Diaspora: A Novel

Normally plot holes that strain my suspension of disbelief get docked a star (I'm a tough grader) but this book has such a sense of wonder that I loved it when it came out and happily bought and reread it (I have a tight budget). But let me explain the plot hole.The core burst, as depicted in the novel, would not only have "disintegrated the nuclear matter" of the Milky Way galaxy, it would have sterilized the Laniakea supercluster and caused a mass extinction out to half the Hubble Radius. The last time such an event could have plausibly happened in the trillion or so galaxies of the observable universe would be the Ordovician Extinction 445 million years ago. So the odds of one occurring in the Milky Way in any given millennium is something like 10^-18. After the first coincidence (the Lacerta gamma ray burst), the second would normally be too much, but I just did not have the heart to dock this otherwise supurb book a star.

I picked this up because I heard Greg Egan uses nonbinary ve/ver/vis pronouns for his characters in it. I was looking at pronoun lists, trying to figure out which I liked best for myself, and was really attracted to the sound of ve/ver/vis… it sounds very shiny and futuristic and I dig it. I like the way the pronoun set has neutral, feminine, and masculine sounds all together and the familiar English pronoun endings.Important Note: ve/ver/vis pronouns were actually first used by Keri Hulme in her novel, The Bone People (which looks very depressing, though…).I have to say that although I really enjoyed seeing my favorite neoproun set used, I didn’t get a lot else out of Diaspora. It’s very hard scifi to the point where it almost feels like a different genre from the classic scifi I’m used to (like H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury). It’s very heavy on the math and physics and I have to admit most of it went right over my head. If you like math and physics and have a good background in it, though, you might love it (I know at least two physicists who did!).The story follows Yatima, a newly-minted “orphan” AI who lives in a city (or server) full of other AI. There’s a long, involved description of how the computer creates new AI and then a funny scene of how Yatima develops vis personality by interacting with older AI, much like a human baby. I was able to imagine Yatima as not being gendered, but the other characters had names and personalities that seemed more gendered to me – Blanca, Gabriel, and Inoshiro seemed feminine, masculine, and masculine and I imagined them in my head as those genders.Actually, Yatima is a feminine name in Africa… it does seem like the characters were written to have gender, but not sex, and that’s what the nonbinary pronouns are referring to (because they’re computers and don’t have physical sex characteristics). In that way, it’s not quite as progressive as I was hoping it would be.After Yatima meets vis new friends, they watch the AI fend off an asteroid from hitting Earth together…Then the humans are all destroyed in a gamma ray burst, after which the AI are put on physical computers and propelled into space, where they encounter one race of aliens that live in five dimensions and another that live in sixteen. To say the least, things get weird and very technical. There are some philosophical ideas brought up, like how having multiple versions of oneself saved at different times might affect one psychologically, but it’s very hard to follow without understanding what’s going on on a technical level, and I just did not have the patience or science background to untangle it.I did like the idea of living in a computer—not having to feel pain or any other physical sensation without consent. If I could do it, I absolutely would, no question. I can live without physical pleasure, but I would LOVE to live without physical pain. Plus near-infinite mental speed and capacity is the cherry on top!* Diaspora is very optimistic in this way. Even though the fleshers die, humanity survives on in computers, living until they complete their self-realization and end their sequence.If you could live in a computer, would you do it?*- This is assuming Cartesian Dualism is real and the mind can be separated from the body. If thoughts and emotions are actually physical sensations I’m not sure what living without a physical body would be like. It might not resemble intelligent life as we know it…

The postapocalypse is side show of little meaning. It open beutifully like an onion only to shrivel back to a single point in incompréhensible far future. The point when countless universes die of old age. Its about the mind when all is done. This nouvel is perfect for those who think big thoughts. Im left empty bit happy. Dont give up, just read, it can be heavy or bizarre. A bit of finnegans wake in space, at points

I'm giving it 3 stars for now because I've barely begun and don't want to be unfair - but what I have read so far was a real struggle, mainly to understand WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?! Do these people have, like, physical bodies? Or are they all just Kindle versions of people, existing only on a giant server?The detail of how Yatima comes to be "born," if that's the right word, gets numbing - page after page after page of extraordinarily - and I think unnecessarily - detailed description of exactly every minute step of the way. It's made more difficult to wade through by the author's refusal to give us a break and tell us - is this all happening in a computer? Is there any flesh and blood? Is everybody in this society just an icon, an avatar? And is all this mind-numbing detail absolutely vital to the story unfolding?I hope not, because large parts of it are incomprehensible to me, and I'm not a novice in sci-fi or computerese or the English language. As it is, there is very little "action" - unless you think action means apps or coding or pixels or GUIs or CPUs or mainframes or servers or whatever interacting or syncing or issuing commands with each other (it's hard for me to think of anything less interesting), with no breaks, like, what do they call those things again? Oh yeah, CHAPTERS.Greg Egan may be a good or even great writer, but I haven't seen evidence of that yet, though I have seen plenty of evidence of what amounts to authorial self-indulgence, as if he's writing to please himself instead of readers, and also trying to show us how smart he is.Well, for now, I'll keep plugging away, but it's not enjoyable at all, yet - rather it's a slog. I hope I get to a point, sooner rather than later, when Egan reveals to me exactly what is going on. And oh yeah, why I should care.