It's No Longer Possible To Look Away
I've just recieved the best birthday present of my short lifespan: a personal email from Greg Egan.
I wrote:
A quick question that I'm sure many people ask you: why do you choose
to write fiction as a vehicle for your ideas?
Someone saw me struggling over Diaspora and commented that it
was "a waste of intelligence" for a person like you to write fiction
and though I had many answers as to why I *thought* it was important
that you did, I thought later that it would be interesting to hear the
answer that you give people of that ilk.
Thank you for reading this -
David Seruyange
Egan responds:
Hi David
Why fiction? Because sometimes the best way to examine important
questions about the nature of the real world is by pushing things to
extremes, and to do thought experiments that are impossible either in
reality, or in a context constrained by having to know every detail about
the real world.
There's plenty to be gained by studying real physics (or neurobiology, or
whatever) and contemplating what those facts alone reveal. But to
extract the most morally/philosophically/aesthetically interesting
consequences of science, I think it's necessary to do it in a context
where you can make up the fine details that have yet to be pinned down by
real research, while remaining true to the general principles that the
scientific worldview has revealed.
Maybe we should all fully grasp, already, what science has taught us in
the most general sense: that human beings are made of matter like
everything else, and that the Earth is one small planet in a very big
universe. But to confront those simple truths more fully, we need to
imagine more extreme situations ... and although things are changing so
fast that we probably *can* all be shocked and unsettled by a factual
report of current science, I really like to push things to the point
where it's no longer possible to look away from what science has
revealed. For that, everything needs to be magnified, and made larger
than (contemporary) life. I can only do that in fiction.
Best wishes
Greg Egan 
About once a year I pick up one of Egan's novels and try to read it. They usually get the better of me but upon each successive attempt I get a little further and understand just a little bit more of his ideas. This year I've made my attempt on Diaspora (synopsis here). You can get a taste of it by reading the first chapter as an excerpt.
Fortunately, Egan expands on some of his ideas online. It's useful for people like me, lay, who are trying to understand what he is writing about.
Egan also publishes non-fiction (ie scientific and mathematical papers) from time to time. Although many are online, they are well beyond my understanding. (Another reason I'm happy he writes - for people like me who lack a sufficient background for the intimate details of modern science).
10:56:10 AM 
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