Is Greg Egan too Science to be Science Fiction?

[stunt50000]

Anyone who has read Greg Egan's novels should notice complex references to concepts such as "decoherence" and "time - transcription". Although I am currently reading his newest book, Schild's Ladder , I find that the "quantum physics" he uses are slightly overwhelming. Do you find that this enhances or detracts from the novel?

 

[Martin]

Can't say anything about Greg Egan, really, considering I've never read anything by him, but I can tell you that an SF-novel shouldn't get to scientific, in my opinion. I love science fiction, don't get me wrong, but it has to remain accessable at all times. I, personally, do not want to struggle to keep up with the narrative.

I started in a Greg Bear novel once, namely 'Eon', and I closed it after 30-something pages, because of the sheer detail in it. I totally understand SF-freaks (no offence intended; couldn't come up with a better word) absolutely loving that kind of stuff, it's just not for me. Maybe the fact that I'd been ill for a couple of days, causing a slight loss of concentration had something to do with it, but I haven't felt the urge to pick it up and start again... yet.

Cheers, Martin

 

[Neo80]

generally speaking i love read SF books that have a lot of
complex ideas & to some degree hard science, that why i love
read Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge books. But sometime it just get way
too far that the book become so boring & you start think that you
are reading a text book not a fiction & that particularly problem
happend with Greg Egan books.
granted, his books have lot of big hard sf ideas but the problem
is that he emphasize more on the science than the fiction
i read so far only two books by Greg Egan, one is Diaspora which was
so damn complex that i read only to page 40 & then i just didn't care
about the damn book.
the other one Child Ladder, although have the same complex ideas &
hard science but i like it more, i don't knew why, it was more
accessible for me.