulative point total. At the end of the day, the archers with the top four (4) cumulative point totals in each division (Men Recurve, Women Recurve, Men Compound, Women Compound) will be named to the 2001 World Target Team a total of 16 team members.Back to TOP DATE: June 3, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 310-9002 Vic Wunderle, Logan Wilde Lead After Second Day of Archery World Target Trials in New York City Flushing, N.Y. Olympic silver and bronze medalist Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.) is the leader in the mens recurve bow division, and Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho) heads the mens compound bow division after day two of the Archery World Target Trials in Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Sunday. Wunderle holds a 10-point advantage on Olympic teammate Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.) in the recurve division. Wilde is four points ahead of first-day leader Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah) in the compound division. The results shown below are cumulative for the first two days of the four-day event. The womens recurve and womens compound scores are shown, but are staggered due to the archers receiving different numbers of byes in Sundays competition. MENS RECURVE BOW 1.Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 2278 2.Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), 2268 3.Jay Barrs (Salt Lake City, Utah), 2244 4.Guy Krueger (Blessing, A/A A&M), 2237 5.Chris Shull (Columbus, Ohio/A A&M), 2231 6.Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind.), 2188 7.Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.), 2170 8.Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.), 2165 9.Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah), 2150 10.Ted Holland (Westminster, Colo.), 2117 11.Guy Gerig (Deer Park, N.Y.), 2104 12.Alan Roe (Columbia, Conn.), 2063 13.George Tekmitchov (Salt Lake City, Utah), 2062 14.Brian Funston (Brier, Wash.), 2057 15.Steve Nielsen, 1992 16.Jerry Pylypchuk (Bloomfield, N.J.), 1954 WOMENS RECURVE BOW FITA Round + 8 matches: 1.Jessica Peterson (Malibu, Calif.), 2081 FITA Round + 7 matches: 1. Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A), 2108 2.Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), 2095 3.Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.), 2025 4.Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.), 2013 5.Ruth Rowe (McLean, Va.), 1996 6.Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Hawaii), 1958 7.Tara Robey (Gahanna, Ohio), 1940 8.Amy Green (Forest Grove, Ore.), 1929 9.Roxanne Reimann (Manchester, Conn.), 1915 10.Lorinda Cohen (Angola, N.Y./A A&M), 1891 11.Lori Cieslinski (Davison, Mich.), 1883 FITA Round + 6 matches: 1.Dawn Chudy (Media, Pa./A A&M), 1888 2.Stephanie White (Yorktown, Ind.), 1699 MENS COMPOUND BOW 1.Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 2372 2.Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah), 2368 3.Dave Cousins (West Jordan, Utah), 2363 4.Dee Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 2359 5.Rich Freitas (San Leandro, Calif.), 2341 6.David Butler (Half Moon Bay, Calif.), 2328 7.Jeff McNail (Sandy, Utah), 2325 8.Reo Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 2325 9.Gary Studt (Brookville, Ind.), 2322 10.Kevin Eldredge (Hatch, Utah), 2321 11.Martin Lotz (Walla Walls, Wash.), 2320 12.Matt Cleland (Swanton, Ohio), 2306 13.Adam Wheatcroft (Clarkston, Mich./James Madison), 2297 14.Perry Harpring (Brookville, Ind.), 2297 15.Bryan Helland (New Hope, Minn.), 2286 16.Tony Bianes (Rock Tavern, N.Y.), 2270 WOMENS COMPOUND BOW FITA Round + 7 matches: 1. Marleigh Bogumil (Pittston Twp, Pa.), 2194 FITA Round + 6 matches: 1.Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.), 2097 2.Nancy Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 2068 3.Sally Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 2067 4.Jamie Van Natta (Maumee, Ohio), 2061 5.Brenda Hopkins (West Jordan, Utah), 2044 6.Diane Watson (Tampa, Fla.), 2037 7.Ashley Kamuf (Dale, Ind.), 2036 8.Diane Hooper (Lockport, Ill.), 2014 FITA Round + 5 matches: 1.Michelle Ragsdale (New Richmond, Wis.), 1972 2.Christie Bisco (Raymond, Maine), 1961 3.Mary Zorn (Warrenville, Ill./A A&M), 1954 The format for the remainder of the tournament is as follows: Monday, June 4: The remaining Round Robin matches will be conducted in the same fashion as on Sunday. At the end of the day, all scores will be accumulated (Saturday through Monday) and the archers with the top 8 cumulative point totals will advance to the final 7-match Round Robin on Tuesday. All point totals will carry over to Tuesday. Tuesday, June 5: Each of the eight archers in all divisions will face the other seven archers in their division in a 12-arrow head-to-head match. The winners of each match will have their full match score added to their cumulative point total. The losers of each match will have their match score, less 10 points, added to their cumulative point total. At the end of the day, the archers with the top four (4) cumulative point totals in each division (Men Recurve, Women Recurve, Men Compound, Women Compound) will be named to the 2001 World Target Team a total of 16 team members. Back to TOP DATE: June 2, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 310-9002 Five World Records Set at Opening Day of Archery World Target Trials in New York City Flushing, N.Y. A total of five world records were set in the compound bow divisions at the opening day of the Archery World Target Trials held in Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Saturday. Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah) set a world record with a FITA round score of 1,414, smashing the previous mark of 1,409. He also set a record at 70 meters along with Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho). Both Hoyle and Wilde shot scores of 355 at the 70-meter distance and will share the world record because they occurred on the same day. In the womens compound division, Michelle Ragsdale (New Richmond, Wis.) shot a FITA round of 1,396, breaking the previous mark of 1,394. Marleigh Bogmil (Pittston Twp, Pa.) set a record at 50 meters with a score of 350, and Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.) set a junior world record with a FITA round of 1,380. The following archers, listed with hometown and score, have advanced to Sundays round robin portion of the trials event: MENS RECURVE BOW 1.Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 1343 2.Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn.), 1333 3.Jay Barrs (Salt Lake City, Utah), 1314 4.Chris Shull (Columbus, Ohio/A A&M), 1312 5.Guy Krueger (Blessing, A/A A&M), 1303 6.Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind.), 1301 7.Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y.), 1299 8.Rick Tollis (Webster, N.Y.), 1279 9.Mike Gerard (Bluffdale, Utah), 1266 10.Ted Holland (Westminster, Colo.), 1263 11.Guy Gerig (Deer Park, N.Y.), 1262 12.Ed Eliason (Stansbury Park, Utah), 1255* 13.Brian Funston (Brier, Wash.), 1243 14.Alan Roe (Columbia, Conn.), 1240 15.Jerry Pylypchuk (Bloomfield, N.J.), 1229 16.George Tekmitchov (Salt Lake City, Utah), 1225 17.Steve Nielsen, 1221 NOTE: Ed Eliason has elected not to advance to the round robin. Consequently, Steve Nielsen was moved up into the final spot to fill out the 16-person round robin. WOMENS RECURVE BOW 1.Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), 1308 2.Kathie Loesch (Fresno, A), 1294 3.Janet Dykman (El Monte, Calif.), 1278 4.Dawn Chudy (Media, Pa./A A&M), 1271 5.Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.), 1257 6.Jessica Peterson (Malibu, Calif.), 1251 7.Ruth Rowe (McLean, Va.), 1244 8.Tara Robey (Gahanna, Ohio), 1227 9.Lorinda Cohen (Angola, N.Y./A A&M), 1224 10.Lori Cieslinski (Davison, Mich.), 1223 11.Amy Green (Forest Grove, Ore.), 1219 12.Phyllis Shipman (Haleiwa, Hawaii), 1214 13.Roxanne Reimann (Manchester, Conn.), 1214 14.Stephanie White (Yorktown, Ind.), 1123 MENS COMPOUND BOW 1.Roger Hoyle (Cedar City, Utah), 1414 2.Dave Cousins (West Jordan, Utah), 1408 3.Rich Freitas (San Leandro, Calif.), 1399 4.Reo Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 1399 5.Dee Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 1397 6.Logan Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho), 1394 7.David Butler (Half Moon Bay, Calif.), 1393 8.Gary Studt (Brookville, Ind.), 1386 9.Jeff McNail (Sandy, Utah), 1385 10.Martin Lotz (Walla Walls, Wash.), 1382 11.Perry Harpring (Brookville, Ind.), 1378 12.Matt Cleland (Swanton, Ohio), 1378 13.Kevin Eldredge (Hatch, Utah), 1369 14.Adam Wheatcroft (Clarkston, Mich./James Madison), 1367 15.Bryan Helland (New Hope, Minn.), 1363 16.Tony Bianes (Rock Tavern, N.Y.), 1358 WOMENS COMPOUND BOW 1.Michelle Ragsdale (New Richmond, Wis.), 1396 2.Mary Zorn (Warrenville, Ill./A A&M), 1383 3.Christie Bisco (Raymond, Maine), 1382 4.Amber Dawson (Robesonia, Pa.), 1380 5.Marleigh Bogumil (Pittston Twp, Pa.), 1377 6.Sally Wunderle (Mason City, Ill.), 1371 7.Ashley Kamuf (Dale, Ind.), 1369 8.Brenda Hopkins (West Jordan, Utah), 1368 9.Nancy Zorn (Warrenville, Ill.), 1366 10.Jamie Van Natta (Maumee, Ohio), 1361 11.Diane Watson (Tampa, Fla.), 1354 12.Diane Hooper (Lockport, Ill.), 1353 The format for the remainder of the tournament is as follows: Sunday, June 3: The first 8 Round Robin matches (consisting of 12 arrows each match) will be conducted. The winners of each head-to-head match will have their match total, plus a 10-point bonus, added to their score from Saturday. Losers of each match will only have their match total added to their score from Saturday. Monday, June 4: The remaining Round Robin matches will be conducted in the same fashion as on Sunday. At the end of the day, all scores will be accumulated (Saturday through Monday) and the archers with the top 8 cumulative point totals will advance to the final 7-match Round Robin on Tuesday. All point totals will carry over to Tuesday. Tuesday, June 5: Each of the eight archers in all divisions will face the other seven archers in their division in a 12-arrow head-to-head match. The winners of each match will have their full match score added to their cumulative point total. The losers of each match will have their match score, less 10 points, added to their cumulative point total. At the end of the day, the archers with the top four (4) cumulative point totals in each division (Men Recurve, Women Recurve, Men Compound, Women Compound) will be named to the 2001 World Target Team a total of 16 team members. Back to TOP DATE: May 31, 2001 CONTACT: Bill Kellick (719) 310-9002 U.S. Men Place Fifth, Women Finish Ninth at Korean International Tournament Wonju, Korea. The U.S. mens team placed fifth and the womens team placed ninth at the 4th Korea International Archery Tournament held May 26-30. The event was the second leg of the European Grand Prix and a world-ranking event. The mens team of Ed Eliason (Stansbury Park, Utah), Guy Gerig (Deer Park, N.Y.) and Guy Krueger (Blessing, A/A A&M) were seeded fourth heading into the team round. The U.S. defeated 13th-seeded Thailand in the opening round, 236-197, then lost to fifth-seeded China in the quarterfinals, 237-232. Host country Korea defeated Russia in the gold-medal match, while Japan beat China for the bronze medal. The U.S. womens team of Jessica Carleton (Westland, Mich.), Leah Clawson (Evans City, Pa.) and Karen Scavotto (Enfield, Conn.) earned the fifth seed for the team round, but were upset by 12th-seeded Chinese Taipei in the opening round, 228-222. Korea won the gold, Ukraine took the silver and Germany earned the bronze medal. In the individual competition, all three U.S. men finished in the top 15. Gerig placed ninth, Eliason finished 11th and Krueger placed 14th. Gerig scored wins over Uzbekistans E. Yusupov, 160-149, and Russias B. Badmaslov, 162-156, before losing to Koreas J. H. Chung, 172-165. Eliason defeated I. Hamzah of Malaysia, 152-147, and H. Orbay of Turkey, 162-160, before being eliminated by C. T. Kim of Korea, 170-164. Krueger also advanced to the third round with wins over K.S. Chan of Hong Kong, 160-152, and A. Balikoev of Russia, 157-151, before losing to B. Yang of China, 169-157. Chung won the gold over fellow Korean Y. H. Yang, and Boris Tsyrempilov of Russia claimed the bronze medal. In the womens competition, Scavotto was the only U.S. archer to advance past the first round. She defeated Singapores F. Lin, 148-139, then lost to Chinas X. Wang, 160-154. Carleton dropped her opening match to Germanys Britta Buehren, 157-156, and Clawson lost to Malyasias H. C. Fairuz, 163-152. Korea swept the medals with J. Choi winning the gold, N. O. Choi the silver and S. H. Park the bronze. Scavotto finished 26th, followed by Carleton in 33rd place and Clawson in 39th place. Back to TOP
410	dbpedia	1	23	https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/page3.html	en	Archery at the Olympic Games	https://members.tripod.c…k_Knights/ks.jpg		[ "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/golden.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/parkeden05pw4.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/wundevic22pw4a.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/huishjus02pw4.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/scarokar23pw4a.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/ks.jpg", "https://members.tripod.com/~Blk_Knights/ksaction.jpg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null					null	The information below is courtesy of: The NAA Be sure to sign Karen's Book at: Karen's Going for the Gold Archery at the Olympic Games The 2000 US Olympic Archery Team Karen Scavotto Karen lives in Enfield, Connecticut, born on April 17, 1982 in Danbury, Connecticut. Most Notable Won individual gold and team bronze at Sydney International Golden Arrow in her first international competition as a senior three-time junior division champion at National Target Championships four-time National Junior Olympic Target Champion three-time National Junior Olympic Indoor Champion holds five junior national outdoor records and one junior national indoor record Personal Currently a senior at Enfield High School coached by 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist Butch Johnson was captain of 8th-grade field hockey team has corresponded with a pen pal in Sydney, Australia since the 5th grade and will finally meet her at the 2000 Summer Games went to the same grade school and high school as 1980 Olympic ice hockey gold medalist Craig Janney enjoys weightlifting and art 1999 Rankings World: 77th (as of 9/1/99) National: 2nd Competitive History Year-by-Year
410	dbpedia	1	54	https://www.paralympic.org/feature/double-duty-athletes-who-competed-both-olympic-and-paralympic-games	en	Double duty: Athletes who competed at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games			[ "https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1143245079059661&ev=PageView&noscript=1", "https://www.paralympic.org/static-assets/images/client/ipc-logo.svg?v=", "https://www.paralympic.org/static-assets/images/games/paris-24.webp?v=", "https://www.paralympic.org/static-assets/images/games/milano-cortina-26.webp?v=", "https://www.paralympic.org/static-assets/images/games/la-28.webp?v=", "https://www.paralympic.org/modules/contrib/social_media/icons/facebook_share.svg", "https://www.paralympic.org/modules/contrib/social_media/icons/twitter.svg", "https://www.paralympic.org/modules/contrib/social_media/icons/email.svg", "https://www.paralympic.org/modules/contrib/social_media/icons/linkedin.svg", "https://www.paralympic.org/themes/custom/theme_builder/main_ipc_master/images/social/instagram.png", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/large_original/public/2022-06/Zahra%20Nemati%20Olympic%20Games%202016.jpg?itok=MyGeQ4o-", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_metadata_content_image_min_696px_wide/public/2022-06/Marla%20Runyan%20USA%20Olympics%202000.jpg?itok=l39AMkCD", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_metadata_content_image_min_696px_wide/public/2022-06/Paola%20Fantato%20Paralympic%20gold%202000.jpg?itok=qN0QYKI6", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_metadata_content_image_min_696px_wide/public/2022-06/Natalie%20du%20Toit%20Olympics%202008.jpg?itok=Z8X51vNl", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_metadata_content_image_min_696px_wide/public/2022-06/Ilke%20Wyludda%20Olympic%20%20Games%20Atlanta.jpg?itok=1mH9cnnS", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_metadata_content_image_min_696px_wide/public/2022-06/Pepo%20Puch%20Austria%20London%202012%20equestrian.jpg?itok=FJ-JyGCN", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/image_crop_3_4_800_1067/public/2022-06/Ukraine%20Opening%20Ceremony%20Beijing%202022.JPG?itok=XwkCP8LQ", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/image_crop_3_4_800_1067/public/images/131113121759117_10834035416_d77036101b_c.jpg?itok=DTEsMCj0", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/image_crop_3_4_800_1067/public/images/161007104533877_zahra.jpg?itok=8mgzy3JB", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/styles/image_crop_3_4_800_1067/public/2021-08/GettyImages-1337227472_0.jpg?itok=fdIe4Qx_", "https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/ipc-logo-white.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "lenasmirnova" ]	2022-06-22T17:49:44+02:00	Olympian or Paralympian? More than a dozen athletes around the world can call themselves both names	en	/themes/custom/theme_builder/main_ipc_master/favicon.ico	International Paralympic Committee	https://www.paralympic.org/feature/double-duty-athletes-who-competed-both-olympic-and-paralympic-games	As the world celebrates Olympic Day on June 23, Paralympians are ready to join the party — and some of them are guaranteed front row seats. In nearly 10 Para sports, there are multiple athletes who have competed in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, including those who have reached this milestone just weeks apart. Here we look back at some of the legends who made history with their double appearances at the Games and at those who continue to push boundaries on the international sports stage to this day. Climbing Mount Olympus Neroli Fairhall made history when she became the first Paralympian to compete in an Olympic Games in 1984. The New Zealander made her Paralympic debut twelve years earlier, then as a Para athlete. She added Para archery to her repertoire in Arnhem 1980, won a gold medal in the sport and set a world record. Fairhall also qualified for the Olympics that year, but was unable to participate due to the US-led boycott. In 1982, Fairhall competed in the Commonwealth Games, where she won a gold medal and became the first disabled athlete to compete in the multi-sport event. Two years later, she made her Olympic debut in LA 1984. Belgium’s Sonja Vettenburg and American distance runner Marla Runyan followed a similar path. Vettenburg won gold and bronze medals in shooting at the 1984 and 1988 Paralympic Games before making her Olympic debut, in the 10m air pistol, in Barcelona 1992. Runyan collected five Paralympic gold medals in her races in Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996. In 2000, she competed in the Sydney Olympics, becoming the first legally blind athlete to compete in an Olympics. She returned to the Olympic stage for the second time in Athens 2004. Double take Olympics and Paralympics a few weeks apart? Not a problem for these five athletes who competed at both Games back-to-back. Italian Para archer Paola Fantato set the bar high when she competed in the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Atlanta 1996 was the third of her five Paralympic appearances, earning the five-time Paralympic champion two medals. Poland's Natalia Partyka, South Africa's Natalie du Toit and Iran's Zahra Nemati are more recent examples of Paralympians who did double duty during the Games. Six-time Paralympic champion Partyka competed in table tennis at both Games for four consecutive editions, starting with Beijing 2008. Fellow Para table tennis player Melissa Tapper followed a similar path eight years later when she competed in the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Australian track athlete repeated this feat in Tokyo 2020, where she won team silver in the Paralympic competition. Para swimmer Natalie du Toit joined Partyka as the only other Paralympic athlete to compete in the 2008 Olympics. She won five gold medals at the 2008 Paralympic Games, bringing her total Paralympic titles to 13, becoming the first athlete who carried the flag at the opening ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in one year. Zahra Nemati also embraced flag-carrying duties when she was selected for the role in the 2016 Rio Olympics. The Para archer also carried the flag of Iran at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, where she won her third consecutive gold medal in the women’s individual recurve. New world explorers While there are multiple Paralympic athletes who have taken on the Olympics, there are also many cases of Olympians who have discovered Paralympic sports and pursued their newfound passion to the highest level of competition. A prominent example is Hungary’s Pal Szekeres, who is the first athlete to win medals at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A bronze medalist in the team foil event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Szekeres switched to wheelchair fencing after being injured in an accident in 1991 and went on to win three gold and three bronze medals in five Paralympic appearances. Italy’s Orazio Fagone has the distinction of being the only winter athlete to have competed in doubles at the Games. Fagone competed in short track speed skating at three Winter Olympics and became Olympic champion in 1994. Although he was unable to skate after his leg was amputated as a result of a road accident, Fagone’s love for ice remained unabated. He took up sledge hockey and competed with the Italian team at their home games of the 2006 Paralympic Winter Games. Other Olympians who have pursued a Paralympic career after serious injuries include Germany’s Ilke Wyludda and Croatian Sandra Paovic. Wyludda, a three-time Olympian, won gold in the women’s discus throw at Atlanta 1996 and became a Paralympian in 2012. Paovic competed in table tennis at the 2008 Olympics, but had a serious accident the following year and switched to Para table tennis. She won Paralympic gold in Rio 2016. To look at If you missed these Paralympics during the past Olympic Games editions, and vice versa, there are plenty of opportunities on the road to Paris 2024 to make up for that. Apart from Partyka and Tapper who continue to shine in the top-level table tennis competitions, Assunta Legnante from Italy is always sure to put on a show on the athletic field. The 2008 Olympic shot putter switched to Para competitions after her vision deteriorated. Legnante, a double Paralympic gold medalist from London 2012 and Rio 2016, settled for two silver medals last summer in Tokyo and will be happy to regain her golden glow in Paris. Another journey worth following is that of equestrian rider Pepo Puch. The five-time Paralympic medallist represented Croatia at the 2004 Olympics and switched to Para sport after suffering an incomplete spinal cord injury from an accident. Puch made his Paralympic debut in London 2012, where he won gold and bronze for his native Austria. He also won medals in his next two Games appearances and wants to continue this streak on French soil.
410	dbpedia	1	0	https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/atlanta-1996/results/archery	en	Olympic Results by Discipline	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_social_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_social_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5	[ "https://olympics.com/images/static/b2p-images/logo_color.svg", "https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private//f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Official Archery results from the Atlanta 1996 Olympics. Full list of gold, silver and bronze medallists as well as photos and videos of medal-winning moments.	en	https://olympics.com/ima…h-icon-16x16.png	Olympics.com	https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/atlanta-1996/results/archery
410	dbpedia	2	40	https://harpers.org/archive/2016/08/arrow-heads/	en	Arrow Heads, by Reeves Wiedeman	http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA058__03HE0-1.png	http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA058__03HE0-1.png	[ "https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=465430731571519&ev=PageView&noscript=1", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/logo.svg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA058__03HE0-1.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA059__03HE0-1.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA061__03HE0-1.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA062__03HE0.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA064__03HE0.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HA0C1CS03HE0.png", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CUT-6-e1719000365170-480x0-c-default.jpg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CUT-13featured1-480x0-c-default.jpg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CUT-21featured1-480x0-c-default.jpg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/logo.svg", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0001.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=K0b0VwrlNfuq2RuJMlo~y-kN8xeFIUFSr74P6HrTDWUTn2YaOyL5AybCG0TKMjHmi8fASNmE8qwmCWD3r7mCk8lmWio1-esdpsqxsM2RWhlhzqwvmJieIJYgSJWelN-jJvMGDzMgSa2Um8jGrC06dICoScCJN-aKb4ZlEqCKdTGbnZ8n5wePorX4tZp8Ljt60Lf-0RaRZeSla2YCUp2nNP4M7N-eerhaJ5S8hyA5i3H-nXqfqQqpM5yx0lMg9mfL7x4XdIHfC7dCiwjcnsb-2Za5Z~Gsn66l48~hLug5QALm0bBn1MKVRRVG511zt9tNldhFoDb0LCYRP5TJNqfFsQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0002.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=gS29SGxRBDbY8t41r3~PBMSQ~-8fW8RbD0ydAkYOruwhLQ~gObSIjmskDP3d33iCaimTd7mIj20BfrkRBDopxXBWgQ4ATCdGiF3ws~TkZxg3Uy8V6FLIOH4VKYkdYliDr7iweEeGbS0NxGDNQY~QcU3FbA~jxTma4dUEKHy94D5DlUTCOYSZnrbmdJBuSYdtUshRRtAyggF7VddAYVL37T-abWGN4TjzBgIJdKEj-PGZOf-xvB~WkqGqin3yjhX~gEFLhcldd7kynEjw8IK31~IXYe60POVUt1ou6~Q2WJ0A~RAaOGgCmDhOLXjZeEMTk8ulHBjJDAbiD86rH3JDjQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0003.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=W0HDQfFNOgAR1DxSPAXFGAdiydwF2q7OSCpTok7gKNgXxFtH0TYxIWXtNf--S8QXa4r0Fe~xWOlcxJBVzXrzsOmvjnVL7A3dYPbZPdYWdk5DRk01GCTt8l7tc8ak16QpTviHNmfA42cycZKLTTYj~TSWLoZMgxNj-cuCl1wW93QE~3kh3GUxacpSNOcPmvHfEQETaQadS6MIoSygXyCCs-PXgEVhZB2bWDCYBRnpIEuLtJMTJZ86oHhPNWKlOT5GKTto-k7lSGPy3ae5Duzn-D~WMqXq8MX4XzYyDmmZ0t2Tox6Pbh4IT8wideL5nPC3v2HFfRMyQnLMLASvLv2JUQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0004.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=F6Eg7DKMED9tzQSnmsOsJ50~oEKiZjlX3C73ZoQzL0Quofix-7ZymXJDEGWJaAJzymx5-Jx9COCp4497rRut0GyU0LuOZSOV8nPZ2TWUjdyN1uhmhPd9xMHOKYul8zgYN2AAcIuQnTnHeePuhfC0bOOH2SCIJj1jERaCEH2pTGWW901t4UX9~aWqNpmeX5F3jxE~7~dumlF8yDgzkyCYW11KQ3l6qbI3JPZtOPYJFKGyWAAHELZBO0HUfNG5mEFyeVtNeU76I1ldVFStyexP~7yc6ZkZ7Hkf-lB7caOZBSg9qolUFI1lR986wZhKC~stIvoTVdmw0uNids6tl62gCw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0005.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=bEVyegQrdiaKTzl8P5oX1JvOsNMUTLdjpXK8i1uksrqFopmnIF4V1ajEkHZdTNLK55mZma4LndlKGqstOoHg-jLbda~ZHDdddf5vg3shCxdWQMSlxlWhJbSEOipVWJBTKkj11I0Pm5OpJA1Xa~d-xI8waw6Hnj6KtuitwAKxFeeo37l0Ocua3CKRnXGiGtcBbjl9qkQK7jqhovNUw8SENYv5ORvz3DlPBVlP4CJe6qYEmzEqkbVqgsauS92ttiGmf1RWdcECVCRhzHaC0IEFYNdLS86N8IH~rWBneInxgZ~-UF16C7V8oPlk4g-mrU4Lvs9ZU-bXyutHNxQP67Yy~A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0006.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=asgGQIi~ZwsNPzZWrUyjcsIyThUgy2D~FElpIP~twELbmWXCmrLXj2gCx-jbSi~UhGs77UuzN5wepaBBBr7Va77qSKzPcwLBs-~HTlWCx9A~p1WQbJQUS9N64NTCBmoJSjZCuI~zkiPZZx83yRIH9GvjWG4Idb7yf96Ks8Pp8hJUwgA2eijuSyhLlka1cAHwnRXf4Myp-xalz8VxUCsZyyyF9u~2HIZh4S~DXNMfKzEj198KVB04Y22ReXVLXN-zTzTomNNVQc80JbLHms1nHAquCggtvMWi8POtNIiOjmnTJk3AqSnL5IgU3CqcP993hXCcE9njDeu8QDx0Td47ng__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0007.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=hduT6g7eOIuFuev6rKCuBRHqPqMKv0UOU0vJHb5l5KxEfAeJafIVhnVtw8Fk~cmJXPMiNamomnxQKTk8QyJ1ySmembinQCs0DOJrjVmuvrbqf56LbXrRvnKmRBw5rQTAX1-Blyc20vN79ID54tX7c5Jymg8OhJCj0q8LeDQDxDZuz20YVAfZ49Uj-cyTkrMY2IRxjQl4A0JOqdmthAU3-8NDqO-irb~hCE2BHkNiV23S5dMmIbUL9R2~uKHIG6CXaShQCQ22koYfEo8S2kVYDNgTdlGIVKWQZUs~kTTY5HU5JSCU4q4rUA3n283I4YCa40oLhU7ZVvkLcZ0MPjYdmA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0008.