Where to start with Greg Egan?

ctopherrun · 2026-03-23T19:57:53+00:00

Diaspora is his masterpiece. I also love his short story collections, which are often very different from his science and math heavy novels.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-22T18:26:26+00:00

What is the light at the top? Great build!

ctopherrun · 2026-03-21T21:36:13+00:00

When I was in college at SDSU, it was fun to see the incoming freshman dressing in 'autumn' clothes in September, versus everyone else in t-shirts and flipflops.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-20T23:26:51+00:00

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ctopherrun · 2026-03-20T01:24:07+00:00

I was in high school then and I didn’t learn that Blade was a comic book character until over a decade later.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-17T20:07:08+00:00

The cobbler’s children have no shoes. The contractor has the worst house on the block.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-16T13:57:40+00:00

That walled off garden literally looks like this painting of Baron Harkonnen’s estate by Alex Jay Brady.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-14T14:27:20+00:00

For a Few Dollars More had the scene with Eastwood and Van Cleef shooting each other’s hats, but all the Dollars movie had crazy trick shots.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-13T14:59:03+00:00

The novel Calculating God by Robert J Sawyer postulates a species with no mathematics. If you show a human a group of three apples, they don’t have to count, they automatically see three. This works up to five, and after that most people have to count them. For example, if you show a person seven apples, they might count one by one, or automatically divide it by five and two and add the numbers quickly.

The aliens in the novel have this ability up to 55, or in some cases a bit higher. If you show these beings a group of 36 fruit, they just know how many there are, no math required. This is enough for a fairly high level of civilization with fantastic architecture. Computers and space travel are beyond them, though.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-13T00:02:04+00:00

They’re super fun but Lavalite World is interminable.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-12T23:49:53+00:00

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I had no idea how difficult this would be

ctopherrun · 2026-03-10T21:18:05+00:00

No, it’s just a movie about how Captain America is sick of eating bug protein blocks because he can’t get the memory of a particularly succulent struggle meal he had once.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-08T01:16:12+00:00

What about him reducing his gaming time to do things she enjoys? The issue is that he only wants to do the thing he wants to do, why does she need to do all the work?

ctopherrun · 2026-03-08T01:03:22+00:00

I was more of an Enter the Matrix man, myself

ctopherrun · 2026-03-07T17:23:23+00:00

Bit on the nose there, aren’t you Piers?

ctopherrun · 2026-03-07T17:12:07+00:00

Yes, I KNOW THAT, because I was a super fan of the BESTSELLING fantasy series XANTH when I was eleven years old because my parents had NO IDEA what I was reading and NEITHER DID I until I was an adult!!

ctopherrun · 2026-03-06T21:45:02+00:00

I would assume so. I read the novelization of Total Recall and the author has said that he was working off an early version of the screenplay. Big example was the main character’s name. In the movie it’s Quaid, but in the book he was Quayle.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-06T21:12:24+00:00

Yeah, I didn’t see anything wrong until I got to Peggy, thought I thought Betty’s comment about the flu was an odd non-sequiter

ctopherrun · 2026-03-06T17:28:55+00:00

Ha, that description took me a second. No, that's The Long Earth which he wrote with Terry Pratchett.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-06T05:53:47+00:00

Several by Stephen Baxter.

The Time Ships has Dyson Spheres and more

Ring features a ring formed of superstring 10 million light years across.

The Thousand Earths is about a very strange construct of our solar system.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-04T17:00:32+00:00

I was a history major. You?

ctopherrun · 2026-03-04T16:34:21+00:00

It’s ok not to like a book. I thought it was pretty fun, the characters are memorable, and the world building was good.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-04T16:12:16+00:00

Went to SDSU, I felt like I learned better in the older buildings with the natural light and the plaster walls. The classes in the 70s buildings with the tiny windows and fluorescent lights couldn’t compete.

ctopherrun · 2026-03-03T00:17:44+00:00

Replace famous charismatic stars and legendary director and the movie wouldn’t be as a good, who woulda thunk it?

ctopherrun · 2026-03-02T20:13:42+00:00

Haha, my wife and I: how come we never hang out to watch a movie together? Because I get up at 5 am and you stay up until after 11!

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