Why Greg Egan is the Greatest Living Sci-Fi Author

Jules Verne. Isaac Asimov. Greg Egan.

These are my favorite sci-fi writers of all time. Each one represents a separate age in human history and science fiction.

Jules Verne was the first sci-fi author I discovered by reading the Soviet translations of his books. He documented the age of wonders of the 19th century, where the Earth’s exploration is just about to be complete but a few remaining white spots are enough to excite the people. His stories are filled with an unshakable belief in progress a technology. “The Mysterious Island” is probably my favorite piece, a tale of a group of Americans stranded on uninhabited island with nothing but their watches and a dog collar and building a small civilization through their intelligence and perseverance. Jules’s style of lengthy vivid descriptions might feel dated, just like some of his views (too close to Kipling), and we no longer believe humans should eradicate all predator animals (although we did kill a lot of them already). But the way Verne’s stories embody the human spirit and ingenuity is truly timeless.

Then, for the longest time I preferred Isaac Asimov as my favorite sci-fi author. We’re getting into the 20th century and his books represent the teutonic change in our understanding of technological limits. At the start of the famous “Foundation” series he uses atomic energy as the universal fantastic element capable of truly magical things far beyond creating current in a wire. Back then we vastly overestimated the progress in space travel and underestimated the advances in computing. Like in many stories in this period, Foundation’s characters can cross half the galaxy but most of them don’t live longer than we do and their computers are extremely primitive. But importantly, Asimov starts playing with these ideas and introduces thinking robots he is famous for and long-living kosmonites.

Most of the space-faring science fiction is pretty basic. Writers come up with action stories by moving everything into space and adding names of random particles to common things to make it sound sci-fi. Need a rocket engine? It’s a_plasma_drive! Need some weapons? A_neutrino_blaster! (actually very silly if you know anything about physics). Asimov didn’t participate in this cargo cult. Instead, he focused on the sociology psychology and used the sci-fi environent to produce unique stories and explore the ethical side of fictionality societes. And he was the master of creating these societies and figuring out the weird habit and traditions they’d inevitable have, whether it’s alients in the The Gods Themselves or the people living under the metal crust of Trantor in the Foundation series.

Greg Egan is their match in the 21st century. Even though the general relativity was discovered back in 1915, it took almost a century for sci-fi writers to accept the hard reality of interstellar travel and stop thinking about breaking the lightspeed. Instead, Greg Egan focused on everything else which was also mostly missing from sci-fi literature in the previous decades. The previous generation of writers didn’t expect much progress in humans. The people piloting their cruisers and falling onto planets aren’t different from us; their medicine might be a bit better but they will still die before turning 100.

Greg Egan writes most of his stories in a very specific way. He comes up with an interesting alternative to our physics or sees a curious paper and then builds an entire world on top of it. The Permutation City novel is based on a fictional Dust Theory, a concept similar to a Boltzmann brain. The Orthogonal series is another great example. Here, Egan changes a single sign in the space-time metric, and then comes up with a new physics, chemistry and biology – only to serve as a backdrop for an engaging story with people who should be extremely alien to us and yet their problem feel so familiar:

In Yalda’s universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. On Yalda’s world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky. As a child Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are 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 civilisation has yet achieved. Only one solution seems tenable: if a spacecraft can be sent on a journey at sufficiently high speed, its trip will last many generations for those on board, but it will return after just a few years have passed at home. The travellers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster.

Many sci-fi writers struggle with filling their stories with live characters that don’t feel like tools. And while Egan’s heroes are often unjustyfiable smart, they do feel alive.

One small bit I particularly enjoy about his books is that he doesn’t try to make everything more exotic by coming up with alien names. If an alien species has big animals they herd and eat, it’ll be a cow. And these farmers will use human names so it’s easier to remember them. Instead of “Far-laq saw a large flock of jumpy-snooters” he will write “Anna saw some chickens”. The science fiction part comes from the story itself, not the entourage, until it’s truly necessary.

I have to warn you, that some of his books can be outright challenging to consume. Orthogonal is filled with math equations. Dychronauts require you to imagine unfathomable geometries of space. But most of them are far more friendly. If you want to try it, I’d suggest starting with the Diaspora novel and the Axiomatic collection of short stories.