Greg Egan

The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan.

—New Scientist

Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961) is an Australian science fiction author.

Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion. He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.

Egan's short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including regular appearances in Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction.

Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Western Australia, and currently lives in Perth. He has recently been active on the issue of refugees' mandatory detention in Australia. Egan is a vegetarian.^[1]

Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances^[2], he doesn't attend science fiction conventions^[3], doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web^[4].

Works

Novels

• An Unusual Angle (1983), ISBN 0-909106-12-6 (not science fiction)
• Quarantine (1992), ISBN 0-7126-9870-1
• Permutation City (1994), ISBN 1-85798-174-X
• Distress (1995), ISBN 1-85798-286-X
• Diaspora (1997), ISBN 1-85798-438-2
• Teranesia (1999), ISBN 0-575-06854-X
• Schild's Ladder (2002), ISBN 0-575-07068-4
• Incandescence (2008), ISBN 1597801283
• Zendegi (2010), ISBN 978-1597801744 (forthcoming from Night Shade Books March 2010, Gollancz October 2010)
• Orthogonal (late 2011 or early 2012)

Collections

• Axiomatic (1995), ISBN 1-85798-281-9
• Our Lady of Chernobyl (1995), ISBN 0-646-23230-4
• Luminous (1998), ISBN 1-85798-551-6
• Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008), ISBN 978-1596061552
• Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009), ISBN 978-1596062405

Short stories

Stories collected in Axiomatic

• The Infinite Assassin
• The Hundred Light-Year Diary
• Eugene
• The Caress
• Blood Sisters
• Axiomatic
• The Safe-Deposit Box
• Seeing
• A Kidnapping
• Learning to Be Me
• The Moat
• The Walk
• The Cutie
• Into Darkness
• Appropriate Love
• The Moral Virologist
• Closer
• Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies'

Stories collected in Our Lady Of Chernobyl

• Chaff
• Beyond the Whistle Test
• Transition Dreams
• Our Lady of Chernobyl

Stories collected in Luminous

• Chaff
• Mitochondrial Eve
• Luminous
• Mister Volition
• Cocoon
• Transition Dreams
• Silver Fire
• Reasons to Be Cheerful
• Our Lady of Chernobyl
• The Planck Dive

Stories collected in Dark Integers and Other Stories

• Luminous
• Riding the Crocodile
• Dark Integers
• Glory
• Oceanic

Stories collected in Crystal Nights and Other Stories

• Lost Continent
• Crystal Nights
• Steve Fever
• TAP
• Induction
• Singleton^[5]
• Oracle
• Border Guards
• Hot Rock

Other stories

• Only Connect
• Yeyuka
• Worthless
• Mind Vampires
• Neighbourhood Watch
• Orphanogenesis^[6]
• Wang's Carpets^[7]
• Reification Highway
• Dust^[8]
• Before
• Fidelity
• The Demon's Passage
• In Numbers
• The Vat
• The Extra
• Beyond the Whistle Test
• Scatter My Ashes
• Tangled Up
• The Way She Smiles, The Things She Says
• Artifact

Awards

• Permutation City: John W. Campbell Memorial Award (1995)
• Oceanic: Hugo Award, Locus Award, Asimov's Readers Award (1998)

Egan was nominated for the 2000 Ditmar Award for best novel with Teranesia. He declined the award.

Usenet Newsgroups

Egan occasionally contributes posts to a variety of (mostly scientific and/or technical) Usenet newsgroups, using his own name. These include: sci.physics.research; sci.math; comp.graphics.algorithms; comp.sys.laptops; comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc; microsoft.public.windowsxp.accessibility; aus.sf; rec.arts.movies.current-films; plus a few others.

From December 1994 to September 1999 he contributed regularly to the group rec.arts.sf.written, where he engaged in dialogue with his readers about his work, and science fiction in general.

Footnotes

1. ^ Iran Trip Diary
2. ^ Science Fiction Book Club
3. ^ Interviews
4. ^ Photos of Greg Egan, science fiction writer
5. ^ Singleton introduced the concept of the Qusp, which was later used in the novel Schild's Ladder.
6. ^ Orphanogenesis became the opening chapter of the novel Diaspora.
7. ^ Wang refers to the mathematician Hao Wang – the carpets are living embodiments of Wang tiles. This story, minorly reworked, became a section of the novel Diaspora.
8. ^ Dust became the opening chapter of the novel Permutation City

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Greg Egan

External links

• Official site
• Greg Egan at the Open Directory Project
• Greg Egan's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• Greg Egan at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Google archive of Egan's posts to rec.arts.sf.written