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=dZE1dsBZDRGvpG3ubGfNmUfmAD3GDIt6eCnFD33Xt1qKNU61e0NGdZkAcuNF6GSkWLJ5Kj6T5B6SsIj05YiYm3IHXyIpFvZCXORW8Z0i3Rf1Znqz1lBtBWZk~97VR5VebkAtXauqLP69LuznPQZDjnq4jTHpKtmgehX9Mt9gRQ2nOY~GYua-l~KELS~t5xYoU5K8oehSRKTA9GAyrSPlfQr8Nu0Ztki84Z4SALPHUxqMgnXW2UqYnZJ9kq8eBdzA-p-85vSIiMv4K2KjdGfB-SOQjz~4aeu9kR9DImwbPDehdRldU9ygmI5ywO1U7aVU9r7k7HUmgKJkA7-DydWFGA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0009.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=CDq3a3IxfDrGt5muO~FYEksjGZrzsnr7rMsTYvUCEfs6UwGspv05WPibEimKe-CbaozzXoKNdZSfdbRKhpX6ePsL~P-x1ZmrnU~yxp5hHwrmrw6yZ~3EYbtN4GynmeqmAwhE0YKzYDUe9z4lIUBqQurpwvD4PImjD4V2rRacYPqOWcYtvf8jks-nTXx-mghJQKbMiFEQxq-rvuy-0AkSmKvKegCXIKOwxEWSEKf5bLUZnggdUeYaeQCmHk5F3jE~OagvfZ6rGbS5LfKHLOBIMVqcz8EgWXbcMI4bAzpwr9KTq~GG8a4TMOfXXoV8TD-xiQsQd5o~f18svLJJJMl8ew__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0010.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Vvg5~546OwN3-fRDMwsGJW7mPJueEJWdU-fZhkQZcBN4K9iEf4R9nxzW2ugLg1rf90siccTe0Icx6cXIFiyKo0NW6ke6bNQl4fhLir8GRRMM3bVvaFCOitpxOsp-FLnOCAgXkM~ve~tXjGA9NwZplUPTl2QBaoBd6ojCtYnRBWgwl21XjiPtTJX4eoc36Iq9MjPNPPD3PNsFKKTMhukDNzdMmc2UpykWaJlNwunvP2TDEXYc7NFyJkqzHGtaFeIzXwkqQrDqBPa9QgvNe5wBfUBNPqlLATNdnWjafmUk~KPmOiVfjbA7xbRrYxA057XGNKbWcLBegPbFyZ8al8QOjw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0011.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=GblL-4SjZ4i1R3JB8dMgh5XNQEqfKDgG8Sazl7~bWtenIDAyky8dfamxML6kEy0ogQZFNxahT9ZFqVeWFnQ7alBZ3XiAIE14Hk1DcJjHMVhmDzsA01Bt-wvjgRcFrF8QkLsx5uSpl3jYspqJuM~9mDaxunKKtZDOwJqsdXQ3t~bbmNU3OhFUkE7rqvV8LyUKUMLMZEvAgoDv-SAD6Ws-jfwWx4xDP5Se9GXXaX2zV6l7hNAfGg6uvekl2dKTZ3leJiJ-Ljjg5WHxRWDJ8sQ01umIJC4tZWKftDT1fKAmZ0CT98rKDpUpnAxbvG9qz2dLKp-KkTXDQsLDoNh5vHZOSw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0012.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=ibDANkfp~MW4dNmrVpPqsT3mwqV5j03HdbOdSus0GmSqP4jlX7zeTYK0nTcflC8keqd38rq2AluVHmKWFw8FqW9pFuUHBH4asXG~gsnzm60JRTydYf7TGzdum6BqIeXlVud1JxgpWB48VhBlFIWEftUcXa3TL-uu0vmq306oA6Qb~7IKM8fqZAVW~YIPYZRx2Lg3G-~08X-O4JmMYROb~6kE-D-AVoeksteto0fPuQqiOi8~lE7S7BiZqd6BkoLQqqPBVFOBlH76cP0crfgnhGykdgIKaWaD2Hi~6kTckMIvxIdXOsdi6c7qKtxmOKpZ0EGec0J4~seXOYmvatii5w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0013.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=AQoOY-SQdoLN1fCtyjxfXspLcAWqxmiga~2YyevjU~wdZqtSvOXyfE7bJL5YJ5xr~wa65nmF5KcT0vQqkcb-fO0zyHJvyUGV3sxcTXxLawoiSoZnX~B5vBSgyunRgxOb6lY2JwrVrVQre-PUNbpwxMLCirRYVICSHyan7bUuLUaNMgfdXUxYeQ09QQTdsRXeUUVRKDMJcfSoUC9cCy80JCPbjxenZ6ZhksMBJ7w0kgmwUUx8C51x901Fg3H-ZnEQjsGtCbZqYZ5qDFaXUddm0~kML2WLCbDwW3dxiJctClzkWCgdaR0~8FkG11WxZqiAtRmR9Pr7dPvweMqh4qAtNw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0014.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=VYUy0ROIyFyWH-VJu82x4RF0f5EXHIMoyaH~I~ny4TGD-BY42OqQ3D09jeMbN3pSuLvKgYAlJ4ML4ZhTDMwbUstlVCQD9HUdvechJT-IzL7VpgSLaDLCNbmQN2PhWNLFC8kaNP4rwl9RAHMIQWtuep8hGLJY7dZJZp4XeDtv~2irItAImZ6IITcA-CogO-dazK~UYkXu7WeenSRXwHe2jeB6GuZwFfXS0ayfRkvtpU3iSnK~Oyh9h5rBmRduXEN3G87aNZSxCiS83AgNcXmADHYBAnTcbpbOZXFgwWbtz6yxIUpuU0N9JuygPdyNcn1m7YhwcOl6ZwTzDu4lC-LJpQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0015.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=UKkc3uBtxWjd~gQ9ej7a4gk54lcTpiTb1wepnHN0j0F8ZvRY7y4AiRH9zH6wBKqWJDGFxMBe66mgP1rSosjwIGsyu5SJfjsbGdgXpDvopJ5lxne6tR-M8t2yHbiK-KzOBmsvJ5wbGEjkyxGBz2SF~6pib2md7-WcUbtMuT7XJH0uE~vIl5PNOrednChot4DNTj6rtXl2FGH6AorWhed4chpJHsRn4VIcUTJcXuTdYsQEI6VtxCmhEoyfXZ8pJPZOpI1ta79qaf-kUjspQvMa4bLHmfkVj~MrkjpGhAZn9eSHYGfewzVZYdslq~T-cVaEm5mR3wiezOWclq9AGiFEkg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0016.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=LPF0j1BLqOrIwshvcq-NZFGiYFMwfWzi0iY9V2pRwxcaky1~4ojt8YC4keqCH6VQH-uQ9WON2n8O9QFLDV0tRmACw71v5yJrPZp6OxycQX8ahruDOqJl5jqtV40-OVhZ9uH2cNu4jQirYEvnPHH3h1pXgWiWMUwWTWL4nyv7Y7nUeeXb1vLzd57WS0a5kpynoOfS92CvObrxTzFQwrMW04piwgU~MJ-T0z3tiX484Nw2cXssEWhwXOAGjbcpiVneyRzEdpj0M4BUUfBRMSOIVV8qdGG-5QuwSO3pS9T5g07zLClaj0F-la5BR59NE~pynNd3pPKjMg50ZgwJS~Olpg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0017.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=AyvNYtXwZF4Aycw5ghfVyJzH9chdYsCiA5vONgB4UgyK8PgfXqhOgNfyWAt2ZDp-svr1q0aqn3PAKS36RLGDJn3OK1~AwCO3q94MEaSh7o0opjJJ5qKm5JDS5J6szZ9k4Hknd~Pejlab9eaTdIesn6Rc3bHH1ivWZNMSbecp4LTh0MbnuhrI62rPno1DmDFGhtnDjR7d6RR6PxWIsF5MxGrQGLNltYKz0ljWJePgDPfvNh1k2g1CsQJ1WFTrY~EP66fZO8yDNL3~WpJELr8v505hJcYCfwTTkdO73xI1osm-2BIfTzs8Y05rLtXZ8UczKvAMVOR3o~0cE1pFke8PRA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0018.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=hSBX2BjeV-ZzryWwuf4BIBLQmYULDMD1407dU9fOihs9hZc40BKTAcRgbBdrNDfY~n2NgIToW03JSBDyHxNKTxlcTqGaKpoUUlq4z44PM4QkdRNEZtJsg7qDtryyJ5YE0tviREOz722vHzzkvoC4PX15QoKCyFTKFAQIg2VMiktI3aR9GfzW14fNZv3ULnROVhGm5Db4Zc9Z1n755wW0bBS17vx0Jencr-xeHsVk6jgpzTxLw56AqizlYoqV8XEGAdVzJvQYYG8D6Wf5JQJNJ3Jjyp6~Af67MHrWmvXii5bDeHa1QoKTVpfh7-e4YUk~Jv9ECD6z7INnlMU1hVgTyQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0019.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=BcIXgusPBVNFbQ62fJ5EHrLqFcBdAHZkfPIKZnhiRRVDEpe0paB-2gD5OGPyEbD1Sq2p1ffHNO4tn44H7znJa6T2SYL2dwmPjBLUy88OUd1DmYFTtnSDuR5kocBzK0SqzkiM888faTIzcncuhjTD~i23R2tpLBtkPTppFYCBJoTdFmSUZSNyPrsBg1LY1RU-WN8x4wkU-7w3Y7kHM9y-J5lOIvyCoNlHareKJ88U-DgUCE6tD-UGJBEzSz3wPNIlAJlH1APbIWIMY0u~uOpf-G9yYU6CeaFJdeNEeiGXdSaViG73govjXfa7m1d5COdkkUIqt8rXrH31yaMnhBWxrw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0020.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=LDNc19w2aEVwX6QkoMtXg9HPtYR1tJ5i2izkRhXZhOPyLt5GaaqNCTSnjcQNaEDN~b56hkdW0ws-3tXNH-mBcJ70-ZXkqr6LfvTk-Y-C7WxxmxQxGvW2RofT5ZfPAF0AJqa8~bj8Rp7UZkYFjLobyicVKoOlJG7k6BpckaEk2ULpFSm9WscTAownRDyDNgTV72eA7qXUh9-FyVZYszTbUG0MYy9OFaCYVq6uq6d17CIQp-dT8f3xzYKwABKLYs~yd5r3X6rZlTXw8KydK-Yu1lE6OsEAbzYwILCRpgrT3Svjk4nMYQIZ~K9GRriDz4ws3Aci4JNc~77l6Mx4viTMog__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0021.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Xtsg-yeg0vKYCWGHUA8HCgeZ4y6GnW1Q6wq3RtoV8XpdPf6DJPIaGwFXt5bHqlK9JjT70bP6H67mRZYPIzuohLSEiz0aYMFskz-dBASui0sRsaa8FIwoWj8NOw6VHMspa35qzzGE-JHGZboOKLm1BuX5pafc5YULdyB1K3uMr8N0hAQwKT7SJbjERw1A~2DNRoHrmnzDoFxuPJdJSnLKmEgbIU8KX9CvahZvg0C6zyz3pVaexkUlJsG3IYwgO-yTXtX3q-vhy5oU4dottmxo3J6QBjUfvhaoKnif-~WlW6KjMG1bDI-10kpyhi5IagJ7TbmS2dFbCkDtt7BBQV36bw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0022.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=T-8bhxmjdG4typ6OP-HUgy63iwSJCQdvOkzgLhRodDGn6kU21b94d9ZgijMfBULSQucEaCIcJVJA2Wh6009UX64SiVDi1DLPXuY36saklk~~3ckMInMYsejcvrOSGsx8P59uqw9teD-hlHph21bNO5ca2ePzXe7bl8JKObcFJi06PLCtUooh9EYBvNxjGwKcLi4WIk0jIZSqT1SEv5nwKy9pjO8kz93eHV-q5D559QWxRqNQOhtm6nKkBZIkpZ8hJdRwYkI1fX3OPIGhzcGF9coUf-muBpzSPyPYmnBZ~A4fdUL77VvfUIZQ6wg83j7ZA59iIgQM5b2EM~U5xFnQqg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0023.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=K~o~wbfaKB5zfTNtOoghKEmRekmxPCcvBuq1icET5h9bgjIQvlptnT1GpMguD0Xy7vdKbrf9YtYfFMxVpb8ypfk0rNOHEhmrQzNTlwbEgyoR56860XXsQJaW8PHBXkZqWyjMYL~iLPpeid8P9DVMeYEEnFgrDO2-pRpfcg8dXi0pCR73GzAqVTkET5WmJjtmqhpBCJH9QfAtMchByuRrV8oINd31qLmvAae8LTrd5xCAbLzJ2690c1qyScyy-NQNvAM1KgDRx3IRFcAyjRYomd7z3lMkAdDg56WxosWP2Vdq9V285Yag~H9gfOc60tDMdiOzMi9xtw8ksXw4Fno5Kg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0024.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=c3H7yhSk6PRLB8Dk-hEVILkn-Xp-QZfJF4Mg98DGGq0thRIUTS3BKwhgq4czPpI7LxWPEORAoOQuvp3BhhDoJbqh0NGSKUV0VY8P1gUh9oOFP6PV5rGPuCH66UgAJ2gJ3m7tlvRIzX9-xaflq~2eMyIizcKdTekwZeNydKtuyDnBBWyZi90jjAlln2oElpdV7j8Ye~-CM9j0LFROTg9kfA85dzWLXtVZl73zn0Q30r~BTZuQCbQ4G5tyGwd2-qQwrVBzGJqG4lIgYF1jtfi76nFRFl6CAFhFxF26TYtDYufcxe34b5ZCbBijW88yTpFd1VqILGFlQsU0o6yhrw1kfg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0025.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=QQU3OMpztYwRQ4OOzDwVGRehCIRCD0dgm5yfvbcKyVIxNJ-~vnDuPYDMjXZoYaOrSeihbQQimQo4NXYznL09-p2N6oPOekYKMGXeL6iqqeIiKmgPpjnSTojLy5Nl1FN2NI-QrEEDNGcNavwyMZn5eeWlEKtxS-dMclaJbqyrDi9cuqwYPmBFB7W2jDKnkVFLGIQb32y-WWOeEnsKpNluxuo-3WkFoH3~UNhOjB9BZ2qAeKW0IrgLeDP7XhbSR6p3F1rRe1zD2P4Qt0j88RDa6-K3EUFIaSdX1OQ5z9aScVjvunEOeNGdoKh4i~RpXOIaCiyVNIpUZPNEEv-d9eZA4g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0026.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=BQlVuwaIMuiqD1zyEzd4BpvU4Vr3w4VS8wsCTOAihNg4PR87JKY809-2BGY92zHv-z5WrHmKHOTW09SoulNncw7ysvNBJO9ZIaMwqPouC1dbZWo9va7qvQRDxUCII~l7H0tq4VcL9y0W4AE373mDC6fBJq9zogHfUdYu5WMuJ48dnNgEVw29OAqsHUO5aVY286c6Dgzu6pcAmCSodtlG255Z~gg-yxnBpyOmuCblp1eHP1Tk5d7w8SgD09QE5Xp~mPcykbIGigI7jNaczdbmBJTxDng8UVO7VcV4b-JbeR92Kd~Lmyoq1Kp4V3kU2o9~2HLemm3pDhG7f1NBL53LIw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0027.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=RIpd~RjzWLu4hjWtRl3S~s4HA2cf2-XJRP3WvS4gwVln2pjqpH3w56mTmo1PBcDNJrf6OPENPHDaYfQ99WfqldwoOmjUqc5R2PkYARIHo15aSbZe8vi64x7vveBvojGX5~1MRT-lwZKd7OjQ2p7aGq7d3Gy0SMu7FaT3OvjfRndcBM0yYtV~TPoahIf35f8DXu6rKyDN1Re3IeIpAgXW~gJBbk-O7XlrU3cw2ymrHLB4YegDHPBqU88tuDLoRxjFnf1rO3q3wM7DvjcYDoIdN6kx9mtx1pRFBK9-La0QvrkSRa8W8wlCZ2hrvmjJx5sY8Yt4g40w07YAkcYoU27nwQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0028.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=YAciymkBRDnxYzbI4NEqEBFnhPpctOZubFsOVs9jSIWXDWWRZlptrpUAcPbNBp9kevdu-qqkPrt-mb1oM5332Vj40M-v58qTBbtqxzzDRj8YORhxrystK-riFkEP9Fvn~kDXJYh02tXba20qCQaIa0CpKbUpRYZz0Y9in7-Ao1EyI4zYUkUh5sHd5SL8epKBwNz8THLSmIck-ii8b0MsahzZ7wEg6GFZGCN4N4eacYlljKew5vFLTuPFLLmbjigTs8EdtxOI0633UZl~ZoGOp1hP66-z5f1iu0iscj9v3oEr8E1pxTvXlxyGRtNXVFg6a4yVyNqF7mQzCNSobmO3bw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0029.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Y1UGUDdS1grPhnde6yY-65lR6AvjQylvt9Ck-sRLIfu2-ec41lDF0HgDItcHeSP80xn3BRqCZ5A73LFNoEeScgA4lk9aKOhSAE0~PEklmrjaHRUWPF80~PI7tO3-aMEPrQt-z1k8XgSSEqS3SZ2cbpOooNv-rvHydUjSlHjw5wLJmL239Sn2xU669FOrnZLP1Kj9KhyHcdv7-xMl5iP2HHd5~6pIc7Iirjb4fUw0OoOXri8NxBVMVIdK5rx5AAvHGr7jfGe1BMCvge2Mw47X0hEGDpQZON0S5DS4QpiC~EqS1b0k4fa9EP-jpisu4ctZMa5zehkp3TcAYvqABGtTLw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0030.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Bs5VCG8RLM4n5ZJNN4KQ8bNWfS7UYqJrd2MXleBqAp-EmDBcuOOlHK2SGpMB1sp1WJs4IW7-tW7gfbWTzdmWyFzgE~50jUrBv1QMKJAa-tpV56pekeRnbyYpbbOhIY~1T~8wh7Yk7uzjoOLQ~K5iCpKVWZRQEyDFCcj4gvG0mWl0n0ydWc2SGGeyDUdyHb2sMa7LRjOf3rWLv7FdPR6lH5ca8XrOLCkzndI6iC~7nkeoiQbs6~Ntq9HYGZRtX2V~EBEPJ0hmRTBlij6Y9BgxUlS8O9ynnK7yhHQi1ZxzI7YFU-McpkvTugJGsLvjAJeDV6CcMR9t4HCIPl4TCAvkCw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0031.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=SNrcSplrbS~MOkVGyIgr~-iTe1HOVwVqG9Hy8E0NTP1K0YuKxrMCf1DGq98wSA9tZPCkHuJ00N6skQCTwXDU~KyEQbNKAzd~KSc8MvYDqa8EJxEADtMEa3LTykbdFM9peCLQtsGhXwrYFk-4Hg7bUqXzX4FRMYdk5UZbDrXz8JISjksy57ZYoMtZr42io3bGNSNNUAZYbqO5LmZQX9wzjJkW~PqXoek-mmsvzsTrmlyMod6VFg4meeVCx73SNinEe3~HoBbGNzVWDeISOcV3zpyEFaAqGIDFSnKviiWQcMsjuwgf8f5r04u6v2IgWeTln6y1fo1aa0VrD~cJpIs4lw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0032.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Xr3TTSGVVB1n8~KtWy3yjQ5OTMU~-CqwZCKQjeY7Bebrlc2PtquQWMH5ErVyR~A-Sz1co~HLVm38xUfKdnbySzzp2gLUoP7KGoVjulOt9kM86ETQZDN219gaGGstHlXyNHHQkI73ehmzV0Zk-0re6hzJANJQy5B7~7RcVwkWPJb1FM2NOk1~kxDS7IiTck7o2Wzn6qA9icZIZsXj7fpgsoJOPNN09aMoSBTlnsOjYM7G08Q7X-HFAx40b6ppSqswO0-0myTmsQ7q8dBZsLZXZClIP0UEWWI9c~MZxnl20Lmf5f3vFr01RZwLEvFlk7sEyQZXO1bRTKp7sa1UB46nTQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0033.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=JGkNkzO1kHqudINhK-37nDFlPEedtiCp9zL35fZZrg1eKCuj6izZDgFYcQxGqsxi2m1plfn61fyc1B3Nwzupcu~Xr97YGgtn7W3LSmHKc4-vJq8T4x8vHJA2YQSg-oR0vfmCPUzcf0oRblvmEWfWQjLexnGvZq9ZF-EVK2CKj6WuRXCPCEYd0JygF9QXL-fDtzbm8UKk3bcHCTP0bsYf-r3-wwut1VldOI-VHnGWmRJqfgIY2Kbtb53X5d6mIonyTQaQ8ptuqhRx5QdKaa3VCB67BgAWvl1t4p2JaF~4jBK9IQXUqh1hpTQU7wBz711N0y0Vj9ChGsIf7aR0370MEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0034.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=c7n0oGJDOj6N2NdT0k4TtKv0hOKDhHgI~c3WmRercdIAAAdVtP2cY0k4ExuuFFKoCnfzrMka1dhRDx0W8ZzwFzNFYNI7k2KF37phUXKuFyC~EwfTuhWHQgFXg6pMlB8FSn2oRGO3Q5Nv~WhZK69IIwyP8v03cbV4YlJYWmVJkt0BsIIYUdrBns28AL1XRiiereGMkWkrmD3eayBcWp3gQpaOAiLSg8XiA1hEKI8C8EBMh9P3~~P2emTco1MaXX~0KqDBqdWC8pkqCpkm-EWj~hqC3ThEpoXD1Xx3ZK-5g6MoOxmAjUGe2vuptW-g3jfc2njwghKkVdTXhTG8lqi-nQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0035.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=G7KFby9J0FAKeFDa6yfgpKrEcEjwNNi56VXYCq3ed4RHm~Km1MIPH6hUt3KEVnI7HxszTgH6lHM2kXTTNK7beQl1OaF4wjN1E4tWLswAwy6OE3nMoL95NNNpMHS5l~lEyIWIxVBEqVRbhI8mgItckUHYTKNxNfHqulHJAq0BITXOA3cSpI1ifE1QCy4HOqycYoZqrbmxqgVybBhyocLUFDppU7vz8JdhQ18icMc5H5h3IvfQLMmTWPj~RuevKHsEkSu19ugRhwCvQEvghVdV9PA3FGzSY348pciUS3KX0OSnmivM8oyhD3z3p23V6BSs2bgqCMIWXx41Yvhj6U3TsQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0036.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=dgiqZTYnQfUyFqs14w~OTAmh6B-ddqC67YaEUe76qAmlKeHK0QY0e4ZHQ7N5kMHWu2S7AM3YbPCNQpB0AVrasQFsCwySMfuJvyk~l2gfYJ7vQxnzLkJucdg3Ni7KMb5kmukIKvi3AZnHpIBdXeJJqH1nP8pzkXfrcJR-vO1RI8EJ0qbw0UeFLlx4ikN2XR3uWUb0cXGAFr5EGl8TMJPRwNCX3Nl-v-msFEbIOY5srBgI-L-kS21AfdtLf4208aHwiGSOZ7arjKbI1iXQs21KdO5H8cw~K8jRyGI-Vw~ww3dW3qUolIFbuxf2S~USjcnU6B2oPDkCEwDaKbUHOOT4HQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0037.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Iov7xBaCvgbSTqoKHFFSoklcARQs-7sdQbXEwaYGhptSgwx09r9mv-V668xy2X7fI-WgI~6yvUcH4Jd8MckiTz-aJaEpSFB9U6vnwIZ6-Wds6J~OI1WjkGHpX0CxiMh2bmWAVSqw1fmuT3pqRQOtl1FOp4OCsgu~GjFIsWr2HyBYxTw6YRAOVSxpqZulopT9p~xXF0K7ST6kWEJms6ny2QjdzST3tWWbgRv8~i9YEA6d9a99aSmDoMXMtxJg--VfUt4ozaTnEolETf3N2avpjMI9pIyxnNyXGkekD56Anwmy35WurVPumHOSrP7sHrssTn5CNNGKs12RN~TFOufNIg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0038.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=iCE1pZP7nV3Oh74okRSlSflt7Z2lfKleKtwdHkuWK-Kb99LO2bxc56VOSvyfhhw7WqIHpuMajpWIElF9VkFyQJ-Fz0Dgl60BgKeZ78uF5NOG9FLL0eOD7HM1Dha6BkuhMUjy3sIlVRvgNft1AKlnzSpQrN-ZX3WCdQrxmwikf-32sbV4YrdI6Kw8IshTAFFApH30h~AIck46cTlvRY~x~G0KfE9~maYkvtMhiLddvo9jJilamMpr96rPKvSA06dfPE4hedwYj~lTymLUVZqvRTYaylRhPNso3fFocdhQESPrCOolGGCMvjScD94OfVllZ9EkZ3ydfMLcvXy33A1d2A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0039.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=ZMK6NefVWilyN~ZoEfSF84RU6E9zCAKAIs~uXszRTAcxRpWZswnWOt8-DLJiEW1TGpMudMutzWd2bw2lEtpkNu5Bor2PkELuK-QbQtyXBgxvDQSluWa8ZReye3N5NZHcn~9INb9ewfHXg5PruIGSXriDYjNMfhSH62xv9rHRsoUBz86WAN7zpNyFzJGZNf0RecPi~xcUeFlpibRR0Ucy7IgjmkIz9mpdrRG~pYxOF8CaWlCPjyKh8031yQ9S2g4JV0l24rTbbpBt6bLldqjZG2Y7JmcKdf2qyE287RMkLk5oPJCxNmM9fFk9Jckb6r6hX9J-axWvn~FDsrHFVnDdZg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0040.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=KZJLN8joPnq4hpAOQa1sYxiN9vGK50aPnb1mp610zC7gH1hKl8xo43z-vswObrPeocKhDPYkDB5xNT-GGv3k9GcPrgHeBgBNxJbEBf~2vbKbXBIPMX4ZGAipys0fRKJcX3wSG1mPJ59wwfkctxLBGOudazhjO-ImmUsLe3el5Ty0P8gOMy3kl5KR6MNZDpjnkp5QJj1VGF0Zp~XVhC2rp0SDQbVaI51~cFJpX9j2PCszFRhIM0izuX3cn2l2vMUPGkol3LQbrJLvozq41oUcvxPa0YbabWT6nVhLp0jysfXvPvFT6ab5IlWL5EWWFA6LSlVaxVCPSZV6pWM1XwIwpA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0041.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=dFnsLNkeCkFmHPht-I1akuQ259tDx7tr9vhwDuHOoPBIUgvsJD3hWKLFggvLu9cypmTv6NRyKUEL-VFD4CrelyOFMRIkMUUIhOJvzlFaomZT9yD04b6yGf6iQ9HJe8KePxMdJZjOu6dK7XXvDPDQWI8lO9lmed6bA3Hb61xd5FooeZgjAnKqs0TBeVo857hCULmeQVP-mAcfBYfLyPi9g52-dB8MSHhLX2s8YbwKEvm6YhAr7DjRo6O42XwMoA9M1ufveXOTMv4Kq3XfNVYG7pu8ELcr6r-dBj8HMLqa5YvJf5HV8ZnbxkFtpf-ctqg~4KxHLwOs0sRlHVvOM~0eHg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0042.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=cXfhS6mvbjfifygmKPxTfJ1KwwZwQH4qcx6IizWfwerQYlMUQeQ3Po3FMRVp6ZDE50mQuJ4xmHCwaeCnx37yssfV~NZssSYnDBlfV~GG2U4x9MIX91f3Y44CMews~E09T6-2TxEuoUHmx9dU58OvqnhAMo-aDTioJVhGOkfEKSSEs37qBUCnzom2e1Sk8wSB1oc2O53Es9VOfYO9IO9p6bNzPC0Kv302JBuVoFLSaI3lPh9ENkoC79CYKRKCsszYvjQ3gavTy0CJ0Mli7To-EWraX7CExkzdvAjNZc2e8c18uruw-y1-GJgRhxJG-EUfjM9IXM6Q7mkJhhpx-3387A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0043.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DvF8i56UpStruBi-hHskOFen0mFAPdkGbQTpZThKRwYcmQNakVuhEdrNqhQwtcIUjKjqxWAMxARVupV8KkG5HuCQuT2hibQ4NXVQPHDC0dQb1sxBncDc7hMYSiQnJ91BlLuK7OX8Q4xSJcBwSqniXmuXgc6DSD6TLl1JQHdu93uerKegccvXJodFnfUTFUrFmRc8E69p-vxIscYlX4rhxDZI1c1tot5hGXJqrERoXXQq9tkMu4oLrdbzwyboCRphcV4OwHw1amxOylxZzytk4cykMEi-46PirfSmp0XDyeVXuA23R5IJ1AbtqUntha7jSM6H2IHcYNtUSVp7IqmZnA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0044.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Q1HWDczCf9E3l-6ixb3ntbMVfFuJ2bwAokxLuE1IgmvYR8RIdnlMPfjkD7U7a5eW3c5gRFKvvm6wpQxSNQAPrynTJv5Z3oyfmA9V5jcjQr2-JQ1G7-6tyUP-G9yUhozYYD-MEruQmeC1LuFkWsHi8FCIh4s0drHqXkbB3OCq0Z8Wcgmo3OQlmdLM9uKmayGu7HVd68oZL1lAfCBQxryNuDufD1kw6XA-pZG3Em3Z3LnxWPyCupmbY2X27Ox0oE09mkTUnw0RTN~frcUFGIlNIlNE6qoub4CepDS1nX-N0HHmCfizRMq0SpfYTNNxh1K3LIYbml-oMhn1dngik95r5Q__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0045.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=WUtfMu4irxWGl8ZIfeYTJFkZOTz1aV8tdB7NBhbJsHkgzGwPnGjDGwmR0TxtRBuZqkEmEn53FzO665hoQfAnQwJMpRa7hy08sB-vjZQUmmhCh5PUnhI~bFOG2FafHFj0pdgInCJiyEB8NipqG~2iiEb7Q8vIHGUwGylK63S-Z~qPbCs81f6ETc36tfv2uAeTnMbo1dotOj3y3XXfiqG7RyL-qDxrWpT-BkYNBjdATe-Gz3SBA5XpxCfEbdujVlq78vq--LBaQGpGs1WRIBeLQ8kM1K6Tqm0P4aw9FUeE7KT7J0crcYCXuxQViAPhaLHO7lGbQxX4ZsL-xer8QZMvRw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0046.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=f2j9VHPtaLzL4LAJwtiTr7TnDI92o7C1UC-ford7J0zloTfMIQDy4yUtop0faGWkzXini4UMMjfiobvldxdn3oL3uy8ZvaDJwCdVPlbfaWqzrYiPW9GvpqakkDLAP-iqr7f~ZlTR95PXVi1Fx7sEjP2jCpbGh29v2JPAEW~giMoWsjf0s01Me~kuFX3ix0XYph1E8gy-V3lxbK~~k7RfyElVBlFXebuGXLAoCoLGOxsQ7tVwwzYoCqemil6ZWGSMWaHhV4McJVcAipb5zPMum-VrLGQqrxF3zbRpswDYbPfbTpMviA3V-CjPxB6YdN-22US6xgQwnWJhPXusNNazZw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0047.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=ekZgAW6YFMqriILPpSJPQY9JzsoNzvf7KPmIPRQ5nn70a1UZyaleHECJ21VFB7CLo6xX2-ZOCMQhSyaZ5pPIM9D2IySmoZM9JBE8pjaeiQeMI75IyEI-WPkd3neZe5ZxUS2bvH3fH2kWsYBDvb4I~4KabGTvtimGYaxMSct89hiFMdJasgJVFDOKGWwCFHiv7Pz0x1feBx8ePVpW4l9XT2Ag~2u8E4P1xPxeIn~jYkFI3LJ0hCiTA22nDvfGClQ7PJ9VjC4GsFwSjK6KuzHKhxYmmlPnodIpAjUU4nVvObFtVsqYGhRnW2nL~WnGlqvM4kN-0o8YLHH~OSkq0y1XaA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0048.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=F9SGAdW0Q7tPXAS1BcsDgAbOTNOy5ck0dH5k~eMMywODB-Dw4mSwY8M~TK6FxnjQ-ZhVae6vxIQQs3xog6-VMRk-89kHNVpWgFN4D~b2vpWHRNUwEKmMWcm3rs3MUgWLwtqh0x5U~EDPWWJ7bJIpC8LKZ0oOUQkyyi6OeRbLl9bBJ8lojqwLNtCZxDgbQc0cSixJdhOE4XrdGEWi~9WkHZsHMXLFqlb5L8thIs4GGfHDdpztJoxGK4ylAki5VjaumiRw4TXAdBwiXe3Kx1EYT8nEVKW4u0m2zcOjIPPVYkAOEIHcBiKv~~BPHTX3AWPzXBlw8P~DA6g1sU9mr9kDEg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0049.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=B4D~6abWEaINt8~ariLUTtMSp4TKYL-Ii2y7~90Dw-uHj2RvTZ4alg66-OaE49Mt9r2GOmiQtIZzselupSLtuaDzlqjfYr5G7oGPgJrOQ3pGK-vuxNNgLUCWujm7DiIqhKrdkUNizsLxKZPemMA23V~esYtiVreJK4gnHBf~14pdOROizq5pgElHIjGynI~p7yAFRD4WkG8tGPotuzAN~SLUdX1WRWq5xAkRuUBYIuQWc5d8uB527aVRgUGzyw3jzhSKSc6FU97t90PK4XA~KrpGLts9hy5cdswJYSpMXyRBgwCiDzWP3HW0NKx4-LHv46mgcIOxGL-ebZercdBOlg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0050.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=XIZLZMTQHB3d1Ee58T1DPKdnx17Bj04vrdAIUbLS1~GqDr8YrktEvgLfAIKsTrjxuuHAao1HG7Mf9a0yP3DdBZoJZm9cfexmhb7tOghli3g7iTXrQv95IqnABI0KHVlaVYmWLARRRiCv-j5DK9sbHbNi1mqaAaoitYL2vwTPT1niKsqeUzubi08ZRcEsfNvOTtiXH7~ctNmC~oMP4STuj4C-VOwCZudJ8nWbe37edQY59udPCMJqcOfSHw~bEG-NG5tICPW9Ia35MEZ7TlBrk8zGa9TUTT-TQZcdZ3PuK78Zvzlrvo1NH2CIGv~5qJ~vh-6Heum-G1Rx2awxz3os~g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0051.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Ti0vfLi9JLPBZJ5rxwc3RvFgNuyiNyzNvIrayMZTgDJXmtc0i4qCLIM8S~X3-UBdpqpPw8GnbyjzDYjMdAcZZ8DAGjrThkQxlgXpQPTk378SlQlfDV1gJYxrXirD4VTK3OfNuFmJS5XNtORfqTxdEiR-3H5c-nWteQ6TxLR11Fqk7CgdFUzz8sTlHBcO1PMTzkgBEQvj2iLBjSp8SWwFnvlceG1n5z5XuJTtFihFZ6uWyxtk3yabPRIiDUjZCfgppL6aqcv~2A0Altr6XayS7KLvupegQ6zyu9vJFr5EX7s8OPjTXoVfsMk1-j55MAD0phL~saUVb7rWxqCoMrhLFQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0052.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Q1ihQfpMt7cxvA4koI2vfQoEtMrp19S9nKduF2fdpQ-rA0devL6i6U6daGiufYJxHtVTCmR6aWhgLy~hwC-al5ckGg6zlBJmjoqNpxT-ftOV4i~hCzWYu~Ut2PAeCfYYc3VwstRd00YMnQis7oexbt~hZwJx5O29BDIpAztL-AIG9nh5OAaOViCt~kppFy0L2mhLvOQl5ENv8OIqDgZsrP3mlRwaFw1zPd7d3XSXfe8yW9Sw-L5Klo1JnuoibRy2jEtrLH0b9FnA~vpCCD6sqgE7tH6Vn1e6h-JWWegO~bIUa-FPkalnUmY~uWqRLPacjuUvfiuLkhekb1nyBrg55w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0053.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=W4JvV-nJL5lT~B5~hE6ZNJaAtCVKqiz4lCqvo3wE8kEVjRvDUfROk-zCTtmzgY-fcsz6xTq0b9yPprXisCsZl~XLoJPZl7qowsAzgAFnRhgGDx46u3nJCx2JeFFL6oc9NahS5AKeB0WgWJeckyPRqZYwaJusF93Xwzp9saqiBiIh1C0PeJnUMmVdz7FM5~Gv87Ir37Y9fzbzeuIfkIehE3LREMMfRhmoy2vGSxKHXSoM8gMGYoOmvjul7WAwy2M3O3xyfP1tYqt-lWce~c-KXb4~GvWVO0Gtuvy3ZB~xIoGx2BHTAwzFVvIM-ghwp07vm~8xL9McfvssBxiMxNWUjA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0054.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=XjMN4Euq2gJnq7PdbZn0Y1JBj39jmgZiJZULd7l3WLicQ5TGRvyM1BE8FCXMaQUKapWGXh3otCbzP9GdzGDYcUk2NVL0WOw-4m2W-fqiLRbU9WmAty7bbMtYvjIInTpIvrOdswovgfSJyXm4~gX8D7O6F7ivhjL103RZy1ziKTdPdZbhUc~l6n0r5u4kcxO19M-Uxj3BWAi9k2mXcxI0LFF-WFmPf66XrrcqxyaThvi9S-dB9147vqdD3643lMSOlF~fculIXarIRGgHrdshKvzM7t4WCIzcUuPNDMuWERVLy-pLWplA7WgTdoXd~Q~I4E6056UzppczZYnKfCcGhw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0055.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DsbJsRYrhzBPy8IKHaNji0mO~MzayoNeOs~YZc1T8mnac392IcLe6E0mIDPGP8qjYMp5keIW1H0lxrd69yJuvUj-kbsfsO1NkKzhP7QBmOyiSqJnqsuSzL1qC56elQopS8jtFiEyTyDo36VUmPn5xsxfwkHIIAirNR4jKSEkf-SD6eBmOh8vrJq3kHoaams0wpPPC3lJtrbhf14vkFC52lbvOaROumMr0G8F9a5v0V-iZM7-bGg-jrxWAit7q5PvqrNs-WRQM~Wmua-kRCVuvSJOdqAPkLONdv4NtxSUgBTfmTC0eU-7l9J3BB7xAlAO2FBXkPp1TgLb4gfy12BVyQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0056.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DjhIcHE7HudRI1tH6sjMZG9505~TeW4PSXK4orWBRlXaoUIZ2wdsOurS7u2UfTSRjGcbfQ4pI7JtNWowWwm0nUUWBajKQC~lXtvxvCuqSIks-0NCfN09NCRxnFJBgBdOectX0FhIqYewrljDOsJnpHLGLCQEZSCAf6GNCSp~b-n29zTLfwo8WSMvyC8XXP5XkPrKBoJqO4sOZ9xCUqRRz~FJSLY10otSXc82jnxWwDG~ShHgCyMnk8dxyKf6C1LFPBSYmSV0-yRHEjcka3yZ-oM0YG1l8euHJ-2RaiUfbWr3N2SGxMsIesD8En~-Q0gRvxrV3-MrXa0YyCQCYa-cAA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0057.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=hrO-XBEG4U0dIYpuFNlN5bgM9f8aHQbK3wqDKz-MrrWenyZvd5tfjcbdnzcUhkEwwJCZUjvMutB~JKO2Gu8IGeAEUGzvMFJMSkANBVR10jL8UUBiyeZhws5RDbKemSdjqhhmANWhtr25YCMUM-ecv6ackHkoIv-HdNqg8~AAV~NgeXFe~T0eMdrXMkKSTeyqCYbLAkxphbG2rEOYU5zwiMp4ZJ8YOp7WWeROkQCQOST4tb86juGx4CJgFcM7KpQcmxmIhSbY7KJcu9cOu3LDqzJYjel5eeAUaFgLR~4T9Ndfu315SfRE7ihFfcd9dm2xWZ8G6h0BiPc~lQdXRQc43w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0058.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=WyXczIwEx1xaXUnByQYHvFZ8ow6JphYq5TCJcvbPV2EjJ4wKB56f9xSUpJW3V9rTnaFnxHq6TgRKSb~Aj6y79KCa5IzINBwAIo9A7fKMGBm6iQNniwDHYjOx-zx7GIfM2mOwEoALU~Ux-SVn6U1Fcdu-XqV8WrDLK~7vQ7ICajDwT0LFF8Pa0eHyjbQ9d1bNHZ6Z4X659DVfnUsXhg34vTcJL3GRjVPq4GAKOTs-VNXqbBJAVjTiQHbe5uggtngbVg9KwBY1jT78qvwxa0KmT5oT0RcXKIepPcKhLUohT~Rg-TXNXCZ0Qykh13TniEa2PifMluwb8vPbl0EzgkVQ2A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0059.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=OLy2JXKeDOD4MtyHWFvrQBJFrHU8oXsfufkHzghAxb32PNFh3-H2ZWMlsHRVL4lAEYX-BGYHrvDFsOBS81NHWv9p3IfYwlfHHYZqH9Kt~nU-ej0chhkImvvq6dhgAlJALM9s-UmTlAZbLKA-JbdmHboh9ZywYl31SRuOspKSzuH8xXLPVxLZazRQP7~aC7TvJ4vpLNGi9CNrtNmKoGxU6pErPJ-8e5dMGEPYCeSorD6uk6LUS904fH~F6akKrjS0XGh5-TdicASFD89tTJcnmKfj-ikxXX3sVBKBc6UOZNtfQ~C0nlXzyEbBFmXNPcrgOeo2UamdG2-E1wHm7OL56Q__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0060.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=UXtqsHzTV~IdliJAA72~~EH5i9u~-13vd9LbachT3a3ZPm5-ySapYS9vD6EoR5MjOMoGcAzL7gL8XzxUM1d9QjmDdz~J8wI-Lhbp1nBYRV4yjaDEH3mx9-kyUK1ZUd3NyGTCHEvS9X0yfB2rnlhBHOohED52EULfZmUNXUC1LNia4RWzZAoTdPbxc87S~Tc6rle4~de6gUkTfceyC-ktZS5BUJ7XqNMifUNyyj7OnWVMUwj~ByBUv9r1mGS2WPLa3tGT4tcQcxyQ3UE9LgBHqWWb974V6bQRWEFjFLkH1d2iJ0jk7R3KQK8uvih27E1dP5atfYOcNux1a4fSsfTDFg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0061.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=NlYfGdV-xufMQUyLGboeLhOuJO-AKkudXx7zvSQx9sc4wchIcf58GO4tY9PQdzR2hlA6GVPi34~A76JnyDDxaQl8p62yJ~tCzXmmdVrWOIN9iogOS09jwaSxApwwNPLV~vRFca6epdOdUMNf8OVHCMpMP~Tr3qEbUKMzB1pvCdjzvecivTNrCgANKaMbp~JAbW8nNbGXCzSbrvQk6srJDhLJxb3LsOEkDlNzH9YTonlOSwId~AFHyFd~u4PcHYZSFtoDLwU5nO2pVefg4Q3vZUCqpygTpEGJRkojgmaw3vFZ6ITLFL~4~omo07b3ZnyQjqKsD6lhXR0dqKohiYHjlA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0062.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=TqqEJYakJK5ERqEzfSjXZP1Xe7izUNtra23VCAYtH7L-V01UZZJoBI8a3GwhymBLclNBoPXA--G951R6VOitLNSUKr2eycpaorQAr~s7kC2TK3TOvvQQW0xYmGGCDHzdVqZwDQMFLSTdaSt0jCfZKzy3V63N588BSURq4SAvcFTSy2YGk1BAkJAvf6yXF7obCV~sVVsUvCfqWe6M5JmI9AylZa114UqxUMddBCHop8LvSfd47VnT3czvhEFRWOIdD4hAZxK2VUm8tK0d17JXcrcezdx9GN9p4fKFsK2lEZS3eQELdGu4LgknnqPlXxWchvVsa9EEk-M1gcD5K2KynQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0063.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=NHl4M7l94jg1utlxAblOyCyeDAMWNUfUK2oXF7cmxDK2us27KHfxTv-jea7UgFZnEQOxEF6dZoP2Jc1PaXB7MqLIECuNMwdHf~YT9yHsw6KS4AkWrm0u8cFRGTsq7O~lKslk1LwHrdZ1uf4214wd7w0mB5B0VMmnx4wTQ4DOKoZ3HUAZUa0bFa1wHLgf77GXltv2oXXPvOM3D5Z54MXL2jkwY~JWqOGdif2SfklB12mgOLptTFLXa8FrT9nwG8fi-MNAgaF2dhG-ny-zOENQ54BddM2y5KRh~d--Z~sWNPEaePHTR7b3rBopTtUTYP5Rd8eCVL1hFELV9RSRh37huw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0064.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=FLYxs9EWJhpf7MyZH723hgFQIUwSvaXSUlqj7anSd4yMbBNcEJlBuTr60W3yLOdtWV6dftDo4xiTeoUrh13-qwtFdF77b1mTNQxnc8pyRdiMEUwbnh21-AJt6IqbJ9svU0ARNm5I~TSD0Tctah8O2E-9bzm9xQEi8KgJfBKQQgql5yYC7f17yS7tk-WiWV7ZHFXBt5zE9oV1I8282RgeqvRJ6K2KYoqtcT1p0nyQ4IMJYuvRJyDBGNYp0IKjCdZuBDsLzB0v1zYvfdydB3Bu-0nIXllXOnqDbvNFjV2vRoAcuLFPcIobpH3ciVM95IFZj924JbJVGCQu6Em1vROGzg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0065.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Cs6jehk7dH0QZG~qM3aUtROIsm1nqRjIiv98iuMqWVAs4lv4rsoRdN2s3UxCVBHUQq7x6tuRpFXYlOVMwE~gQszFqyoS-LyfHOyBINdBMHWg2LHZDSWF-lrJzeZft-YPleJ6DJxSqLZHGmUjemoVUyBV4PvzGMJsUa5pF0AySgKDgxjP-x1ttuS3BfC85jO3KWaxiQTmn1d666vgxx1XTRDukIz6ec2Y7g4pBbGmoDb2XATCrYj~DJu3qML2wvqj0Krl8xvnyExC6wanob0VPN2MLtCv7XfXOCSNBpl~oL7maPtFi8RJ7KwK08kxH0SC8XD2PSINZn0KHJY9~OkEJg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0066.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=V63meSR4gOrx6nwIG08ENTeiRqu5L1K-KJdwy2lmpnQDA6ge18c-QyN6nCit12E7Giv0D3KuqQ~iZUVLSQGhcGZOR7HGNcqJbMGu08OWzZbrl7geJ4aUqw4hHB2oJYAGhh5c8BiSzgoDPjItuN2Z3E5lzjXmBHhs5jqIlyxdxoeDxj5xHzBrP4OKOe6T5KFA~G4QI1Mdznomu-D5~2UlE8hwbQcSiojhsDRWHnQUk-HkJyss-3WEjKpl0ZE3j1Klw~GbRqpjQv5cG3Qf7fBoaVEHcBqu5DZL4HT6U7fpz5opqXTpZO0nTVESkMaVhW2NKhX1CIRRizXoVANDXQrhag__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0067.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=EYQbt4L5KtCXN-E-uG-AUrC5XKjQU1znm8FgN8QbRSoUUBglmsxOJzDuPe~K0Xu77aYlw0YKIslAG0QbtWF0HLHSjW6fknT7HmXnXpqCa~9r2ozbxXWajgO63iIKA0mH5l6PCet2kehN1noNS8GmnePP2Vc77o4NWKUBRkVFVKPjbIbVNOz1P~1EIj9sfjmk88cLU58E1QhXpR~bYOPjjOMWqVv3wjDYV26lBPX8CzHt66Z9y0u-iTcRA8fdiDC85N-fDwY6HXoCUSZhqre9gua3fIM~fI-aUirhQSP8SptX788zkGbUavpEvVne1kOa8LaC25Ec7mp6ddTDx7BQPQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0068.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=YHutKlU7rioTF3INkjB0z5eLCa9OBb6Q~6rsF8Gl60O91PY4bF-E9fur22AlcASs2Ew3RfrAS4orgXNpWKalFYqHWCeD8QjgFrN4vYTIBHWyPaf6m5u8V2eUBUWZz01DeBRgyW4v0BYcTfN22JdbbKrs8I9DoZq8tC58LtXGn3hjZLjvN72e-ywNRAqETFksFgu0fBWebEuXJfN2Qw5udanx4QJyaUK5ShBtrZz-jnsnjgSdfC03lD9PwXPp3rL7qHMEBShNaZKeO0VNUWTgrDZFEcbFlFlmrhAEHivIFWXN81K5ltMWQfC-GfxorVhMmS9HKwPTlA02SS9WVvbS6g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0069.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=MfXRZATBK2KIU8gu~yp6tFAoa-Cnyr-eyxviuXy4F-jGWZgcmRjdRBTPpXFhYHUG3rm-igPo6NVChDRk09gllOsJsUyyZ2-i8CNfAPK7yPn0xysd4fgT-Q-Sp948P80QCT1h2s2sSZnaQQCpY9lkP~v4bbithfWOgdNnKRhlgClhpvQ0WPNrILih0HJjSZBZqrs6cV~~ZkDmj7c097Gww9sBbDVm4wEcPKfm~MGft32UdbG-BEkgSZifWuKz4dv1g~FfrVxXQjySBprXlWmtazhDte8r7Z3jJOdwXSLsKm4-WQzq6TO6zEzcnADTCJ2OS02e1CozxIb5i3ej8UVOLA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0070.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=Crgeab2mcImOEBkU0clxV7S9ME~gMDtYNeoz~zqzIOUaNrvE21COYs67SwV689dXlDy~~-0lZPuhCE3GKB141aU-Ms48WZ87krSdQgB8C5OeowLMPxmO9uSScrObJIDuCW93P~KIcFNimHAaCYgV0jOr3Tn3qTPcs5xUq5u7uWUDubS6LDKJpzkLcmKV-IyjBODBmHsd8WKND0bh39ZQsW0dlqwo3fbCwLo1QwSc4OFP5ZOAXqAJFtPmgwKjwpNpxk77TdcZh4SdKzRf7IDWOi~suJ86ygEOYVlFIQkSNaJ-dQH-ikAVEPv63keGe7IgL0z3wTl05wvCL0FseQTysQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0071.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=EXF7Os~ti--t8xu7dix2~NE793tYjdlvbuwHzGJl80NHTvshpzVDQvBZHAzBNCTFt~yT~kVL~h280cIQMD5EJNrKxzu66iBTz4bReqK4KbRdh3j9IDX3pURubuXU4QK-HfbBYxa9FTWO6fFMRuGjsczEuKsIuYt6Uuyli1h0wJN5GdvRgScrjP2VJ56JW4CDu6~07tlDCUTLmQ4Rr6~bbD-XpJeGLe5hFxG8noPZgE8dNZZFv2lVYJHmWRWkXIi2AoDVgFHcmlmAgnro3fq88Dy5449zeaz5LrIPAGbe5g4dINcXcYFUzboiNuw3FQzoMhiEIH47Drq4xRlZIW9~MA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0072.