Diaspora (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Paperback, 5th Imp., 2003 |
|
| Author | Greg Egan |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Hard science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Gollancz |
| Released | July 1998 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 376 pp (PB edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-75280-925-3 |
Diaspora is a Hard SF, 1997 novel by Australian writer Greg Egan.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
This novel contains references to post-humanism, and post-technological singularity events.
The novel began life as a short story entitled "Wang's Carpets" which originally appeared in New Legends, a collection of short stories edited by Greg Bear (Legend, London, 1995), and was later adapted, and included, as a chapter in the novel.
A glossary is included, which explains many of the complicated terms in the novel. Egan deftly invents several new kinds of physics, each stranger than the one before.
[edit] Plot summary
By 2975 ACE (Universal Time), the year in which the novel begins, the human race has separated into three distinct strands:
(1) corporeals, or fleshers, flesh&blood societies consisting of baseline, naturally-evolving Homo sapiens, and a wide variety of exuberant derivatives, whose genes have been modified beyond the "norm". These include enhancements such as disease resistance, life extension, intelligence amplification, and the ability to allow selected transhumans to thrive in new environments, such as the sea. There even exists a subculture (the dream apes) whose ancestors bred out the capacity for speech and the higher brain functions, in order (apparently) to attain a primal innocence and rapport with nature.
(2) Gleisner robots - individual software intelligences housed inside artificial android physical bodies that interact with the physical world in "real time", a fact which they regard as important, as they consider the polis citizens to be too remote and solipsistic. The majority, if not all, of Gleisner's live in space, mostly in the asteroid belt, and various other places in the solar system.
(3) the citizens or acorporeals[1] - intelligence as computer software running entirely within simulated reality-based communities known as polises.[2] These, by far, are the majority of "humanity" by this time. They interact in virtual fora, or scapes, through the use of avatars or icons.
The novel focuses on communities of acorporeals and the unprecedented range of possibilities and experiences that are open to them, free from the constraints of the physical world. The novel depicts day-to-day life in such an environment.
Diaspora begins with a description of the "orphanogenesis" and subsequent upbringing of Yatima. Unlike modern humans, Yatima is already "old" within a few real-time days, due to the way time runs differently in the polises. Early on, Yatima visits a "flesher" colony near the old city of Atlanta on Earth.
Years later, the Gleisner robot Karpal, using a gravitational wave detector, determines that a binary neutron star system (Lacerta) expected to last for another eight million years will in fact collapse within the next four days. Yatima and a friend Inoshiro go back down to Earth to try and convince the people there to either "migrate" to the polises or at least shelter themselves. The resulting radiation burst from the collapse of the neutron stars nearly destroys the Earth's atmosphere, and Yatima and Inoshiro end up abducting a few involuntary fleshers before they die from the resultant conditions.
The novel title itself derives from a quest that most of the inhabitants of the Carter-Zimmerman polis undertake. The Diaspora is a collection of one thousand clones of the C-Z polis, launched at various distant planetary systems in an attempt to find alien life; one of the hopes is that any aliens found can explain what happened to cause the Lacerta incident so that they can take steps to ensure it never happens again, or find ways to protect themselves if it does.
The first major discovery on the trip occurs before the arrival at another planetary system; one of the Blanca-clones discovers a way to resolve the currently-extant discrepancies in physics theory, explaining why previous experiments had anomalous results. Not long after this particular Blanca sends a description of the theory to the other Carter-Zimmermans, the clone's own polis is destroyed by space debris.
In the process they discover a message from a previous civilization hidden inside neutrons. This discovery leads to knowledge of an even more threatening problem: the end of life in the Milky Way galaxy. Eventually, they discover the means of escaping the coming catastrophe by leaving the universe altogether.
[edit] Characters
- Yatima[3] is an Orphan, a being created by the Konishi polis conceptory, with no parental lineage. The central character of the novel, who usually takes the iconic form of a tall, African flesher in a purple robe, Yatima exhibits a deep love of mathematics and a desire to explore the unknown.
- Blanca, whose icon is a featureless black silhouette, is another inhabitant of the Konishi polis, and one of the first three people that Yatima meets. Blanca has a deep understanding of physics, especially the "Kozuch Theory" cosmology that Egan invented for the novel.
- Inoshiro is another of Yatima's friends, whose icon features metallic, pewter-grey skin. Ve is the most "well-drawn", individualistic character in the novel who becomes so depressed at vis and Yatima's failed interactions with the fleshers that he eventually succumbs to a tragic, virtual extinction.
- Gabriel is Yatima's third original friend, whose icon is covered in short, golden-brown fur.
- Karpal is a Gleisner robot and an astronomer who lives on the surface of the Moon, and is the one who first discovers the imminent catastrophe that is about to visit the fleshers. He later leaves his robotic body to emigrate to the Carter-Zimmerman polis.
- Radiya - iconified as a fleshless skeleton made of twigs and branches, skull carved from a knotted stump - is Yatima's first mentor in abstract mathematics and exploration of the "truth mines", the vast data-storage areas of the polis.
- Orlando Venetti is a "flesher", an exuberant human being who lives near the ruins of Atlanta on Earth. Eventually, he is one of the last fleshers who transfer into the polises.
- Liana Zabini is Orlando's wife. Her tragic death after the Lacerta incident stays with him for the rest of his life.
