[B35]⇒ Descargar Gratis Distress Greg Egan 9780061057274 Books

Distress Greg Egan 9780061057274 Books

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Distress Greg Egan 9780061057274 Books

I tend to describe this book as "truth, disguised as bad sci-fi". And it kind of is both.

I first read this book almost 2 decades ago. At the time I remember it as a nice, solid, near-future sci-fi book. What I remembered most from that first read was just how believable and interesting the genetic engineering aspects of the world were.

I remember thinking to myself that "yes - if biotech is to do in the near future what information-tech did in the near past - this is what it would look like".

Similar to Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd", which is the first realistic description of a society with teleporters I ever saw, this book was the first realistic description of a society with advanced biotech I ever saw.

So that's what I thought about the first time I read it - an enjoyable sci-fi book with good science but bad characters. You know the kind - where all the characters are "too logical" and only exist to explain the science.

Around a decade later, I got an itch to re-read the book. Took me a couple of years to track it down in a second hand book store.

I re-read it - and to my amazement I found that almost all my opinions about society, sexuality, social justice, and "people" in general were in this book. Opinions and views that I thought I developed on my own from observations of the world - I found spelled out almost identical in this book.

Without me realizing it - this book has completely shaped my world view. Even re-reading it, I don't know *how* it did it. The ideas are conveyed... poorly, in the usual manner of sci-fi books, using flat characters and spoon-feedingly-long conversations. Yet there you have it.

I would recommend this book to everyone. Not the audio-book though - that's horrible. Whoever narrated it has no business narrating anything.


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Distress Greg Egan 9780061057274 Books Reviews

I wish that I had found this book when it was first published in 1995. It has everything in it anti-male/anti-science radical victim feminists, extreme voluntary gender reassignment, uber fems and men, voluntary asexuals, internal body technology, pre big bang symmetry, post big bang broken symmetries, competing Theories of Everything, eigenstates, and the idea that consciousness causes the wave-function to collapse. It's hard science fiction played out on the grandest scale.
No one writes like Greg Egan.

His work delves deeply into themes and ideas that are hard to find in speculative fiction (or any fiction for that matter).
Distress includes explorations into the sociology of physics, the search for a theory of everything, cultures and cults of belief, and how gender and sexuality would change in a world unshackled from physical norms. The story is powerfully thought-provoking and has an added gift a plot that moves quickly with suspense and a satisfying conclusion.
So many plot threads come together in unexpected ways in this novel, that it is difficult to say much about the plot without spoiling something. I would just suggest reading the blurb.

I was strongly reminded of _Quarantine_, in which for some reason only a human mind is a suitable observer to collapse wave functions of quantum events. This particular plot point is silly in _Quarantine_, and its rough equivalent here is even sillier. (All of Egan's Subjective Cosmology Cycle, while aptly named, gets a little too speculative for my taste--the Dust Theory in _Permutation City_ would be another example.) Nonetheless, the suspense thriller elements of the plot succeeded in keeping me guessing almost to the end, and a few of the sideplots were excellent the Neo-DNA plot echoed and expanded on Egan's short story "The Moat" (and was brilliantly brought back into the novel without warning about two-thirds through), and one of the five sexes in the novel set the stage for _Diaspora_ (so far my favorite of Egan's novels, though I have yet to read _Zendegi_, _Teranesia_, or the Orthogonal Trilogy). It also had an unusual amount of humor for an Egan novel, and several characteristically awkward sex scenes (as in _Schild's Ladder_ and _Permutation City_).

I'll give this one four stars for the suspense, surprises, and abundance of clever ideas. It's more of a page-turner than most of Egan's novels, but I think _Diaspora_, _Schild's Ladder_, and _Incandescence_ are more rewarding overall, and give more insight into the author's worldview.

Edit On thinking about this book a little longer, one thing that occurs to me as pretty silly is that Worth had a documentary, apparently recently enough that he was married to Gina, about the five sexes. However, in the novel, it's obvious that ufems, umales, and asexes are basically everywhere, so wouldn't this documentary be a bit like making an exposé in 2014 called "On the Gays and their Gayness" and having it be a big hit? Am I off base here?
Of the Greg Egan books I've read this one is the most well rounded in a literary sense. The characters are better developed, the story has more dimensions, and it delves into a wider array of issues familiar to modern society. I does lack the deeper exploration of science and technology like Diaspora and Permutation City (which are fantastically mind blowing and inventive), but that's what makes Distress a nice addition to my growing collection of Egan's work. It trades depth for breadth.
I don't know if I'll ever give Greg Egan less than 5 stars. Maybe more philosophy than science and still more science than any other author I've read. It seems that heaven for Egan may be the same as the one I have contemplated myself understanding.
The exploration of sexuality was both brutal and beautiful. I will make my sisters read this.
Distress was a slower start since I'd come from Schild's Ladder and didn't quite want to be stuck on Earth, but once I got going I was reading through my multivariable calculus class. (Wish me luck on the test...). Thank you Egan for some fresh insights to keep my brain working!
I tend to describe this book as "truth, disguised as bad sci-fi". And it kind of is both.

I first read this book almost 2 decades ago. At the time I remember it as a nice, solid, near-future sci-fi book. What I remembered most from that first read was just how believable and interesting the genetic engineering aspects of the world were.

I remember thinking to myself that "yes - if biotech is to do in the near future what information-tech did in the near past - this is what it would look like".

Similar to Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd", which is the first realistic description of a society with teleporters I ever saw, this book was the first realistic description of a society with advanced biotech I ever saw.

So that's what I thought about the first time I read it - an enjoyable sci-fi book with good science but bad characters. You know the kind - where all the characters are "too logical" and only exist to explain the science.

Around a decade later, I got an itch to re-read the book. Took me a couple of years to track it down in a second hand book store.

I re-read it - and to my amazement I found that almost all my opinions about society, sexuality, social justice, and "people" in general were in this book. Opinions and views that I thought I developed on my own from observations of the world - I found spelled out almost identical in this book.

Without me realizing it - this book has completely shaped my world view. Even re-reading it, I don't know *how* it did it. The ideas are conveyed... poorly, in the usual manner of sci-fi books, using flat characters and spoon-feedingly-long conversations. Yet there you have it.

I would recommend this book to everyone. Not the audio-book though - that's horrible. Whoever narrated it has no business narrating anything.