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DoeDyV3hP4wM630onwkXmBsrlV8eSVpXa5TGbjxwt4wZk~ri6h-j5DpqFX7GM24WEsI-GuIYZR2bweC6HEvtwkfoq6n-204wDR1QgrQEtjqVUeOyXiDp5OVtRVGrG6ASTyqqPZx7~4NnskRd~1dgY7Rv6wBsHnjRsby7NdZJJK5VaiiLZ70YARrdGPBpPSaoNqvaR85jCA07FkL2IXW57eBb3NjD9skWbRcHEKzqEHDAyhVAwBeLpk0HngO0TEG4eZfMzRUXCT7NiHJLJlTHDCfMmFWzqcQzaprxuUobnelDQ5yRUxmjmMP-ejs2Y5HgEITBH3g9fzHzhIjqGC40ng__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0073.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=abxZOVCrHnk-w17OWJkDR2q3JdHbKN6nTqJeTuVZLzRxZxemggpfsoY49vH3R62dhIjRA9zqQu7lPcXxeEGAozQgiJQgKzt-3GpL8Pf6Fm4q319K9sqLZ-u8EIC9kXswScW8hVDbH5yb568owlAKFo65sG2tvNaDffyN25xJZi9SCPP48id0ENHhNMW-38TCqIE07I0W42R40saRqL2DwDPZHrG0XnUExx6FixknDAmWWKszxwjBD2nyhQeayeS-0mKGmJUYeFqTvlUf-hxz1mo5MAxaeza5SSqUuU6YGVdZASGjQCOIJmd2IbsvGKtqmMHLrx7VHTZAjjrgksV0Mw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0074.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=EpNVrpnRpMkEKaHhbn~yYO1HIXu5Fl86n5gRnGHQqgQBuOQ8nzgt7AvqOKJSmqUfRDT3GbqFBAUaD1ypxQhbjmi78svUOoRSrOuVD5rw73rfr1pB91XdqqOkmc0P9txmOldsZQkZTYWS5~mx94aKsBpT9avtwV9YrNmpShvPyJX82O0oxt1LFRy5vgvcP1zY4ny~tN6xgoImjEGorPV3apIpm3S~LVJGPZRV8SAo0G3I~6YZ6JeQ027br2lVRPEuQm3rYdvDlSHK3q-FWU444MfTEUSzUcEkcAwIWEfRsfAWEequ8FYBHuHVPtxisCcs6hclhY4nhosYt1mDlV8NKA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0075.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=ARP3TELcr8498hDSCY1SQwg76TpbJWwgkcRVIsnsILZjbC~SF5GrSbDwrb0UVuVdlSCGninIMOzV6Lk4naNjkOJZOO6bxOXrJNRHOcXQMMj5AJVoUoGQxV5BR3TxXE0Jp4pt2IYuPKaLeP0yqB59V3y56dicoI0gZ0p51a3tuK18zH87XcPOFv3-IYSTBeTKgVwUWsfhYvAa1dbPYeBPCxFgTSVmvatLhQ-jGJvZ3y~jsKsd6iCOf5pyR6h~HOeFzaVaEAggkekWpwCTZ1hnVuXzwjdt5AuN4dVl2~wq1FdaksGP5JZoXx3CBefUSPRNccnOkzWM-EgbPmBEWs9PfA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0076.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=GppLFBTzIl53asXnlgtEhigiRUz2fqOwb5s-x130iNbZx33604tUXOTJ0a85NFoY69SDAEbE5Xz0jKvJOCyPWLV~nYtpAd29QvzAy0TsX9weSj9tHyvguGURATQjT7rHzpJy4Y0v34Fmm0nXiuTx7gL2H74azveCLj-bq~7UTQLYwaIY5opZf-Hw9eErHoh-T4nGSjwYVnGWWtySGabYGWGdx74ukV6b-8k-boc9Dvv~Z5zoALbGpJZf7yZqHxRb5zjagAtxJvaz~DCQwKU7FSXvwLlRzjSIZ0lOtKJHJWojPTdkM1onG~-O2gQKKrt8PIV6TcpYI8OAtHQZAhqBUQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0077.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=XTlUoGMUiAReFUJkLqw076gcZeg37VxjaUXUvNf4rqlMsDDUgFRYCR~rYZtPnwOwW0-bCSM5HG2mJCuaxc~5Rb4HOi7giU-evXlnmv0OmOZD7cgfzRbl2b7qC3EYO9e-60HeIkmd9GSUnhJa-qe9jr-gjTgNK4WCQ6FcbUKZHsoG~jjzZYg1QRYw4k6gDh6zPpBuscZIXtO2XQ-Q10meYfkbJvm7GG9TzvsqGqBqiTk5VELdqN5V2xWsP~Qvwy7E2bKIHo1YhxytD26Db7R3UsrKLiJ2puEQ3YFTQRhg0RtGsc15gUADJl2aLzpDiW2wIq-OCWPQ6eTIQGgMoSaA8g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0078.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DtVgHIxyUTazcJMFpmWORdZa1YsQZBPkIh9zdaFVShKsuDqHB0-38X2lK5KPWxhLqfhxXUz9vETdX9D8e118a8VzrtliyDkKlxqCoyTXQun7JxaJDJoIwk-x-p3VKyAW7itjcKfkAXa5Xa~y7y1BRrbvHmlAfFx0pka7gSr9A4yeTQ2JtbfvQMAb6rBfTp7UXzwNjc~SbXd~v15ofgqoy2q9csm09kUWT9-Xb2xLJePXkEVgn42BKGXWERNfF9gIoLnWBQnMWdzavb~KyevsMgWolFEw1zKQ7CRTGRQ-bwgG2NzSHL~wzdbLGXRdYOmL5JR3ERLOkynkIRGWTtJyhg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0079.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=imrlwQHHC0GKA836-RRr9yBELqWg8yJt73ko8jcSHqXQS8Zn7vtv~2HgL0ZKy~2puILhQ4LM16LSou3HNksZF9krbM73-cCrjn9kgHOAjHgVsOpPN9z1ZzH4WbmMnbGz~6LJ-2DvbFKOhb3VSUjiVLSu43hI3-XM00l1W8WCIGZkkLZWWEdFjaJGYkGb8W91X3sw8DbGyye3FqqWldwinyTNWrf34ULsOfMdQDDucrMO-uXGoc96LcLZRRMKF5mgyZ2hKN5kTJk8p5OP7kY9pHWN6dkKT0ShIWqTfmHZTrwQELODsWE-3MwMusRL47rzGSMBhxe8~NbwocCTgh3uUw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0080.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=VJp4plyPZIYyYM84zJJ0VHw7fw4FLvY-bVs1Ku74hg~8GENznzy2zXqbthaWqGyBIUNFv5ff2kipoDXiOPf-yFV7A9YiBT2nyzVze2sFgovSRN0j8DXGT3SlS~dqiZEXrV3swEwuCPCjS54C6FS65i7WmzwBcgJDXqonvSNJFGp~p1ct2CDUV-nTzc3YgX-i7Rp~~C00j0Twiqo-WmyzBlNsYzgOy2lEZ5IUFrgztlTTQ-oejEUIBEuS4fxaseeErO3dzeRO0Yn~O6UdXH0divZa~0PvRUCzW9Dq2yNa8gvE~se9A2p3rxcdSZPx5PH2jQ86sck4HGQtVMhPPlyGtw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0081.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=XO4RxYHxcCQZGX0DHdyYgECsbJJyvHFBp7~80JLDdfpcw3dq4jdzFRNvOaKsBrE0HXbTjQxw25G3DSKJZLVyqv~GwP096v~WY-rsBjCRhf~0E8bT4CIV5adhBW9XR45yiRFD5XVGC1XPdDFuG3-UqxhDNyLBKz9Gy3mF4YRe08r7uOW8B9pPqrgBwtX5qldzQZ7cgtFqROl-nZQmRvi99o~bh5dQgbgeXl3qoYgIpkVGcj5BRuTXeA3biXHzEDKUTBGJkBtQbDMO~aE8XW1aMR0Us5vCHeuksVb7nyt0bwtceCrZDyRPba5RrY5JaCu6jvTmARYn7eTrkEFoAMDGvA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0082.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=VqtASeSSnLgwLR0JBQt0db730N6NylofxUJnGn8siuAnKj79xMwz2hjYG02vkGStG75w3ZHxJwgKFgCcRjbx8mWCzdeLJ-gXdv2XQ~AtOFOW7ePR5OqhIvfTz8gOO7FEiqHLW1lr~mz2gRJceQaCoCVtojcMOxsYfMls0s~8cpU6zM3mBwQmEOpVNq3BdrgM5PrfZ54f~n90Gf3cP3TF3gYJqSS5fNfgbo~VmAialG-cbpt2jdiu-pd6Iqx0J0OaR40O15fgk9YDDTmt1yo0jcmlHDPvwX2Rs~MgB9nLi004bCYpDgpDrUEogJh1yvOYS32~cLNoUxZdjAvwcFjouQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0083.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=STgMadFEDVK~0Wtqx5w1ZbW0ZesUUjpMVEv3GhlOFpVvkKAKXesyG59CrNyY7~4Vt7-JhLEmJ-FVSCFzzeLizagtw7R7xd29ahaJkz4SS-I2RUL7Rl6tL1toFXyFqALkb4f6Y42wMs~u4zT-zF3xqtCodLKO4GvLEiYA43t9l5PdQtIYcK549De4ndeCJt6UXa6h0ywD3VJVkOXZwt008dQB3QT2-ZGEB6p6yaYLh7kZD1qz0yYsocAJHpYcjNHwhlpHV~fxkz~80LPR~ynunVAKwxIfzBViZjLjJnEXTxkBHzYas-qH0jUQ-ezFH5WsnHrrEsNRSA-JIKYxn1GZYg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0084.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=ig1q6GNaEcdBoM3TMyCl5mXc4--APeCSobxNlnuMq7iSklVdbu52uW9HCGBhqb3pehTp0j8EVKF2UUQgWhkuEpah88OqhDGskrB6wvwLxJi0YEf5D2Rgu4D8aAI81b4rWRBpu7mKhUQ~MjPXVwHLcFNeN8cCBVjl4cWsqN-t5o3sPwXM-qbkmMy~o2aeOV3ZgOWxbBZR~RVQ6QQY0K4X8MBdBe1SeaNfbPivyLrOfIwbL6vxs2ZejZkb6zUnvoXYhJT4Ijg0kcQ9j1xM6AD~igd4peQvtn4h20l-J79YxHvmWojKNq9~l06BuiHgmqB9FDq5bfOUA-IOTlHNiVIq1A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0085.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=G-Us4O~LkxG1x~Xo4M1hBpgoXT6TKq5-nPdaddSzNRbJqvuKGjA-VzOZHDaKttM3oFanJFFjZdzOH8ilXcs~T3VoFlDNi-f5ewVjBegRSVw8fXTmUuFYX1bCUYqFzf0LZdCJPlBICyEgzEIqZJ~F2du~P1-0P2e9zRSCD7-mq7xMKD~1Ci6wkjTssOxDONJEjkf95-MZUGouyo6XwwGW7grhFzvzNeVNWy8qrl9bSJ0N~S~GbTJEgNVW0VXQGSBeKXuM65vo20bhcUMzJtE1Qnbn1pQTgK~DPIRvR8SS8jqi0Dcf8ZlBDDdiH27Rkf7p1MOnuHegBqsov6BDOdaXXQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0086.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=EGe~CCVr04MkqiUcyjx3Eh4ETO54tbBnqP8gL667J4ax0rNDk6OYCNtARMrFgu-74hYIRSIYfKLLz-K5gkQOOeTWb2U5xu~jn4vV3Xi6j-g8yfNUClQhBG9OSOv1wbqZ3nnnslECN95J-f-pKpnGsTrqaIuyiXQmpJJa6lyOXkX-rifVt2P-3HtNYa56vZCI9qI7JDGSQ3ofjAI98SE2yJb9g6vN3e1o8vn3inqif~UQ~7CLrWyOGPHHLmZFsignk3-ObTvnMDDTgGnQ2mTBn7zpagPYcOcQNC45087Xje9t4iuJ9BEcFyHBOHHtgDxIX0IA9zFbBxpnsRxuTpvOaQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0087.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=gEFL4a0VaHeOkOwTNvXPHZ-5OgUDglVQOFouG9ApMrSmonQ9zOKGz2FFspO1zOD1eYAPG2zc2JaGOuU-4Rj~ygmbC4N05U8E3BbtIZwROc2dwGcgTtYeW6L1JNLcnIaAG5pckhNY5UWCQuB6N4eRLUoy8K8uYsp6yl1IZyoLhl1D3TaE4eBrNFZDPItL2jv3xsIcJinLYn6gwyAQ1QXOP43PBVFW9-d3qGenoYKJ-Ano-sHVzdIAoK~bUCROs9Fi6Ai6-rjUhU9Ht2C66EZtj3USfYQm5uxiAF83NN7SnseP~gG0EvIx85nt7cESxigWrvjBuHMyS7U3sg7XDybpeQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0088.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=gvTsgJkVToH4WJIDYUkPysBkwOk2HkIwSduxSKrXp-pHvREsErCTxfn4a64kwR2IwirbnlzcnEpefYemJVo9JJ2RFt0xmDQ33xXr-xZYh6y7RoW59tIdPMxzn4QFsT~8I9-QLR9sPlKw3yHDrSOtqZy-agomGDAU46pX9hItmCIuwElbOzpjIEqGcPUnV6bkQhRV0Z8v-tcepvzMkzpq1uLdXAnabxyAC~gE3d3F2k~PJGJrbkhDSgU30lH031zSO36yCrA74kL0gdYFeTZFVLs~db1izw2Ca8sZV7bHZg-f8YggD-sRzhKcjQWZjPvFpr-ZDzy2~bfoVX1FmztmOQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0089.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=GQ0Rvh0jTbU0ZB6Jp0npIClmTfgvkOVkQCPLCLch~0tsY5smv5dxAP2w2NlqgObOfmoP3ckZQROnh61TOLn0g5BieSVvar-uspfj3YUFDYqBJJ9-R~iNAbVjPg3H2RLFgr5KyJwU2Prp5y3gbfzxL87S1TRn1WKOpWQsyc8lutZ6atcuHGG6BeaFeaI6J7X3G9BR3JZYh~BjFOKGQN47C1YWTlQAQ7F2AkcmqUR2XTLbfTkd~8T4PAr~ikY2iqj4a4cXuoWeNk6alh0wGLYL37NL2CUCsTMLRAXHBJVvewTXKVN2bhVLJWdA1B3AF531bVRrcDjFqwTiQ6slgMlKFA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0090.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=OoFzz3SPrhv-KK32hAVKn9IU4hXazd3jr6plqyg6kz0zWylPLAkh~VbPSEvSBeR5EC3aMLkNE0eaNblVHN6QyUNw7T0aZgQHcvgVqMlcH03OOERGIfoqPEbGuUtFolJqgEr7gSGCbgb72F-MwiZ85s-XTYAge79U1EycfEbdvWe200tRT3iZCPdyjWfUWrM3q8PDw50Aki4N1e5B4FhodtSEZ37HLlcHlR-FJSC9ePCkIAc5TTYrJTclR-CuWJddtLI~SMQ2ISQAy-5vGaoPKTmyWmP8u9dJpiIKRbDpmWXFFxOlgjfmRXZmC68OlInEer3HFmBnzwC15m5sE1d1Qw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0091.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DciyHEUG5yRtiMhn8HAgKYayXWfplTCt0btKj1duP9WeI7pf2H6njL5ZbSLHYgkf4RXNzrOUn8HYRpJylyTP3WnRkaqQ0PMLXyJqd3HiNAVLVgybgIYqbJVBcSW2ChG4KH6mMpxcJG~0b4YXgZO6KdgIkM-bCM99YgHITtT-lk~ZbF0ZHpDt9fR3pblrc0PjLakxfKb~DXbiIZl7BuRpBGOqfaqRWGg87R52fJWSbRN7t8Aw~9VshLknEQ1FOrDwzF~2SIFV1BUJldFfU3b0JCLoGVjI~kZrdGjQ2NldPd1NzA3lUqByIbf3pn9Smfw~vHhsrbozNZXOAg6nfMeIVA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0092.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=TysARJMpdi6B~k3~J5oIKA0ySdJZH9EHTr7Exl3rpCEyGVIVNTQorsSS2EBxKs66CCN9MEVAKPd0alktAd66rQV2RRGXqVbnoBMCxnRn0dHShle2TTG9x03PtAUNtT4vGkp1bfDKzAFhY7DqtX9IgMS0GgxarodXUs5g0Xk66Fu0Cqi94lzFfSBKQzQoN5zliES1aAzpjn81-9zKHC5nxJHE6lE3HdCqq32s4uEdQbrzvg-yih6Kt6wwYv7BHkj9N8~GAkmiJXN9LNL9uyUB3PhVRrnZI71ZSdKHsVonjMWX517YzBpS-Ro3TOskPZkqXDr-~7fkIPqaP8jKQ8hxXQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0093.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=UkU2QASYsTgj8HbfP4cQD42YrA~cxRYBMRbI9dCKcyxsXnaWsdCDh86tBlnuRFmkDFAqmzudtSgO9IefS3-RsdPu9cJImeliremAyLoSxxFj2voBvtMV9V3j9p7I5QuP3reRv7rAdlDbzaAZWl8eeJAX6seK85pmdc8T3YFWtunu~fjtnnoA93v7r1dtjakMcGyfbtL9HVqRNuOZ7uvi60Be8Khju5h4Cm4ZGYUKupqiY~1HxAyX3pG~hTrCNAZdVBVVwCGDuVU~XN~YzOmZJ1Cy96nSje-1HcgHR1JRVNilYIgY-XqcwqyyWmcd4Zz0GkuCracTE4rRid1W4LAipQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0094.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=KNDyRM1QbnKYWB9ZK9SR446tIe9WJG7d6t4h4LNaWYiK3uo3OniOmthzHa~rYzHNNi0Byc7nazdvjfTYI0sw3JZJrURoDZC3Fq47OAMg~vv6cog6J9eOD4Cturcisub3LbQDutsoiylYH55Iwl5EoVeBJgNoFEJuyrRhUTOYe-MXymvBncbqZWLuEGTIgv-UMEkU0egfnyc-J4-q0CfBbJ5wUFYnbx6UXyvu5wEtZ5tvp60quR7Dr2nJdTGW5-Ek0DZZcvuOCo5nYLYMLFkkwzZhaQHxysa4R-YHGk8YdU7XdCKR7XdICyiTXtD7BR5X2eQvyQQiZ1hpCLL0PddB5A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0095.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=dLgZyfZF-6FIy6RnyqnrHU3wp~yGR7qi9Gr58CHx3sueBkS9f1diFMcBCP5ntsOKpt6wI6MKusI1Lm69Pgu90pg3qOzxAg5Y1UDJ7lOEircCvZZZOkR-Cy5HRpF1DXrY2kxOrZwqVXty~CigNCcgF6swI-8r1xlNb4VFvEOggrKpP-IHjkrTJvvJfeUZpFRYfKGIYUTAoXQl~kHKyEqbhcHnO8wH~~H1MZqCi5~rJ95CmL8CQPT-l3jZ4p33HRt1-8eT3VwKOy7cwiUnT-MKq-p-b1giXOIkb0no6BjHrEkYOAOhzClREPgk~yULYBc8bwxCkyp4ifSHKb8ahBxpKA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0096.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=gcYM~PG~vSY6uBVJfiUrFu3ukC8Jc6cH-ydh5LoeqFM6M4GfbRY~~YTT49f3dU0oG7k9~4SdHiDmUjVU5Op7nIt~qqzrNGHnHlAj25u07GSEYUKtvjzgEmS6JAiHutiAppMBSDqjgpdGZ6~F3L853DyGPFu5WITxoMKyWCWu7wDN632P0QUSV-0X~yfCqYC4I3-ENr14gLZAzhQdMhC~Q2lBdZk-zNdn69hwuIeSvL-sjey5DvlX6XhWE5zWMYzVsLDqzSdvqBFyQCmn5OEzXTiab5RbGGjE00iDQ0pSuo3t-do7GTaTEQZYvRm8EEaEYYpqU6vcnSIoLNbTQR16Gw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0097.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=dXyfzaNRk9qhKtXrAe0WhLh96bcgv4fE-Dsy9ok7ElICxRRXWyUzIGYzdrpimv-F7FkC3yfyGtWzLfcAhnZLlFTyzqqHYzNJANgdQZUsfLU8aAnR0J8DgjkTOq1zC3MEs7JYW9yIR89grmskX78eZF0ShJIsqv~FODLUYWIl0WIFVqXCOwL2kwiuObB~Rkl0mDRcFIFOOkpfrCHHce61Yf~NKCzGZISRaPgJmJa6Jc3e-~YW~gvxYovxSdce9JnY3jwT~~hp0v~IB28jOYsBoEtSdkRP8162btv--7TaAE4zROJmEu4BoTQMLX2RNPqIPy7Fi8vHwhkIOaSX4oZVJA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0098.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=HAInIMebllsqrwGsA3cHCi~GOlJ6z1qoBhRc2mzwY2IPvvSMVmf-6hNVsPuNnW348G93SFV6BYGUcGmG9XtmIkUhnAq9haRdDjbEhYP3JVx8dG79hVjUqEavSYXnHOFaEg5YRQI8Us9Ep8yBA2mwvffMqomwFnFxBr867GkmO75BkFgys4AMa0o1PUydOWGJuQTQQIJUfyHiiPk-BM~cGG4Rf2D5U2gnN-KLsew2UMlXTax9OaX3oFDynd7I4vyR3kspfXX-2H3SWYOJiOMXWaA4BDJSYohJI076To4EycHTEExz8Ppt4OXnaIcxkv~eKon12A3effz6-NO69m4mmg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0099.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=DDebwmIae1Q4WhuMRNDmtSdIbwCnu~ylBZolyiSo39t2o3sE3SwlqtxoIfG7EIZyNXfXkHlKNUY-iva31eGE9wxW4HvOgutDukMasVq47XVcCi3meZLtCvtGMX3nRjLdrYNtxNhCVajO5fJMoVSqo58pMQ~8R~0IR3HokpfCJt0saI0EVX8Fwg9mwQ74LD-N3Zr4-PNemzCVrovN5fjdYIL4qE2LFF6h27WheBqUaeBLsbDwTXEPp8dIH3olb5PANKzIS1QDO1ElVplR44QfHNTSbgDlVVUBC0TR-FQs~28FZmPZtc94GByowDH6~YBSTUL7uLFqAz0CMQtNEYlsbw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://archive.harpers.org/2016/08/thumb/0100.png?Expires=1723264339&Signature=EWdThnAmoMPsfkffXq-HfQPFDJhIxU7VZj~0jCsBTdEE6mxFxeH71ntN0cOfR9n6iePP2wLOz1MEKdVcDMbN4EgfQN46xhbcFj3l7ZsswHO~Pm1Kna8CzX3ZnxSuW68HovPFMracXYCKsSxLWCJwZK8iRPvnqcwtlCYpixTXNpKqsXTHtT37aNwf2JDL9~8XudKD3iFYg~jFMzTms8d78564dqG7kaF-Ve-wIIzVUZWO61lobcuxRjxy-a9s-bgSett5~jFCC1PqctBE07BZ04yzE4-FFwX8Aa4A1vyrH5fi4S5xcnELyJxintWiXrh0ygq2hB~S3zvw8h-Pt8VMwQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIQD6QYTWPWWYIORQ", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/plugins/s3_archive/images/ajax_loader.gif", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/icon-close.svg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/NYT-Pop-Up-2024-slower.gif", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/icon-close.svg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Frame-1-400x400-c-default.jpg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/icon-close.svg", "https://harpers.org/wp-content/themes/timber/assets/img/icon-close.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Reeves Wiedeman", "Sam Kestenbaum", "William T. Vollmann", "Ellyn Gaydos" ]	2016-08-01T04:01:24+00:00	Living in archery	en	/favicon.png	Harper's Magazine	null	When an Olympic archer readies to shoot, she is staring down a distance of seventy metersÂ â roughly three quarters of a football fieldÂ â and aiming to hit a circle the size of a CD. An elite archer does not grip her bow tightly, fearing what anxious jitters might do; she attaches it to a string that wraps around her hand, extends her arm forward, and holds the bow in place with the skin between her thumb and index finger. As she draws, more than forty pounds of resistance weighs on her fingers and back, and her bow stores so much energy that if she were to fire without an arrow the bow could break at both ends. The physical strain is never evident on her face, which remains in stern repose as she brings the string back to the same spot on her lips as the shot before and the shot before that. It presses against her mouth, pulling it into a frown, as if she were afflicted with a temporary bout of Bellâs palsy. She must hold steadyÂ â moving her release point by more than the width of a ballpoint pen would result in a miss. This is difficult enough on a good day, but arrows are not bullets. They dip under the weight of raindrops and veer in a gust of wind, which can force an archer to aim entirely off the target, a compensation process that has been referred to by the acronym S.W.A.G., which stands for Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. Once an archer is confident in her position, her chest and shoulders will stretch ever so slightlyÂ â a moment known as expansion, which is attributed variously to breath, a muscular contraction, or a shift in blood pressure. At this point, her skeleton is aligned from her left hand, which holds the bow, to her opposite elbow, which is behind her ear. A tiny mechanical clicker on her bow will snap, letting her know that everything is in its proper place, and itâs time to let go. When an arrow is loosed, it does not fly straight; it wriggles like an eel. From bow to target, it will arc to a height of about ten feet, traveling at 150 miles per hour, and arrive at its destination in one second. To anyone standing along its path, a passing arrow sounds like a viper hissing as it leaps forward to bite its prey. The archer stands and watches, a portrait of serenity hiding a tremor, while her string bounces back and forth like a snapped rubber band. Her bow, still attached to her hand, tips gently forward, as if genuflecting before what is almost certainly another well-struck bullâs-eye. Olympic archers regularly split one anotherâs arrows, and though none would recommend trying to shoot an apple off anyoneâs head, they are confident in their ability to do so without bloodshed at anything less than a hundred yards. Or so it should go. âSomething isnât right,â Mel Nichols, an Olympic coach, said as he watched Khatuna Lorig, one of the best archers in the world, shoot earlier this year. She had just pulled the string to her lips, induced a frown, and then lowered her bow without firing. Lorig is a native of Georgia, a former Soviet republic, and a five-time Olympian with three countries, most recently the United States. She has long blond hair and an aquiline nose that stretches toward her target, and was wearing a skintight Nike T-shirt that was apparently not skintight enough: she had attached a safety pin to keep any loose fabric out of her stringâs path. Lorig took a deep breath, raised her bow again, and held steady for ten seconds. Lorig was preparing to try out for the Olympics, which will take place this month in Rio de Janeiro. Archery is in the middle of an unprecedented boom: membership in USA Archery, the sportâs national governing body, has quadrupled since 2011, and youth participation has quintupled. But more shooters means more competition, and because archery is a sport with almost no margin for error, both within an individual shot and over a career, Lorig was in danger of not making the Olympics if she couldnât get it together. A full minute went by before Lorig finally loosed an arrow, which missed her target, wide right. âIf youâre confident, you step up there, you shoot, and youâre done,â Nichols said, shaking his head. âThatâs either panic or anxiety, or maybe itâs a little bit of both.â An elite archer told me that the tension between body and mind is so great that during a competition he once lost the feeling in his arms. All archers can do is try desperately to keep their thoughts from spinning entirely out of control. The Easton Archery Center of Excellence, which is, by general consensus, the worldâs most excellent archery center, sits on eleven of the 155 acres that make up the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California. To the west of the archery range is a BMX course, and to the east, beyond several beach-volleyball courts and a field for javelin, discus, and shot put, is the Lower Otay Reservoir, home to Americaâs top rowers. To the south is Mexico. âYou see border patrol a lot,â Collin Klimitchek, one of the fifteen archers, including Lorig, who live and train at the O.T.C. year-round, told me when I visited in February. âThereâs been a couple of times when four-wheelers were flying all over the place looking for people.â Should Donald Trump become president and his wall prove too expensive, one could imagine him asking Americaâs best archers to put their skills to a more traditional purpose. âThen maybe we could get the government to fund us,â Guy Krueger, one of the USA Archery coaches, joked. The $29 million archery complex, which opened last October, was built not with taxpayer dollarsÂ â the United States Olympic Committee is privately fundedÂ â but with the largesse of a foundation run by Jim Easton, the CEO of Jas D. Easton, the worldâs largest archery-equipment company. Plans for the range had been in the works since the mid-2000s, but America isnât in the business of backing losers, and U.S. archers werenât winning any medals. âIf you donât medal, you donât exist,â Krueger told me. The archers were left with a field on the southern edge of the O.T.C., even closer to the border, which they shared with the occasional rattlesnake. The teamâs performance improved in 2012. The men won a silver at the London Olympics, and Lorig finished fourthÂ â the best result for an American woman since 1988. More surprising, archery was the most watched sport on cable during the first week of the Games, topping even basketball. âThe numbers for archery have been nothing less than huge,â Alan Wurtzel, an NBC executive, said at the time, speculating that âmaybe itâs The Hunger Games phenomenon.â The first movie in the series, which starred Jennifer Lawrence as an arrow-flinging revolutionary, had opened earlier that year, as had Brave, in which a Disney princess wields a bow, and the first Avengers film, featuring Hawkeye, whose superpower is the ability to fire a bow with complete disregard for both proper archery form and the laws of physics. By comparison, archers praise Lawrenceâs technique, which she refined over ten hours of training with Lorig. Now more than 20 million Americans pick up a bow every year, from hunters to yuppies on Groupon dates. An archery class I attended in Brooklyn was largely made up of young couples, plus a middle-aged woman who walked up to her target and snapped a photo of an arrow that had struck the bullâs-eye. âFor my future ex-boyfriends,â she said. Jay McAninch, the head of the Archery Trade Association, has seen cultural booms beforeÂ â Rambo helped push the rise of bowhunting in the EightiesÂ â but the industry hoped that this time would be different. In particular, McAninch wants to avoid the fate of fly-fishing, which saw an explosion in interest after A River Runs Through It until new fishermen realized that buying a rod and waders did not transform them into Brad Pitt. To help archery retailers cater to the expanding demographic, the A.T.A. recently published an article titled âWhat Motivates the Healthy, Happy, Hipster Hunter?â Guns made bows largely obsolete for their intended purpose by the seventeenth century. (Historians note an exception: China, where archers were so highly skilled and well equipped that they continued to prove useful in battling nomads on the open steppe.) It turned out that many of the archers at the O.T.C. came from hunting backgrounds. Klimitchek, who grew up in rural Texas, said that were he better at it, he would prefer to shoot a rifle, and Sean McLaughlin, who moved to the O.T.C. with his twin brother, Daniel, said both of them âliked shotgun, but figured this would be a little cheaper.â (Archers get to reuse their ammo.) Observing a practice, I noticed that the attire among the group was red-state collegiateÂ â a far cry from the bucket hats and long sleeves worn by archers from other countriesÂ â which meant sneakers, shorts, and bald-eagle belt buckles holding up American-flag quivers. (Backpack quivers are impractical for anyone but Errol Flynn.) Zach Garrett, a twenty-one-year-old from Missouri who is one of Americaâs top-ranking male archers, keeps his hair in a sidelong swoop, his lips in a boyish grin, and his Star Wars socks mismatchedÂ â Darth Vader on the left and a Stormtrooper on the right. âIf Iâm being honest, I got into archery after I saw the Lord of the Rings,â he said. Like most of the resident archers, Garrett moved to the O.T.C. after the 2012 Olympics, and has rarely left since. Easton built a dormitory overlooking the rangeÂ â athletes in other sports were stuck in older housing elsewhere on the campusÂ â so that the archers would never be far from their bows. Six days a week, Garrett and the rest walk to the range around eight in the morning and spend most of the next eight hours shooting 300 arrows, which they keep track of on the type of clicker used by bouncers at popular nightclubs. âWhoa, Hawkeye!â a young boy in a football jersey yelled as he walked by on a tour of the O.T.C. None of the archers reacted. âI thought Legolas was badass,â Garrett said, referring to Tolkienâs elf, who once slid down a staircase loosing arrows into half a dozen orcs. âNow I just stand still and shoot things, so itâs not really as badass.â Many of the resident athletes move to the Easton Center when they might otherwise be going off to college, which means that practice, during which the archers shoot side by side, has the air and humor of a locker room without the sweat or any serious injuries. When I asked LaNola Pritchard why she had a Band-Aid on her chin, she said that she had a âbow hickeyâÂ â which prompted Chris Webster, a former demolitions expert in the army who, at thirty-two, was the second-oldest O.T.C. resident after Lorig, to point out that his beard was going white at the precise spot where his string touched it. On a balcony looming over the scene was Kisik Lee, the teamâs head coach, who was silently filming the practice on an iPad. Lee came to the United States in 2006, after winning eight gold medals as a coach for his native South Korea, the dominant power in world archery. Korea has won every womenâs team gold medal since 1988, and three of the past four menâs golds. Leeâs directive was to translate that success to American archery, but his tenure got off to a rocky start. When he first arrived at the O.T.C., Lee began holding Bible-study sessions, and he sponsored the baptism of several athletes, saying that a strong sense of faith could help quiet an archerâs mind and that he found it difficult to coach athletes who did not believe that a divine presence might have some influence on their arrows. Lee was forced to stop proselytizing after a critical article appeared in the New York Times during the 2008 OlympicsÂ â it didnât help that God had not guided American arrows to any medalsÂ â but the archery community was even more rankled by Leeâs efforts to institute a measure of rigid control, as is found in Korea. When Korean children learn archery, in elementary school, they spend up to six months perfecting their form in front of a mirror before picking up a bow. âIf we tried to bring that system here, you would lose kids,â Guy Krueger told me. Leeâs attempt at a less tedious form of standardization was to recommend that all USA Archery coaches begin training students in a twelve-step shooting process that he had developed in consultation with a biomechanical engineer. Such heavy-handed instructions were met with some initial resistance among the peewee archery set, but Leeâs strict system was more familiar to Lorig, who was shooting by herself at the O.T.C., fifty feet away from the others, wearing a navy-blue bucket hat and headphones. (âIf you were forty, and you were training with people half your age all day, youâd get sick of it, too,â Zach Garrett said.) When she first tried archery, in sixth grade at a state-sponsored archery school in her hometown of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, Lorig was required to spend eight months drawing a bow in front of a mirror without loading an arrow. âYou know how we got mentally strong?â Lorig said. âThere was a small dark room, and we were strapped into a chair, and we had to watch this monitor with two lines and a square. The square was your heart rate.â Lorigâs coaches turned off the lights and started sporadically playing loud noises over a speaker. If Lorig jumped, and her heart rate spiked, she would get a shock on the wrists. Lorig said she got so good at the exercise that her coach had to turn up the voltage. The point was to show archers that the key to success is as much mental as physical. (The American Olympic team also uses a computer program that develops mental strength, but without the shocks.) The importance of psychological fortitude was apparent when Lorig went to her first Olympics, in 1992, as part of the Soviet Unified Team (consisting of athletes from the defunct U.S.S.R.). She was eighteen, four months pregnant, and managed to win a team bronze medal. But as the Soviet sports apparatus fell apart, Lorig was left on her own. She trained by candlelight in her mother-in-lawâs basementÂ â âGeorgians live together, like Italians,â she saidÂ â while her newborn slept. She competed for Georgia in the 1996 Olympics, and decided that she didnât want to leave the United States. âI lived where everybody goes first,â she said. âBrooklyn.â She stopped shooting and worked odd jobsÂ â at a toy store, in a gymÂ â to support her family. âEverything was kind of hard, just struggling to every day survive,â Lorig said, in her still-stilted English. âI only knew âhi,â âbye,â and f-word.