Short Reviews: Greg Egan

"Chaff" [permanent link]. A story of biochemical warfare set in the Amazon. One man has been sent into the jungle to bring back a scientist who has escaped into the jungle. But his mission and the biological 'weapon' being developed by the scientist may not be what they seem.
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"Closer" [permanent link]. A story that looks at old question from another perspective; how can you really know somebody and be closer to that person? One person wonders about this, in a world where the brain can be artifically replaced by a computing 'jewel', and the answers he comes out with leads him to do more and more 'experiments' until the ultimate drastic one. Will he like the answer to his question?
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"Cocoon" [permanent link]. What starts out looking like a simple investigation of an explosion at a biotechnology firm quickly turns into an amazing tale about deception, a biotechnological protection system and the effects it may have on a certain biological inclination of part of the human population.
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"The Demon's Passage" [permanent link]. A somewhat unusual story about a 'creature' that is apparently trying to communicate with mankind, asking to be killed. You may start to have strange thoughts when it becomes apparent what the creature is and why it wants to die,
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"The Extra" [permanent link]. An impressive tale with a disturbing look how our personality is retained in the brain. In a world where cloning has produced 'extra' bodies (clones grown without much of a brain) that can be 'cut up' for spare parts, a wealthy man decides to go for the ultimate transplant. But the results may not be what he expects.
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"Luminous" [permanent link]. A thoughtful tale that requires your full attention for you are about to plunged into a world where people fight over...mathematical theorems. More specifically, ways to define systems of theorems that could affect the outcome of mathematical analyses around the world.
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"Mister Volition" [permanent link]. A dizzying story about a man who steals a 'patch' (a kind of visualisation device) that begins to give him strange visions; visions about himself or rather, about what he may be thinking about. But are the visions real and what will they reveal about free-will and consciousness?
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"Mitochondrial Eve" [permanent link]. This is a world where genetic markers in the cell's mitochondria have been used to trace the lineages of people back to their common ancestors, a "Mitochondrial Eve." But the paternal cult-society is disrupted with the discovery that lineages can also be traced back via the Y-chromosome giving rise to "Chromosome Adam." Into this volatile mix comes a man who can use a technique to give an absolute trace of the immediate ancestors of a person (genetic markers only gives probabilities); and the "Children of Eve" hope to use it in their dispute at a conference. But what if the results of the technique are not to anybody's liking?
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"The Moral Virologist" [permanent link]. In a tale that mixes religion with genetic engineering, a religious virologist decides that AIDS was divine retribution. But as AIDS is an imperfect 'holy' weapon, he decides to go about creating one that will surely go after the 'sinners'. But has he really thought through all the implications? And what will happen when the flaw in his plan is revealed?
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"Oceanic" [permanent link]. This is an unusually 'quiet' story by Greg Egan, who is known more for his highly speculative 'hard science' stories. But even in this story, he manages to weave together an unusual tale of humans living on another world in the future and what happens when an apparently religious experiences felt by one person may have a more mundane explanation.
Get from Fictionwise | Found in Aug 1998 Asimov's Science Fiction | Read from Egan's Homepage
"Oracle" [permanent link]. A story that takes a fictional look at two well-know British characters; a well-known British mathematician with a 'biological' problem and a religious scholar who encounters the mathematician and engages in a rigourous debate and protest about his work. Into this, add a character who can manipulate quantum states (based on the 'many-worlds' interpretation of Quantum Physics) and you have the makings of a world that very different from our own, yet is strangely familiar and asks how we can make decisions when each choice is being made in a quantum universe.
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"Our Lady of Chernobyl" [permanent link]. An involving story about a detective hired to find icon that has gone missing. As she goes about her task, picking up clues to its whereabouts, she begins to question the reasons for finding the icon and finds out what it may to certain groups of people.
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"The Planck Dive" [permanent link]. An intricate story, full of particle physics theory (both read and 'made-up') about a group of 'people', living as 'software' inside computers, who are about to make the ultimate dive into and around a black hole to verify some theories about the structure of the universe under extreme conditions. But their life is made more difficult when a philosophical entity joins them to 'report' on their activities.
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"Reasons to be Cheerful" [permanent link]. An impressive story about a man who, due to chemicals taken to destroy a brain tumour, discoveres that he is unable to feel enjoyment. Years later, a treatment is offered to him but will it end up hurting him more than ever?
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"Silver Fire" [permanent link]. A story about a scientist who is asked to help track down the source of an infection of "Silver Fire", a strange infectious disease. Who could be carrying the source and why are they keeping the carrier alive?
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"Singleton" [permanent link]. An interesting story set around the 'Many-Worlds' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. A man, whose life was changed one day by a decision he made, finds life meaningless because he thinks that the many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics means that there is another version of him in another universe who made a different decision that day. But what if he could 'shield' a person from this effect, making sure only one decision (and one person) would 'exist' when a decision was made?
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"Transition Dreams" [permanent link]. Set in the future, an old man is getting ready to have himself 'scanned' so that his mind can be 'copied' into a body of a robot. But in the process of copying, the man is told that he may experience 'transition dreams'. He finds this troubling for nobody knows why it happens (it just does). He beings to wonder if the dream may hint at something that may be happening during the transfer in this thoughtful story.
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"The Vat" [permanent link]. A tale billed as a 'romantic comedy' that looks at two researchers in a facility with a 'vat', a huge biological machine that produces embryos by combining human sperms with eggs. One researcher has a 'crush' on the other and his struggles over his feelings for her mix with his feelings for the operation of the vat.
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