- Francesca Canetti, a flesher, is a Bridger, someone who specializes in diplomatic relations between the exuberant varieties.
- Paolo Venetti is Orlando's son, born en-polis.
- The Contingency Handler is a non-sentient alien software construct created by an alien species known as the Star Striders that the Diaspora encounters on one of the flights.
- Hermann is a member of the Diaspora, who often appears as a segmented worm with 6 flesher-shaped legs, based on the curl-up from the work of M. C. Escher. Hermann is very old, a product of the original 21st century introdus. Later, his icon is "borrowed" by the Contingency Handler.
- Elena is a physicist in the Diaspora.
- The Star Puppies are a group of Carter-Zimmermann citizens who elect to stay conscious, in real time, for the duration of their spaceflight in the Diaspora (most are in a state of suspension). They take the form of space-evolved creatures who wander around the virtualized hull of the spacecraft, employing personality outlooks that ensure they feel constant joy in, and at, the universe around them.
- The Transmuters are the alien species the Diaspora attempts to chase down, as it is known that they understand the reasons why cosmic conflagrations occur and that they know a "way out".
[edit] The Polises
There are many polises, though only a few are mentioned in the novel. The author does not go into any great detail about them, in a physical sense, though they seem to be hardware-based supercomputers of unknown size and computational ability, all of which are probably situated in safe, secure locations. Konishi polis, at least, is buried deep beneath the Siberian tundra.
Humanity began transferring itself into the polises (the introdus) in the late 21st century UT.
Each polis seems to have its own unique character, encapsulated in a "charter" which defines its goals, philosophies, and attitudes to other polises, and the external world. Citizens are expected to pay attention to the charter of the polis they are situated in; should they begin to disagree with the charter, they can always migrate to a polis which is more amenable to them.
The citizens of Konishi polis seem to be concerned mostly with abstract mathematics and esoteric philosophical pursuits, and are generally uninterested in the "real world", while Carter-Zimmermann polis is not averse to interacting with the objective universe.
It is in the sphere of objectivism & subjectivism that the polises define themselves, to one degree or another. They range from those who wish to experience the "real world" of "normal" time and space to the wholly solipsistic who live their entire lives in esoteric, isolated virtuality.
In the Diaspora, when Carter-Zimmermann is cloned many times, the main part of each "new" polis is a dense package of (presumably) computronium which is only a few centimetres square. Author Charles Stross featured a similar spacecraft in his 2005 novel Accelerando.
[edit] Polis time
The internal dating and time-standard used in the polises is known as CST (Coalition Standard Time). It is measured in tau (an elastic value, as it changes with polis hardware improvements) elapsed since the system was adopted on Jan 1, 2065 (UT).
When the novel begins (see the UT date at the top of the page) the equivalent in the polises is 23 387 025 000 000.
The polises, generally, run roughly a thousand (subjective) times faster than the outside world, allowing for very rapid development compared to the physical world.
Being software-based, the polis citizens can live life at user-determined speeds, meaning that they can, if they wish, experience subjective centuries of time while only short periods of time in objective "real time" has passed. The opposite is also true - it's mentioned that a few citizens choose to experience brief periods of consciousness in objective time, remaining unconscious for long periods, so that by "stringing together" the waking periods they can witness continental drift and geological erosion in real time.
[edit] Language
Along with introducing a complicated fictional physics theory (Kozuch Theory), Egan uses the "virtualized" gender-neutral pronouns 've', 'vis', 'ver' for a number of characters in the novel who opt to have a neutral gender, including Yatima and Blanca.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Acorporeals are sometimes referred to as infomorphs within the genre.
- ^ Polis is Greek for city/state.
- ^ Yatima is a Swahili word meaning Orphan.
[edit] Reviews
[edit] References
- Egan's 1994 novel, Permutation City, could be seen as being a very loose prequel to Diaspora, as it features early experimentation into the uploading of minds into supercomputers.
- Orphanogenesis, the first chapter of the novel, is available, for free, at Egan's website HERE
- A short story, published in Egan's short-story collection Luminous, The Planck Dive, also concerns events in the Diaspora. It is available, for free, from the author's website HERE
[edit] Editions
September 1997 : Hardback ISBN 1-85798-438-2 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz 320 pages
September 1997 : Paperback ISBN 1-85798-439-0 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz
1997 : Hardback Cover of ISBN B000GX6OQU Publisher: Orion
February 1998 : Hardback ISBN 0-06-105281-7 (USA edition) Publisher: Eos
July 1998 : Paperback ISBN 0-75280-925-3 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz
April 1999 : Unbound ISBN 0-606-18687-5 (USA edition) Publisher: Demco Media
November 1999 : Mass Market Paperback ISBN 0-06-105798-3 (USA edition) Publisher: Eos
1999 : Boukoumanis Editions, Athens Translated by Christodoulos Litharis (Greek translation)
February 2000 : Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich ISBN 3-45316-181-5 (pb) Translated by Bernhard Kempen (German translation)
2003 : Mondadori/Urania, Milan ISSN 1120-5288 / Number 1460 (pb periodical) Translated by Riccardo Valla (Italian translation)
2005 : Hayakawa, Tokyo ISBN 4-15011-531-1 (pb) Translated by Makoto Yamagishi (Japanese translation)
