Greg Egan


A leading Australian SF writer. The hardest of Hard SF writers. Undisputed king of infinite vector space.

"I am a science fiction author and computer programmer." -- Greg Egan, on his home page

Greg Egan knows his science and maths, and he shows it. Moreover, he shows you what he can do with it. He doesn't show off, he doesn't info-dump, he just takes a simple, technically accurate idea and makes it into a geometrically perfect story. He writes rather well, too, with textured characters (when he needs them) and well-realised glimpses of convincing futures.

See:

Niall Harrison came across a lot of comparisons between Greg Egan and Ted Chiang. Since nobody had read any of the latter's work, he went off and read some, discovered it was excellent, and converted several others. Egan and Chiang are similar in that they write 'hard' fiction, taking a basic concept and spinning an inventive and interesting (and usually short) story by following it to its logical conclusion. The major difference is that Egan writes Hard SF, whilst Chiang writes a mixture of Hard SF and Hard Fantasy (or something - go and read 'Hell Is The Absence Of God' and see if you can work out what subgenre it is ...).

Books as rated on a Five Point Scale by Wikizens:

If you haven't read any Greg Egan but would like to, you would probably be best off starting with Axiomatic And Luminous, the books of shorts, both of which are excellent.

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Fri, 19 Sep 2003 17:25:14 GMT Front Page Recent Changes Message Of The Day