Finished reading
Incandescence. It was better than
Diaspora, but it still didn't make me want to rush out and buy more of Egan's work. Early on, it suffers from using too many made-up words in too short a space of time, but I'm not sure you could describe a non-euclidian coordinate system in normal words. The science was a little dense, but I found it entirely grokable, which is quite an achievement.
There are two parallel plotlines, one of post-humans investigating the only true mystery to have cropped up in millions of years, and one of aliens trying to figure out the basic rules of physics (and incidentally save their world from being destroyed). The obvious expectation is that the two groups will meet at the end, and the two plots will merge into one, but this never happens. Instead, we're given a strong hint about how the two are related, but I'm not convinced that it makes sense
unless the Splinter managed to move from a neutron star to a supermassive black hole without requiring any major physical (or biological) changes...Anyway, decent book. It'll keep all the relativity-nerds out there happy. And now I'm back to the fourth of Turtledove's Worldwar series.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 02:09:05 PM by Russell Nash »
Science means that not all dreams can come true