This book was not for me - I tried to get into it but the authors writing style was not a match for where my head was when I tried to read it.

This was quite a feast. More like weeks of fine, mind dining, given the menu of 20 story courses over 700 pages. Many longish and meaty and others tasty and short. After only moderate pleasures from a couple of his novels, it is clear that his great strength is in mastery of the short story medium. I see I made 60 bookmarks for great passages in the course of my reading of the ebook version. The impression is of compression of events in the context of a novel technology, then a surprising explosion as he blows your mind with compelling projections of their implications. Part of his effectiveness in engaging the reader lies with his apparent deep knowledge of physics and biology and corresponding ability to inspire trust in the plausibility of his projections. Yes, characters are sketchy, but it’s not hard to identify with their issues, whether pushing toward a new frontier or facing the challenging outcomes of the new twist for humanity.

For example, one story delves into the impact of pervasive use of audiovisual recording devices to make a continuous POV record of one’s life. We already wonder how social media and Google might be changing the way our minds and relationships work. If a powerful enough AI-driven search facility was readily accessible as an implant to tap into each person’s recording archive, how might that change how humanity views and uses memory to judge truth. Egan is attuned to how significant it is for us to forget certain experiences and to continually shape and distort the ‘facts’ of our lives, and so his projections raise the prospect of an adverse impact on human nature. (In a way, Ben Winter’s “Golden State” has a comparable projection in his sci fi fable of “truth police” who have access to the ubiquitous recordings, but unlike with Egan I could not ‘suspend disbelief’).

Another couple of stories that I really liked explore the implications and impacts of technology to digitally capture and emulate one’s personality and the application of the technology to dispense with death of the self. One pathway aligns with organ transplants or artificial to extend life and another pathway leads to virtual selves in a network without bodies. In the first story, Egan engaged me well in the scenario by using the perspective of a child receiving the implant and struggling with the psychological and logical challenges of coming to terms with a novel outlook on the meaning of self and identity.

A couple of stories that were particularly fun deals with the discovery that some areas of our universe have developed since the Big Bang under alternate laws of mathematics and physics. Human scientists come to understand that the incompatibilities between the foundational laws poses a risk for our reality being destroyed and find themselves in a “war” with alien scientists of that other reality to maintain stability of their respective systems.

Another couple of stories blessed with the fun factor deal with AI emulations of dead humans being exploited by online gaming corporations In the face of stupidity and nonsense in their roles with respect to game participants, the simulated personalities are driven to fighting back and collaborating to achieve a more meaningful existence. Egan’s take on an interplay between parallel worlds was also brilliant and stands in good company with recent explorations in the novels of William Gibson and Blake Crouch.

You don’t have to understand much math and physics to enjoy these stories, but such understanding could help you appreciate the fresh approaches taken in this collection. If 20 stories would be an overdose, one could sample a few at a time stretched over a long period.

This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.

At 736 pages, the Best of Greg Egan is an enormous volume, but it's well worth digging into. ""Learning to Be Me" explores what we've all been waiting for, a cure for dementia, a cure for the rapidly aging brain. And why not? The organic brain deteriorates every second after maturity is reached. Things are forgotten. Replace the brain with a computer chip and become a jewelhead and live forever. Where is the line between human and artificial intelligence?"

"Axiomatic" delves into the rapidly shrinking lines between human and artificial intelligence. What if instead of drinking to oblivion or taking drugs to deaden our senses and allow us to release our inhibitions, you simply went to a store and bought a program to download and let go of your inhibitions for a short period of time? How would that work out?

""Appropriate Love" is another trip through a future of mind and body alterment. This time it's the insurance company's bizarre means of preserving life that makes the reader gasp.

These are but a few examples of the unique gems found here. Egan explores how technology changes us and makes us something different. Or does it? What is human and what is cyborg?

