Will I love Diaspora?

This is the most evil book on my list.

As a math teacher, I thought Egan’s world of numbers would give me some kind of home-field advantage. I admit I lost that feeling rather quickly. The story explores post-human minds, simulation theory, and far-future consciousness, and Egan keeps the pace intense.

His skill with math makes the confusion feel real. By the end, I wasn’t sure of anything. Even now, I'm still not sure.

I love how this book conveys the wonder of discovery as they travel the universe. You can skip over some of the early math passages without missing anything. The book is about a civilization of software agents, and the description of how their understanding of physics advances is great.

If you like this one, check out Permutation City by Egen, which explores what it is like to live forever in a simulation. You live for so long that you can load passions for hobbies into your brain to pass the time. A character has an intense desire for woodwork and… show more.

In the 1990s, I stopped reading science fiction to focus on more “serious” writing. In 2008, someone recommended this book to me, and my appreciation of science fiction changed forever.

In Diaspora, science fiction is an exploration of the deepest existential questions we can face: In a post-scarcity world, where people can duplicate themselves, back themselves up, and radically alter their personalities and values at will, what can and should we want?

Egan guides us through a diverse landscape of possibilities, from biologically enhanced apes to AI systems that derive immense joy from proving mathematical theorems to creators of multidimensional… show more.

I loved this book for its wild story. It has three main sections, and each of them has its own delight. It covers so many transhuman topics. From orphanogensis, the creation of a new mind in a digital world, to multiple nested universes, each section amazed me.

Not as mindbending as the others, in the sense of not being able to trust your own data, this book scratched the itch I had after The Three-Body Problem. Virtual Realities, interstellar topics, the future of man, and the possibilities for which consciousness expands into the universe and those who do not… show more.

One of the most mind-expanding books I've ever read – taking place on a greater-than-cosmic scale, exploring the possibilities for life as software.

If you want to understand how weird the future could be, I’ve found Greg Egan’s work to be the best, and this is my favourite of his books. Just be warned, it’s heavy going–so also consider Permutation City or Quarantine as starting points.