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 "famously reclusive" author.^[1]. He does not attend science fiction conventions^[2], and does not sign books.

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

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
• Oceanic and Other Stories (2000), ISBN 4-15-011337-8
• Reasons to Be Cheerful and Other Stories (2003), ISBN 4-15-011451-X
• Dark Integers and Other Stories (March 2008, Subterranean Press)

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 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" (Winner of the Hugo Award)

Other stories

• "Oracle"
• "Only Connect"
• "Border Guards"
• "Yeyuka"
• "TAP"
• "Worthless"
• "Mind Vampires"
• "Neighbourhood Watch"
• "Orphanogenesis" ^[3]
• "Wang's Carpets" ^[4]
• "Reification Highway"
• "Dust" ^[5]
• "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"
• "Singleton" ^[6]
• "Lost Continent"

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, which is an invaluable source of information. See External links for the Google archive of these posts.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Science Fiction Book Club
2. ↑ Interviews
3. ↑ "Orphanogenesis" became the opening chapter of the novel Diaspora.
4. ↑ 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.
5. ↑ "Dust" became the opening chapter of the novel Permutation City http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/permcity.htm
6. ↑ Singleton introduced the concept of the Qusp, which was later used in the novel Schild's Ladder.

External links

• Open Directory category: Greg Egan
• Greg Egan's homepage
• Greg Egan's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• Google archive of Egan's posts to rec.arts.sf.written

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