The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan 10/31/19 Subterranean Press In the all-too-brief afterword to his self-selected collection of best works from the last three decades of writing, Greg Egan says he never intended to be a futurist, painting a roadmap for things to come. Reading this collection confirms this, but not because his vision of the future is poorer than, say, Gibson or Sterling’s, but because he uses the future as a device to challenge his characters. Egan is a humanist using science fiction settings to explore what it means to be human. In the bargain, he just happens to have 2020 foresight.

These 20 stores are arranged in chronological order, starting with “Learning to be Me” about an identity-crisis where the question of who’s real, you or the image in the mirror, takes on new life, to the last about a host of virtual intelligences looking to find a way to survive the end of the game that spawned them (“Instantiation”). The theme that goes through the collection has to be the survival of identity, of what it’s like “when minds can be copied, morality is edited, and digital beings fight to be emancipated.” Egan engages the reader with rich characters and challenges that are resonant, and despite spanning three decades, the oldest stories would be welcome in any of today’s magazines or collections. I thought it might be interesting to see how many of these stories were featured in Gardner Dozois, Johnathan Stratham, or Neil Clarke’s Best SF of the Year anthologies, but I quickly ran out of fingers and gave up. In many ways, they define the sort of story that such collections yearn for, thought-provoking, engaging, and with a bit of dark humor in the mix.

It’s a pity that this collection is only being offered in hardcover. I read it in a Kindle format Advanced Readers Copy, so I know it’s ready for other formats. But maybe it’s not a pity, because seeing a copy of The Best of Greg Eagen on your bookshelf will certainly remind you of what the best of science fiction can be.

Thank you to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for this advanced review copy. The following is an excerpt of my review of The Best of Greg Egan. To read my full review, please visit my website below.

"From Subterranean Press, The Best of Greg Egan collects cybernetic think pieces with remarkable haptic situations. His depth of field is diverse and perverse, foreboding and familiar, experimental yet elastic. Although these stories manage a clarity that confounds itself as it grows more curious, a lot is still to be questioned despite the seeming disconnects threaded and plot holes filled. Characters are painfully aware and disturbingly made unaware of their second class citizenship and the capitalist and commercialist gains forced onto them in stories like “Learning to Be Me” and “Closer.” The willful ignorance and digital dire straits following the forgone autonomy for transhumanist robot bodies and plastic replicas, the literal turning over of the human brain and body to technology is all cause for concern, but never in time to admit the mindless reliance placed on these drawn-and-quartered alternatives. Before any digital dust kicks up, there are some novella-length companion pieces that bid for the noninvasive engineering of the human spirit..."

Full review here: https://wigginswords.com/2019/10/30/the-best-of-greg-egan-by-greg-egan-book-review/

An interesting collection of twenty hard science-fiction tales selected by the author is located in the Best of Greg Egan.

The longish stories deal with what it means to be human and how technology is going to change both us and our outside environment. They were originally created between 1990 and 2019. Five of them are collected here for the first time. All of them use some intense ideas, science and especially math. It helps if those are your fields. They are not mine but I still enjoyed some of the more psychological stories.

As with all short story collections, some will appeal to you more than others. The author seems to have selected the ones that garnered the most awards and/or reader support so this is a broad look at his style. If you enjoy hard science-fiction stories that have an underlying philosophical question, you will enjoy these tales. With a whopping 736 pages, reading the physical book, as no e-book is planned, will give your arms and upper body a good work-out. 4 stars!

