 First edition | |
| Author | Greg Egan |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Gollancz |
Publication date | 15 May 2008 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-0-575-08162-8 |
| OCLC | 192027449 |
Incandescence is a 2008 science fiction novel by Australian author Greg Egan. The book is based on the idea that the theory of general relativity could be discovered by a pre-industrial civilisation. [1]
The novel has two narratives in alternate chapters. The first follows two citizens of the Amalgam, a Milky Way-spanning civilisation, investigating the origin of DNA found on a meteor by the Aloof. The Aloof control the galactic core and, until the novel begins, have rejected all attempts at contact by the Amalgam. The second narrative is set on a small world known as the Splinter, and covers the attempts by its inhabitants to understand the environment within which their home exists. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the Splinter orbits a collapsed star within its accretion disk and is subject to various dangers. The two stories come together in a complex twist which involves a kind of past/future first contact role reversal.
Much of the narrative explores the effects of orbital dynamics around a high mass object and requires an understanding of Newtonian gravitation and at least a basic familiarity with general relativity and its application to black holes and neutron stars to be compelling. Understanding the story's wider frame of reference and the Splinter's encounter with the Wanderer are tied in with this.
The Amalgam is explored in three other short stories, Riding the Crocodile , [2] Glory , [3] and Hot Rock.
One review compared Incandescence to "a not particularly enthralling lecture on the process of scientific discovery, combined with the physics of a black hole". [4] Another reviewer described much of this criticism as "trite received opinion" and said the book had "hints of greatness and pleasing moments" but its structure was "a failed literary experiment" and ultimately rather dull. [5]
On June 6, 2008, British writer Adam Roberts released a review [6] criticizing Incandescence for its awkward prose and weak characterization. In response, Egan dissected the review, going so far as to call it "probably the first genuine hatchet job I've ever received." [7] In particular, he accuses Adam Roberts of malicious nitpicking and a straw man argument, and suggests that Roberts should have known he would be unfairly biased against the book and refused to review it:
But if someone aspires to be taken seriously as a reviewer, they either need to read the entire book, carefully, and give at least as much thought to what they've read as a twelve-year-old would when sitting a reading comprehension test, or — if that prospect is far too unpleasant to bear — they should decline to review the book. [...] In short, Roberts has as much of a good time as I'd have at the Bayreuth Festival, and as little worth reporting about the experience. The mystery is why he bought the ticket in the first place; a previous encounter with Schild's Ladder should have warned off any but the most masochistic of science-haters.
— Greg Egan [7]
Greg Egan is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Locus Award.
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Black holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing—including light—can escape them, have been depicted in fiction since at least the pulp era of science fiction, before the term black hole was coined. A common portrayal at the time was of black holes as hazards to spacefarers, a motif that has also recurred in later works. The concept of black holes became popular in science and fiction alike in the 1960s. Authors quickly seized upon the relativistic effect of gravitational time dilation, whereby time passes more slowly closer to a black hole due to its immense gravitational field. Black holes also became a popular means of space travel in science fiction, especially when the notion of wormholes emerged as a relatively plausible way to achieve faster-than-light travel. In this concept, a black hole is connected to its theoretical opposite, a so-called white hole, and as such acts as a gateway to another point in space which might be very distant from the point of entry. More exotically, the point of emergence is occasionally portrayed as another point in time—thus enabling time travel—or even an entirely different universe.
One Million A.D. is a science fiction anthology edited by American writer Gardner Dozois, published in 2005.
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection is a science fiction anthology edited by Gardner Dozois that was published in 2007. It is the 24th in The Year's Best Science Fiction series.
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The Clockwork Rocket is a hard science-fiction novel by Australian author Greg Egan and the first part of the Orthogonal trilogy. The novel was published by Night Shade Books on 1 July 2011 with a cover art by Cody Tilson and by Gollancz on 15 September 2011 with a cover art by Greg Egan. The novel describes an alien civilization being threatened by the appearance of hurtling meteors entering their planetary system with an unprecedented speed and the implementation of an unusual plan: All the technology needed for an effective defense shall be developed on board of a generation ship launched into the void while only a few years pass back on the home world in the meantime due to time dilation. This is possible due to different laws for space and time in this universe, in which they have the same signature instead of different ones, or which is alternatively described by a Riemannian instead of a Lorentzian manifold. The consequences on some of the physical concepts needed in the novel including time dilation and radiation, are described by Greg Egan with diagrams in the novel and also his website. The story is continued in The Eternal Flame and The Arrows of Time.
Quantum fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that reflects modern experience of the material world and reality as influenced by quantum theory and new principles in quantum physics. It is characterized by the use of an element in quantum mechanics as a storytelling device. The genre is not necessarily science-themed, and blurs the line separating science fiction and fantasy into a broad scope of mainstream literature that transcends the mechanical model of science and involves the fantasy of human perception or imagination as realistic components affecting the everyday physical world.
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is a 2004 book by Christopher Booker containing a Jung-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning. Booker worked on the book for 34 years.
The City In the Middle of the Night is a 2019 climate-fiction novel by Charlie Jane Anders. It is set on a tidally locked planet, where human life, surrounded by hostile alien life, is mostly divided between two archetypically different urban sites. The main story focuses on two characters whose actions take them outside of the cities.
The Arrows of Time is a hard science-fiction novel by Australian author Greg Egan and the third part of the Orthogonal trilogy. The novel was published by Gollancz on 21 November 2013 with a cover art by Greg Egan and by Night Shade Books on 5 August 2014 with a cover art by Cody Tilson. The novel describes the return journey of the generation ship Peerless, which has been launched in The Clockwork Rocket and traveled into the void in The Eternal Flame, and the reverse enabling the construction of a device to receive messages from the own future as well as the journey to a world where time runs in reverse. The universe of the novel is therefore based on a Riemannian instead of a Lorentzian manifold, changing the rules of physics. The details are described by Greg Egan on his website.
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"Riding the Crocodile" is a science-fiction novella by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in One Million A.D. edited by Gardner Dozois in December 2005. The novella was included in the collections Dark Integers and Other Stories in 2008 and Oceanic in 2009. The short story is set in the same universe as Egan's short stories "Glory" and "Hot Rock" as well as Egan's novel Incandescence.
"Glory" is a science-fiction novelette by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in the anthology The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan in 2007. The novelette was included in the collections Dark Integers and Other Stories in 2008 and Oceanic in 2009. The novelette is set in the same universe as Egan's novellas "Riding the Crocodile" and "Hot Rock" as well as Egan's novel Incandescence.
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