â She did not see her parents for two years. Eventually, Lorig moved to New Jersey, where she found an archery range and began training again while continuing to work full-time. She represented Georgia once more, in the 2000 Olympics, but her life had begun to fall apartÂ â âdivorces, kids growingâÂ â which made an archery career even harder. She watched the 2004 Games at home. Two years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, Lorig moved into the dorms at the O.T.C., leaving her son back with family in New Jersey. She qualified for the 2008 Games, at which her immigration story, and a fifth-place finish, earned her the honor of carrying the American flag during the closing ceremony. (Russian troops were occupying parts of Georgia at the time, so some viewed her selection as a political statement.) Lorig got the Olympic rings tattooed on her forearm, saying that she could think of nothing that defined her more. âSheâs been competing longer than weâve all been alive,â Sean McLaughlin said. There is nothing physically preventing Lorig from continuing as a professional archerÂ â her 2008 teammate, Butch Johnson, made his last of five Olympic teams at fifty-twoÂ â but younger competitors have been catching up to her. American men had already secured spots for a full team of three in the Rio Olympics, but the women were guaranteed just one spot, with a chance to qualify a team in June. After the first of three U.S. Olympic trials, held last September, Lorig was in fourth place. The top rank belonged to Mackenzie Brown, a twenty-one-year-old from Texas, who had seen Lorig as one of her role models while she was growing up. They were now sharing a two-room suite at the O.T.C. One afternoon, as I watched Zach Garrett shoot, I told him I was surprised that Lorig had continued to stay at the dorms. âSee, thatâs the thing,â he said, after setting his bow on the ground. âSome of these people who are really good, they donât have anywhere else to go.â Lorig was off shooting by herself, with her headphones plugged in again, blocking out any distraction. Watching an indoor-archery competition feels like sitting under a skylight during a rainstorm; the constant thwack of strings and the low thump of arrows hitting targets produces a steady beat. The National Indoor Championships, held at the Easton Center in February, was an especially cacophonous event, with a hundred contestants firing. They represented the archery worldâs constituent parts: There were college teams, retirees, and teenagers reading science textbooks between shots, which suggested that the watchful parents in the stands were primarily interested in how ânational archery championâ would look on a college application. Many of the bows were taller than the people who shot them. Lorig, Garrett, and several of the other O.T.C. residents stood together in the middle of the range. They were using the particular type of bow required by the Olympics, a recurve, so called because it bends back toward the target at each end. Recurves have been around for thousands of yearsÂ â some scholars say that thereâs one in the Odyssey. Top-of-the-line modern recurves are made with the same synthetic foam that allows submarines to withstand extreme pressure, and come tricked out with sights, wind gauges, and bayonetlike stabilizers. A recurve is simple, however, compared with a compound bow, which was invented in 1966 by Holless Wilbur Allen, a hunter in Missouri who sawed off the ends of a recurve and ran the string through a pulley system that gave his arrows more speed. The compound is now the most commonly used bow in America because it is the choice of hunters, like Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, who once posed for a Time magazine photo shoot in a suit and tie with a compound bow at full draw. (Ryan has taken up restructuring the excise tax on arrows as a pet cause.) Though compounds arenât permitted in the Olympics, any type of bow was allowed in the National Indoor Championships, so Lorig was shooting next to a man who looked as if he were trying to bag several deer. Whatever the bow, all archers aim at a target with a bullâs-eye, worth ten points, surrounded by concentric rings, each worth a decreasing number of points. In competition, archers shoot three arrows in a row, after which they score their own shots along with another archer, who provides a check on any cheating. When a mark is too close to call, a judge is summoned to examine it with a magnifying glass. Garrett recently won a match after a judge pulled out a pair of calipers and determined that his arrow had landed millimeters closer to the center than his opponentâs. Lorig won in her category by eight points, a landslide, but the victory was largely meaningless. The National Indoor Championships didnât count for her Olympic rankingÂ â Mackenzie Brown had skipped the competition to attend a mental-training seminarÂ â and netted her just $2,000. Financially speaking, Olympic sports divide into three categories: those like basketball or soccer, for which the Games hardly matter; prestige events like gymnastics and track, in which a strong performance can mean six- or seven-figure endorsement deals; and everything else. âEveryone in our program I would consider a âprofessionalâ archer, but no oneâs getting paid,â Chris Webster, the former soldier, said over lunch in the O.T.C. cafeteria, where the archers were commiserating with a member of the womenâs rugby team about their crappy gear. Archery companies sometimes do pay archers if they win certain tournaments, but not much. Guy Krueger, who trained at the O.T.C. in the early 2000s, said, âI had an average of probably less than twenty dollars in my bank account for probably two years.â Every professional archer has a side hustle. A former O.T.C. resident made extra cash as a stunt double for an episode of CSI: Miami, in which someone was murdered by bow and arrow. One member of the silver-winning 2012 menâs Olympic team, Jacob Wukie, found work as a restaurant inspector, and another, Jake Kaminski, runs an archery company with his wife near their home in Gainesville, Florida, where he was training for Rio. Lorig once spent six months driving a cab in Los Angeles. After coaching Jennifer Lawrence, she had been able to recruit a stable of students, but that hardly paid enough to live on. âIf not for archery, I would probably be married and milking the cows in Georgia,â she said with a shrug. After a failed attempt to secure an endorsement deal with Celestial Seasonings, which sells a Tension Tamer among its varieties of herbal tea, Lorig finally landed her first campaign with a non-archery brand in April: Bridgestone put her in a commercial to show how far its tires could go after she pierced one with an arrow. The worldâs only true archery salaries are in Korea, where Coach Lee estimated that two hundred or so archers receive upwards of $50,000 to compete for professional teams sponsored by companies like Hyundai and Samsung. âWhen they go to competitions, they fly business class!â he said. Given that GE and Apple were unlikely to start sponsoring U.S. archery teams, Lee hoped for government support. Korean archers who win an Olympic gold medal are awarded a pension for lifeÂ â Americans get $25,000Â â while several European countries give archers do-nothing military jobs. âBradyâs the only one doing it for a living,â Chris Webster said. âYou know, the twenty-foot guy on the wall?â He meant Brady Ellison, who led the American menâs team in 2012 and has his face emblazoned on a mural in the Easton Centerâs lobby. Ellisonâs forearm is covered in tattoos marking his Olympic appearances in Beijing and London, and he plans to wrap another around his elbow for Rio. Beyond his archery talent, Ellison has both the rugged image that appeals to companies catering to survivalistsÂ â he killed a bear with a bow when he was elevenÂ â and a television-friendly personality: after winning a competition, he headed for a young woman waiting on the sidelines (now his ex-wife), grabbed her by the waist, and kissed her, bow still in hand. âI think the crowd should be pumped up and cheering,â he told me. âYou win a big tournament, donât act like your grandma just died.â The hope was that Ellisonâs pseudo-celebrity would give novice archers something to aspire to, in the same way that young basketball players can dream of a shoe deal with Nike. But it was unclear exactly how well he was doing. Some archers suggested that his income had inched into the six figures, but a friend of Ellisonâs told me his guaranteed sponsorship money was less than half that. Other archery careers never got off the ground. One day at the O.T.C., Lorig was visited by her son, Levan, with whom she had been pregnant at the 1992 Games. Lorig coached Levan for years, hoping that they might become the first motherâson duo to qualify for a single Olympics in any sport, but Levan broke her heart two years ago, when he sold his bow to buy a car. He now had a girlfriend, and hadnât shot in months. When a friend tried to explain to Lorig that, for an American child, your twenties are a period of exploration rather than commitment, Lorig couldnât quite understand. âHe dreams about the Olympics,â Lorig said. âBut it takes a lot more than just talk and shooting arrows once in five months. I donât take off. I live here. I live in archery.â To observe the archery boomâs grassroots, I went to Balboa Park, in the center of San Diego, and met several members of the San Diego Archers. The clubâs main range is in a canyon squeezed between the zoo, a freeway, and the San Diego Museum of Man, and bisected by a bridge. âOne evening a couple years ago, I was shooting at a target under the bridge,â Patty Koutz, the groupâs secretary, told me. âAnd I hear someone yell, âHey! I just saw this movie that had archery in it, and I decided I wanted to try it, and then I come walking across the bridge and here you are.â â The man had seen the first Hunger Games film. Since then, the groupâs membership has tripled, but Koutz said the series was just one reason for the expansion. The club now has a number of soldiersÂ â archery is sometimes used as a treatment for PTSDÂ â and others who got into the sport for its meditative value. (Zen in the Art of Archery, the 1953 book by Eugen Herrigel, a German philosophy professor, is a foundational text in the mindfulness movement.) Koutz is a fiftysomething molecular biologist. When we met, she wore earrings in the shape of the earth, and she said that when she joined, in 2008, she had been one of many people taking to the sport as a way to bond with nature. She showed me around the range, which was set up like a golf course amid a forest of palm trees and cacti. Once a month, the club arranges a series of foam targets in animal shapes. âWeâve got elk, skunk, goats, bobcat, bear,â she said. For a recent competition, they had attached a pig to a zip line. Koutz had taken a class to learn how to build her own wooden longbow, and said that she gets most of her enjoyment out of shooting with gear she made. Plus, she explained, âA lot of people are realizing this is a sport where you donât have to be especially physically fit.â That was something I had noticed in Chula Vista, where the archers were taut in the forearms and back but did not fill out their T-shirts. Olympic archers walk four or five miles a day to retrieve their practice arrows, but weight lifting isnât required. (Some is recommended for general fitness, and to prevent lopsidedness: archers report that the muscles on their right sides are much larger than those on their left.) The World Anti-Doping Agency administers drug tests to archers, but most at the O.T.C. couldnât imagine anything having much effect on them. âWeed, maybe, to help you relax?â Webster suggested. One archer had heard of parents feeding their children ginseng root to increase focus, which you can read more about in âEffect of Ginseng Preparation for Improvement of Cerebral Blood Flow in Professional Archers.â The only real way to tell an archer from a member of the general population is to get a good look at her hands. âThis is what happens when you shoot a bow,â Lorig said, showing me the three fingers on her right hand that she uses to draw her string. They were covered in as many calluses as a lead guitaristâs and noticeably fatter than the fingers on her left. The range of body types that fills archeryâs elite ranks was enough to get a guy dreaming about his own prospects. Jennifer Lawrence had gotten good in just ten hours with Lorig, and the actress Geena Davis nearly qualified for the 2000 Olympics after two years of practice. If I devoted myself to archery for the next four years, I began to wonder, was a trip to Tokyo in 2020 a possibility? For answers, I called Hoyt Legal, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and asked for Thomas Stanwood, a lawyer at the firm. Stanwood had shot compound bows as a child, but then gave up the sport until 2009, when he went to law school and needed a diversion. He picked up a recurve for the first time at thirty-two, and a month later finished fifth at the 2010 Indoor Nationals. Two years after that, he nearly qualified for the Olympics. âItâs not that difficult to get pretty good at archery,â Stanwood said. He had an understanding boss, an even more understanding wife, and, as of a year ago, a back yard large enough to fit a seventy-meter range. After dropping archery for two years to focus on his legal career, he was now shooting two hours a day after work, which was far less than the archers in Chula Vista, but enough to put him in sixth place after the second stage of the U.S. Olympic trials in April. As for my Tokyo hopes, Stanwood said that, in a matter of months, most anyone could become a very, very good archer. Becoming an Olympian was a more difficult task, and more difficult to explain. Stanwood, for starters, seems to be something of a savant when it comes to noncardiovascular competition: he is a scratch golfer and a pool shark, and played competitive video games before that became a more lucrative career than professional archery. âThe thing thatâs gonna take you to my level is some thing that canât necessarily be taught,â he said, comparing firing a bow to an internal symphony whose movements only work as a whole. âHow do you teach that?â he said. âPeople have to learn that for themselves.â Youâre sick,â Ed Lucero, who helps run the Easton Center, told me when I returned for the second night of the National Indoor Championships. Lucero is something of a Don King figure for San Diego archery, tasked with promoting the sportÂ â he signs his last name âLoose-ArrowâÂ â but even he seemed to recognize its limitations. âIf you have no vested interest, this is terrible to watch,â he said. âEven parents will tell you that after fifty arrows, theyâre falling asleep.â A scan of the bleachers confirmed as much, as did one parentâs reaction when an award was given to her child: âThank God. Now we can leave.â The most exciting moment during the entire three-day event came when everyone was startled by a loud pop: a man had fired without loading an arrow, and his bow snapped. There was general agreement that more explosions would be good for the sport. âIt would be cool if, when somebody shot a thirtyâÂ â three straight bullâs-eyesÂ â âthey had fireworks coming out of the target,â Collin Klimitchek suggested. Archery as a spectator sport has been in decline more or less since the eighteenth century; croquet was often deemed more interesting to watch. Archery was included in several early Olympics, but disappeared from 1924 to 1972 because the worldâs archers couldnât agree on a set of rules. Twenty years later, the Olympics introduced a head-to-head format; individual matches were divided into games, like in tennis, to make the competitions more exciting. But this can still be a tough sell to audiences, since even archers need binocular scopes to tell exactly where their arrows landÂ â Swarovski scopes are the bling of the archery worldÂ â and on television, itâs impossible to track an arrowâs path. Lucero thought that perhaps NBC could adopt something like the glowing puck that was briefly used to track movement during televised hockey games, an idea that is largely considered one of the great follies in modern sports television. (Wurtzel, the same NBC executive who shouted the sportâs praise in 2012, put the excitement in perspective by noting that âarchery is the new curling.â) The qualification round, which consists of each archer shooting seventy-two arrows, is a soporific process, and the organizers in London scheduled the event for the morning before the opening ceremony. Archers find themselves with a lot of downtime, and during the National Indoor Championships, Lorig checked Facebook on her phone, played with a dog that a friend had brought, and finished an entire sleeve of Ritz Crackers. Garrettâs girlfriend brought him leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory. As with most eccentrics, American archers tend to be comfortable with their position on the fringe. They view most mainstream encroachment with skepticism, and admit that an activity often used to relax the mind is not likely to become a fixture of sports broadcasting. Archery is meant to be a pursuit, not a performance, and even the most impressive shots make for quiet entertainment. All the action happens inside an archerâs head, and until ESPN hooks up archers to a brain scanner, there wonât be much for spectators to see. That didnât stop one fan from trying to get a better view by flying his drone over the range at the final U.S. Olympic trials, held on Memorial Day in central Florida. (Officials forced him to land it.) The field had been narrowed to eight archers of either gender. Mackenzie Brown led the womenâs pack, while Lorig had dropped to fifth place, two spots out of Olympic contention. It was ninety degrees, and all of the archers wore T-shirts and shorts; to keep the rising sun out of their eyes, many had attached small pieces of paper to their baseball caps. On the menâs side, Zach Garrett, Brady Ellison, and Jake Kaminski nabbed the three spots to compete in Rio as a team and as individuals. Lined up among the women, Lorig was using a new bow painted like an American flag, and after several months of disappointing performances, her decades of Olympic experience finally came through. She took first place in a series of elimination matches, beating Brown along the way; by the end, sheâd leaped into third, behind Brown and Hye Youn Park, a Korean archer who received her American citizenship just last year. The three advanced to a tournament in Turkey in mid-JuneÂ â their last chance to qualify as a team in Rio. During the quarterfinals, against Ukraine, Lorig was the final American female archer, and she needed a bullâs-eye to stave off elimination. She stepped up to shoot, pulled the string against her lips, but then she hesitated, and lowered her bow. When she finally fired, her arrow sailed wide. Mackenzie Brown would be the only American woman going to the Games. Lorigâs effort to reach another milestone had also been thwarted: a few weeks earlier, two pistol shooters from her native Georgia qualified as the first motherâson pair to compete in a single Olympics. Before the trials, each of the archers had already begun to face their uncertain futures. Klimitchek planned to enlist in the military; the McLaughlin twins wanted to go to school. Zach Garrett had started a stabilizer company with an archer who had a degree in aerospace engineering. All felt sure that they wanted to move as far away as they could from life inside the dorms at the O.T.C. Lorig remained an exception. âYou look at Khatuna, and longevityâs not really limited to what your body can do,â Garrett said. âItâs limited to how willing you are to put off the rest of your life.â Lorig told me that she plans to be back for 2020, and beyond. âOf course Iâm not quitting,â she said. âI have a goal, and Iâm very stubborn.â
410	dbpedia	1	15	https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/atlanta-1996/medals	en	Atlanta 1996 Olympic Medal Table	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_social_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5	https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private/t_social_share_thumb/f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5	[ "https://olympics.com/images/static/b2p-images/logo_color.svg", "https://img.olympics.com/images/image/private//f_auto/primary/kuxmoldrq2rjc9wases5" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Official medal table of the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. Find an alphabetical list of medals and celebrate the achievements of 1996's finest athletes	en	https://olympics.com/ima…h-icon-16x16.png	Olympics.com	https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/atlanta-1996/medals
410	dbpedia	1	42	https://kids.kiddle.co/Archery_at_the_Summer_Olympics	en	Archery at the Summer Olympics facts for kids	https://kids.kiddle.co/i…avicon-16x16.png	https://kids.kiddle.co/i…avicon-16x16.png	[ "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/wk/kids-robot.svg", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/wk/kids-search-engine.svg", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/8/8e/Archery_pictogram.svg/150px-Archery_pictogram.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/8/8e/US_flag_45_stars.svg/22px-US_flag_45_stars.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/ae/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c8/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c8/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c8/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984-1997%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/76/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/76/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/76/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281997-2011%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/ae/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/22px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9e/Flag_of_Japan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/1/14/Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg/22px-Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/02/Russian_Olympic_Committee_flag.png/22px-Russian_Olympic_Committee_flag.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fc/Flag_of_Mexico.svg/22px-Flag_of_Mexico.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a7/Olympic_flag.svg/22px-Olympic_flag.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/1/1a/Flag_of_Argentina.svg/22px-Flag_of_Argentina.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Austria.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/dd/Flag_of_Azerbaijan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Azerbaijan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f9/Flag_of_Bangladesh.svg/22px-Flag_of_Bangladesh.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/8/85/Flag_of_Belarus.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belarus.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/91/Flag_of_Bhutan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Bhutan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/6/6f/Flag_of_the_Central_African_Republic.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Central_African_Republic.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/4b/Flag_of_Chad.svg/22px-Flag_of_Chad.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/78/Flag_of_Chile.svg/22px-Flag_of_Chile.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/1/14/Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg/22px-Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/21/Flag_of_Colombia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Colombia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f2/Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg/22px-Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/bd/Flag_of_Cuba.svg/22px-Flag_of_Cuba.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d4/Flag_of_Cyprus.svg/22px-Flag_of_Cyprus.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/2d/Flag_of_Czechoslovakia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Czechoslovakia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_the_Dominican_Republic.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Dominican_Republic.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/e/e8/Flag_of_Ecuador.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ecuador.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fe/Flag_of_Egypt.svg/22px-Flag_of_Egypt.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/3/34/Flag_of_El_Salvador.svg/22px-Flag_of_El_Salvador.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/8/8f/Flag_of_Estonia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Estonia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Fiji.svg/22px-Flag_of_Fiji.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/0f/Flag_of_Georgia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Georgia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/ae/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/22px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/07/Flag_of_Guam.svg/22px-Flag_of_Guam.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/5b/Flag_of_Hong_Kong.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hong_Kong.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_India.svg/22px-Flag_of_India.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/22px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f6/Flag_of_Iraq.svg/22px-Flag_of_Iraq.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/45/Flag_of_Ireland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ireland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d4/Flag_of_Israel.svg/22px-Flag_of_Israel.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fe/Flag_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire.svg/22px-Flag_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9e/Flag_of_Japan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/c0/Flag_of_Jordan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Jordan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d3/Flag_of_Kazakhstan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/22px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/56/Flag_of_Laos.svg/22px-Flag_of_Laos.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Libya.svg/22px-Flag_of_Libya.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/da/Flag_of_Luxembourg.svg/22px-Flag_of_Luxembourg.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d1/Flag_of_Malawi.svg/22px-Flag_of_Malawi.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/6/66/Flag_of_Malaysia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Malaysia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Malta.svg/22px-Flag_of_Malta.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/77/Flag_of_Mauritius.svg/22px-Flag_of_Mauritius.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/fc/Flag_of_Mexico.svg/22px-Flag_of_Mexico.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/27/Flag_of_Moldova.svg/22px-Flag_of_Moldova.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/e/ea/Flag_of_Monaco.svg/22px-Flag_of_Monaco.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Mongolia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Mongolia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/2c/Flag_of_Morocco.svg/22px-Flag_of_Morocco.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/8/8c/Flag_of_Myanmar.svg/22px-Flag_of_Myanmar.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9b/Flag_of_Nepal.svg/16px-Flag_of_Nepal.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/22px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/22px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/99/Flag_of_the_Philippines.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Philippines.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Portugal.svg/22px-Flag_of_Portugal.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/28/Flag_of_Puerto_Rico.svg/22px-Flag_of_Puerto_Rico.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/6/65/Flag_of_Qatar.svg/22px-Flag_of_Qatar.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/3/31/Flag_of_Samoa.svg/22px-Flag_of_Samoa.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/b1/Flag_of_San_Marino.svg/22px-Flag_of_San_Marino.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/0d/Flag_of_Saudi_Arabia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Saudi_Arabia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/e/e6/Flag_of_Slovakia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Slovakia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f0/Flag_of_Slovenia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Slovenia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/74/Flag_of_the_Solomon_Islands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Solomon_Islands.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a7/Olympic_flag.svg/22px-Olympic_flag.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Switzerland.svg/20px-Flag_of_Switzerland.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/d/d0/Flag_of_Tajikistan.svg/22px-Flag_of_Tajikistan.