Thanks to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Review copy provided by the publisher.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>This is a large and fairly comprehensive volume of short stories. For anyone who wants a view of what Greg Egan is up to in his work, this is an extremely good selection of What Greg Egan Is Up To, a cross-section, a sampler. I talk about hard SF a lot in various configurations, and Greg Egan is one of the people who's aiming at doing it, not just moving other people's furniture but building his own configurations of hard SF futures, nerdy ideas and the humans that poke at them.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Ideas are Egan's strength, and it's fun to watch him turn some of them over and examine them from different angles in adjacent stories. Sometimes it's the same idea resurfacing--a "jewel" that stores a human mind and how people would interact with such a machine, how they would conceive of which thing was "really them," their brain or the jewel--and sometimes it's variations on a more general concept, biochemical happiness, religion and its manifestations in the human brain.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I was a little surprised that Egan didn't take the time, in a note of some sort, to comment on what things he would do differently now, because I would hope there are some things--nor is that unique to him, heaven knows I've learned some things in the time I've been writing, one would hope a person would. In particular I'd flag that I'd hope his concept of bisexuality has evolved and that he would no longer use the word "retarded" in the casual offhand manner in which it shows up in a few stories. I'm also a little baffled as to why no one suggested that a story called "Crystal Nights" should either have a clearer connection to Kristallnacht or get a different and considerably more sensitive title.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>But with those caveats established, this is an excellent place to start thinking about the career of Greg Egan, and about what can be done with the sub-genre of hard science fiction.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan is a very highly recommended collection of twenty stories spanning 1990 to 2019. Egan is a Modern Master of science fiction from Australia and all of these stories are winners.

The twenty stories in this collection are arranged chronologically and were all chosen by Egan as being the best of those covering his career from the last thirty years. As Egan writes in the afterward: "If there is a single thread running through the bulk of the stories here, it is 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. While the prospect of engineering our minds might still seem remote, anyone who has read a few case studies by the late Oliver Sacks will understand that we have already confronted the materiality of the self in the starkest terms."

These are all intelligent, hard science fiction stories with technical and scientific advancements as an integral part of the plot, but they also explore relationships, personal identity, and morality of the characters. The writing is exceptional and intelligent. Some of the stories are interconnected. All of them have well-developed, diverse and interesting characters. This is a door-stopper of a collection but it was well worth the time invested in reading it. For all of you who enjoy and appreciate hard science fiction, The Best of Greg Egan would make a great addiction to your science fiction collection. This is an amazing collection and I enjoyed every story.

Contents include: Learning to Be Me; Axiomatic; Appropriate Love; Into Darkness; Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies; Closer; Chaff; Luminous; Silver Fire; Reasons to Be Cheerful; Oceanic; Oracle; Singleton; Dark Integers; Crystal Nights; Zero for Conduct; Bit Players; Uncanny Valley; 3-adica; Instantiation; and an Afterword.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Subterranean Press
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/10/the-best-of-greg-egan.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3028460768
https://www.librarything.com/work/22935549/book/174814561
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1188920126151839750?s=20
Amazon and Barnes&Noble after publication

I received an ebook advance reader copy from Subterranian Press through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The book is expected to be published on 31 October 2019.

Greg Egan is a hard science fiction writer, whose stories often involve mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, post-humanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rationalism over religion. Even when the themes do not deal directly with advanced math and/or science, his perspective characters are often math and science researchers. This collection offers a broad cross-section of Egan’s novella-length works, from 1990 through 2019. His writing is dense, and all told, this collection takes up 736 pages in print form – so reading it is a substantial undertaking. In fact, much of the writing here has been previously packaged into one of his series of three prior collections – Axiomatic (1995), Luminous (1998), and Oceanic (2009) – with about five more. So, if you’re a close follower of Egan’s writing, this could be redundant for you. However, you may not have been aware of the interconnected nature of some of the stories which now appear in the same volume. On the other hand, if Egan is new to you, this collection is in fact, his best. I highly recommend it.

Below are some of my non-comprehensive notes on individual novellas. Almost all were first published in Interzone or Asimov’s Science Fiction. And there are a lot of award winners and nominations.

“Learning to be Me” (1990) ***** - In the future, all people have a brain-implanted “jewel” that parallels their brain development throughout their lifetime. By abandoning their flesh brain and switching over to the jewel, all may achieve near-immortality, but it raises unanswerable questions of identity. Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991.

