 First edition (publ. Millennium) | |
| Author | Greg Egan |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | George Bell and Sons |
Publication date | November 1900 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 306 pp. |
| Awards | 1996 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel |
Distress is a 1995 science fiction novel by Australian writer Greg Egan. [1]
Distress describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property.
The narrator is a journalist for a science channel called SeeNet named Andrew Worth who carries video recording software in an intestinal implant. He is offered a story on a new illness called Distress, but declines. He journeys to Stateless through a series of convoluted flights to cover a presentation by 27-year-old South African physicist Violet Mosala, supplanting the preproduction by a colleague, Sarah Knight. When he arrives, he is informed by an asex anthrocosmologist named Akili that Violet's life is in danger. Violet is finishing her Theory of Everything, which she intends to present on the conference's last day.
Through interfacing with a talkative local, Worth learns that Violet plans to emigrate to Stateless after the conference to use her celebrity status to provide an opportunity for South Africa and other nations to end their support for the United Nations boycott of Stateless. He also witnesses the islands' physical underpinnings: it is basically held up by the activity of millions of micro-organisms. After meeting with a faction of anthrocosmologists, he learns that they believe in the concept that the universe is created by one person's Theory of Everything. That person is called the Keystone.
Worth becomes deathly ill and believes he has been infected with cholera by a faction of anthrocosmologists who wanted him to transmit the disease to Violet Mosala. He recovers and is kidnapped by this group, who are led by a rival physicist Worth saw with Violet at the conference. Worth and Akili are held on a tanker where it is explained that these cultists believe Violet's TOE will destroy the world. Worth signals for help by connecting his implant to a port on the ship. He and Akili are rescued by citizens of Stateless.
Worth returns to the conference and learns that a biotech conglomerate sent a militia to Stateless, angry at the technology they have appropriated. He negotiates with the militia to let a suddenly ill Violet return to South Africa, where she dies. Before her illness, however, she tasked an AI to synthesize her final theory. The militia moves to take over the main city of Stateless, brutalizing the citizens as they evacuate to the outskirts. While seemingly helpless to do anything at first, they soon strike back at the invaders by having triggered microorganisms consume the cities structural underpinning, sinking it into the ocean. Worth is fired from SeeNet and Sarah Knight replaces him, covering the war. Worth discovers that Sarah was working with the cultists, and that AIs are exhibiting symptoms of the titular mental illness as well. Believing that the AI that wrote the paper became the Keystone and that Distress will continue until a human reads it, Worth downloads and reads the paper, and realizes that all minds, together, collaborate in being "the" Keystone, giving all of humanity an intuitive connection with the universe.
The novel contains a great deal of commentary on gender identities, multinational capitalism, and postmodern thought. It also features Egan's usual playful exploration of physical, metaphysical, and epistemological theories.
Egan uses his hypothetical future to postulate the existence of not just one but five new genders, and introduces a set of new pronouns for gender neutral people. One of the central characters of the novel, Akili Kuwale, provides a demonstration of this change and its implications. As an asexual human, Akili has had all reproductive organs removed entirely. Within the scope of the novel, Egan uses the pronouns 've', 'ver', and 'vis' to represent Akili's definitive gender neutrality.
Egan also uses the hypothetical technological advances in Distress to explore ideas about anarchism, especially when its protagonist, Andrew Worth, a journalist, travels to the anarchistic man-made island named Stateless. Andrew meets some minor characters on Stateless who explain to him the relationship between anarchistic principles and various ideas such as quantum physics, information theory and independent spirituality. [2]
Worth also meets a painter, Munroe, who attempts to explain how anarchy functions on Stateless. [3]
Munroe is an Australian as are Andrew Worth and Greg Egan himself. Egan uses Munroe to deliver a critique of Australian culture.
Don't you ever get sick of living in a society which talks about itself, relentlessly - and usually lies? Which defines everything worthwhile - tolerance, honesty, loyalty, fairness - as 'uniquely Australian'?" [4]
A major theme running through Egan's presentation of a futuristic anarchism is something called Technolibération, which is to do with the liberation of technology and information from corporate control as well as the idea of using advanced technology to enable liberatory social movements.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. An anarcho-capitalist philosophy extends the concept of ownership to include control of private property as part of the self, and, in some cases, control of other people as private property. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society the system of private property would still exist, as it would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should gain precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism makes the individual its focus, and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".
Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story "When It Changed".
Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.
The Dispossessed is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopia, individualism, and collectivism.
Permutation City is a 1994 science-fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, through various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust", which dealt with many of the same philosophical themes. Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award the same year. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark.
Teranesia is a 1999 science fiction novel by Greg Egan. The novel follows protagonist Prabir Suresh, who lives on an island in the South Moluccas with his biologist parents, who are investigating the unique evolutionary traits of butterflies on the island. As civil war erupts in Indonesia, Prabir and his baby sister Madhusree must escape the islands. When they grow up, Madhusree becomes a biology student, motivated to carry on her parents' legacy in uncovering the evolutionary phenomenon. Prabir reluctantly follows her, as he must navigate and confront the truth that shaped his past.
John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for a retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1995. It was originally published under the shorter title Triton.
According to different scholars, the history of anarchism either goes back to ancient and prehistoric ideologies and social structures, or begins in the 19th century as a formal movement. As scholars and anarchist philosophers have held a range of views on what anarchism means, it is difficult to outline its history unambiguously. Some feel anarchism is a distinct, well-defined movement stemming from 19th-century class conflict, while others identify anarchist traits long before the earliest civilisations existed.
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist, with anarchism usually referred to as a form of libertarian socialism, i.e. a stateless system of socialism. Anarchists support personal property and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production, profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism.
The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.
National-anarchism is a radical right-wing nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity. National-anarchists syncretize ethnic nationalism with philosophical anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy. The main ideological innovation of national-anarchism is its anti-state palingenetic ultranationalism. National-anarchists advocate homogeneous communities in place of the nation state. National-anarchists claim that those of different ethnic or racial groups would be free to develop separately in their own tribal communes while striving to be politically horizontal, economically non-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, and socially and culturally traditional.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing equality before the law and civil rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines. Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas.
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, opposition to the state is not its central or sole definition. Anarchism can entail opposing authority or hierarchy in the conduct of all human relations.
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert Spencer and Henry David Thoreau. Other important individualist anarchists in the United States were Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Batchelder Greene, Ezra Heywood, M. E. Lazarus, John Beverley Robinson, James L. Walker, Joseph Labadie, Steven Byington and Laurance Labadie.
Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. From 2018 to 2020, she served as the president of PEN America.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism:
Dark Integers and Other Stories is a collection of five science-fiction short stories by Australian writer Greg Egan, published in 2008 by Subterranean Press. One of them, "Oceanic", won the Hugo Award for Best Novella, while two others were nominated.