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_Thailand.svg/22px-Flag_of_Thailand.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Tonga.svg/22px-Flag_of_Tonga.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/c/ce/Flag_of_Tunisia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Tunisia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/22px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/4e/Flag_of_Uganda.svg/22px-Flag_of_Uganda.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Vanuatu.svg/22px-Flag_of_Vanuatu.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/06/Flag_of_Venezuela.svg/22px-Flag_of_Venezuela.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/2/21/Flag_of_Vietnam.svg/22px-Flag_of_Vietnam.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/f/f8/Flag_of_the_United_States_Virgin_Islands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States_Virgin_Islands.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/7/71/Flag_of_SFR_Yugoslavia.svg/22px-Flag_of_SFR_Yugoslavia.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/6/6a/Flag_of_Zimbabwe.svg/22px-Flag_of_Zimbabwe.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/0/09/Flag_of_South_Korea.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/thumb/5/5f/Kids_robot.svg/60px-Kids_robot.svg.png", "https://kids.kiddle.co/images/wk/kids-search-engine.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	Learn Archery at the Summer Olympics facts for kids	en	/images/wk/favicon-16x16.png		https://kids.kiddle.co/Archery_at_the_Summer_Olympics	Quick facts for kids Archery at the Summer Olympics Governing body WA Events 5 (men: 2; women: 2; mixed: 1) Games 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 Medalists Archery had its debut at the 1900 Summer Olympics and has been contested in 17 Olympiads. 105 nations have competed in the Olympic archery events, with France appearing the most often at 15 times. The most noticeable trend has been the excellence of South Korean archers, who have won 27 out of 39 gold medals in events since 1984. It is governed by the World Archery Federation (WA; formerly FITA). Recurve archery is the only discipline of archery featured at the Olympic Games. Archery is also an event at the Summer Paralympics. Summary Key Archery events not held Olympic Games not held Games Year Events Best Nation 1 2 1900 7 France 3 1904 6 United States 4 1908 3 Great Britain 5 6 7 1920 10 Belgium 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Games Year Events Best Nation 17 18 19 20 1972 2 United States 21 1976 2 United States 22 1980 2 Soviet Union 23 1984 2 United States 24 1988 4 South Korea 25 1992 4 South Korea 26 1996 4 South Korea 27 2000 4 South Korea 28 2004 4 South Korea 29 2008 4 South Korea 30 2012 4 South Korea 31 2016 4 South Korea 32 2020 5 South Korea History The second Olympic Games, Paris 1900, saw the first appearance of archery. Seven disciplines in varying distances were contested. At the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, six archery events were contested, of which three were men's and three were women's competitions. Team archery was introduced, as was women's archery. At the 1908 Summer Olympics, three archery events were held. Archery was not featured at the 1912 Summer Olympics but reappeared in the 1920 Summer Olympics. Archery has appeared in the Olympics sixteen times, as between 1920 and 1972 it was not included in the Games. The archery competition featured at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich consisted of a double FITA Round (from 2014 known as a '1440 Round') competition with two events: men's individual and women's individual. This form of archery competition was held until the 1988 Summer Olympics, when team competition was added and the Grand FITA Round format was used. Starting at the 1992 Summer Olympics, the Olympic Round with head-to-head matches was adopted and has been used ever since. In 1984 at Los Angeles, Neroli Fairhall of New Zealand was the first paraplegic competitor in the Olympic Games. The USA Archery Team has three Olympic quota slots in each division; the top three archers per division are nominated to the U.S. Olympic Team. Since 2004, the archery competitions at the Olympic Games have often been held in iconic locations like the Panathinaikos Stadium (2004), Lord’s Cricket Ground (2012), and the Sambodromo (2016). Medal tables Archery competitions in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1920 years preceded the modern, standardized archery competition under the rules of the World Archery Federation. They were contested by three nations at most in any given year, and were dominated by home nations in both the number of participants and number of medals won. The nations that competed during that period were France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States. In some events in Antwerp (1920) bronze medals were not awarded as only two nations competed. 1972 marked the beginning of the modern archery competition at the Olympic Games. The events began to use standardized forms and many nations competed. This table includes archery competitions in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1920 in addition to the ones from 1972 on. Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 South Korea 27 9 7 43 2 United States 14 10 9 33 3 Belgium 11 7 3 21 4 France 7 11 7 25 5 Italy 2 3 4 9 6 Great Britain 2 2 5 9 7 China 1 6 2 9 8 Soviet Union 1 3 3 7 9 Finland 1 1 2 4 Ukraine 1 1 2 4 11 Netherlands 1 1 1 3 12 Australia 1 0 2 3 13 Spain 1 0 0 1 Turkey 1 0 0 1 15 Japan 0 3 4 7 16 Chinese Taipei 0 2 2 4 Germany 0 2 2 4 18 ROC 0 2 0 2 Sweden 0 2 0 2 20 Mexico 0 1 2 3 21 Poland 0 1 1 2 Russia 0 1 1 2 23 Indonesia 0 1 0 1 24 Unified Team 0 0 2 2 Totals (24 nations) 71 69 61 201 Qualification Qualification spots in archery are allotted to National Olympic Committees rather than to individual athletes. The minimum age for an Olympic archer is 16, according to World Archery (The Federation for the sport). There are two ways an NOC may earn qualification spots: by team or by an individual. For each gender, an NOC that earns a team qualification spot may send three archers to compete in that team event; each archer also competes in the individual competition. NOCs that earn individual qualification spots are limited to a single entry in the individual event. For each gender, there are 12 team qualification spots: the host nation, the top 8 teams at the World Archery Championships, and the top 3 teams at the Final World Team Qualification Tournament. In addition to the 36 entries awarded through team qualification, an additional 28 individual qualification spots are available for each gender, bringing the total number of competitors in each individual event to 64. Qualification for the mixed team event is done through the ranking round at the Olympics. 2012 For 2012, the qualification rules were adjusted slightly. The host nation continued to receive three spots, as did the top eight teams at the World Championship. However, only 8 further individuals qualified through the individual placement at the World Championship. The continental tournaments received unbalanced allocations, with Africa and Oceania receiving only two qualification spots to the other continents' three. The Tripartite Commission retained its three selections. The remaining 13 spots were decided by Final Qualification Tournaments. Three additional team spots (9 individual spots) were allocated through the Final Qualification team event, and the last 4 spots through the Final Qualification individual tournament. If any of the NOCs qualifying through Final Qualification had already earned an individual spot, one more spot as added to the individual Final Qualification quota. 2016 Africa received 3 qualification spots in the continental tournaments, leaving Oceania as the only continent to receive 2 spots rather than 3. 2020 For the 2020 Olympics (which was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), the five Continental Games were added to the qualification pathway. The winning NOC in the mixed team event at each of the five receives one allocation spot per gender; there is also one quota spot per gender for the individual event winners at the Asian, European, and Pan American Games. The World Championship allocation was reduced to 4 per gender and the Tripartite Commission allocation was reduced to 2 per gender. The European continental tournament received an additional spot (up to 4) at the expense of Oceania (down to 1) and Africa (down to 2). The base allocation for the final individual qualification tournament was reduced to only 1 per gender, though this tournament also reallocates unused quota spots. Competition From 1988 through 2016, Olympic archery consisted of four medal events: men's individual, women's individual, men's team, and women's team. The mixed team event is being added in 2020. In all five events, the distance from the archer to the target is 70 meters. Individual In the individual competitions, 64 archers compete. The competition begins with the ranking round. Each archer shoots 72 arrows (in six ends, or groups, of 12 arrows). They are then ranked by score to determine their seeding for the single-elimination bracket. After this, final rankings for each archer are determined by the archer's score in the round in which the archer was defeated, with the archers defeated in the first round being ranked 33rd through 64th. Pre-2008 The first elimination round pits the first ranked archer against the sixty-fourth, the second against the sixty-third, and so on. In this match as well as the second and third, the archers shoot simultaneously 18 arrows in ends of 3 arrows. The archer with the higher score after 18 arrows moves on to the next round while the loser is eliminated. After three such rounds, there are 8 archers remaining. The remaining three rounds (quarterfinals, semifinals, and medal matches) are referred to as the finals rounds. They consist of each archer shooting 12 arrows, again in ends of 3 arrows. The two archers in the match alternate by arrow instead of shooting their arrows simultaneously as in the first three rounds. The losers of the quarterfinals are eliminated, while the losers of the semifinals play each other to determine the bronze medal and fourth place. The two archers who are undefeated through the semifinals face each other in the gold medal match, in which the winner takes the gold medal while the loser receives the silver medal. 2008 changes All matches in 2008 were in the previous finals round format, using 12 arrow matches. Archers alternated shooting by arrow. 2012 changes The individual match system was completely overhauled for the 2012 Olympics, though the single elimination with bronze medal match format was retained. The matches now consisted of sets. Each set comprised both archers shooting three arrows. The archer with the best score in the set received two points; if the set was drawn, each archer received one point. The match would continue until one archer reached six points. If the match was tied after five sets, a single arrow shoot-off was held with the closest arrow to center winning. Team The team event uses the results of the same ranking round as the individual competition to determine seeding for the teams. The team's three individual archers' scores are summed to get a team ranking round score. The competition thereafter is a single-elimination bracket, with the top 4 teams receiving a bye into the quarterfinals. The semifinal losers face each other in the bronze medal match. The set format from the individual competition was not used in 2012, but was used beginning in 2016. In team matches prior to 2016, each archer shot 8 arrows, with the best overall team score (for the total of 24 arrows) winning the match. Beginning with 2016, the set format (with each archer shooting two arrows per set for a total of six arrows per team per set) is used. Mixed team The mixed team competition uses the results of the ranking round to both qualify and seed teams. Each of the 16 teams that compete consist of one man and one woman. Events Early Games Early Olympic archery competitions had events that were unique for each of the Games. 1900 1904 1908 1912 1920 7 events, men only 6 events, men and women 3 events, men and women not held 10 events, men only Au Cordon Doré, 50 metres Au Cordon Doré, 33 metres Au Chapelet, 50 metres Au Chapelet, 33 metres Sur la Perche à la Herse Sur la Perche à la Pyramide Championnat due Monde Team round, men Team round, women Double American round, men Double Columbia round, women Double National round, women Double York round, men Double National round, women Double York round, men Continental style, men Individual fixed large bird Individual fixed small bird Individual moving bird, 50 metres Individual moving bird, 33 metres Individual moving bird, 28 metres Team fixed large bird Team fixed small bird Team moving bird, 50 metres Team moving bird, 33 metres Team moving bird, 28 metres Modern Games Current program Event 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 00 04 08 12 16 20 24 Years Men's individual X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14 Men's team – – – – X X X X X X X X X X 10 Women's individual X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14 Women's team – – – – X X X X X X X X X X 10 Mixed team – – – – – – – – – – – – X X 2 Events 2 2 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 50 Participating nations The following nations have taken part in the Archery competition. 96 In the table headings, indicates the Games year, from 1896 to 2012 3 Number of archers participated in the specified Games Archery not competed in these years Host nation for the specified Games NOC did not compete in Games or was superseded or preceded by other NOC(s) during these years Event 00 04 08 20 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 00 04 08 12 16 20 Years Argentina (ARG) 2 1 Australia (AUS) ANZ 3 4 3 2 3 3 5 6 6 5 2 4 4 13 Austria (AUT) 1 1 1 1 4 Azerbaijan (AZE) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 1 1 Bangladesh (BAN) 1 1 2 3 Belarus (BLR) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 2 2 2 2 1 1 3 7 Belgium (BEL) 18 14 3 2 2 5 3 1 1 1 1 1 12 Bhutan (BHU) 6 3 6 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 10 Brazil (BRA) 2 1 2 2 1 1 6 2 8 Bulgaria (BUL) 2 1 1 1 1 1 6 Canada (CAN) 6 4 3 4 3 3 1 2 4 2 2 2 12 Central African Republic (CAF) 1 1 Chad (CHA) 1 1 Chile (CHI) 1 1 1 1 4 China (CHN) 6 6 6 6 6 5 6 6 6 6 10 Chinese Taipei (TPE) 1 2 6 3 6 3 6 6 6 6 6 11 Colombia (COL) 1 1 3 2 4 2 6 Costa Rica (CRC) 2 2 1 3 Cuba (CUB) 4 1 1 1 1 5 Cyprus (CYP) 1 1 2 Czech Republic (CZE) Bohemia Czechoslovakia 2 1 2 Czechoslovakia (TCH) 3 1 2 Denmark (DEN) 4 1 3 3 1 1 2 3 1 9 Dominican Republic (DOM) 1 1 Ecuador (ECU) 1 1 Egypt (EGY) 1 4 2 2 2 2 6 El Salvador (ESA) 1 1 2 Estonia (EST) Russian Empire Soviet Union 1 1 1 1 1 5 Fiji (FIJ) 1 1 1 3 Finland (FIN) 3 2 4 5 6 3 3 3 1 1 2 1 12 France (FRA) 129 15 8 5 2 2 6 6 4 5 6 5 4 3 4 15 Georgia (GEO) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 1 3 2 2 1 3 6 Germany (GER) 6 3 4 4 2 2 2 4 8 West Germany (FRG) Germany 4 3 5 6 Germany 4 Great Britain (GBR) 41 6 4 4 6 6 6 3 3 4 6 6 2 6 14 Greece (GRE) 1 6 2 1 1 5 Guam (GUM) 1 1 Hong Kong (HKG) 6 3 1 1 4 Hungary (HUN) 2 4 3 2 4 India (IND) 3 3 2 6 4 6 4 4 8 Indonesia (INA) 1 2 2 4 4 3 1 2 2 1 4 4 12 Iran (IRI) 2 2 1 1 4 Iraq (IRQ) 1 1 Ireland (IRL) 1 3 2 3 1 1 6 Israel (ISR) 1 1 Italy (ITA) 3 4 3 3 3 4 6 6 4 6 6 6 4 13 Ivory Coast (CIV) 1 1 2 Japan (JPN) 4 4 5 6 6 5 5 6 5 6 4 6 12 Jordan (JOR) 1 1 Kazakhstan (KAZ) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 6 4 3 1 2 2 3 7 Kenya (KEN) 2 1 1 3 North Korea (PRK) 2 3 3 1 2 1 1 7 South Korea (KOR) 3 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 11 Laos (LAO) 1 1 Libya (LBA) 1 1 Luxembourg (LUX) 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 8 Malawi (MAW) 1 1 2 Malaysia (MAS) 1 3 4 3 2 5 Malta (MLT) 2 1 1 3 Mauritius (MRI) 1 1 1 3 Mexico (MEX) 6 2 4 4 3 2 3 4 6 4 4 11 Moldova (MDA) Russian Empire ROU Soviet Union EUN 1 1 1 2 4 Monaco (MON) 1 1 2 Mongolia (MGL) 3 4 4 3 1 1 2 1 2 9 Morocco (MAR) 1 1 Myanmar (MYA) 1 1 1 1 1 5 Nepal (NEP) 1 1 Netherlands (NED) 6 8 2 2 3 6 2 3 3 1 3 4 12 New Zealand (NZL) ANZ 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 7 Norway (NOR) 4 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 8 Philippines (PHI) 3 2 1 1 1 2 6 Poland (POL) 4 4 3 3 6 4 5 4 6 2 1 2 12 Portugal (POR) 1 3 1 1 1 1 6 Puerto Rico (PUR) 1 2 1 2 1 5 Qatar (QAT) 1 1 Romania (ROU) 4 1 2 3 Russia (RUS) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 6 4 5 5 3 3 6 Samoa (SAM) 1 1 2 San Marino (SMR) 1 1 1 3 Saudi Arabia (KSA) 3 2 2 Slovakia (SVK) Hungary Czechoslovakia 2 1 2 Slovenia (SLO) Austria / Hungary Yugoslavia 1 3 1 1 1 5 Solomon Islands (SOL) 1 1 South Africa (RSA) 2 3 2 1 1 1 6 Soviet Union (URS) Russian Empire 6 3 4 6 EUN 4 Unified Team (EUN) URS Soviet Union 6 1 Spain (ESP) 2 2 4 4 4 1 1 2 1 2 4 2 12 Sweden (SWE) 5 4 3 5 6 3 6 6 3 1 1 1 1 13 Switzerland (SUI) 4 4 3 2 1 2 6 Tajikistan (TJK) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 1 1 2 Thailand (THA) 3 2 1 1 4 Tonga (TGA) 1 2 2 Tunisia (TUN) 2 1 Turkey (TUR) 2 6 6 4 6 4 2 1 2 2 10 Uganda (UGA) 1 1 Ukraine (UKR) Russian Empire Soviet Union EUN 6 6 6 5 6 4 3 7 United States (USA) 29 1 6 4 6 6 5 6 6 6 5 6 4 6 14 Vanuatu (VAN) 1 1 Venezuela (VEN) 1 2 2 3 Vietnam (VIE) 2 1 Virgin Islands (ISV) 1 1 Yugoslavia (YUG) 1 1 2 Zimbabwe (ZIM) 1 4 1 3 No. of nations 3 1 3 3 27 24 25 35 41 44 41 46 43 49 55 56 49 104 No. of archers 153 29 57 30 95 64 67 109 146 135 125 128 128 128 128 128 128 Year 00 04 08 20 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 00 04 08 12 16 20 Years Records The Olympic records for archery are for the competition format established in 1992. Further information: List of Olympic records in archery Men's current records # of arrows Archer(s) Score Games 72 (ranking) Kim Woo-jin (KOR) 700 2016 216 (team ranking) South Korea (KOR) Im Dong-hyun Kim Bub-min Oh Jin-hyek 2087 2012 Women's current records # of arrows Archer(s) Score Games 72 (ranking) An San (KOR) 680 2020 216 (team ranking) South Korea (KOR) Jang Min-hee Kang Chae-young An San 2032 2020 Mixed team current record # of arrows Archer(s) Score Games 144 (ranking) South Korea (KOR) Kim Je-deok An San 1368 2020 See also In Spanish: Tiro con arco en los Juegos Olímpicos para niños
410	dbpedia	0	9	https://www.usarchery.org/about/olympians	en	USA Archery	https://www.usarchery.or…022019150028.jpg	https://www.usarchery.or…022019150028.jpg	[ "https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=982160028848274&ev=PageView&noscript=1", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/logo-new.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/search-white.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/easton-foundations-080219160836.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/verona-110324113721.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/datacore-110324113550.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/ata-170320154340.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/national-archery-association-foundations-220321161356.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/usopc-170320155755.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/hoyt-150419202430.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/easton-090321185817.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/lancaster-archery-supply-090321185841.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/truball-axcel-sights-and-scopes-091120224739.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/american-whitetail-inc-240622141302.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/wiawis-270324081223.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/conquest-archery-230419073031.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/black-eagle-arrows-170320154115.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/darton-archery-120424084840.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/ramrods-150224193316.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/vortex-optics-170320154908.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/skb-cases-150419234221.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/mathews-100221171114.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/bass-pro-shops-010321222746.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/cabelas-010321222813.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/gold-tip-240622141228.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/bee-stinger-180321141750.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/gas-bowstrings-240222145608.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/hotelplanner-050824102028.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/lancaster-archery-foundation-050423091740.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/maven-110324113758.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/chinook-seedery-120424084708.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/sponsors/shrewd-170524100523.png", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/facebook.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/linkedin.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/instagram.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/youtube.svg", "https://www.usarchery.org/images/icons/email-white.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null	USA Archery's Olympians.	en	/images/favicon.png		https://www.usarchery.org/about/olympians	Olympic Archery Medal Count Gold = 8 Silver = 6 Bronze = 4 Men Women
410	dbpedia	3	20	https://www.nbclosangeles.com/paris-2024-summer-olympics/2024-olympics-numbers-stats-facts-countries-medals/3457104/	en	Paris Olympics by the numbers: Participating country stats and facts	https://media.nbclosange…esize=1200%2C675	https://media.nbclosange…esize=1200%2C675	[ "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/04/KNBC-Dgtl-Oly-On-Dark.png?fit=507%2C120&quality=85&strip=all&w=169&h=40", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/01/GettyImages-493053558-blue.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3000%2C1003&w=400&h=114&crop=1", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/01/NBC_PARIS2024_RGB_FRAMELESS_1C_WHITE-1.png?fit=2000%2C2000&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/web-231206-olympics-rings-paris.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=3500%2C1968&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/11/GettyImages-683272720-e1700610736326.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&fit=5000%2C2475&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=130&h=73&crop=1 130w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=170&h=96&crop=1 170w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=210&h=118&crop=1 210w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=250&h=141&crop=1 250w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=290&h=163&crop=1 290w, https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2023/12/231219-ledecky-biles-james-getty.png?fit=2250%2C1269&quality=85&strip=all&w=330&h=186&crop=1 330w", "https://www.nbclosangeles.com/wp-content/themes/nbc-station/client/src/images/olympics-logos/olympics-paris-2024.png", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/04/LA-web@3x.png?fit=838%2C72&quality=85&strip=all", "https://nbcu.tmsimg.com/assets/p27888479_b_h10_ab.jpg?w=960&h=540", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/08/GettyImages-2165152250.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=100%2C56", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/07/image_c79af8.png?resize=100%2C56&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/08/GettyImages-1482077825.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=100%2C56", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/08/cheviot-hills.png?resize=100%2C56&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/08/airbnb.png?resize=100%2C56&quality=85&strip=all", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/04/KNBC-Dgtl-Oly-On-Light.png?fit=507%2C120&quality=85&strip=all", "https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035083&cv=2.0&cj=1", "https://media.nbclosangeles.com/2024/04/KNBC-Dgtl-Oly-On-Light.png?fit=507%2C120&quality=85&strip=all" ]	[ "https://art19.com/shows/7cc83890-38c0-4c79-ae42-a7031db03f57/embed?playlist_type=playlist" ]	[]	[ "2024 Paris Olympics" ]	null	[ "Logan Reardon" ]	2024-07-12T07:36:47	Here are some surprising stats and facts about the participating countries of the past and present ahead of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.	en	https://media.nbclosange…ity=85&strip=all	NBC Los Angeles	https://www.nbclosangeles.com/paris-2024-summer-olympics/2024-olympics-numbers-stats-facts-countries-medals/3457104/	The whole world has its eyes on Paris. Athletes from more than 200 countries across the globe will attend the 2024 Summer Olympics in France's capital city. Each of the Olympians gathering in Paris this summer will add to the long history of the Olympics, which have been played every four years since 1896 (except 1916 due to World War I, 1940 and 1944 due to World War II and 2020 due to COVID-19). Paris has hosted the Olympics twice before in 1900 and 1924, so this return trip is long overdue. Here are some different records and stats ahead of the 2024 Olympics: How many countries are competing in the 2024 Olympics? There are 206 countries in the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and each will have at least one athlete in Paris this summer. What is the smallest country to compete in the Olympics? Nauru holds the distinction as the smallest nation (by population) to compete in the Olympics. A small island located in the Pacific Ocean to the northeast of Australia, Nauru has an estimated population of 12,100. The country has yet to medal since it first competed in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Nauru has only competed in the Olympics for weightlifting, judo and track and field, sending a total of 15 athletes in the last seven Games (1996 to 2020). Which is the most populous country to never win an Olympic medal? Bangladesh, with a population of 169,828,911 in its 2022 census, is the most populous country to never win an Olympic medal. While Bangladesh has never competed in the Winter Olympics, it has sent athletes to the Summer Olympics every four years since 1984. Forty-nine athletes from Bangladesh have represented their country in track and field, archery, swimming, shooting, gymnastics and golf over the last 10 Olympics. Four more athletes will represent Bangladesh in 2024: Md Sagor Islam (archery), Md Robiul Islam (shooting), Samiul Islam Rafi (swimming) and Sonia Aktar (swimming). Which country has the fewest Olympic medals? There are more than 60 countries that have never earned an Olympic medal. Some of the larger, more notable countries never to medal (outside of Bangladesh) include Bolivia, Cambodia, Honduras, Nepal and Yemen. Which country has competed in the most Olympics without winning a gold medal? Monaco has competed in 21 Summer Games without earning a gold medal, which is the most appearances ever without a gold. Known for its famed Formula 1 race and as a tourist destination among the wealthy, Monaco has sent 114 athletes to the Summer Olympic Games since its first trip in 1920. Monaco has not only never won a gold medal, it has never won any medal at the Olympics — summer or winter — in 32 appearances. In 2024, Monaco will send five athletes looking to earn that first medal: Marvin Gadeau (judo), Quentin Antognelli (rowing), Théo Druenne (swimming), Lisa Pou (swimming) and Tang Xiaoxin (table tennis). Which country has attended the fewest Olympics? Among currently existing nations, South Sudan and Kosovo have attended the fewest Olympics with two appearances each (2016 and 2021). Both of these countries have one key thing in common: they haven’t existed for very long. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, while Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, so neither country appeared in the Olympics until 2016 before returning in 2021 at the Tokyo Games. How many athletes are competing in the Paris Olympics? A estimate of 10,500 athletes are expected to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympics — and for the first time ever, the split will be 50% men and 50% women. Those 10,500 athletes will compete in 32 different sports and 339 events this summer. Which country has hosted the most Olympics? France will play host for a sixth time in 2024, but it will still be chasing the United States as the country that has hosted the most Olympics.
