Further reading: Schild's ladder yet I have done, but just before the half, it is unlikely to stop liking.
I have spoken before Greg Egan, author of Distress and Diaspora, but known in Spain especially Quarantine and Permutation City, the two mentioned above, is an author of "science fiction" Australian mathematician, and programmer; his novels are full originality and scholarship on all four sides. Schild's Ladder (probably translated in Spain in a future "Critical Point", "kill zone" or some bullshit like that) is no exception, is spectacular.
Sometime Millennium 24 (the exact year does not matter because, unlike many novels mediocre showing human empires that seem the British Empire transplanted to distant future, in Schild's Ladder, as it was at the Diaspora, long ago that humans seem little to us: most acorpóreos, and all the immortals, or at least with longevities much higher than we can imagine), a bold experiment tests the unification theory that mankind has been using successfully since 2300 (our timeline), and the result threatens to wipe out human civilization spread itself by many Milky Way.
What may seem like an unoriginal plot becomes Egan hands in a display of sophistication difficult to imitate.
A single page displays-and it is no exaggeration-more original ideas than any best-seller of fashion.
To sample, the first pages of the novel, in which the protagonist sums up the theory of unification discovered in his past 24 century, Hawking and Penrose should read this and think about it (sorry for my hasty translation):
the beginning was a graph, more like diamond and graphite .\u0026lt;...>. Sarumpaet Rules allow you to trace the history of the universe to an environment of Diamond Graph, and everything you might ask was there a Big Bang: low entropy, particle creation, accelerated expansion of space .\u0026lt;...>. Sarumpaet Rules assigned a quantum amplitude to the possibility that any graph was followed by another. Among other things, the Rules predicted that if a graph was formed by a loop of three trivalent nodes alternating with three pentavalent nodes, most likely successors would share this pattern, but would be moved to a set of adjacent nodes, such a loop was known as a photon .\u0026lt;...>. The Quantum Theory of Graph as a description of the dynamics of the universe with minimal complexity algorithmic, The Quantum Theory of Graph as a new topological description of some basic results of the theory of categories, ...
easily
As presumed, the Rules of Sarumpaet be supplanted by a new theory more sophisticated, yet simple, after studying the disaster become bold experiment, 600 years after the experiment, actors present in what is a constant paean to the scientific method as the cornerstone of human progress, of humanity several orders of magnitude more advanced and ethics that ours, as many of our limitations (mortality, aging, sickness) have disappeared naturally.
Reading is not difficult, but the above might suggest otherwise. Just ignore the details matemáticofísicos, but with the reassurance that Egan knows what he's talking.
The archetypal characters are nothing, in fact, very often is criticized for claiming that his characters are bland. Of course, but they are extremely realistic and current (even posthuman Millennium 24).
The novel shares many of the ideas and characteristics of Diaspora (recently translated into English, and whose reading since last summer recommended) although not absolutely necessary to read before Schild's Ladder.
Finally, another example of novel that makes you enjoy, makes us think, makes you want to know more (there are details and background of "backstage" on its website, for example, the explanation of why a new universe that spreads as a shock wave moving at half the speed of light is never seen at actual size, and why blue looks bright if you watch an almost static, such as from the surface of a planet about to be engulfed by it, I'm sure a lot of authors do not even have noticed it and speak no more than "the menacing black border appeared that they are going to eat ")...
