Greg Egan at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 28/01/2008

Greg Egan

About the Author

Paperback - Gollancz (2007)

First British Edition Gollancz (2002)

Paperback
Gollancz Millenium (2003)

Schild's Ladder
For twenty thousand years, every observable phenomenon in the universe has been successfully explained by the Sarumpaet Rules.
Now Cass has stumbled on an entirely different kind of physics, and she has travelled three hundred and seventy light-years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, in the hope of bringing this tantalising alternative to life. The ‘novo-vacuum’ should begin decaying the instant it’s created, but even a short-lived, microscopic speck could shed light on the origins of the universe.
Cass’s experiment is wildly successful: the novo-vacuum is more stable than the ordinary vacuum around it, and a region in which the new physics holds sway proceeds to expand out from Mimosa at half the speed of light.
Six hundred years later, more than two thousand inhabited systems have been lost to the novo-vacuum. People have come from throughout inhabited space to the Rindler to study the phenomenon. Most are Preservationists, hunting for a way to turn back the tide, but a few, the Yielders, believe that the challenge of adapting to survive on the far side of the border would reinvigorate a civilisation that has grown stale and insular.
Tchicaya is a Yielder, but when Mariama, the childhood friend who inspired a life of travel, arrives soon after, he is shocked to discover that she is intent on finding a way to destroy the novo-vacuum.
When the true richness of the world behind the border is revealed, tensions between the opposing factions grow. Then a splinter group responds to these revelations with violent, unilateral action, and Tchicaya and Mariama are forced into an uneasy alliance, travelling together through the border, balancing old and new loyalties against the fate of two incomparably different universes.
‘Wonderful mind-expanding stuff’ The Guardian
‘One of the genre’s great ideas men’ The Times
`The universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it’s going to have a tough time outdoing Egan’ New Scientist
‘When it comes to making big science intelligible to a wider audience. Egan is second to none’ SFX
‘A major voice in SF’ Publishers Weekly
‘Hard-sf of diamond quality by one of the genre’s finest writers… challenges the weary Space Opera clichés common elsewhere with peerless conviction and a refreshing cool sensibility. A work of immense sf talent’ Starburst
'One of the genre's great ideas men' The Times
‘It is one of Greg Egan’s great skills that he makes the passion of science appear understandable, even inevitable, to non-scientists’ Foundation
Greg Egan is the 21st century’s most important sf writer. Schild’s Ladder is an epic adventure founded on the true science of the future. This is a book none could have written before, and only Egan could write now. Read Egan today, because it’s what everybody else will be reading tomorrow’ Stephen Baxter

First British Edition Gollancz (1999)

Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (2000)

Teranesia
Prabir Suresh is nine years old and the son of two scientists specialising in entomology. They live on an otherwise uninhabited island in a remote part of the Indonesian ocean. The island has no real name, but Prabir calls it Teranesia and populates it with imaginary creatures even stranger than the evolutionarily puzzling butterflies that his parents are studying.
Thirty years into the third millennium, the discovery of bizarre new species on and around Teranesia draws Prabir's biologist sister Maddy back to the island. Prabir has reasons of his own for fearing what she might find there and persuades a pharmaceutical researcher on the lookout for biological bounty to take him along as her guide.
Who will get there first, Prabir or Maddy? And what will they find? An evolutionary leap forward, a new humanity or the evanescent ghosts of past lies?
'A crescendo of emotional power. It's as though a writer whose last several novels have been powered by stunning ideas has suddenly discovered that passions can be stunning too' Locus
'Rewards the reader with ever expanding vistas of wonder' New Scientist
'Egan's future fascinates' SF Eye
'Achieves what the fiction of ideas should always aspire to' The Modern Review
'Science fiction as it should be' Odyssey
'Contains far too many ingenious notions to list ... Egan is a fiendishly clever fellow' Dave Langford, SFX

Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (1999)

Luminous
Greg Egan is the author of some of the most surprising and intuitive short fictions in the genre. His stories range from near future predictions to far future, far space improvisations and this new collection of ten stories includes 'The Planck Dive','Transition Dreams','Our Lady of Chernobyl', 'Cocoon' and the title story 'Luminous'.
'A first class collection. Every one of these stories is gripping and skilfully done, one of the best single author collections of the year' Science Fiction Chronicle
'The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan' New Scientist
'[Greg Egan] reveals wonders with an artistry to equal his audacity' New York Review Of Science Fiction
'Wonderful mind expanding stuff, and well written too' The Guardian

First British Edition Gollancz Millenium (1997)

Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (1998)

Diaspora
By the end of the 30th century humanity has flung itself far out into the universe beyond earth, beyond even the confines of the human body. The descendents of twenty centuries of scientific cultural and physical development divide into three: flesh humans - biological descendents of Homo sapiens; gleisner robots embodying human minds; and polises - supercomputers teeming with intelligent software, the direct copies of billions of human minds now existing only in the virtual reality of the polises. In Konishi polis a new mind - Yatima - an orphan, is created from the base mind seed plus a few random mutations rather than from combining elements of existing Konishi minds.
Diaspora is Yatima's story and mankind's. Two colliding stars send out a wave of gamma rays that may bring the end of earth and the few remaining flesh humans. The polises decide that to ensure their continuance they must clone themselves thousandfold and set out to look for a new home where random astrophysical events a can threaten them no more.
Diaspora
'Greg Egan is central to contemporary science fiction' INTERZONE
'Never one short of startling ideas, Egan's latest, greatest novel presents us with hard SF miracles… Diaspora is both concisely written future history and exhilarating genre thriller… Remember to keep your mouth closed when reading this or your jaw might drop clean off' Starburst
Distress
'Breaks new ground for Egan... the mood is darker and the tone more combative' interzone
'Ambitiously juggles elements of quantum theory and metaphysics with tremendous skill and verve...his most coherent and engrossing novel so far' Starburst
Permutation City
'A virtual computer space immense enough to contain universes, infinities, heaven and hell... Science fiction can still boggle us' Guardian
'Filled with wonderful set pieces and vaulting leaps of imagination it's a real trip' Locus
Quarantine
'Achieves what the fiction of ideas should always aspire to' The Modern Review
Axiomatic
'The most constantly impressive single-author collection I've seen in a decade' Interzone

Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (1999)

Quarantine
It's late in the 21st century and bioengineering has become such a commonplace that people are able to modify their minds in any way they wish. It is an era which has been shaped by information systems so vast that security, in any form, is easily breached. You can be just exactly what you want to be, but the world outside and your life in it aren't going to run any more smoothly...
Because one night, thirty three years ago, the stars went out and everything disappeared from the sky. 'The Bubble' - a perfect sphere centred on the sun - made its appearance and isolated the earth from the solar system.
Humanity has been cut off... Quarantined.
'Qualifies as grand speculation in the purest sense… stunning' Locus
The universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a hard time outdoing Egan' New Scientist

About The Author
Greg Egan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He alternates programming contracts with stretches of full time writing. His short fiction has twice won Best Story of the Year in Interzone. He is a winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three times.
Visit the author's web site

Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Schild's Ladder (Gollancz, 2002) Gollancz Pbk Aug 07

Teranesia (Gollancz, 1999) Gollancz Millenium Pbk Aug 00

Luminous Short Stories ( 1998) Gollancz Millenium Pbk Aug 99

Diaspora (Gollancz Millenium, 1997) Gollancz Millenium Pbk 1998

Quarantine ( 1992) Gollancz Millenium Pbk Aug 99

Permutation City

Axiomatic Short Stories

Distress