410	dbpedia	1	39	https://ipv6.topendsports.com/events/summer/oldest-youngest.htm	en	Oldest and Youngest Olympians			[ "https://www.topendsports.com/images/header.png", "https://www.topendsports.com/images/mountain-top.png", "https://www.topendsports.com/images/homepage-circle.png", "https://ipv6.topendsports.com/sport/equestrian/images/1901-arthur-von-pongracz-pd.jpg", "https://www.topendsports.com/images/letter-icon.png", "https://www.topendsports.com/sport/swimming/images/race-winner.png", "https://www.topendsports.com/images/footer-logo.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null		en			null	Here are some of the 'Oldest and Youngest' competitors at the Summer Olympic Games. See also our list of the oldest living Olympians, and the Oldest and Youngest at the Winter Olympics. Oldest Male Competitor The oldest ever Olympian is Oscar Swahn of Sweden. He was 72 years, 281 days old when he competed at the 1920 Olympics in shooting. He also qualified for the 1924 Olympics but withdrew without competing. other old competitors Arthur von Pongracz of Austria also competed at age 72 in Dressage in 1936, becoming one of the oldest ever competitors at the Olympics. Arthur von Pongracz was born June 25, 1864 and competed on August 12 and 13, 1936, so he was 72 years and 49 days old. Equestrian rider Hiroshi Hoketsu is the oldest Japanese Olympic representative, competing in 2012 at age 71. In 2012 he finished 40th in the individual dressage event. Hoketsu first took part in the Olympics in 1964, qualified in 1988 (but did not compete as his horse was quarantined), and also competed in 2008. In 2021, he was still competing for a spot on the Japanese team for the Tokyo Olympics. If he was successful, he would have overtaken Swahn to become the oldest ever Olympic athlete at 80 years old. Louis, Count du Douet de Graville (69 years, 95 days) competed in Equestrian at the 1900 Olympics. He was born February 27, 1831, and competed on June 2, 1900. If you include the art competitions (and some people do) and deceased people, then the oldest Olympic participant may be USA artist Winslow Homer who was a participant in the painting category at the 1932 Summer Games. He actually died in 1910, but if he was still alive he would have been 96 years, 157 days old when he competed. He was listed as "hors concours", by one definition means engaged in a contest but not competing for a prize. Someone who was alive when they competed in the art competition, British graphic artist John Copley won the Silver medal for his design "Polo Player" in 1948, just about a month before his 74th birthday. Oldest Male Gold Medalist Oscar Swahn won a gold medal for shooting at the 1912 Olympics, when he was 64 years and 280 days old. At the time of his win, Swahn was 9 months older than Galen Spencer had been when he won his gold medal in 1904. Other old gold medalists Galen Carter Spencer was an American who competed in archery at the 1904 Summer Olympics. He won the gold medal in the team competition. He was born September 19, 1840, and competed on September 19, 1904, which means he competed on his 64th birthday. Jerry Millner (born July 5, 1847) was a British shooter who represented Great Britain and Ireland at the 1908 Summer Olympics. He won a gold medal in the Free rifle at 1000 yards. At the time he was 61 years and 4 days old. Oldest Male Medalist The oldest male Olympic medalist is genarally considered to be Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn. He won a silver medal in 1920 when he was 72 years, 281 days old. Overall Swahn won six medals in a shooting event called "running deer" in appearances at the 1908, 1912, and 1920 Games. However, there is an older medalist from the little known art competitions that ran from 1912 to 1948. In the final year that these events were held, British graphic artist John Copley was awarded the silver medal for his design "Polo Player" just about a month before his 74th birthday. This makes him officially the oldest Olympic medalists ever. Oldest Female Competitor The oldest woman to compete in the Olympics was British rider Lorna Johnstone, who participated in Equestrian at the 1972 Olympic Games at 70 years and 5 days old. Another equestrian athlete, 66 years old Mary Hanna from Australia, became the second-oldest female Olympian when she competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Hanna is back in Paris as a reserve team member for Australia, but is not expected to compete. Oldest Female Medalist Lida Peyton "Eliza" Pollock from the USA competed in the 1904 Olympic Games archery competition. She won bronze in the Women's Double Columbia and National Rounds and as part of the women's Team Round she won a gold medal. She was aged 63 years and 333 days when she won gold. Oldest Female Gold Medalist Lida Peyton "Eliza" Pollock won gold aged 63 years and 333 days as part of the women's archery Team Round, though that as part of a team event. The oldest woman ever to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event was British archery winner Sybil “Queenie” Newall who won gold in the Double National Round in 1908, aged 53 years, 275 days. Youngest Male Medalists If you discount the young coxain who won gold in 1900, the youngest confirmed Olympic medalist is Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras (born on September 4, 1885), who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics. He was only 10 years old. He received a bronze medal in a team event (on 9 April 1896) at 10 years 218 days. The youngest male medalist in an individual event was Nils Skoglund of Sweden, who finished second in the High Diving, 1920 at age 14 yrs, 11 days. Youngest Male Gold Medalist There is speculation that a young boy from Paris was coxswain in the winning Dutch pair oars boat in the 1900 rowing event. Before they raced in the Final, their regular coxswain Hermanus Brockmann was determined to be too heavy at 60kg, so he was replaced by this boy. The boy's name or age has never been determined. Only a photograph exists, showing him with his two oarsmen FranÃ§oise Brandt and Roelof Klein - he may have been as young as seven. It is not sure which of the coxswain was given the Gold medal. The youngest confirmed male gold medalist is the German Klaus Zerta who was 13 years, 283 days when he competed as the coxain in the Men's Coxed Pairs, in 1960. The youngest male gold medalist in an individual event was Kusuo Kitamura of Japan, who won the 1500-m Freestyle swimming event in 1932 aged 14 yrs, 309 days. Youngest Male Competitor The youngest documented Olympian is 10 year old Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, but there may have been a younger competitor, the young boy of unknown age from Paris who was the substitute coxswain in the winning Dutch pair oars boat in the 1900 rowing event. Youngest Female Medalist There were three young Italian gymnasts Luigina Giavotti, Ines Vercesi and Carla Marangoni, who competed in 1928 in the women's team allround event, winning a silver medal. Luigina Giavotti was just 11 years and 301 days old, the others were 12 years and 99 days (Vercesi) and 12 years and 269 days old (Marangoni). The youngest ever medal winner in an individual Olympic Games event was Inge SÃ¸rensen of Denmark, who was 12 yrs, 21 days old when she won a bronze medal in the 200m Breaststroke in 1936. A recent young medallist was Japanese skateboarder Kokona Hiraki who was 12 years 243 days when she won silver in the women's park event in Tokyo 2020. Third in the same event was Sky Brown who was 13 years and 28 days old. Youngest Female Gold Medalist USA swimmer Donna Elizabeth de Varona competed in the relay heats for the 4x100m freestyle at the 1960 Olympics, and was presented with a gold medal. She was just 13 years and 129 days old. The youngest to actually compete for the medal, and in an individual event, was Marjorie Gestring of the USA who won the 3-meter Springboard Diving event in 1936 aged 13 years, 268 days. In 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics, the first female street skateboarding event was won by Momiji Nishiya of Japan, who was just 13 years 330 days, becoming the second youngest female gold medalist in an individual event. Youngest Female Competitor The youngest female competitor was the Italian gymnast Luigina Giavotti, who competed in 1928 aged 11 years 301 days. Related Pages The oldest living Olympians Oldest competitors per sport Youngest competitors per sport Related Olympians More Olympic Trivia Oldest and Youngest at the Winter Olympics Oldest and Youngest at the Commonweath Games Oldest and Youngest Australian Olympians Old Comments Commenting is closed on this page, though you can read some previous comments below which may answer some of your questions.
410	dbpedia	0	22	https://patch.com/connecticut/across-ct/olympic-gold-medalist-connecticut-resident-butch-johnson-dies-68	en	Olympic Gold Medalist, Connecticut Resident Butch Johnson Dies At 68	https://patch.com/img/cd…_31003130400.jpg	https://patch.com/img/cd…_31003130400.jpg	[ "https://cdn.patchcdn.com/assets/layout/icons/logo/logo.svg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/profile_pics/pearl-100th-1-copy___06014956567.jpg?width=64", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/badges/verified-patch-staff.svg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/20240531/124316/styles/patch_image/public/butch-johnson-2017-gold-key___31003130400.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103650/20240531/123252/styles/raw/public/processed_images/Butch%20and%20Theresa%20Johnson.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/22729282/20240809/064503/styles/patch_image/public/patch-stock-diner-breakfast-pancakes-eggs-food-booth___09184418016.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/21821499/20240809/030908/styles/patch_image/public/jamesrmartin-irs-tax-form-1040-shutterstock-1018857577___09150556026.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/22729282/20240809/123422/styles/patch_image/public/thunderstorm-and-shutter___09123119953.jpg", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/footer_patch_logo.png", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/apple_appstore.png", "https://patch.com/img/cdn/assets/layout/google_play.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Tim Jensen" ]	2024-05-31T10:50:31+00:00	Olympic Gold Medalist, Connecticut Resident Butch Johnson Dies At 68 - Across Connecticut, CT - The unexpected death of the 5-time Olympic archer and 1996 team gold medalist was announced this week by USA Archery.	en	https://cdn.patchcdn.com/assets/layout/icons/logo/favicon.ico	Across Connecticut, CT Patch	https://patch.com/connecticut/across-ct/olympic-gold-medalist-connecticut-resident-butch-johnson-dies-68	The unexpected death of the 5-time Olympic archer and 1996 team gold medalist was announced this week by USA Archery. WOODSTOCK, CT — Richard "Butch" Johnson, a resident of Woodstock who traveled the world competing in five consecutive Olympic Games and won a gold medal with the 1996 U.S. archery team in Atlanta, has passed away, according to an announcement from USA Archery. He was 68. A synopsis of his story posted by a family friend indicates Johnson had been living for several years with a blood cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Recently, his symptoms progressed, forcing removal of his spleen last week. His recovery was complicated by his leukemia, leading to a stroke from which he could not recover, and he died late Monday night. Beginning in Barcelona in 1992, Johnson represented his country in each Olympiad through the 2008 Games in Beijing. He teamed with Justin Huish and Rod White in Atlanta to capture the men's recurve team gold medal, the lone gold ever won by Team USA. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, the team of Johnson, White and Vic Wunderle took home the bronze medal. Other international success was achieved with team gold medals at the Pan American Games in 1999 (Winnipeg) and 2007 (Rio de Janeiro), and a team bronze medal at the 1999 World Championships in Riom, France. Individually, Johnson won both silver and bronze medals at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina. He placed second at the 2012 National Target Championships in Hamilton, Ohio, and earned the silver medal that same year at the Hoyt World Open. "Butch was an icon in the sport, matching a unique technique approach with elite success and unrivalled longevity as the USA Archery’s most-capped Olympian," World Archery secretary general Tom Dielen said. "His impact went beyond the shooting line to the many archers he coached and mentored. My condolences go to his wife Teresa, his family and the archery community in the USA." A 2012 feature story on npr.org illustrated Johnson's humility and lack of ego, despite all his success. The article revealed, "He keeps his medals in a cabinet under the kitchen sink.," and also described the red-headed athlete as "tall and broad-shouldered, and he doesn't say much." The last point became clearly evident in 2017, when he was accorded one of the state's most prestigious sports awards, the Gold Key, by the Connecticut Sports Writers' Alliance (now the Connecticut Sports Media Alliance). As part of a group of honorees which included recent Pro Football Hall of Fame electee Dwight Freeney, Johnson set what is believed to be an unofficial record for shortest time at the podium since the Gold Key Dinner debuted in 1940. His acceptance speech lasted 34 seconds. Funeral arrangements are not yet complete. Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
410	dbpedia	3	77	https://www.cbc.ca/sports/the-buzzer-newsletter-canada-medal-prediction-olympics-1.7253561	en	Here's how many medals Canada might win at the Olympics	https://i.cbc.ca/1.72535…0/1625994171.jpg	https://i.cbc.ca/1.72535…0/1625994171.jpg	[ "https://www.cbc.ca/a/images/nojsimg.gif", "https://i.cbc.ca/1.7253564.1720037362!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/1625994171.jpg", "https://subscriptions.cbc.ca/newsletter_static/images/1581432954501-the-buzzer.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Jesse Campigotto", "CBC Sports" ]	2024-07-03T20:15:00+00:00	CBC Sports' daily newsletter digs into a fresh set of podium projections for Canadian athletes at the Paris Summer Games.	en	/a/apple-touch-icon.png	CBC	https://www.cbc.ca/sports/the-buzzer-newsletter-canada-medal-prediction-olympics-1.7253561	Competition at the Paris Olympic Games begins exactly three weeks from today. It's kind of a soft launch, as we say in the media business, with a handful of preliminary-stage men's soccer and men's rugby sevens games kicking things off on Wednesday, July 24, followed by women's soccer (including Canada vs. New Zealand), archery, handball and more men's rugby sevens the next day. The opening ceremony is on Friday, July 26. Then it's off to the races, literally, as swimming highlights the first full day of competition on Saturday. Anyway, this seems like a good time to check in on the latest Olympic medal projections from our friends at Nielsen's Gracenote (a division of the company that measures TV ratings). Their model crunches the results from various world championships, World Cups, Grand Prixs and other important competitions to predict the medal winners for all 329 events in Paris. Gracenote's previous forecast, back in April, had Canada winning 22 medals — six gold, seven silver and nine bronze. That would match the country's second-highest total ever for a non-boycotted Summer Games (alongside Atlanta 1996 and Rio 2016) and fall two short of the non-boycott-record 24 medals Canada won three years ago in Tokyo, which included seven gold. The new projections, released last week, drop Canada down to 20 medals. The good news is that the gold count remains at six and the silver increases to nine, but the bronze falls to five. So, what's changed? For the gold medals, not much. Gracenote's model still has swimming phenom Summer McIntosh winning both of her best events (the 400m individual medley and 200m butterfly) and 800m runner Marco Arop, judoka Christa Deguchi and break dancer Philip Kim (aka Phil Wizard) taking gold in theirs. The only change is in the decathlon, where Canadians Pierce LePage and Damian Warner have flipped positions. Warner is now projected to repeat as Olympic champion while LePage, the reigning world champ, falls to silver. Unfortunately, that might be too optimistic an outlook for LePage. He missed last week's Canadian track and field trials due to an unspecified injury that has prevented him from competing for virtually the entire outdoor season. LePage was still named to the Olympic team, but it's fair to wonder whether he'll be fit enough to contend for a medal — or even make the trip to Paris. Even if LePage can't go, Canada looks poised for a lot of medals in track and field. Along with the golds for Warner and Arop, Gracenote is still predicting silver and bronze for reigning hammer throw world champions Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg while upgrading shot putter Sarah Mitton and the men's 4x100m relay team from bronze to silver. On the down side, the model still thinks relay anchor Andre De Grasse won't win a medal in the individual 100m or 200m, even though he's the defending Olympic champ in the latter and has never missed the podium in an Olympic event. The model might also be underestimating Katzberg. He came out of nowhere to win gold at the world championships last year, but the now 22-year-old looks like the real deal. Katzberg is undefeated in 2024 and owns the three farthest throws in the world this year. His best (a North American record 84.38m in April) is almost three metres clear of anyone else's. Meanwhile, Rogers's chances for the Olympic women's gold improved recently when world leader Brooke Andersen fouled out at the U.S. trials and failed to qualify for Paris. Removing the 2022 world champion, Rogers has the two best throws of the year. While Canada is projected to win the same number of track and field medals (seven) as it was in the April forecast, Gracenote cut the swimming total from six medals to four. McIntosh should have a hand in all of them: in addition to her pair of gold in the projections, she'll presumably be part of the women's 4x100m freestyle and 4x100m medley relay teams that are tapped to take bronze. But the 17-year-old sensation went from a bronze in the 200m individual medley in the April forecast to off the podium in the new one. Reigning Olympic 100m butterfly champ Maggie Mac Neil also lost her bronze slot. Another downer: the Canadian women's soccer team, whose surprising gold-medal victory in Tokyo was probably the highlight of the 2021 Games in this country, is projected to miss the podium for the first time since 2008. The forecast also has the rising men's basketball team falling short of the medals despite its historic bronze at last year's Basketball World Cup. The women's eight rowing team is projected for bronze after its thrilling Olympic gold-medal win three years ago. To end on some more positive things in the Canadian medal predictions, canoeist Katie Vincent is still projected for two silvers; Canada is expected to win its first artistic (formerly synchronized) swimming medal in 24 years; and the model says Tammara Thibeault will capture Canada's first boxing medal since the late David Defiagbon's heavyweight silver in 1996. Here's the full list of Canada's projected medals from the latest Gracenote release: Gold Swimming: Summer McIntosh (women's 200m butterfly) Swimming: Summer McIntosh (women's 400m IM) Track and field: Marco Arop (men's 800m) Track and field: Damian Warner (decathlon) Breaking: Philip Kim (B-Boys) Judo: Christa Deguchi (women's 57kg) Silver Track and field: Men's 4x100m relay team Track and field: Pierce LePage (decathlon) Track and field: Camryn Rogers (women's hammer throw) Track and field: Sarah Mitton (women's shot put) Boxing: Tammara Thibeault (women's 75kg) Canoe sprint: Katie Vincent (women's single) Canoe sprint: Katie Vincent and Sloan MacKenzie (women's double) Judo: Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard (women's 53kg) Artistic swimming: team event Bronze Swimming: Women's 4x100m freestyle relay team Swimming: Women's 4x100m medley relay team Track and field: Ethan Katzberg (men's hammer throw) Rowing: Women's eight Judo: Shady Elnahas (men's 100 kg)
410	dbpedia	3	2	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1996_Summer_Olympics_medal_winners	en	List of 1996 Summer Olympics medal winners	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico	[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Olympic_rings_without_rims.svg/40px-Olympic_rings_without_rims.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/23px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/23px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ireland_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Civil_ensign_of_Croatia.svg/22px-Civil_ensign_of_Croatia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/23px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Flag_of_Namibia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Namibia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svg/23px-Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Flag_of_Namibia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Namibia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svg/23px-Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Flag_of_Uganda.svg/23px-Flag_of_Uganda.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/21px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Flag_of_Mozambique.svg/23px-Flag_of_Mozambique.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Flag_of_Algeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Algeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Austria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Flag_of_Burundi.svg/23px-Flag_of_Burundi.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Flag_of_Morocco.svg/23px-Flag_of_Morocco.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Flag_of_Morocco.svg/23px-Flag_of_Morocco.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Portugal.svg/23px-Flag_of_Portugal.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/23px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Civil_Ensign_of_Slovenia.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Slovenia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Flag_of_Zambia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Zambia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Flag_of_the_Bahamas.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Bahamas.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/22px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/22px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Flag_of_Ecuador_%281900%E2%80%932009%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ecuador_%281900%E2%80%932009%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Flag_of_Mexico.svg/23px-Flag_of_Mexico.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kenya.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281996%E2%80%932009%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/21px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Flag_of_Syria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Syria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Flag_of_Malaysia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Malaysia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Flag_of_Malaysia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Malaysia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Flag_of_Lithuania_%281988%E2%80%932004%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Lithuania_%281988%E2%80%932004%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Flag_of_the_Philippines_%281936%E2%80%931985%2C_1986%E2%80%931998%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Philippines_%281936%E2%80%931985%2C_1986%E2%80%931998%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_Thailand.svg/23px-Flag_of_Thailand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_Thailand.svg/23px-Flag_of_Thailand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Flag_of_Algeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Algeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Flag_of_Tunisia_%281959%E2%80%931999%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Tunisia_%281959%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Flag_of_Puerto_Rico.svg/23px-Flag_of_Puerto_Rico.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Flag_of_Uzbekistan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Uzbekistan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Flag_of_Algeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Algeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Tonga.svg/23px-Flag_of_Tonga.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Flag_of_Slovakia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Slovakia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Civil_Ensign_of_Slovenia.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Slovenia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Flag_of_Slovakia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Slovakia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Flag_of_Latvia_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Latvia_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Flag_of_Moldova_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Moldova_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/21px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/21px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/20px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/23px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/23px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/22px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/22px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Civil_ensign_of_Croatia.svg/22px-Civil_ensign_of_Croatia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Mongolia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Mongolia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/23px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Flag_of_Georgia_%281990%E2%80%932004%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Georgia_%281990%E2%80%932004%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Flag_of_Uzbekistan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Uzbekistan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/22px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Civil_Ensign_of_Switzerland_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/22px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Argentina_%281861%E2%80%932010%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Flag_of_Israel.svg/22px-Flag_of_Israel.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/22px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belgium_%28civil%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/22px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Portugal.svg/22px-Flag_of_Portugal.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg/22px-Flag_of_Norway.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/22px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Austria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Flag_of_Slovakia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Slovakia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Austria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg/23px-Flag_of_Chinese_Taipei_for_Olympic_games.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_India.svg/23px-Flag_of_India.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/22px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/22px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Serbia_and_Montenegro_%281992%E2%80%932006%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/23px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Hungary.svg/23px-Flag_of_Hungary.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/23px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/23px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/23px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Flag_of_Armenia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Armenia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Bulgaria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Flag_of_Azerbaijan_%281991%E2%80%932013%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Azerbaijan_%281991%E2%80%932013%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg/23px-Flag_of_North_Korea.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg/22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/23px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/23px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Flag_of_Georgia_%281990%E2%80%932004%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Georgia_%281990%E2%80%932004%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/23px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Korea_%281984%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Flag_of_Armenia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Armenia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Kazakhstan_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Cuba_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Flag_of_Finland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg/23px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Belarus_%281995%E2%80%932012%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/23px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/23px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Flag_of_Moldova_%283-2%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Moldova_%283-2%29.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Flag_of_Ireland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ireland.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg/22px-Flag_of_Romania.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Flag_of_Belarus.svg/22px-Flag_of_Belarus.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg/22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Flag_of_Jamaica.svg/22px-Flag_of_Jamaica.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg/22px-Flag_of_Austria.