"Darwin's Radio" by Greg Bear (1999)

"'Look, trees send out chemical signals when they're attacked.  The signals attract insects that prey on the bugs that attack them.  Call the Orkin man.  The concept works at all levels, in the ecosystem, in a species, even a society.  All the individual creatures are networks of cells.  All species are networks of individuals.  All ecosystems are networks of species.  All interact and communicate with one another to one degree or another, through competition, predation, cooperation.  All these interactions are similar to neurotransmitters crossing synapses in the brain, or ants communicating in a colony.  The colony changes its overall behavior based on ant interactions.  So do we, based on how our neurons talk to each other.  And so does all of nature, from top to bottom.  It's all connected.'"

Greg Bear has already been discussed in my review of Eon, a novel published 14 years before Darwin's Radio.  He is/was a noted author of hard science fiction.  He passed away from stroke-related complications last year.

I was pretty hard on Eon, the one other of his books that I've read, but looking back at that review I think that my assessment of it was fair.  It really wasn't up to the level of more noteworthy hard science fiction entries, and yes, it does come off like a less digestible version of Ringworld.  Perhaps the sequels were better.  I certainly hope so.

I'm happy to say that Darwin's Radio is a superior book in every respect.  The author has a firm grasp of the science involved, the characters are fully realized and their actions make sense, and the sprawling plot manages to both fascinate and make logical sense at the same time.  I sometimes disagree with the Nebula Awards, but this book amply deserved that level of recognition.

Darwin's Radio takes place in the early 2000s, as health officials across the globe come to grips with a "new" virus that seems to have lain dormant in our DNA.  The danger posed by this virus is far from certain, and as a team of researchers attempts to assess this threat a new chapter in the history of our species (or at least our genus) begins.

Darwin's Radio isn't kind of book you pick up occasionally and read over a long period  of time.  It's a very involved novel, both in terms of the science discussed and the arguments presented its characters.  It thus requires a sustained effort on the part of the reader, but if you can sit down and get to it you'll find your effort rewarded. 

There's also the COVID angle.  Keep in mind that this novel was written in 1999, long before we'd taken up wearing masks, washing our hands obsessively, and also long before we began attempting to keep abreast of "new developments" via cellular technology that didn't exist in 1999.  For this reason Darwin's Radio can seem very prescient, in that discussions of viruses, epidemics and the paranoia engendered by both are things we grew uncomfortably close to during the pandemic years.

As for a recommendation, I'll just say that I can't recommend this book enough.  It's one of the best things I've read in a while, and when I have the chance I'll be reading the sequel, Darwin's Children.

Related Entries:

"Traitor to the Living" by Philip Jose Farmer (1973)

"Time War" by Lin Carter (1974)

"Pathogenesis" by Jonathan Kennedy (2023)

"Saturn Run" by John Sandford and Ctein (2015)

"Distress" by Greg Egan (1997)

"He gestured at the screen, and the ball of twine exploded, sending brilliant loops arching out into the darkness in all directions.  'The Keystone is, at the very least, armed with a TOE [Theory of Everything], and aware of both vis [sic] existence, and a canonical body of observations and experimental results - whether vis [sic) own, or 'second hand' - which need to be accounted for.  If we lacked either the information density or organizational schema to explain vis [sic] own existence self-consistently, the whole event would be sub-critical: there'd be no universe implied.  But given a sufficiently rich Aleph, the process won't stop until an entire physical cosmos is created." 

I know, I know.  Let that sink in for a while, and get back to me.  No one's going to get there all at once, and anyone who says they have is probably mistaken.

Greg Egan is an Australian computer programmer and writer of science fiction.  He's somewhat famous for being one of the harder hard science fiction writers out there, and he's won several awards for his books.  One of his other books, Permutation City, has also been reviewed here.

In Distress a journalist is assigned to cover a physics conference in the year 2050.  This particular physics conference has attracted a lot of attention because at least three of its keynote (or should I say keystone?) speakers have claimed to have discovered a Theory of Everything (TOE) which will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos.  Little do these speakers know that a fringe group of cosmologists has targeted each and every one of them for assassination, hoping to avert the end of everything.

As novels go it's damn slow, and it just didn't blow my mind the way Permutation City did.  The protagonist is by turns irritating and slow on the uptake, and none of the situations in which he finds himself are remotely interesting.  About halfway through the book I started to actively wish for his death, and the threatened end of the world began to seem like a satisfying way to end this novel.

As much as I loved Permutation City, I think it's in Distress that Greg Egan reveals his weakness as a writer.  He's good with big, sweeping, mind-numbing ideas - the kind of ideas that held center stage in Permutation City - but very weak with regard to creating interesting characters and putting them in dramatic situations.  And instead of going with his strength as a writer, the kind of philosophical/technological/scientific ideas which should have been at the heart of this story, he decided to populate this novel with a host of unlikable and uninteresting people, all loosely joined together by a subplot that would make most people laugh if you explained it to them.

So yeah, this book is boring... but I won't hold it against the author.  If the only thing he'd ever written was Permutation City, that alone would be enough to put him up there with authors like Asimov and Clarke.  I'm also fairly certain that he's written other, better books than Distress.  Every author's allowed his or her occasional duds, and it was just my bad luck to have chosen Distress out of Egan's bibliography.

