Greg Egan’s work exemplifies a certain kind of “hard” science fiction: not that it’s obsessed with big manly space battles, but rather that it’s using science to really dig into some complicated subjects. Eden Kupermintz, of Death // Sentence and many other cool projects, joins to discuss the scope and the scale, philosophy and physics in Diaspora.

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

• Guest: Eden Kupermintz
• Title: Diaspora by Greg Egan
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Additional music:
• • "Equatorial Complex" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
  • "Fluidscape" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• The Translated Hugo Initiative
• Brian Catling's Earwig
• Jeffrey Ford's The Physiognomy
• Jeff VanderMeer's The Strange Bird
• Jeremy P. Bushnell's Relentless Melt
• Severian (from Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun)
• Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
• "Every text is ergodic if you want it to be."
• Pink Floyd's Stairway to Heaven
• Heavy Blog is Heavy
• Centroeuropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated by Rahul Bery
• Dengue Boy by Michel Nieve, translated by Rahul Bery
• You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer
• Enrigue in discussion with Maia Gil’Adí (friend of the pod) on Novel Dialogue
• Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation & Authority (and the Meal of Thorns episode)
• Dan Simmons’ Hyperion
• Ursula Le Guin's Ekumen (in the Hainish books)
• Ben Berman Ghan’s The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits & Eden's review
• Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Starmaker
• Greg Egan's Scale
• Backlisted episode on Last and First Men
• David Hume
• leptons & femtoseconds
• Gilles Deleuze & Jacques Derrida
• Immanuel Kant & correlationism
• Egan's Perihelion Summer
• Socrates & Plato & the polis
• solipsism
• Edwin A. Abbot's Flatland
• Zelazny, Le Guin, Dick, Asimov
• Peter Watts' Blindsight
• Becky Chambers' To Be Taught If Fortunate
• Egan's Morphotropic
• Larry Niven (e.g., Ringworld)
• "I know kung fu" scene in The Matrix
• Pragmatism, coherence, William James
• The Best of Greg Egan
• Permutation City
• Greg Daniel’s Upload series
• The Orthogonal Rocket trilogy
• Zendegi
• Karen Burnham's Modern Masters of SF book on Egan
• MMSF on Ballard, Bester
• Frederick Pohl's Gateway
• Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero
• Wells, Camille Flammarion, Flash Gordon, Star Trek & Star Wars
• M. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device
• Gareth Watkin's essay on AI & fascism
• John M. Ford's Web of Angels on Death // Sentence
• GregEgan.net