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/22px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png", "https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Wikimedia projects" ]	2008-08-19T17:48:25+00:00		en	/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1996_Summer_Olympics_medal_winners	This is a list of medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, USA: Contents Aquatics Archery Athletics Badminton Baseball Basketball Boxing Canoeing Cycling Equestrian Fencing Field hockey Football Gymnastics Handball Judo Modern pentathlon Rowing Sailing Shooting Softball Table tennis Tennis Volleyball Weightlifting Wrestling Leading medal winners References Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's 3 metre springboard details Xiong Ni China Yu Zhuocheng China Mark Lenzi United States Women's 3 metre springboard details Fu Mingxia China Irina Lashko Russia Annie Pelletier Canada Men's 10 metre platform details Dmitri Sautin Russia Jan Hempel Germany Xiao Hailiang China Women's 10 metre platform details Fu Mingxia China Annika Walter Germany Mary Ellen Clark United States Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's 50 metre freestyle details Alexander Popov Russia Gary Hall Jr. United States Fernando Scherer Brazil Women's 50 metre freestyle details Amy Van Dyken United States Le Jingyi China Sandra Völker Germany Men's 100 metre freestyle details Alexander Popov Russia Gary Hall Jr. United States Gustavo Borges Brazil Women's 100 metre freestyle details Le Jingyi China Sandra Völker Germany Angel Martino United States Men's 200 metre freestyle details Danyon Loader New Zealand Gustavo Borges Brazil Daniel Kowalski Australia Women's 200 metre freestyle details Claudia Poll Costa Rica Franziska van Almsick Germany Dagmar Hase Germany Men's 400 metre freestyle details Danyon Loader New Zealand Paul Palmer Great Britain Daniel Kowalski Australia Women's 400 metre freestyle details Michelle Smith Ireland Dagmar Hase Germany Kirsten Vlieghuis Netherlands Women's 800 metre freestyle details Brooke Bennett United States Dagmar Hase Germany Kirsten Vlieghuis Netherlands Men's 1500 metre freestyle details Kieren Perkins Australia Daniel Kowalski Australia Graeme Smith Great Britain Men's 100 metre backstroke details Jeff Rouse United States Rodolfo Falcón Cuba Neisser Bent Cuba Women's 100 metre backstroke details Beth Botsford United States Whitney Hedgepeth United States Marianne Kriel South Africa Men's 200 metre backstroke details Brad Bridgewater United States Tripp Schwenk United States Emanuele Merisi Italy Women's 200 metre backstroke details Krisztina Egerszegi Hungary Whitney Hedgepeth United States Cathleen Rund Germany Men's 100 metre breaststroke details Fred Deburghgraeve Belgium Jeremy Linn United States Mark Warnecke Germany Women's 100 metre breaststroke details Penelope Heyns South Africa Amanda Beard United States Samantha Riley Australia Men's 200 metre breaststroke details Norbert Rózsa Hungary Károly Güttler Hungary Andrey Korneyev Russia Women's 200 metre breaststroke details Penelope Heyns South Africa Amanda Beard United States Ágnes Kovács Hungary Men's 100 metre butterfly details Denis Pankratov Russia Scott Miller Australia Vladislav Kulikov Russia Women's 100 metre butterfly details Amy Van Dyken United States Liu Limin China Angel Martino United States Men's 200 metre butterfly details Denis Pankratov Russia Tom Malchow United States Scott Goodman Australia Women's 200 metre butterfly details Susie O'Neill Australia Petria Thomas Australia Michelle Smith Ireland Men's 200 metre individual medley details Attila Czene Hungary Jani Sievinen Finland Curtis Myden Canada Women's 200 metre individual medley details Michelle Smith Ireland Marianne Limpert Canada Lin Li China Men's 400 metre individual medley details Tom Dolan United States Eric Namesnik United States Curtis Myden Canada Women's 400 metre individual medley details Michelle Smith Ireland Allison Wagner United States Krisztina Egerszegi Hungary Men's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay details United States (USA) Jon Olsen Josh Davis Brad Schumacher Gary Hall Jr. David Fox* Scott Tucker* Russia (RUS) Roman Yegorov Alexander Popov Vladimir Predkin Vladimir Pyshnenko Denis Pimankov* Germany (GER) Christian Tröger Bengt Zikarsky Björn Zikarsky Mark Pinger Alexander Lüderitz* Women's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay details United States (USA) Angel Martino Amy Van Dyken Catherine Fox Jenny Thompson Lisa Jacob* Melanie Valerio* China (CHN) Le Jingyi Chao Na Nian Yun Shan Ying Germany (GER) Sandra Völker Simone Osygus Antje Buschschulte Franziska van Almsick Meike Freitag* Men's 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay details United States (USA) Josh Davis Joe Hudepohl Brad Schumacher Ryan Berube Jon Olsen* Sweden (SWE) Christer Wallin Anders Holmertz Lars Frölander Anders Lyrbring Germany (GER) Aimo Heilmann Christian Keller Christian Tröger Steffen Zesner Konstantin Dubrovin* Oliver Lampe* Women's 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay details United States (USA) Trina Jackson Cristina Teuscher Sheila Taormina Jenny Thompson Lisa Jacob* Annette Salmeen* Ashley Whitney* Germany (GER) Franziska van Almsick Kerstin Kielgass Anke Scholz Dagmar Hase Meike Freitag* Simone Osygus* Australia (AUS) Julia Greville Nicole Stevenson Emma Johnson Susie O'Neill Lise Mackie* Men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay details United States (USA) Jeff Rouse Jeremy Linn Mark Henderson Gary Hall Jr. Josh Davis* Kurt Grote* John Hargis* Tripp Schwenk* Russia (RUS) Vladimir Selkov Stanislav Lopukhov Denis Pankratov Alexander Popov Roman Ivanovsky* Vladislav Kulikov* Roman Yegorov* Australia (AUS) Steven Dewick Phil Rogers Scott Miller Michael Klim Toby Haenen* Women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay details United States (USA) Beth Botsford Amanda Beard Angel Martino Amy Van Dyken Catherine Fox* Whitney Hedgepeth* Kristine Quance* Jenny Thompson* Australia (AUS) Nicole Stevenson Samantha Riley Susie O'Neill Sarah Ryan Helen Denman* Angela Kennedy* China (CHN) Chen Yan Han Xue Cai Huijue Shan Ying * Swimmers who participated in the heats only and received medals. Event Gold Silver Bronze Women's team details United States (USA) Suzannah Bianco Tammy Cleland Becky Dyroen-Lancer Heather Pease Jill Savery Nathalie Schneyder Heather Simmons-Carrasco Jill Sudduth Emily LeSueur Margot Thien Canada (CAN) Karen Clark Sylvie Fréchette Janice Bremner Karen Fonteyne Christine Larsen Erin Woodley Cari Read Lisa Alexander Valerie Hould-Marchand Kasia Kulesza Japan (JPN) Miya Tachibana Akiko Kawase Rei Jimbo Miho Takeda Raika Fujii Miho Kawabe Junko Tanaka Riho Nakajima Mayuko Fujiki Kaori Takahashi Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's team details Spain (ESP) Josep María Abarca Ángel Andreo Daniel Ballart Pedro Francisco García Salvador Gómez Manuel Estiarte Iván Moro Miguel Ángel Oca Jorge Payá Sergi Pedrerol Jesús Rollán Jordi Sans Carles Sans Croatia (CRO) Maro Balić Perica Bukić Damir Glavan Igor Hinić Vjekoslav Kobešćak Joško Kreković Ognjen Kržić Dubravko Šimenc Siniša Školneković Ratko Štritof Renato Vrbičić Tino Vegar Zdeslav Vrdoljak Italy (ITA) Alberto Angelini Francesco Attolico Fabio Bencivenga Alessandro Bovo Alessandro Calcaterra Roberto Calcaterra Marco Gerini Alberto Ghibellini Luca Giustolisi Amedeo Pomilio Francesco Postiglione Carlo Silipo Leonardo Sottani Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's individual details Justin Huish United States Magnus Petersson Sweden Oh Kyo-Moon South Korea Men's team details United States (USA) Justin Huish Butch Johnson Rod White South Korea (KOR) Jang Yong-Ho Kim Bo-Ram Oh Kyo-Moon Italy (ITA) Matteo Bisiani Michele Frangilli Andrea Parenti Women's individual details Kim Kyung-Wook South Korea He Ying China Olena Sadovnycha Ukraine Women's team details South Korea (KOR) Kim Jo-Sun Kim Kyung-Wook Yoon Hye-Young Germany (GER) Barbara Mensing Cornelia Pfohl Sandra Wagner-Sachse Poland (POL) Iwona Dzięcioł Katarzyna Klata Joanna Nowicka Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's 100 metres details Donovan Bailey Canada Frankie Fredericks Namibia Ato Boldon Trinidad and Tobago Women's 100 metres details Gail Devers United States Merlene Ottey Jamaica Gwen Torrence United States Men's 200 metres details Michael Johnson United States Frankie Fredericks Namibia Ato Boldon Trinidad and Tobago Women's 200 metres details Marie-José Pérec France Merlene Ottey Jamaica Mary Onyali Nigeria Men's 400 metres details Michael Johnson United States Roger Black Great Britain Davis Kamoga Uganda Women's 400 metres details Marie-José Pérec France Cathy Freeman Australia Falilat Ogunkoya Nigeria Men's 800 metres details Vebjørn Rodal Norway Hezekiél Sepeng South Africa Fred Onyancha Kenya Women's 800 metres details Svetlana Masterkova Russia Ana Fidelia Quirot Cuba Maria de Lurdes Mutola Mozambique Men's 1500 metres details Noureddine Morceli Algeria Fermín Cacho Spain Stephen Kipkorir Kenya Women's 1500 metres details Svetlana Masterkova Russia Gabriela Szabo Romania Theresia Kiesl Austria Men's 5000 metres details Vénuste Niyongabo Burundi Paul Bitok Kenya Khalid Boulami Morocco Women's 5000 metres details Wang Junxia China Pauline Konga Kenya Roberta Brunet Italy Men's 10,000 metres details Haile Gebrselassie Ethiopia Paul Tergat Kenya Salah Hissou Morocco Women's 10,000 metres details Fernanda Ribeiro Portugal Wang Junxia China Gete Wami Ethiopia Men's 110 metres hurdles details Allen Johnson United States Mark Crear United States Florian Schwarthoff Germany Women's 100 metres hurdles details Ludmila Engquist Sweden Brigita Bukovec Slovenia Patricia Girard France Men's 400 metres hurdles details Derrick Adkins United States Samuel Matete Zambia Calvin Davis United States Women's 400 metres hurdles details Deon Hemmings Jamaica Kim Batten United States Tonja Buford-Bailey United States Men's 3000 m steeplechase details Joseph Keter Kenya Moses Kiptanui Kenya Alessandro Lambruschini Italy Men's 4 × 100 metres relay details Canada (CAN) Robert Esmie Glenroy Gilbert Bruny Surin Donovan Bailey Carlton Chambers* United States (USA) Jon Drummond Tim Harden Michael Marsh Dennis Mitchell Tim Montgomery* Brazil (BRA) Arnaldo da Silva Robson da Silva Édson Ribeiro André da Silva Women's 4 × 100 metres relay details United States (USA) Chryste Gaines Gail Devers Inger Miller Gwen Torrence Carlette Guidry* Bahamas (BAH) Eldece Clarke Chandra Sturrup Savatheda Fynes Pauline Davis-Thompson Debbie Ferguson* Jamaica (JAM) Michelle Freeman Juliet Cuthbert Nikole Mitchell Merlene Ottey Gillian Russell* Andria Lloyd* Men's 4 × 400 metres relay details United States (USA) LaMont Smith Alvin Harrison Derek Mills Anthuan Maybank Jason Rouser* Great Britain (GBR) Iwan Thomas Jamie Baulch Mark Richardson Roger Black Mark Hylton* Du'aine Ladejo* Jamaica (JAM) Michael McDonald Greg Haughton Roxbert Martin Davian Clarke Dennis Blake* Garth Robinson* Women's 4 × 400 metres relay details United States (USA) Rochelle Stevens Maicel Malone-Wallace Kim Graham Jearl Miles Linetta Wilson* Nigeria (NGR) Olabisi Afolabi Fatima Yusuf Charity Opara Falilat Ogunkoya Germany (GER) Uta Rohländer Linda Kisabaka Anja Rücker Grit Breuer * Athletes who participated in the heats only and received medals. Event Gold Silver Bronze Women's 10 kilometres walk details Yelena Nikolayeva Russia Elisabetta Perrone Italy Wang Yan China Men's 20 kilometres walk details Jefferson Pérez Ecuador Ilya Markov Russia Bernardo Segura Mexico Men's 50 kilometres walk details Robert Korzeniowski Poland Mikhail Shchennikov Russia Valentí Massana Spain Men's Marathon details Josia Thugwane South Africa Lee Bong-Ju South Korea Erick Wainaina Kenya Women's Marathon details Fatuma Roba Ethiopia Valentina Yegorova Russia Yuko Arimori Japan Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's High jump details Charles Austin United States Artur Partyka Poland Steve Smith Great Britain Women's High jump details Stefka Kostadinova Bulgaria Niki Bakoyianni Greece Inha Babakova Ukraine Men's Long jump details Carl Lewis United States James Beckford Jamaica Joe Greene United States Women's Long jump details Chioma Ajunwa Nigeria Fiona May Italy Jackie Joyner-Kersee United States Men's Triple jump details Kenny Harrison United States Jonathan Edwards Great Britain Yoelbi Quesada Cuba Women's Triple jump details Inessa Kravets Ukraine Inna Lasovskaya Russia Šárka Kašpárková Czech Republic Men's Pole vault details Jean Galfione France Igor Trandenkov Russia Andrei Tivontchik Germany Men's Shot put details Randy Barnes United States John Godina United States Oleksandr Bagach Ukraine Women's Shot put details Astrid Kumbernuss Germany Sui Xinmei China Irina Khudoroshkina Russia Men's discus throw details Lars Riedel Germany Vladimir Dubrovshchik Belarus Vasiliy Kaptyukh Belarus Women's discus throw details Ilke Wyludda Germany Natalya Sadova Russia Ellina Zvereva Belarus Men's javelin throw details Jan Železný Czech Republic Steve Backley Great Britain Seppo Räty Finland Women's javelin throw details Heli Rantanen Finland Louise McPaul Australia Trine Hattestad Norway Men's Hammer throw details Balázs Kiss Hungary Lance Deal United States Oleksandr Krykun Ukraine Men's decathlon details Dan O'Brien United States Frank Busemann Germany Tomáš Dvořák Czech Republic Women's Heptathlon details Ghada Shouaa Syria Natallia Sazanovich Belarus Denise Lewis Great Britain Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's team Cuba (CUB) Juan Manrique Garcia Orestes Kindelán Antonio Scull Alberto Hernández Antonio Pacheco Massó Juan Padilla Omar Linares Lazaro Vargas Alverez Miguel Caldés Luis Eduardo Paret José Estrada González Rey Isaac Vaillant Luis Ulacia Alverez Pedro Luis Lazo Eliecer Montes de Oca José Contreras Omar Luis Martinez Omar Ajete Ormari Romero Jorge Fumero Japan (JPN) Masahiko Mori Jutaro Kimura Masao Morinaka Hitoshi Ono Takashi Kurosu Masahiro Nojima Makoto Imaoka Kosuke Fukudome Takayuki Takabayashi Yasuyuki Saigo Masanori Sugiura Takeo Kawamura Koichi Misawa Hideaki Okubo Nobuhiko Matsunaka Tadahito Iguchi Takao Kuwamoto Daishin Nakamura Tomoaki Sato Yoshitomo Tani United States (USA) Kris Benson R. A. Dickey Troy Glaus Chad Green Seth Greisinger Travis Lee Augie Ojeda Jason Williams Chad Allen Kip Harkrider A. J. Hinch Jacque Jones Mark Kotsay Matt LeCroy Braden Looper Brian Loyd Warren Morris Jeff Weaver Jim Parque Billy Koch Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's singles details Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen (DEN) Dong Jiong (CHN) Rashid Sidek (MAS) Women's singles details Bang Soo-hyun (KOR) Mia Audina (INA) Susi Susanti (INA) Men's doubles details Ricky Subagja and Rexy Mainaky (INA) Cheah Soon Kit and Yap Kim Hock (MAS) Denny Kantono and Antonius Ariantho (INA) Women's doubles details Ge Fei and Gu Jun (CHN) Gil Young-ah and Jang Hye-ock (KOR) Qin Yiyuan and Tang Yongshu (CHN) Mixed doubles details Kim Dong-moon and Gil Young-ah (KOR) Park Joo-bong and Ra Kyung-min (KOR) Liu Jianjun and Sun Man (CHN) Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's United States (USA) Charles Barkley Penny Hardaway Grant Hill Hakeem Olajuwon Karl Malone Reggie Miller Shaquille O'Neal Gary Payton Scottie Pippen Mitch Richmond David Robinson John Stockton FR Yugoslavia (YUG) Dejan Tomašević Miroslav Berić Dejan Bodiroga Željko Rebrača Predrag Danilović Vlade Divac Aleksandar Đorđević Saša Obradović Žarko Paspalj Zoran Savić Nikola Lončar Milenko Topić Lithuania (LTU) Arvydas Sabonis Rimas Kurtinaitis Darius Lukminas Saulius Štombergas Eurelijus Žukauskas Šarūnas Marčiulionis Mindaugas Žukauskas Gintaras Einikis Andrius Jurkūnas Artūras Karnišovas Rytis Vaišvila Tomas Pačėsas Women's United States (USA) Teresa Edwards Dawn Staley Ruthie Bolton Sheryl Swoopes Jennifer Azzi Lisa Leslie Carla McGhee Katy Steding Katrina Felicia McClain Rebecca Lobo Venus Lacy Nikki McCray Brazil (BRA) Hortência Marcari Oliva Maria Angélica Adriana Aparecida Santos Leila Sobral Maria Paula Silva Janeth Arcain Roseli Gustavo Marta Sobral Silvinha Alessandra Oliveira Cintia Santos Claudia Maria Pastor Australia (AUS) Robyn Maher Allison Cook Sandy Brondello Michele Timms Shelley Sandie Trisha Fallon Michelle Chandler Fiona Robinson Carla Boyd Jenny Whittle Rachael Sporn Michelle Brogan Event Gold Silver Bronze Light flyweight (48 kg) details Daniel Petrov Bulgaria Mansueto Velasco Philippines Oleg Kiryukhin Ukraine Rafael Lozano Spain Flyweight (51 kg) details Maikro Romero Cuba Bolat Dzhumadilov Kazakhstan Zoltan Lunka Germany Albert Pakeyev Russia Bantamweight (54 kg) details István Kovács Hungary Arnaldo Mesa Cuba Vichai Khadpo Thailand Raimkul Malakhbekov Russia Featherweight (57 kg) details Kamsing Somluck Thailand Serafim Todorov Bulgaria Pablo Chacón Argentina Floyd Mayweather Jr. United States Lightweight (60 kg) details Hocine Soltani Algeria Tontcho Tontchev Bulgaria Terrance Cauthen United States Leonard Doroftei Romania Light welterweight (63.5 kg) details Héctor Vinent Cuba Oktay Urkal Germany Fathi Missaoui Tunisia Bolat Niyazymbetov Kazakhstan Welterweight (67 kg) details Oleg Saitov Russia Juan Hernández Sierra Cuba Daniel Santos Puerto Rico Marian Simion Romania Light middleweight (71 kg) details David Reid United States Alfredo Duvergel Cuba Yermakhan Ibraimov Kazakhstan Karim Tulaganov Uzbekistan Middleweight (75 kg) details Ariel Hernández Cuba Malik Beyleroğlu Turkey Rhoshii Wells United States Mohamed Bahari Algeria Light heavyweight (81 kg) details Vasilii Jirov Kazakhstan Lee Seung-Bae South Korea Antonio Tarver United States Thomas Ulrich Germany Heavyweight (91 kg) details Félix Savón Cuba David Defiagbon Canada Nate Jones United States Luan Krasniqi Germany Super heavyweight (+91 kg) details Wladimir Klitschko Ukraine Paea Wolfgram Tonga Duncan Dokiwari Nigeria Alexei Lezin Russia Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's slalom C-1 details Michal Martikán Slovakia Lukáš Pollert Czech Republic Patrice Estanguet France Men's slalom C-2 details France (FRA) Frank Adisson Wilfrid Forgues Czech Republic (CZE) Jiří Rohan Miroslav Šimek Germany (GER) André Ehrenberg Michael Senft Men's slalom K-1 details Oliver Fix Germany Andraž Vehovar Slovenia Thomas Becker Germany Women's slalom K-1 details Štěpánka Hilgertová Czech Republic Dana Chladek United States Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi France Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's C-1 500 metres details Martin Doktor Czech Republic Slavomír Kňazovický Slovakia Imre Pulai Hungary Men's C-1 1000 metres details Martin Doktor Czech Republic Ivans Klementjevs Latvia György Zala Hungary Men's C-2 500 metres details Hungary (HUN) György Kolonics Csaba Horváth Moldova (MDA) Viktor Reneysky Nicolae Juravschi Romania (ROU) Grigore Obreja Gheorghe Andriev Men's C-2 1000 metres details Germany (GER) Gunar Kirchbach Andreas Dittmer Romania (ROU) Marcel Glăvan Antonel Borșan Hungary (HUN) György Kolonics Csaba Horváth Men's K-1 500 metres details Antonio Rossi Italy Knut Holmann Norway Piotr Markiewicz Poland Men's K-1 1000 metres details Knut Holmann Norway Beniamino Bonomi Italy Clint Robinson Australia Men's K-2 500 metres details Germany (GER) Kay Bluhm Torsten Gutsche Italy (ITA) Beniamino Bonomi Daniele Scarpa Australia (AUS) Andrew Trim Daniel Collins Men's K-2 1000 metres details Italy (ITA) Daniele Scarpa Antonio Rossi Germany (GER) Kay Bluhm Torsten Gutsche Bulgaria (BUL) Andrian Dushev Milko Kazanov Men's K-4 1000 metres details Germany (GER) Thomas Reineck Olaf Winter Detlef Hofmann Mark Zabel Hungary (HUN) András Rajna Gábor Horváth Ferenc Csipes Attila Adrovicz Russia (RUS) Oleg Gorobiy Sergey Verlin Georgiy Tsybulnikov Anatoli Tishchenko Women's K-1 500 metres details Rita Kőbán Hungary Caroline Brunet Canada Josefa Idem Italy Women's K-2 500 metres details Sweden (SWE) Susanne Gunnarsson Agneta Andersson Germany (GER) Birgit Fischer Ramona Portwich Australia (AUS) Anna Wood Katrin Borchert Women's K-4 500 metres details Germany (GER) Anett Schuck Birgit Fischer Manuela Mucke Ramona Portwich Switzerland (SUI) Gabi Müller Ingrid Haralamow Sabine Eichenberger Daniela Baumer Sweden (SWE) Susanne Rosenqvist Anna Olsson Ingela Ericsson Agneta Andersson Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's road race details Pascal Richard Switzerland Rolf Sørensen Denmark Max Sciandri Great Britain Women's road race details Jeannie Longo France Imelda Chiappa Italy Clara Hughes Canada Men's time trial details Miguel Induráin Spain Abraham Olano Spain Chris Boardman Great Britain Women's time trial details Zulfiya Zabirova Russia Jeannie Longo France Clara Hughes Canada Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's 1,000 metre time trial details Florian Rousseau France Erin Hartwell United States Takanobu Jumonji Japan Men's 1,000 metre sprint details Jens Fiedler Germany Marty Nothstein United States Curt Harnett Canada Women's 1,000 metre sprint details Félicia Ballanger France Michelle Ferris Australia Ingrid Haringa Netherlands Women's 3,000 metre pursuit details Antonella Bellutti Italy Marion Clignet France Judith Arndt Germany Men's 4,000 metre pursuit details Andrea Collinelli Italy Philippe Ermenault France Bradley McGee Australia Women's 24 kilometre points race details Nathalie Lancien France Ingrid Haringa Netherlands Lucy Tyler-Sharman Australia Men's 40 kilometre points race details Silvio Martinello Italy Brian Walton Canada Stuart O'Grady Australia Men's 4,000 metre team pursuit details France (FRA) Christophe Capelle Philippe Ermenault Jean-Michel Monin Francis Moreau Russia (RUS) Eduard Gritsun Nikolay Kuznetsov Alexei Markov Anton Shantyr Australia (AUS) Brett Aitken Stuart O'Grady Timothy O'Shannessey Dean Woods Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's cross-country details Bart Brentjens Netherlands Thomas Frischknecht Switzerland Miguel Martinez France Women's cross-country details Paola Pezzo Italy Alison Sydor Canada Susan DeMattei United States Event Gold Silver Bronze Individual dressage details Isabell Werth Germany Anky van Grunsven Netherlands Sven Rothenberger Netherlands Team dressage details Germany (GER) Klaus Balkenhol Martin Schaudt Monica Theodorescu Isabell Werth Netherlands (NED) Tineke Bartels Anky van Grunsven Sven Rothenberger Gonnelien Rothenberger United States (USA) Robert Dover Michelle Gibson Steffen Peters Guenter Seidel Individual eventing details Blyth Tait New Zealand Sally Clark New Zealand Kerry Millikin United States Team eventing details Australia (AUS) Wendy Schaeffer Gillian Rolton Andrew Hoy Phillip Dutton United States (USA) Karen O'Connor David O'Connor Bruce Davidson Jill Henneberg New Zealand (NZL) Blyth Tait Andrew Nicholson Vaughn Jefferis Victoria Latta Individual jumping details Ulrich Kirchhoff Germany Wilhelm Melliger Switzerland Alexandra Ledermann France Team jumping details Germany (GER) Franke Sloothaak Lars Nieberg Ulrich Kirchhoff Ludger Beerbaum United States (USA) Peter Leone Leslie Burr-Howard Anne Kursinski Michael R. Matz Brazil (BRA) Luiz Felipe de Azevedo Álvaro Miranda Neto André Johannpeter Rodrigo Pessoa Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's individual épée details Aleksandr Beketov Russia Ivan Trevejo Cuba Géza Imre Hungary Women's individual épée details Laura Flessel France Valerie Barlois France Gyöngyi Szalay Hungary Men's team épée details Italy (ITA) Sandro Cuomo Angelo Mazzoni Maurizio Randazzo Russia (RUS) Aleksandr Beketov Pavel Kolobkov Valery Zakharevich France (FRA) Jean-Michel Henry Robert Leroux Éric Srecki Women's team épée details France (FRA) Laura Flessel Sophie Moresee-Pichot Valerie Barlois Italy (ITA) Laura Chiesa Elisa Uga Margherita Zalaffi Russia (RUS) Maria Mazina Yuliya Garayeva Karina Aznavourian Men's individual foil details Alessandro Puccini Italy Lionel Plumenail France Franck Boidin France Women's individual foil details Laura Badea Romania Valentina Vezzali Italy Giovanna Trillini Italy Men's team foil details Russia (RUS) Dmitriy Shevchenko Ilgar Mamedov Vladislav Pavlovich Poland (POL) Piotr Kiełpikowski Adam Krzesiński Ryszard Sobczak Jarosław Rodzewicz Cuba (CUB) Elvis Gregory Rolando Leon Oscar García Perez Women's team foil details Italy (ITA) Francesca Bortolozzi-Borella Giovanna Trillini Valentina Vezzali Romania (ROU) Laura Badea Reka Szabo Roxana Scarlat Germany (GER) Anja Fichtel Mauritz Sabine Bau Monika Weber-Koszto Men's individual sabre details Stanislav Pozdnyakov Russia Sergey Sharikov Russia Damien Touya France Men's team sabre details Russia (RUS) Stanislav Pozdnyakov Grigoriy Kirienko Sergey Sharikov Hungary (HUN) Csaba Köves József Navarrete Bence Szabó Italy (ITA) Raffaello Caserta Luigi Tarantino Toni Terenzi Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's details Netherlands (NED) Jacques Brinkman Floris Jan Bovelander Maurits Crucq Marc Delissen Jeroen Delmee Taco van den Honert Erik Jazet Ronald Jansen Leo Klein Gebbink Bram Lomans Teun de Nooijer Wouter van Pelt Stephan Veen Guus Vogels Tycho van Meer Remco van Wijk Spain (ESP) Jaime Amat Pablo Amat Javier Arnau Jordi Arnau Óscar Barrena Ignacio Cobos Juan Dinarés Juan Escarré Xavier Escudé Juantxo García-Mauriño Antonio González Ramón Jufresa Joaquín Malgosa Víctor Pujol Ramón Sala Pablo Usoz Australia (AUS) Mark Hager Stephen Davies Baeden Choppy Lachlan Elmer Stuart Carruthers Grant Smith Damon Diletti Lachlan Dreher, Brendan Garard Paul Gaudoin Paul Lewis Matthew Smith Jay Stacy Daniel Sproule Ken Wark Michael York Women's details Australia (AUS) Michelle Andrews Alyson Annan Louise Dobson Renita Farrell Juliet Haslam Rechelle Hawkes Clover Maitland Karen Marsden Jenn Morris Nova Peris-Kneebone Jackie Pereira Katrina Powell Lisa Powell Danni Roche Kate Starre Liane Tooth South Korea (KOR) You Jae-sook Lim Jeong-sook Oh Seung-shin Woo Hyun-jung Lee Eun-young Lee Eun-kyung Lee Ji-young Kim Myung-ok Kwon Chang-sook Kwon Soo-hyun Choi Mi-soon Jeon Young-sun Jin Deok-san Chang Eun-jung Cho Eun-jung Choi Eun-kyung Netherlands (NED) Suzanne Plesman Dillianne van den Boogaard Florentine Steenberghe Willemijn Duyster Mijntje Donners Fleur van de Kieft Nicole Koolen Jeannette Lewin Wietske de Ruiter Ellen Kuipers Margje Teeuwen Carole Thate Jacqueline Toxopeus Stella de Heij Noor Holsboer Suzan van der Wielen Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's details Nigeria (NGR) Daniel Amokachi Emmanuel Amuneke Tijani Babangida Celestine Babayaro Emmanuel Babayaro Teslim Fatusi Victor Ikpeba Dosu Joseph Nwankwo Kanu Garba Lawal Abiodun Obafemi Kingsley Obiekwu Uche Okechukwu Jay-Jay Okocha Sunday Oliseh Mobi Oparaku Wilson Oruma Taribo West Argentina (ARG) Matías Almeyda Roberto Ayala Christian Bassedas Carlos Bossio Pablo Cavallero José Chamot Hernán Crespo Marcelo Delgado Marcelo Gallardo Claudio López Gustavo López Hugo Morales Ariel Ortega Pablo Paz Héctor Pineda Roberto Sensini Diego Simeone Javier Zanetti Brazil (BRA) Dida Zé María Aldair Ronaldo Guiaro Flávio Conceição Roberto Carlos Bebeto Amaral Ronaldo Rivaldo Sávio Danrlei Narciso André Luiz Zé Elias Marcelinho Luizão Juninho Women's details United States (USA) Michelle Akers Brandi Chastain Joy Fawcett Julie Foudy Carin Gabarra Mia Hamm Mary Harvey Kristine Lilly Shannon MacMillan Tiffeny Milbrett Carla Overbeck Cindy Parlow Tiffany Roberts Briana Scurry Tisha Venturini Staci Wilson China (CHN) Chen Yufeng Fan Yunjie Gao Hong Liu Ailing Liu Ying Shi Guihong Shui Qingxia Sun Qingmei Sun Wen Wang Liping Wei Haiying Wen Lirong Xie Huilin Yu Hongqi Zhao Lihong Zhong Honglian Norway (NOR) Ann Kristin Aarønes Agnete Carlsen Gro Espeseth Tone Gunn Frustøl Tone Haugen Linda Medalen Merete Myklebust Bente Nordby Anne Nymark Andersen Nina Nymark Andersen Marianne Pettersen Hege Riise Brit Sandaune Reidun Seth Heidi Støre Tina Svensson Trine Tangeraas Kjersti Thun Ingrid Sternhoff Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's floor details Ioannis Melissanidis Greece Li Xiaoshuang China Alexei Nemov Russia Women's floor details Lilia Podkopayeva Ukraine Simona Amânar Romania Dominique Dawes United States Men's vault details Alexei Nemov Russia Yeo Hong-Chul South Korea Vitaly Scherbo Belarus Women's vault details Simona Amânar Romania Mo Huilan China Gina Gogean Romania Men's parallel bars details Rustam Sharipov Ukraine Jair Lynch United States Vitaly Scherbo Belarus Women's uneven bars details Svetlana Khorkina Russia Bi Wenjing China none awarded Amy Chow United States Men's horizontal bar details Andreas Wecker Germany Krasimir Dunev Bulgaria Vitaly Scherbo Belarus Fan Bin China Alexei Nemov Russia Women's balance beam details Shannon Miller United States Lilia Podkopayeva Ukraine Gina Gogean Romania Men's pommel horse details Li Donghua Switzerland Marius Urzică Romania Alexei Nemov Russia Men's rings details Jury Chechi Italy Szilveszter Csollány Hungary none awarded Dan Burincă Romania Men's individual all-around details Li Xiaoshuang China Alexei Nemov Russia Vitaly Scherbo Belarus Women's individual all-around details Lilia Podkopayeva Ukraine Gina Gogean Romania Simona Amânar Romania Lavinia Miloşovici Romania Men's team all-around details Russia (RUS) Sergei Kharkov Nikolai Kryukov Alexei Nemov Yevgeni Podgorny Dmitri Trush Dmitri Vasilenko Alexei Voropaev China (CHN) Fan Bin Fan Hongbin Huang Huadong Huang Liping Li Xiaoshuang Shen Jian Zhang Jinjing Ukraine (UKR) Igor Korobchinski Oleg Kosiak Grigory Misutin Vladimir Shamenko Rustam Sharipov Olexander Svitlichni Yuri Yermakov Women's team all-around details United States (USA) Amanda Borden Amy Chow Dominique Dawes Shannon Miller Dominique Moceanu Jaycie Phelps Kerri Strug Russia (RUS) Elena Dolgopolova Rozalia Galiyeva Elena Grosheva Svetlana Khorkina Dina Kotchetkova Yevgeniya Kuznetsova Oksana Liapina Romania (ROU) Simona Amânar Gina Gogean Ionela Loaieş Alexandra Marinescu Lavinia Miloşovici Mirela Ţugurlan Event Gold Silver Bronze Group all-around details Spain (ESP) Estela Giménez Cid Marta Baldó Marín Nuria Cabanillas Provencio Lorena Guréndez García Estíbaliz Martínez Yerro Tania Lamarca Celada Bulgaria (BUL) Ina Deltcheva Valentina Kevlian Maria Koleva Maja Tabakova Ivelina Taleva Vjara Vatachka Russia (RUS) Yevgeniya Bochkaryova Irina Dzyuba Yuliya Ivanova Yelena Krivoshey Olga Shtyrenko Angelina Yushkova Individual all-around details Ekaterina Serebrianskaya Ukraine Yanina Batyrchina Russia Elena Vitrichenko Ukraine Event Gold Silver Bronze Men details Croatia (CRO) Patrik Ćavar Valner Franković Slavko Goluža Bruno Gudelj Vladimir Jelčić Božidar Jović Nenad Kljaić Venio Losert Valter Matošević Zoran Mikulić Alvaro Načinović Goran Perkovac Iztok Puc Zlatko Saračević Irfan Smajlagić Vladimir Šuster Sweden (SWE) Magnus Andersson Robert Andersson Per Carlén Martin Frändesjö Erik Hajas Robert Hedin Andreas Larsson Ola Lindgren Stefan Lövgren Mats Olsson Staffan Olsson Johan Petersson Tomas Svensson Tomas Sivertsson Pierre Thorsson Magnus Wislander Spain (ESP) Talant Duyshebaev Salvador Esquer Aitor Etxaburu Jesús Fernández Jaume Fort Mateo Garralda Raúl González Rafael Guijosa Fernando Hernández José Javier Hombrados Demetrio Lozano Jordi Nuñez Jesús Olalla Juan Pérez Iñaki Urdangarín Alberto Urdiales Women details Denmark (DEN) Anja Andersen Camilla Andersen Kristine Andersen Heidi Astrup Tina Bøttzau Marianne Florman Conny Hamann Anja Hansen Anette Hoffmann Tonje Kjærgaard Janne Kolling Susanne Lauritsen Gitte Madsen Lene Rantala Gitte Sunesen Anne Dorthe Tanderup South Korea (KOR) Cho Eun-Hee Han Sun-Hee Hong Jeong-ho Huh Soon-Young Kim Cheong-Sim Kim Eun-Mi Kim Jeong-Mi Kim Mi-Sim Kim Rang Kwag Hye-Jeong Lee Sang-Eun Lim O-Kyeong Moon Hyang-Ja Oh Sung-Ok Oh Yong-Ran Park Jeong-Lim Hungary (HUN) Éva Erdős Andrea Farkas Beáta Hoffmann Anikó Kántor Erzsébet Kocsis Beatrix Kökény Eszter Mátéfi Auguszta Mátyás Anikó Meksz Anikó Nagy Helga Németh Ildikó Pádár Beáta Siti Anna Szántó Katalin Szilágyi Beatrix Tóth Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's Extra lightweight (−60 kg) details Tadahiro Nomura Japan Girolamo Giovinazzo Italy Richard Trautmann GermanyDorjpalamyn Narmandakh Mongolia Women's Extra lightweight (−48 kg) details Kye Sun-Hi North Korea Ryoko Tamura Japan Yolanda Soler SpainAmarilis Savon Cuba Men's Half lightweight (−65 kg) details Udo Quellmalz Germany Yukimasa Nakamura Japan Israel Hernández CubaHenrique Guimarães Brazil Women's Half lightweight (−52 kg) details Marie-Claire Restoux France Hyun Sook-Hee South Korea Noriko Sugawara JapanLegna Verdecia Cuba Men's Lightweight (−71 kg) details Kenzo Nakamura Japan Kwak Dae-Sung South Korea Christophe Gagliano FranceJimmy Pedro United States Women's Lightweight (−56 kg) details Driulis González Cuba Jung Sun-Yong South Korea Isabel Fernández SpainMarisbel Lomba Belgium Men's Half middleweight (−78 kg) details Djamel Bouras France Toshihiko Koga Japan Soso Liparteliani GeorgiaCho In-Chul South Korea Women's Half middleweight (−61 kg) details Yuko Emoto Japan Gella Vandecaveye Belgium Jenny Gal NetherlandsJung Sung-Sook South Korea Men's Middleweight (−86 kg) details Jeon Ki-Young South Korea Armen Bagdasarov Uzbekistan Marko Spittka GermanyMark Huizinga Netherlands Women's Middleweight (−66 kg) details Cho Min-Sun South Korea Aneta Szczepańska Poland Wang Xianbo ChinaClaudia Zwiers Netherlands Men's Half heavyweight (−95 kg) details Paweł Nastula Poland Min Soo Kim South Korea Stéphane Traineau FranceAurélio Miguel Brazil Women's Half heavyweight (−72 kg) details Ulla Werbrouck Belgium Yoko Tanabe Japan Ylenia Scapin ItalyDiadenis Luna Cuba Men's Heavyweight (+95 kg) details David Douillet France Ernesto Pérez Spain Frank Möller GermanyHarry Van Barneveld Belgium Women's Heavyweight (+72 kg) details Sun Fuming China Estela Rodríguez Cuba Johanna Hagn GermanyChristine Cicot France Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's individual details Alexander Parygin Kazakhstan Eduard Zenovka Russia János Martinek Hungary Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's single sculls details Xeno Müller (SUI) Derek Porter (CAN) Thomas Lange (GER) Women's single sculls details Ekaterina Karsten (BLR) Silken Laumann (CAN) Trine Hansen (DEN) Men's double sculls details Italy (ITA) Agostino Abbagnale Davide Tizzano Norway (NOR) Steffen Størseth Kjetil Undset France (FRA) Frédéric Kowal Samuel Barathay Women's double sculls details Canada (CAN) Kathleen Heddle Marnie McBean China (CHN) Xiuyun Zhang Cao Mianying Netherlands (NED) Irene Eijs Eeke van Nes Men's lightweight double sculls details Switzerland (SUI) Michael Gier Markus Gier Netherlands (NED) Maarten van der Linden Pepijn Aardewijn Australia (AUS) Bruce Hick Anthony Edwards Women's lightweight double sculls details Romania (ROU) Camelia Macoviciuc Constanța Burcică United States (USA) Teresa Bell Lindsay Burns Australia (AUS) Virginia Lee Rebecca Joyce Men's quadruple sculls details Germany (GER) Andreas Hajek Stephan Volkert André Steiner André Willms United States (USA) Tim Young Eric Mueller Brian Jamieson Jason Gailes Australia (AUS) Janusz Hooker Bo Hanson Duncan Free Ronald Snook Women's quadruple sculls details Germany (GER) Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski Jana Sorgers Kerstin Köppen Kathrin Boron Ukraine (UKR) Svitlana Maziy Dina Miftakhutdynova Inna Frolova Olena Ronzhyna Canada (CAN) Laryssa Biesenthal Diane O'Grady Kathleen Heddle Marnie McBean Men's coxless pair details Great Britain (GBR) Steve Redgrave Matthew Pinsent Australia (AUS) David Weightman Rob Scott France (FRA) Michel Andrieux Jean Christophe Rolland Women's coxless pair details Australia (AUS) Megan Leanne Still Kate Elizabeth Slatter United States (USA) Missy Schwen Karen Kraft France (FRA) Christine Gossé Hélène Cortin Men's coxless four details Australia (AUS) Nicholas Green Drew Ginn James Tomkins Mike McKay France (FRA) Bertrand Vecten Olivier Moncelet Daniel Fauché Gilles Bosquet Great Britain (GBR) Gregory Searle Jonathan William Searle Rupert John Obholzer Tim James Foster Men's lightweight coxless four details Denmark (DEN) Victor Feddersen Niels Henriksen Thomas Poulsen Eskild Ebbesen Canada (CAN) Brian Peaker Jeffrey Lay Dave Boyes Gavin Hassett United States (USA) Marc Schneider Jeff Pfaendtner David Collins William Carlucci Men's eight details Netherlands (NED) Koos Maasdijk Ronald Florijn Jeroen Duyster Michiel Bartman Henk-Jan Zwolle Niels van der Zwan Niels van Steenis Diederik Simon Nico Rienks Germany (GER) Mark Kleinschmidt Detlef Kirchhoff Wolfram Huhn Roland Baar Marc Weber Ulrich Viefers Peter Thiede Thorsten Streppelhoff Frank Joerg Richter Russia (RUS) Pavel Melnikov Andrey Glukhov Anton Chermashentsev