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Biography
Australian

Greg Egan

1961

Greg Egan is the hardest of hard science fiction writers, an Australian novelist and short story writer whose Permutation City, Diaspora, and Schild's Ladder explore the furthest implications of physics, mathematics, and computational theory with a rigour that no other fiction writer can match. Egan's work assumes a reader willing to engage with topology, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the philosophy of consciousness at a technical level — and rewards that engagement with visions of posthuman existence that are genuinely mind-expanding. He is the most intellectually demanding science fiction writer alive.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAustralian
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Greg Egan (b. 20 August 1961) was born in Perth, Western Australia. He studied mathematics at the University of Western Australia. He is famously reclusive — he does not attend conventions, does not do public readings, and has never been photographed publicly. His online presence is limited to a website where he publishes mathematical and physics applets that accompany his fiction.

Life and Career

Quarantine (1992) — set in a near-future where a mysterious barrier has enclosed the solar system and consciousness plays a role in quantum mechanics — was his debut. Permutation City (1994) — about simulated minds, cellular automata, and what it means to exist as a computation — won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and is his most widely read novel. Its central premise — that a sufficiently detailed simulation of a person is that person — is explored with philosophical and mathematical seriousness.

Diaspora (1997) — set in the thirtieth century, following posthuman software intelligences investigating a cosmological catastrophe — pushes further into pure abstraction. Schild’s Ladder (2002) — about physicists investigating a expanding region of space governed by different physical laws — requires genuine understanding of quantum field theory to follow.

The Orthogonal trilogy — The Clockwork Rocket (2011), The Eternal Flame (2012), The Arrows of Time (2013) — is set in a universe with different physics (Riemannian rather than Lorentzian spacetime), and Egan works out the consequences with complete mathematical rigour, including supplementary material on his website.

His short fiction, collected in volumes like Axiomatic (1995) and Luminous (1998), includes some of the genre’s most important stories.

Major Works and Themes

Egan writes about the nature of reality, consciousness, and identity under the assumption that physics is true and its implications are worth following to their logical conclusions. His fiction asks: What does it mean to be a person if you can be copied, simulated, or modified? What does physics actually say about the structure of reality? His refusal to simplify the science — or to provide conventional narrative comfort — makes his work simultaneously the most challenging and most intellectually rewarding science fiction being written.

Key Works

  • Permutation City (1994)
  • Diaspora (1997)
  • Schild’s Ladder (2002)
  • The Clockwork Rocket (2011)

Collecting Egan

Quarantine (1992, Legend, UK) — the true first — brings $50–$150. Permutation City (1994, Millennium) brings $40–$100. Egan does not sign books. Australian and UK editions are the true firsts; US editions generally followed later.