Distress, by Greg Egan

Greg Egan is my favorite author this year. Diaspora and Permutation City were fantastic books with brilliant writing and mind-bending concepts to ponder. His short stories are sublime.

Which makes Distress all the more of a puzzle to me. The read was nearly entirely unpleasant and went nowhere, slowly. I suffered through the endless discussion of political intrigue, waiting for the good stuff to emerge, and it never did. Worst of all is that the story concept at the center of the book was beyond ridiculous. I'm still shaking my head at it.

At its essence, this book is about the search for A Theory of Everything -- a single equation or set of equations that can explain all of the fundamental interactions of matter and energy. Such a theory would explain gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and provide clarity into all sorts of elementary particles, how they transform themselves, and how all of this relates to dark matter and dark energy – assuming that they exist.

Apparently, Stephen Hawking used to believe that a Theory of Everything was attainable but later changed his mind, saying, "Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind." (Stephen Hawking, Gödel and the end of physics, July 20, 2002.)

I was hoping to read about the search for this theory, and one possible resolution of the issue. I was sorely disappointed to find the core concept of the book to be the most bizarre and unreasonable bastardization of The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle I have ever heard of. Namely, that the event which causes the universe to be created has not happened yet. It happens in the future and the event radiates instantly throughout time and space. That I could buy, for reasons too complex to discuss here. What I can't buy is the idea that the event that causes the creation of the universe is a single conscious human "thinking" and understand the Theory of Everything in his or her brain.

Put another way, Egan suggests that the moment Stephen Hawking or Antony Garrett Lisi (or you) comes to understand the Theory of Everything, that clarity of understanding – that "aha moment" -- somehow causes the universe to spring into existence, in a manner similar to how a single electron seems to "appear" from a foam of quantum uncertainty when its speed and location is measured.

What puzzles me most about this book is not Egan's flight of fancy beyond, what seems to me, the boundaries of science fiction. Rather, it is the relatively large number of people who have posted glowing reviews for this book at Amazon.com. Perhaps these folks enjoyed the lengthy discussions of philosophy. Or they understood Egan's idea much more (or much less) than I did.

Regardless, I am glad that this book made them all happy but it certainly did not make me happy. I would much rather Egan have expanded on the concepts he explored in the early chapters such as future technology that can temporarily bring a murder victim back to consciousness for a few minutes, for the purpose of identifying their killer.

On the other hand, Egan has lots more stuff that I've yet to read and I remain a huge fan of his work. Off to the bookstore…