The Best of Greg Egan

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The Best of Greg Egan
Author Greg Egan
Language English
GenreScience fiction short story collection
Publisher Subterranean Press
Publication date
December 2019
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages731 pp.
ISBN 978-1-59606-942-8

The Best of Greg Egan is a collection of science fiction stories by Australian writer Greg Egan, published by Subterranean Press in 2019. [1]

Contents

The collection contains 20 stories which were published in a variety of original publications. It is also accompanied by an Afterword from the author. [1]

Contents

Critical reception

Writing in Locus Magazine reviewer Russell Letson noted Egan's statement in his Afterword that the stories here concern "the struggle to come to terms with what it will mean when our growing ability to scrutinize and manipulate the physical world reaches the point where it encompasses the substrate underlying our values, our memories, and our identities." Letson then went on to say: "Of course, there is more to Egan's thematic universe – notably in his far-future and virtual-environments settings – and there are recurring figures and motifs that run across the whole range of his work: refugees, exiles, outsiders and outliers, unpersons, relentless investigators and explorers and explainers-of-phenomena, inventors and devisers of understandings. Most of these stories do indeed emphasize his examinations of how we experience ourselves – our understandings, our feelings, our motives, our sense of who-we-are and what-we-mean and what-we-value." Concluding: "Egan is determined to make sense of everything – to understand the whole world as an intelligible, rational, material (and finally manipulable) realm – even if it means abandoning comfortable and comforting illusions. This is fundamental to the whole project of SF and it's why Egan's Best – and his Rest – is worth any number of looks." [2]

See also

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"Silver Fire" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in Interzone #102 in December 1995. The short story was included in the collections Luminous in 1998 and The Best of Greg Egan in 2019.

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References

  1. 1 2 "The Best of Greg Egan". ISFDB. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  2. ↑ ""Russell Letson Reviews The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan"". Locus Magazine, 14 June 2019. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
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