“Axiomatic” (1990) ***** - When you can purchase mind modification implants, what is your true personality? Nominated for British SF Association Award in 1991

“Appropriate Love” (1991) **** - A young couple finds that their least costly medically sanctioned option for total body replacement is far more invasive than they anticipated.

“Into Darkness” (1992) **** – It takes an unusual personality to act as on-call rescuer from an anomalous area of spacetime, that has logical but unexpected perils.

“Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies” (1992) ***** – A post-apocalyptic world has resulted from the general breach of the mental privacy of philosophical orientation among humanity. But some individuals have preserved their independence, geographically navigating between monolithic philosophical/religious concentrations.

“Closer” (1992) **** – The concept of a “jewel” is used again. The novella explores just how close individuals could become, by creative transference and communication between bodies and jewels.

“Chaff” (1993) ***** - A criminal empire based in the Amazon has been created by engineering of biological organisms.

“Luminous” (1995) ***** – Early in the formation of the universe, several different mathematical realities competed for dominance. Today, there are regions where each dominates, and conscious exploration extends each into the territories of the others. A small group of people fights against opposing mathematics, unknown to their peers. Nominated for 1996 Hugo novelette.

“Silver Fire” (1995) *** – A government agent pursues mathematical models of the rarified pattern of contagion in a pandemic. I was fascinated by that investigation, but the ultimate cause of the problem is an unrealistic and horrific exaggeration of some weird new age spirituality. I found it to be too heavy handed of an anti-religion polemic.

“Reasons to be Cheerful” (1997) ***** - Whatever the plot, the topic of speculation is the molecular biology of happiness. Fascinating to me, but definitely too info-dumpy for the Star Wars audience.

“Oceanic” (1998) **** – On a colony world, a scientist discovers the biological basis of his own religious experience. That alone is a sufficient concept for the story, but additionally I liked the way that the engineered sexual dimorphism of the culture was revealed only through plot, even if the biology of that aspect is a little flaky. It's the winner of a 1999 Hugo, and was also nominated for the Tiptree Award, among others.

“Oracle” (2000) ***** – A visitor from an alternate time line appears and helps an Alan Turing-like character escape torture and lead the rapid development of interdisciplinary science, all in an effort to avoid painful lives among the branching of many worlds. Nominated for 2001 Hugo and 2001 Nebula.

“Singleton” (2002) ***** – A contemporary physicist couple make a decision to raise a synthetic child, who is also shielded from many worlds branching as a true singleton. Story linked to “Oracle”, giving the back story of Helen. Nominated for British SF Association Award.

“Dark Integers” (2007) *** – Sequel to “Luminous.” Another war with the alternate mathematical space that overlaps with our own. Nominated for Hugo 2008.

“Crystal Nights” (2008) **** - A rich man evolves an artificial intelligence civilization in an extremely high-speed computer, that outstrips humanity. Nominated for British SF Association Award.

“Zero for Conduct” (2013) ***** - An Afghan school girl living in exile in Iran chemically designs a room-temperature superconducting magnet. Message is about the educational oppression of women. The impressive realism of the setting is due to Egan’s personal experiences in modern Iran, from which also came his novel Zendegi.

“Bit Players” (2014) *** – Human characters, who are composites of thousands of public domain recordings, come to consciousness in a gamespace whose designers had a poor grasp on elementary physical laws.

“Uncanny Valley” (2017) *** – A cybernetic heir confronts the incompleteness of memories that was passed on to him.

“3-Adica” (2018) *** – Sequel to “Bit Players.” The gamespace characters move into a bizarre new spacetime setting.

“Instantiation” (2019) **** – Sequel to “3-Adica.” There is a crisis in gamespace, as the real world business that supports it could soon go bankrupt and shut down. In order to move out danger of extinction, the characters must deceive real world characters using simulation. Plays upon Gödel’s theorems.

Ahoy there mateys! I read Greg Egan's story Phoresis and wanted to read more of his work. Unfortunately this collection is not to me taste. This certainly seems like the case of it being the wrong book for this reader. I just did enjoy the tone of the stories I read and ended up abandoning this. Grateful for the review copy and hope it finds the correct audience. Arrrr!