Related Entries:

"Artemis" by Andy Weir (2017)
"The Windup Girl" by Paulo Bacigalupi (2009)
"Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement (1954)
"R.U.R. and War with the Newts" by Karl Capek (1920 and 1936)

"Eon" by Greg Bear (1985)

"The glob dropped and fleshed out like a vampire in an old horror movie to form a masculine body, clothed in loose white shirt and forest-green pants.  The figure seemed to solidify."

Greg Bear is highly regarded among certain aficionados of "hard sci-fi."  He's written dozens of books, and his bibliography stretches back to the late 70s.  This novel, Eon, is the first of four books in his "The Way" series.

In the early 2000s, a massive object called The Stone appears near the Earth.  Several teams of scientists investigate this object, and after many years they uncover both the startling secret of The Stone's origin and its connections to worlds (and realities) far beyond their wildest imaginings.

In tone the earliest chapters of Eon reminded me a lot of Larry Niven's Ringworld, in that a cast of decidedly "diverse" individuals study an object that defies our present understanding of physics, only to discover that a shadowy race of "engineers" is lurking behind the scenes.  You could also compare Eon to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series, which also features a mysterious object(s) lying at the edge of our exploratory capacity, followed by revelations concerning its creators and their "message from the stars."

Yet I think Ringworld is the more apt comparison, given that Eon shares the same flaws.  Despite the "hard science" on display, both novels fail to adequately think through the implications of the ideas presented, and instead attempt to overwhelm our critical instincts with concepts that were cutting-edge at the time.  Both books also feature paper-thin characterizations, and tend to wander more than they ought to.  The chief difference being that Ringworld is much shorter, and as a result much more readable.

I wanted very much to like Eon - I'd heard great things about it - but I found it less brilliant that its reputation would suggest.  I felt like there were glimmers of better novels in its pages, but the whole was much less than the individual parts.

P.S. It may be that I'm being overly hard on this one.  After reading Greg Egan's Permutation City, Eon might be a victim of my newer, higher expectations.  Whatever the case, Eon definitely ISN'T in the same league as Egan's book.

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan (1994)

"And in the meantime?  The privileged class of Copies will grow larger, more powerful - and more threatening to the vast majority of people, who still won't be able to join them.  The costs will come down, but not drastically - just enough to meet some of the explosion in demand from the executive class, once they throw off their qualms, en masse.  Even in secular Europe, there's a deeply ingrained prejudice that says dying is the responsible, the moral thing to do.  There's a Death Ethic - and the first substantial segment of the population abandoning it will trigger a huge backlash."

How "hard" do you like your science fiction?  Do you prefer sword and sorcery with a dash of laser guns?  Or books so conceptually deep that they threaten to split your head open?  Ursula K. Le Guin or Stanislaw Lem?  Starship Troopers or the V.A.L.I.S. trilogy?  Straight-to-film, or unfilmable?  If your answer in each instance is the latter, then you'll love Greg Egan.

Egan is a science fiction writer and computer programmer.  He also has a degree in Mathematics (and it shows).  According to Egan, there are NO pictures of him to be found on the Internet, though you are, of course, welcome to search.  Maybe, just maybe, some of those you find will be the real Egan?

Permutation City is one of his earlier novels.  He's written a lot of them, many with catchy titles like "Dark Integers," "Mitochondrial Eve," and "The Moral Virologist."  Still looking for those laser guns and rocket ships?  Abandon all hope, all ye who enter Egan's bibliography.

So what's this book about, you ask?  Well, the simple answer is virtual reality.  The more complex answer is the nature of virtual reality, and how the virtual might be more "real" than we think.  

Or something.  I'm not sure.  It gets very deep my friend.  It gets very, very deep.  Along the way Egan also speculates on the nature of consciousness, the conditions necessary for the creation of life, and the nature of sanity in relation to a ever-shifting, possibly illusory world.

Long story short (not that this book is that long), Permutation City will FUCK YOUR MIND, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.  If you like books that ask big questions, if you like authors that talk up to you instead of down, then you'll freaking love this one.  It is, I think, the most difficult science fiction novel I've ever read (and I've read a few whoppers), but for those who enjoy thinking (and reflecting) on their science fiction this one's a winner.  Just don't expect Egan to go gentle.  He'll be hitting you over the head with existential quandaries before the end of the introduction.

If You Liked This Book, You Might Also Like:

"The Eden Cycle" by Raymond Z. Gallun
"The Information" by James Gleick

...and You'll Probably Despise:

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

P.S. Egan gets a lot of flack for the "Dust Theory" of consciousness presented in this book.  Some people on the Internet like to think they're VERY clever, and in their oversimplified mode of thinking this theory is easy to tear apart.  There are, however, certain allowances in quantum mechanics for this theory - it's just that Egan doesn't include these allowances in the book.  Given our current understanding of both quantum indeterminacy and entanglement, the Dust Theory does make a certain kind of sense.

Many critics also fail to take into account the sheer volume of information available within the observable universe (In the book, a character mentions that "dark matter" has been fully accounted for, and that the approximate date of a "Big Crunch" can be predicted.)

P.P.S. There is a criticism that runs "Egan only writes for his main audience, which is Egan."  I see some validity to this argument.  While I think Permutation City is fairly accessible (especially if you already have an interest in scientific topics), some of his other stuff is so obscure that one wonders why he bothered to write it in the first place.