Distress

“Any liveliness comes solely from the ideas,” hilariously writes Mr. Egan in his review of [b:A New Kind of Science|238558|A New Kind of Science|Stephen Wolfram|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386925097s/238558.jpg|231083]. However, it's not an issue per se that Distress itself doesn't go further than that.
Neal Stephenson—another author famous for including lots of exposition—claims that “story is everything”; Greg Egan also “wants to tell a story”. However, while Mr. Stephenson writes great fiction, Mr. Egan tries to, and although there's an interview where he rants against standard “development” of the characters, Distress has a lot of remarkably unmotivated stuff that looks like “I was told one needs this in a novel”. Andrew Worth's supposed transformation is the best (and the main) example: he has a break-up, he's bored of his whole life, he talks to interviewees and Stateless locals (and their Ayn Rand-ish transhumanism-related speeches are probably the second main source of liveliness), he falls ill, he's on the verge of death, he's reborn as another person. Well, in fact he doesn't change—maybe because he had no identity before, maybe because all this stuff is incredibly superficial.
It would be great if one day Mr. Egan starts writing non-fiction on sociology and ethical issues of technology adoption, but sadly, this day will probably never come.

This isn't one of Egan's best, I think – as always, the mathematical and science ideas are solid (and pleasantly mindblowing), but at times I felt like the story itself was taking a backseat. Extra points for some very positive explorations of gender and sexuality (including having a very sympathetically-written gender-neutral, asexual character who played a large part in the story). It's good overall, solid Egan – I just thought that, while it started out strong and ended strong, there was a bit of a slog in the middle. Maybe it wasn't quite fair to read it just after rereading [b:Axiomatic 156783 Axiomatic Greg Egan http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1287341765s/156783.jpg 1270534].