A light in the dark, luminous (Luminous - Greg Egan)

Member Name: mpeh

Product:	Luminous - Greg Egan
Date:	27/08/02 (91 review reads)
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This is an opinion on the collection of short stories collected under the title: Luminous.

My copy of this was provided for me by a friend who wanted me to read one of the stories it contains. She kept telling me that I should read it and I said that I would. Then, fed up with my apathy I imagine, she told me that she'd mail me a copy. Imagining that she meant a print out or photocopy I said great and then this gorgeous little book arrives in the post. Many thanks Arwen although you'll never read this I'm sure. My copy is a paperback, slightly wider than usual with a mandelbrot set (a fancy computer generated image or fractal) on the front surrounded by psychadelic waves of colour. It might sound dreadful but it's very attractive. Honest.

Luminous is a collection of ten short stories by Greg Egan. Each is self contained and has no links to the others, originally they were published separately in various magazines and journals. They are all what would broadly be classified as science fiction. The stories are all purposeful, they each explore to some degree the possibilities of future technologies or discoveries. All of the stories are set in the future of our own world, most of them only a little way into the future, well within most readers' likely lifetimes. The issues explored are things like genetic modification of plants and viruses, vastly increased computational power and it's applications (to mathematics, economics and so forth).

One of the difficulties with short stories, and these are short, ranging from about twenty five to forty pages, is characterisation. The author has this clever idea that they either don't wish to fully explore or feel would be better presented in a short form so as to get the reader to do more of the imaginative leg work and as such the normal process of introducing and characterising each of the people who appear in the story cannot be undertaken in the same way that it would be
for a full length novel. The best authors of short stories have got the knack of allowing you to feel empathy and sympathy for their characters very quickly, both understanding their motives and goals without taking up too many lines of text. This can be achieved in many ways, from an adjective dense opening paragraph to a first person narrative which drops details about the narrator as the story goes. Egan tells his stories from the first person and as such you connect with his characters initially because you are seeing the world through their eyes and then because as the plot thickens each time the details of the character's involvement are deftly woven in.

Egan has a gift for short stories, he gets across the details of the setting, mainly on earth shortly into what is presently the future, very quickly and easily imparting a lot of information in a seemingly effortless selection of insights from the story's 'hero'. Like all accomplished writers (and if Egan does not count as this he should and, I dare say, will) the tricks used to develop affinity between reader and character and to impart information without lecturing are seamless and, as I said, appear effortless. Egan writes with a casual fluidity which is nice, but only in hindsight, at the time of reading it is so casual you don't notice it. Where as with some people the writing style is polished and as you read it you can revel in the sumptuousness of the language with Egan the story is so smoothly told you don't notice the style of telling. It's the difference between being in a Jag at 60 cruising along and, although knowing you are travelling, not noticing the motion just the plush interior of the car, and being in a well driven Golf at 60, off rode, where you are enjoying the motion so much that the car, although well built, doesn't register on your attention.

Now my first criticism of the book or, more accurately, some of the stories contained therei
n. With short stories, especially ones exploring an issue, even more especially ones exploring some fictitious science or technology, there are two approaches generally taken. It is almost inevitable that one of the points of the piece is to make the reader think about the issue in question, to explore that which the author touches upon more fully both during the reading and, more completely, afterwards. So the two common approaches are to do what the film Highlander does, which is tell one story and touch upon many many other concepts very lightly, or to more deeply explore one concept still allowing for further thought from the reader. Highlander worked very well indeed, although many of the people who watch it probably don't explore the concepts further afterwards because the story has closure. With science fiction short stories both approaches have been used very well and Egan uses both in different stories in this collection but I would suggest, doesn't always make the right choice.

There are a few stories in this book with very subtle, very sophisticated new concepts which are the main points of the pieces in which they are contained. If the focus of the short story is to examine, or open up to the reader a new concept then I think that that concept should be examined in more detail than merely mentioning it and explaining it's context. It's difficult to give an example without spoiling the stories. I read a few of these stories and felt a lack of completeness, not that deliberate blank to make me think but an actual slight dissapointment that he hadn't given me more to base my explorations on.

I've written this before in a lot of my reviews but; this is a good book, even though I make criticisms. I find it easier to pull out the mistakes and faults in a product than the good points, I expect most people are the same. This is a very sophisticated collection. The ideas are tight, original and well presented and each st
ory will make you think. Some of them may make you wish he'd told you more or given you a bit more pseudo science on which to philosophise but all in all a gem of creative writing.

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