Book: Zendegi

[liv]

Author: Greg Egan

Details: (c) Greg Egan 2010; Pub 2011 Gollancz; ISBN 978-0-575-08620-3

Verdict: Zendegi has some cute ideas, but is rather slight overall.

Reasons for reading it: I'm sometimes in the mood for Egan's very ideas-heavy, well-researched hard SF. Plus jack said positive things about it, and I was interested in the near future Iran setting.

How it came into my hands: Library.

Egan doing futurology is a cute concept but I think it doesn't really play to his strengths. I mean, it's impressive that he more or less anticipated something a bit like the Arab Spring writing in 2009, and I quite enjoyed the opening section where he describes the successful and relatively bloodless overthrow of the Iranian theocracy. But as a political thriller, Zendegi is very second rate, particularly because Egan sort of hints at the horrors of a violent revolution but isn't really willing to follow through, so the dangers never quite seemed real. I don't know much about contemporary Iran, but I was rather too aware that I was making judgements like, well, it looks like Egan's at least done some research and included some detail of why Iran is not like Australia, rather than actually being immersed in the setting. Egan is also not famous for his characterization but there are some nice touches in the portrayal of Martin as someone who isn't a geek or science/tech fan, and Nasim as a scientist with identity and cultural issues.

Anyway, the imaginary Iranian revolution is pretty much dropped altogether after the first hundred pages, as the narrative jumps forward to 15 years later, to tackle a much more Egan-esque theme of implementing human consciousness in computers. There are some very nice ideas; I definitely do find it plausible that major advances in AI will come out of the gaming world (if not out of advertising and anti-spam). The trouble is that near future is hard to do well, and Egan is only averagely good at it, whereas he's superlatively good at writing incredibly distant future that doesn't bother with how we get there from here. I enjoyed reading the later two thirds of Zendegi, but it's fairly forgettable.

In a funny way I prefer the more heavy-handed, infodumpy discussion of the philosophical implications of uploading typical of Egan's earlier work over this attempt to address these issues through a personal story. Martin's relationship with his wife and son didn't really hold together well enough for me to care about whether partial, primitive uploading was the solution to their problems. And I didn't really even care about the tragic tragedy of tragicness, because it's too transparently just a plot mcguffin to be able to explore the imagined technology. Nasim's conflict with the fundamentalists who insist on trying to fit her technical work into their particular belief systems again didn't really grab me, though there's a kind of hilarious caricature of Yudkowsky representing one of the factions.

I don't think the book really gained very much from being set in future-Iran instead of future-Australia. Though I suppose it's a good thing for non-Western settings to be used just because, rather than always falling back to the default unless there's a specific reason to do something else. In a lot of ways the later part of the story undermines the first part, because the further discussion of how Iranian life unfolded post-revolution is really very limited.

Oh, I should mention that you may not want to read this if you're trans. The opening scene involves a trans prostitute, and the narrative is clearly meant to be sympathetic to her, but Egan hasn't really done the minimum of research into how to refer to a trans character. Phrases like a man who took oestrogen and put on an evening gown kept grating on me, and I can imagine that kind of thing would be even more unpleasant if you were personally affected.

Comments

[naath]

Yes, umm, I think Egan should stick to the difficult maths. His forrays into writing stories that are people-driven aren't so good.

[ptc24]

I think there are lots of short stories - much of the content of Axiomatic - where forced to shoehorn them into "difficult maths" or "people-driven", I'd have to go for the latter, but that doesn't get the distinction. Learning to be me, for example, there's a bunch of philosophical and psychological ideas, a nifty bit of technology that makes them relevant, and a person who it's all happening to. The phrase "Eganesque nightmare" exists for a reason.

OTOH, your main point - that Egan shouldn't write mimetic fiction, or stray too close to writing mimetic fiction (i.e. excessively character driven stuff which may or may not be good but which is often over my head) - is a good one. In the stories above, the person it is happening to is often Everyman - or Everyagent in some of the less compelling ones - and they work very well for it.

[jack]

Hm. Maybe not hard-maths, but I feel most of the stories are about the ideas not the characters. I could probably name the core idea in most of the stories, but name the characters only as "the one who this happened to", "the one who that happened to". Although I think there are _some_ interesting characters.

[ptc24]

I think I'm making a possibly fatuous distinction between "people" and "characters" - I'm asserting that Egan's best shorts are about people but not about characters.[1] I think to qualify as being "about characters", it has to be about the specific personality traits of the specific characters in question, rather than about human nature in general - or general human nature in specific situations.

Perhaps my idea of "about people" is too broad here, however there is some Egan that really is about maths or physics and not about people in any sense at all, and for me, that is some of his less compelling work.

[1] As in, I observe a group of shorts which I enjoyed the most and other people also seem keen on, and I'm looking for a common factor that explains this. I'm not asserting a priori that "being about people but not about characters" is a good thing in general.

[jack]

distinction between "people" and "characters"

Ah! I don't think I'd drawn the distinction, but I generally agree with that.

[liv]

Yeah, people-driven versus difficult maths doesn't quite precisely get the distinction. The best Egan stories, I agree, are those which explore an interesting idea, often with a mathematical or other sciencey underpinning, but sometimes more philosophical than anything else, through a viewpoint character who is sympathetic enough for the reader to relate, but not particularly vivid. Actually my absolute favourite Egan is Orphanogenesis (though I wasn't quite so keen on the expansion into Diaspora). The thing I loved about it (and it shows up in some of Egan's other IMO best writing) was that he created characters I cared about, who were absolutely and indisputably non-human.

[jack]

Well, on balance I like that Egan tried to write a character-driven Iranian-based novel, although I agree he doesn't do it anywhere near as well.

[naath]

Yes, it was an interesting idea. But not his best executed.

Interestingly just after I read it the Fitzwilliam had an exhibit on the Shamaneh which was nice - but alas they didn't appear to have the full thing in English :(

[liv]

Agreed, and thank you for telling me about it! This may in fact be a better than average attempt at 20-years-ahead Iran, it's just not nearly as good as Egan's trademark harder than hard SF with long epilogues about the underlying physics.

[liv]

I slightly feel like I'm judging Egan unfairly, because his ability to make a fascinating story out of difficult maths is absolutely amazing, so I'm harsher on him for writing a merely ok character-based futurology novel than I would be if I picked up something of the same quality from someone I hadn't previously heard of.