This collection of twenty hard science fiction stories are the best of Greg Egan’s career. From short stories to novellas, you’ll encounter artificial intelligence and consciousness, science and religion, and unexpected fusion of human and technology. With such a wide range of stories, there’s something for every hard scifi fan. Each story is filled to the brim with intelligent ideas, often presented in surprisingly entertaining ways, and I love the stories that consider the boundaries of the natural brain, whether enhanced by biology or tech.

My absolute favorites include:

-The very first story, “Learning to be Me,” is about brain implant tech referred to as “the jewel”, which listens and learns the hosts’ thoughts. When the host is ready, typically in their twenties or thirties, they undergo the “switch”, letting the jewel take over the natural brain and become the primary processor, giving the host a kind of immortality. A later story “Closer” takes place in the same world and questions what makes consciousness.
-“Axiomatic” is another implant story, but one in which adults can purchase very specific alterations to their personalities, from meditation to languages to sexual orientation to Catholicism. The hero of of the story buys one that will let him take revenge on the man who shot his wife during a bank robbery.
-In “Appropriate Love”, a woman’s husband needs a new body to survive. Thankfully cloning technology is well accepted and their insurance will pay for the least costly medically sanctioned option. Unfortunately, a new option is available for brain storage that challenges her commitment to him.
-“Reasons to be Cheerful” follows a young boy who thinks unbridled happiness is the natural state of being, until his brain tumor is removed and he must face life with a drastically lower baseline of endorphins.
-The Hugo Award-winning novella “Oceanic” is fantastic. A young boy in a sea-faring community experiences a powerfully spiritual near-death experience at a young age, forming a rock-solid religious belief that guides him to make his faith the center of his studies.

I should stop there, but there are so many great stories in this collection that it’s hard to showcase just a few. There are others that explore ideas in math, physics, and chemistry. Some are detective stories and mysteries. Some feature androids. Some question fate with parallel universes. A trio of stories later in the book follow self-aware NPC characters in gaming worlds.

One of the great things unique to this collection is the temporal breadth of the stories, spanning Egan’s thirty year plus career. Even more interesting is that they are presented in chronological order, providing an interesting opportunity to trace the growth and exploration of the writer. Over time, the stories tend to grow longer. More complex plots emerge. The POV characters grow more diverse. There’s more exploration of technical details. But the early stories pack a punch in their simplicity that will stick with me.

This collection of short stories and novellas is enormous, so there is a lot of enjoyment inside of it. Many of the stories are hard sci-fi, and many prominently feature math. As with any collection, some stories really resonated with me, while others were certainly worth reading but not re-reading. I enjoyed reading a few stories, then reading something else, then coming back to read more of these stories.

Great collection of short stories from an author whose novels never appealed to me. The best of these leave me wanting more, and the worst still have good ideas but read like a first-person narrator telling you what the story is instead of the author telling you the story. Well-worth reading. Unexpectedly, not all are hard SF.

A very good, very solid, very large collection of work by a mostly hard sci-fi and prolific author. You're guaranteed not to like every story here, but the overall quality is high. If you're a sci-fi fan, this is probably for you! Recommended.

I feel very fortunate to be able to review this, and I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

The Best of Greg Egan- Subterranean Press is releasing this huge tome(700+ pages) in October. There is supposedly no digital releases planned, however, I was fortunate enough to get a e-book review copy. Yes, it is a doorstop even in digital format. Most of the stories are either novellas or long novelettes. As with any "Best of" collection, or any anthology for that matter, there are stories you love and those that fall like lead bricks through your consciousness. This is a pretty good assortment, including some award winners and some standout stories(Axiomatic, Dark Integers, Crystal Nights, Oceanic). If you're not familiar with Greg Egan, here is a great way to introduce yourself to his unusual take on things as well as his fevered mathematics.