Aleksandr Lukyanov Nikolay Aksyonov Dmitry Rozinkevich Sergey Matveyev Roman Monchenko Vladimir Volodenkov Vladimir Sokolov Women's eight details Romania (ROU) Liliana Gafencu Veronica Cochela Elena Georgescu Anca Tănase Doina Spîrcu Marioara Popescu Ioana Olteanu Elisabeta Lipă Doina Ignat Canada (CAN) Anna van der Kamp Tosha Tsang Lesley Thompson Emma Robinson Jessica Monroe Heather McDermid Maria Maunder Theresa Luke Alison Korn Belarus (BLR) Yelena Mikulich Marina Znak Nataliya Volchek Nataliya Stasyuk Tamara Davydenko Valentina Skrabatun Nataliya Lavrinenko Yaroslava Pavlovich Aleksandra Pankina Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's sailboard details Greece (GRE) Nikolaos Kaklamanakis Argentina (ARG) Carlos Mauricio Espinola Israel (ISR) Gal Fridman Women's sailboard details Hong Kong (HKG) Lai Shan Lee New Zealand (NZL) Barbara Kendall Italy (ITA) Alessandra Sensini Men's Finn class details Poland (POL) Mateusz Kusznierewicz Belgium (BEL) Sebastien Godefroid Netherlands (NED) Roy Heiner Women's Europe class details Denmark (DEN) Kristine Roug Netherlands (NED) Margriet Matthijsse United States (USA) Courtenay Becker-Dey Men's 470 class details Ukraine (UKR) Yevhen Braslavets Ihor Matviyenko Great Britain (GBR) John Merricks Ian Walker Portugal (POR) Hugo Rocha Nuno Barreto Women's 470 class details Spain (ESP) Theresa Zabell Begoña Vía-Dufresne Japan (JPN) Yumiko Shige Alicia Kinoshita Ukraine (UKR) Ruslana Taran Olena Pakholchik Open Laser class details Brazil (BRA) Robert Scheidt Great Britain (GBR) Ben Ainslie Norway (NOR) Peer Moberg Open Star class details Brazil (BRA) Torben Grael Marcelo Ferreira Sweden (SWE) Hans Wallén Bobby Lohse Australia (AUS) Colin Beashel David Giles Open Soling class details Germany (GER) Jochen Schümann Thomas Flach Bernd Jäkel Russia (RUS) Georgy Shayduko Dmitri Shabanov Igor Skalin United States (USA) Jeff Madrigali Jim Barton Kent Massey Open Tornado class details Spain (ESP) Fernando Leon José Luis Ballester Australia (AUS) Mitch Booth Andrew Landenberger Brazil (BRA) Lars Grael Henrique Pellicano Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's 10 metre air rifle details Artem Khadjibekov Russia Wolfram Waibel Austria Jean-Pierre Amat France Women's 10 metre air rifle details Renata Mauer Poland Petra Horneber Germany Aleksandra Ivošev FR Yugoslavia Men's 50 metre rifle prone details Christian Klees Germany Sergey Belyayev Kazakhstan Jozef Gönci Slovakia Men's 50 metre rifle three positions details Jean-Pierre Amat France Sergey Belyayev Kazakhstan Wolfram Waibel Austria Women's 50 metre rifle three positions details Aleksandra Ivošev FR Yugoslavia Irina Gerasimenok Russia Renata Mauer Poland Men's 10 metre air pistol details Roberto Di Donna Italy Wang Yifu China Tanyu Kiryakov Bulgaria Women's 10 metre air pistol details Olga Klochneva Russia Marina Logvinenko Russia Mariya Grozdeva Bulgaria Women's 25 metre pistol details Li Duihong China Diana Iorgova Bulgaria Marina Logvinenko Russia Men's 50 metre pistol details Boris Kokorev Russia Igor Basinski Belarus Roberto Di Donna Italy Men's 25 metre rapid fire pistol details Ralf Schumann Germany Emil Milev Bulgaria Vladimir Vokhmyanin Kazakhstan Men's trap details Michael Diamond Australia Josh Lakatos United States Lance Bade United States Men's double trap details Russell Mark Australia Albano Pera Italy Zhang Bing China Women's double trap details Kim Rhode United States Susanne Kiermayer Germany Deserie Huddleston Australia Men's skeet details Ennio Falco Italy Mirosław Rzepkowski Poland Andrea Benelli Italy Men's 10 metre running target details Yang Ling China Xiao Jun China Miroslav Januš Czech Republic Event Gold Silver Bronze Women's details United States (USA) Laura Berg Gillian Boxx Sheila Cornell Lisa Fernandez Michele Granger Lori Harrigan Dionna Harris Kim Maher Leah O'Brien Dot Richardson Julie Smith Michele Smith Shelly Stokes Danielle Tyler Christa Lee Williams China (CHN) An Zhongxin Chen Hong He Liping Lei Li Liu Xuqing Liu Yaju Ma Ying Ou Jingbai Tao Hua Wang Lihong Wang Ying Wei Qiang Xu Jian Yan Fang Zhang Chunfang Australia (AUS) Joanne Brown Kim Cooper Carolyn Crudgington Kerry Dienelt Peta Edebone Tanya Harding Jennifer Holliday Joyce Lester Sally McDermid Francine McRae Haylea Petrie Nicole Richardson Melanie Roche Natalie Ward Brooke Wilkins Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's singles details Liu Guoliang China Wang Tao China Jörg Roßkopf Germany Men's doubles details China (CHN) Liu Guoliang Kong Linghui China (CHN) Lü Lin Wang Tao South Korea (KOR) Lee Chul-Seung Yoo Nam-Kyu Women's singles details Deng Yaping China Chen Jing Chinese Taipei Qiao Hong China Women's doubles details China (CHN) Deng Yaping Qiao Hong China (CHN) Liu Wei Qiao Yunping South Korea (KOR) Park Hae-Jung Ryu Ji-Hae Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's singles details Andre Agassi United States Sergi Bruguera Spain Leander Paes India Women's singles details Lindsay Davenport United States Arantxa Sánchez Vicario Spain Jana Novotná Czech Republic Men's doubles details Australia (AUS) Todd Woodbridge Mark Woodforde Great Britain (GBR) Neil Broad Tim Henman Germany (GER) Marc-Kevin Goellner David Prinosil Women's doubles details United States (USA) Gigi Fernández Mary Joe Fernández Czech Republic (CZE) Jana Novotná Helena Suková Spain (ESP) Conchita Martínez Arantxa Sánchez Vicario Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's team details Charles "Karch" Kiraly and Kent Steffes (USA) Michael Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh (USA) John Child and Mark Heese (CAN) Women's team details Jackie Silva and Sandra Pires (BRA) Mônica Rodrigues and Adriana Samuel (BRA) Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst (AUS) Event Gold Silver Bronze Men's team details Netherlands (NED) Peter Blangé Guido Görtzen Rob Grabert Henk-Jan Held Misha Latuhihin Jan Posthuma Brecht Rodenburg Richard Schuil Bas van de Goor Mike van de Goor Olof van der Meulen Ron Zwerver Italy (ITA) Lorenzo Bernardi Vigor Bovolenta Marco Bracci Luca Cantagalli Andrea Gardini Andrea Giani Pasquale Gravina Marco Meoni Samuele Papi Andrea Sartoretti Paolo Tofoli Andrea Zorzi FR Yugoslavia (YUG) Vladimir Batez Dejan Brđović Đorđe Đurić Andrija Gerić Nikola Grbić Vladimir Grbić Rajko Jokanović Slobodan Kovač Đula Mešter Žarko Petrović Željko Tanasković Goran Vujević Women's team details Cuba (CUB) Taimaris Aguero Regla Bell Magaly Carvajal Marlenis Costa Ana Fernández Mirka Francia Idalmis Gato Lilia Izquierdo Mireya Luis Raisa O'Farrill Yumilka Ruíz Regla Torres China (CHN) Cui Yong-Mei He Qi Lai Yawen Li Yan Liu Xiaoning Pan Wenli Sun Yue Wang Lina Wang Yi Wang Ziling Wu Yongmei Zhu Yunying Brazil (BRA) Ana Ida Alvares Leila Barros Filo Bodziak Hilma Caldeira Ana Connelly Marcia Cunha Virna Dias Ana Moser Ana Sanglard Hélia Souza Sandra Suruagy Fernanda Venturini Event Gold Silver Bronze Flyweight (−54 kg) details Halil Mutlu Turkey Zhang Xiangsen China Sevdalin Minchev Bulgaria Bantamweight (−59 kg) details Tang Lingsheng China Leonidas Sampanis Greece Nikolay Peshalov Bulgaria Featherweight (−64 kg) details Naim Süleymanoğlu Turkey Valerios Leonidis Greece Xiao Jiangang China Lightweight (−70 kg) details Zhan Xugang China Kim Myong-Nam North Korea Attila Feri Hungary Middleweight (−76 kg) details Pablo Lara Rodriguez Cuba Yoto Yotov Bulgaria Jon Chol-Ho North Korea Light Heavyweight (−83 kg) details Pyrros Dimas Greece Marc Huster Germany Andrzej Cofalik Poland Middle Heavyweight (−91 kg) details Aleksei Petrov Russia Leonidas Kokas Greece Oliver Caruso Germany Heavyweight I (−99 kg) details Kakhi Kakhiashvili Greece Anatoli Khrapaty Kazakhstan Denys Gotfrid Ukraine Heavyweight II (−108 kg) details Timour Taimazov Ukraine Serguei Syrtsov Russia Nicu Vlad Romania Super Heavyweight (+108 kg) details Andrei Chemerkin Russia Ronny Weller Germany Stefan Botev Australia Event Gold Silver Bronze Light flyweight (−48 kg) details Kim Il North Korea Armen Mkrtchyan Armenia Alexis Vila Cuba Flyweight (−52 kg) details Valentin Yordanov Bulgaria Namig Abdullayev Azerbaijan Maulen Mamyrov Kazakhstan Bantamweight (−57 kg) details Kendall Cross United States Guivi Sissaouri Canada Ri Yong-Sam North Korea Featherweight (−62 kg) details Tom Brands United States Jang Jae-Sung South Korea Elbrus Tedeyev Ukraine Lightweight (−68 kg) details Vadim Bogiyev Russia Townsend Saunders United States Zaza Zazirov Ukraine Welterweight (−74 kg) details Buvaisar Saitiev Russia Park Jang-Soon South Korea Takuya Ota Japan Middleweight (−82 kg) details Khadzhimurad Magomedov Russia Yang Hyun-Mo South Korea Amir Reza Khadem Iran Light Heavyweight (−90 kg) details Rasoul Khadem Iran Makharbek Khadartsev Russia Eldar Kurtanidze Georgia Heavyweight (−100 kg) details Kurt Angle United States Abbas Jadidi Iran Arawat Sabejew Germany Super Heavyweight (−130 kg) details Mahmut Demir Turkey Aleksei Medvedev Belarus Bruce Baumgartner United States Event Gold Silver Bronze light flyweight (−48 kg) details Sim Kwon-Ho South Korea Aleksandr Pavlov Belarus Zafar Guliyev Russia flyweight (−52 kg) details Armen Nazaryan Armenia Brandon Paulson United States Andriy Kalashnikov Ukraine bantamweight (−57 kg) details Yuriy Melnichenko Kazakhstan Dennis Hall United States Sheng Zetian China featherweight (−62 kg) details Włodzimierz Zawadzki Poland Juan Marén Cuba Mehmet Akif Pirim Turkey lightweight (−68 kg) details Ryszard Wolny Poland Ghani Yalouz France Aleksandr Tretyakov Russia welterweight (−74 kg) details Filiberto Azcuy Cuba Marko Asell Finland Józef Tracz Poland middleweight (−82 kg) details Hamza Yerlikaya Turkey Thomas Zander Germany Valeriy Tsilent Belarus light heavyweight (−90 kg) details Vyacheslav Oliynyk Ukraine Jacek Fafiński Poland Maik Bullmann Germany heavyweight (−100 kg) details Andrzej Wroński Poland Sergey Lishtvan Belarus Mikael Ljungberg Sweden super heavyweight (−130 kg) details Aleksandr Karelin Russia Matt Ghaffari United States Sergei Mureiko Moldova 23 competitors won at least three medals.[1] Athlete Nation Sport Gold Silver Bronze Total Russia (RUS) Gymnastics 2 1 3 6 United States (USA) Swimming 4 0 0 4 Ireland (IRL) Swimming 3 0 1 4 Russia (RUS) Swimming 2 2 0 4 United States (USA) Swimming 2 2 0 4 United States (USA) Swimming 2 0 2 4 Romania (ROU) Gymnastics 1 1 2 4 Germany (GER) Swimming 0 3 1 4 Romania (ROU) Gymnastics 0 1 3 4 Belarus (BLR) Gymnastics 0 0 4 4 United States (USA) Swimming 3 0 0 3 United States (USA) Swimming 3 0 0 3 Ukraine (UKR) Gymnastics 2 1 0 3 Russia (RUS) Swimming 2 1 0 3 Le Jingyi China (CHN) Swimming 1 2 0 3 Li Xiaoshuang China (CHN) Gymnastics 1 2 0 3 United States (USA) Swimming 1 2 0 3 United States (USA) Swimming 1 2 0 3 Australia (AUS) Swimming 1 2 0 3 Germany (GER) Swimming 1 0 2 3 Jamaica (JAM) Athletics 0 2 1 3 Austria (AUT) Swimming 0 1 2 3 Germany (GER) Swimming 0 1 2 3 1996 Summer Olympics medal table
410	dbpedia	1	81	https://olympics.fandom.com/wiki/Shooting_1996	en	Shooting 1996	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fashion/images/e/e6/Site-logo.png/revision/latest?cb=20210719100617	https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fashion/images/e/e6/Site-logo.png/revision/latest?cb=20210719100617	[ "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/9b/Germany.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120807041224", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/4/43/Australia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206044054", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/99/Poland.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/27?cb=20110125200603", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/59/Serbia_and_Montenegro.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206181507", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/d/de/France.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802034205", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f4/Bulgaria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120329190438", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0e/Kazakhstan.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120910092745", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/7/7f/Austria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120329185242", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/5c/Belarus.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120820045959", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/5d/Czech_Republic.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20130107020347", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/89/Slovakia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20180206171758", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/1/10/Gold.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20160806153450", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0b/Silver.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20160806155256", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f2/Bronze.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20110115000101", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/7/7f/Austria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120329185242", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/d/de/France.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802034205", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/9b/Germany.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120807041224", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0e/Kazakhstan.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120910092745", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/89/Slovakia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20180206171758", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/d/de/France.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802034205", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0e/Kazakhstan.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120910092745", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/7/7f/Austria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120329185242", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f4/Bulgaria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120329190438", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/5d/Czech_Republic.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20130107020347", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/9b/Germany.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120807041224", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f4/Bulgaria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120329190438", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0e/Kazakhstan.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120910092745", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/5c/Belarus.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20120820045959", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/99/Poland.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/27?cb=20110125200603", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/4/43/Australia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206044054", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/4/43/Australia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206044054", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/2/2a/Italy.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120802051306", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/1/10/Gold.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20160806153450", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/0/0b/Silver.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20160806155256", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f2/Bronze.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/24?cb=20110115000101", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/99/Poland.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/27?cb=20110125200603", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/9b/Germany.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120807041224", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/59/Serbia_and_Montenegro.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206181507", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/59/Serbia_and_Montenegro.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206181507", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/99/Poland.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/27?cb=20110125200603", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f4/Bulgaria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120329190438", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/8/81/China.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20120801072831", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/f/f4/Bulgaria.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120329190438", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/e/ee/Russia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/26?cb=20230730061405", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/9/9b/Germany.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/29?cb=20120807041224", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/4/43/Australia.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180206044054", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/olympic/images/5/55/USA.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/30?cb=20180201004841", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6a181c72-e8bf-419b-b4db-18fd56a0eb60", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/6c42ce6a-b205-41f5-82c6-5011721932e7", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/464fc70a-5090-490b-b47e-0759e89c263f", "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/f7bb9d33-4f9a-4faa-88fe-2a0bd8138668" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Contributors to Olympics Wiki" ]	2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00	Shooting at the 1996 Summer Olympics was held from 20 to 24 July 1996 at the Wolf Creek Shooting Complex. For the first time, a women's shotgun event was added to the Olympic shooting program. 419 total athletes from 100 countries have participated in the sport at these Games. Darko Naseski was...	en	/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico	Olympics Wiki	https://olympics.fandom.com/wiki/Shooting_1996	Shooting at the 1996 Summer Olympics was held from 20 to 24 July 1996 at the Wolf Creek Shooting Complex. For the first time, a women's shotgun event was added to the Olympic shooting program. Medal Table[] Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Russia 3 2 1 6 2 China 2 2 1 5 3 Germany 2 2 0 4 4 Italy 2 1 2 5 5 Australia 2 0 1 3 6 Poland 1 1 1 3 United States 1 1 1 3 8 Serbia and Montenegro 1 0 1 2 France 1 0 1 2 10 Bulgaria 0 2 2 4 11 Kazakhstan 0 2 1 3 12 Austria 0 1 1 2 13 Belarus 0 1 0 1 14 Czech Republic 0 0 1 1 Slovakia 0 0 1 1 Medalists[] Men[] Event 10 m air rifle Artem Khadzhibekov Wolfram Waibel Jr. Jean-Pierre Amat 50 m rifle prone Christian Klees Sergey Belyayev Jozef Gonci 50 m rifle three positions Jean-Pierre Amat Sergey Belyayev Wolfram Waibel Jr. 10 m air pistol Roberto di Donna Wang Yifu Tanu Kiryakov 10 m running target Yang Ling Xiao Jun Miroslav Janus 25 m rapid fire pistol Ralf Schumann Emil Milev Vladimir Vokhmyanin 50 m pistol Boris Kokarev Igor Basinski Roberto di Donna Skeet Ennio Falco Miroslaw Rzepkowski Andrea Benelli Trap Michael Diamond Josh Lakatos Lance Bade Double trap Russell Mark Albano Pera Zhang Bing Women[] Event 10 m air rifle Renata Mauer Petra Horneber Aleksandra Ivosev 50 m rifle three positions Aleksandra Ivosev Irina Gerasimenok Renata Mauer 10 m air pistol Olga Klochneva Marina Logvinenko Mariya Grozdeva 25 m pistol Li Duihong Diana Jorgova Marina Logvinenko Double trap Kim Rhode Susanne Kiermayer Deserie Huddleston Statistics[] 419 total athletes from 100 countries have participated in the sport at these Games. Darko Naseski was the youngest participant with 16 years and 249 days. Jose Artecona was the oldest participant with 63 years and 347 days. 14 participants were chosen to be a flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
410	dbpedia	0	34	https://vindyarchives.com/news/2004/jun/19/archery-sharpsville-native-burkett-fails-to-make/	en	ARCHERY Sharpsville native Burkett fails to make Olympic team	https://vindyarchives.co…ial_default1.jpg	https://vindyarchives.co…ial_default1.jpg	[ "https://vindy.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/static-4/content/image/a/5.1/whthr/light_rain.png", "https://vindy.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/static-4/v6/img/vindyarchives_white.png", "https://vindy.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/static-4/upgrade/images/buttons/btn_main_menu.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "Vindy Archives", "Local News", "Youngstown", "Warren", "Ohio", "Vindicator Archives" ]	null	[]	2004-06-19T00:00:00	Former Hermitage resident Rod White also fell short. VINDICATOR STAFF/WIRE REPORTS MASON -- John		https://vindy.media.clie…h-icon-57x57.png	http://vindyarchives.com	https://vindyarchives.com/news/2004/jun/19/archery-sharpsville-native-burkett-fails-to-make/	Former Hermitage resident Rod White also fell short. VINDICATOR STAFF/WIRE REPORTS MASON -- John Burkett, 21, a native of Sharpsville, Pa., placed eighth and last in the finals of men's recurve competition at the USA Olympic Archery Team Trials Saturday at Heritage Park, and failed to qualify for the 2004 Summer Olympics. After the fifth day of shooting and 29 total matches Saturday, Burkett, who now lives in McDonald, Pa., finished with 4,422 points. The top three finishers qualified for the U.S. team for the Summer Olympics, held in Athens, Greece, in August, while the fourth-place finisher is an alternate. The three qualifiers were Vic Wunderle (Mason City, Ill., 4,610); Butch Johnson (Woodstock, Conn., 4,567); and John Magera (Carterville, Ill., 4,472). The alternate is Jason McKittrick (Holton, Ind., 4,461). The other finishers Rounding out the finals field were Joe McGlyn (Floral Park, N.Y., 4,456); Scott McKechnie (Orange, Calif., 4,444); Guy Krueger (Blessing, Texas, 4,429); and Burkett. Johnson, 48, is a three-time Olympian and is ranked No. 1 in the U.S., while Wunderle, 28, is ranked No. 2. Magera, 34, is a newcomer who first bought an Olympic style recurve bow last June, after shooting traditional bows since he was 3 years old. His first competition was the Prairie State Games in Illinois last June. Burkett did well early in the meet to make it to the final eight. The field was reduced from the original 64 shooters to 16 after Wednesday and eight after Thursday for Friday's and Saturday's round-robin competition. Burkett held fourth place after Thursday's sessions with 2,937 points. The top three at that point were Wunderle (3,022), Johnson (3,001) and Magera (2,960). White 16th Rod White, formerly from Hermitage and now of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, was 16th after Thursday with 2,832 and did not advance to Friday's competition. White is a two-time Olympian. He was a member of the 1996 U.S. team that won the gold medal and the 2000 team that won the bronze. Burkett has been a member of the U.S. national team the past five years, after advancing rapidly through the junior ranks. He started shooting when he was 13. Burkett's biggest achievement to date was winning the Arizona Cup April 7 in Phoenix, beating many of the most prominent archers he is facing this week. Nichols is top woman On the women's side, No. 1-ranked Jennifer Nichols of Cheyenne, Wyo., who dominated the entire tournament, finished far ahead in first place with a score of 4,510. Nichols will compete on her first Olympic Team in Athens along with Stephanie White-Arnold of Portland, Ind., who finished in second with 4,251; and 50-year-old, two-time Olympian Janet Dykman of El Monte, Calif., third with 4,227. Placing fourth to be named alternate was 16-year-old Kendra Harvey of Rio Rancho, N.M., with 4,205. The Olympic Games will be held August 13-29, with archery slated Aug. 15-21 at the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the first Modern Olympic Games were held.
410	dbpedia	1	97	https://olympic.org.nz/athletes/neroli-fairhall	en	New Zealand Olympic Team	https://olympic.org.nz/favicon.ico	https://olympic.org.nz/favicon.ico	[ "https://olympic.org.nz/images/placeholder-olympic-logo.svg", "https://olympic.org.nz/images/placeholder-commonwealth-logo.svg", "https://olympic.org.nz/images/shield-logo.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[]	null		en	/favicon.ico		https://olympic.org.nz/athletes/neroli-fairhall	Neroli Fairhall became the first disabled athlete to take part in an Olympic Games when she competed in the women’s archery event at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It was yet another remarkable achievement in a unique career. Two years previously, at Brisbane, Fairhall became the first disabled athlete to compete at a Commonwealth Games and, what’s more, she stunned sports followers by winning a gold medal. The 38-year-old Fairhall’s performance at Brisbane was incredible enough, but when the years of coping with her disability while she trained and competed around the world are considered, it was truly astonishing. She became an inspiration to other New Zealanders with disabilities. Fairhall, born in Christchurch in 1944, was an active young woman when she had a motorcycle accident on the Port Hills in 1969. The rescue took an age – she lay helpless for 21 hours. Worse, it was discovered that she was paralysed from the waist down. Before her accident, Fairhall had represented Canterbury at national pony club championships. Her riding career was over, but at the urging of New Zealand’s most famous disabled athlete, Eve Rimmer, she tried the shot put. Soon she discovered that she had ability as an archer. She had excellent concentration, thrived on competition, was calm, and had a good eye. At her first national archery championship, in 1976, she placed third. She improved steadily and was selected in the New Zealand team for the 1979 Australian national championships in Perth. There was a crushing disappointment for Fairhall in 1980. She earned selection for the Moscow Olympics, a historic achievement, but was unable to participate because of the American-led boycott. She had won her first national title that year and, by way of consolation, travelled to the Paralympics at Arnheim Holland, where she won a gold medal and set a world record for the double FITA round. Fairhall won her second national title in 1981, after a tight contest with her closest rival, Ann Shurrock, of Ashburton. The pair vied for New Zealand archery honours throughout the 1980s. Both women were chosen for the Brisbane Commonwealth Games, when archery made its only games appearance. For preparation, Fairhall competed at the world championships in Italy, and her 16th placing, in a field of 92, was encouraging. The women’s double FITA, an arduous four-day competition, was held at the Murarrie Range in Brisbane. Fairhall struggled with the wind over the 70 and 60-metre ranges on the first day, which she finished in 12th place. She was nothing if not determined, and gradually improved her position. After the second day she was fourth, within range of the leader, Belfast teenager Janet Yates. Yates faded slightly on the third day and Canadian Lucille Lemay led. Shurrock was second, three points behind, and Fairhall was a further five points adrift, in third. The first round of the final day was over 50 metres and Yates stormed back into the lead, with Fairhall her closest challenger. Yates began the final session – a 30-metre round – strongly and swept to a formidable five-point lead. With 285 of the 288 arrows shot, she still led. But the pressure told and the Northern Ireland schoolgirl muffed her last three shots. Fairhall, meanwhile, was rock-solid under pressure, finishing with three consecutive bulls. This put them level on 2373 points. After 20 minutes the scorers announced that Fairhall had won the countback by 60 bulls to 57 and was the gold medallist. There followed scenes of emotion and jubilation. Everyone was proud of the gallant New Zealander. Well, not quite everyone. At the post-event press conference, one cynical journalist asked Fairhall if, in the windy conditions, it was a help or a hindrance to shoot from a wheelchair. Fairhall’s answer has become one of the great New Zealand sports quotes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never shot standing up.” At the Los Angeles Olympics two years later, Fairhall totalled 2357 points and finished 35th in a field of 47. It was not a particularly happy Games for her – her steel wheelchair caused nightmares, setting off metal-detection scanners at airports. Security personnel wanted to inspect every part and Fairhall had to be lifted out so that even her air-filled cushion could be searched. She was also bothered by dozens of interview request from journalists wanting to speak to the first disabled Olympian. Fairhall eventually competed at five world championships, the last in Turkey in 1993, plus various wheelchair events around the world. She won five national titles and tried desperately get to a second Olympics. Even when she was 51, she was aiming for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but a chronic shoulder injury, which required reconstructive surgery, proved too big a handicap. She competed in four Paralympics, the first, in 1972, in track and field, the second, in 1980, in both track and field and archery, and the last two, in 1988 and 2000, in just archery. She was a New Zealand Sportsman of the Year finalist after her 1982 Commonwealth Games heroics, and was made a life member of Archery New Zealand. Fairhall later became an administrator for disabled sport and coached elite-level New Zealand archers. She died in 2006, aged 61. She was awarded with an MBE for services to her sport and the Lonsdale Cup in 1982.
410	dbpedia	1	78	https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1147442/kim-woo-jin-secures-the-gold-by	en	jin secures the gold by 3 millimetres	https://cdn.dmcl.biz/med…s-2164795311.jpg	https://cdn.dmcl.biz/med…s-2164795311.jpg	[ "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/289205/o/2_5337143584275577107.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/301379/o/GettyImages-2164795311.jpg", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/301380/o/GettyImages-2164733177.jpg", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/289204/o/WhatsApp+Image+2023-10-31+at+21.54.29.jpeg", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/295811/o/Sam+Staff+Pic.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/286803/o/ITG-Autumn-Magazine-2023-Digital-1.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/269396/o/April---Magazine-1.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/254149/o/ITG-Autumn-Magazine-2022-1.jpg", "https://3113bd565d2f8d649361-a9ae00dd0e64385bd82d92fba68e6c40.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/FISU-2019-awards.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/68841/o/2017-awards-winner.png", "https://3113bd565d2f8d649361-a9ae00dd0e64385bd82d92fba68e6c40.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/online-media-awards-2015.jpg?v=4", "https://3113bd565d2f8d649361-a9ae00dd0e64385bd82d92fba68e6c40.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/images/2014/08/poll-results-sidebar.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/290172/o/PS_850299.jpg", "https://global-sports.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/tenantb72d524b-09bf-472b-b5f9-0da0e87ebcc1/logos/00760da1b672ee4bd66abd03c2e05699.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/288964/o/Cricket+World+Cup+2023+New+Zealand+edited.jpg", "https://3113bd565d2f8d649361-a9ae00dd0e64385bd82d92fba68e6c40.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/images/2014/08/vote-on-our-poll-sidebar.png", "https://cdn.dmcl.biz/media/image/162664/o/anoc-world-beach-games-magazines.png" ]	[]	[]	[ "" ]	null	[ "Javier Carro" ]	null	South Korea's Kim Woo-jin won the gold medal in the men's individual archery final at Paris 2024 on Sunday 4 August. Thanks to a difference of just three millimetres in the tie-break he was able to beat the American Ellison Brady, who won the silver medal.		/assets/images/icons/favicon.ico		https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1147442/kim-woo-jin-secures-the-gold-by	South Korea's Kim Woo-jin won the gold medal in the men's individual archery final at Paris 2024 on Sunday 4 August. Thanks to a difference of just three millimetres in the tie-break he was able to beat the American Ellison Brady, who won the silver medal. The Esplanade des Invalides was the stage chosen to name the champion. The Asian archer managed to beat his rival 6-5 after the so-called golden arrow had decided the title in his favour. The victory was Woo-jin's third gold medal at the Olympics after he also won the men's team and mixed team events. The South Korean began by losing the first set 29-27 to a Brady who in the beginning was close to perfection. The second set brought the score back to level terms and in the next set it was the American who took the lead again. Woo-jin bounced back in the fourth round, taking advantage of a bad shot by his opponent, hitting 10 shots to make it 4-4 on aggregate and leave the competition open for the final leg.