Teranesia: by Greg Egan (Teranesia - Greg Egan)

Member Name: mohan

Product:	Teranesia - Greg Egan
Date:	26/09/00 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Genre busting, emotionally intense.

Disadvantages: unclassifiable if you're confined by genres

There are some for whom science fiction is folks wearing funny clothes whispering into hand held gadgets, firing off pulses of phosphorescent rays into a very ugly but thoroughly humanoid enemy.

If you're serious about stories, and have never really ventured into sci-fi fearing such nonsensical gobbledegook, I suggest you read TERANESIA. You will never look back.

TERANESIA is a marvellous concoction of emotional power, immaculately conceived characters and bursting with ideas that would have made a thousand other stories. Greg Egan packs so much into his novels that you wonder how this man's brain works.

I have always respected his work, especially his short stories that have won numerous awards ( I particularly like 'Oceanic' :a novella, and a compelling, mind blowing story called 'Reasons to be cheerful' that appeared in Interzone, but I digress...).

Teranesia tells the story of nine year old Prabhir Suresh who lives with his parents in an otherwise uninhabited island in the Indian ocean. His parents are entomologists who have stumbled upon some evolutionally puzzling species of butterflies on the volcanic island not far from Indonesia. Prabhir has a fabulous imagination and he populates the island with imaginary animals and narrates fables to his young sister, Madhushree.

Something terrible makes Prabhir leave the island, rescuing his little sister singlehandedly. He ends up in Toronto in custody of his foster parents, but his mind refuses to let go of Teranesia and it's inhabitants. Is it guilt, fear or something worse that resides in the depths of his mind?

Thirty years into the new millenium the discovery of further bizarre new species, draws Madhushree, now a biologist, back to the island. But Prabhir doesn't want her to go. When she does, he decides to take his own trip to the island, venturing into the forbidden parts of his past. What follows is a relentless chase from
island to island, unravelling the mysterious force that seems to lure every creatures' DNA which results in rapid and unexplained mutations, often seemingly backward. From butterflies to birds, frogs and even plants all around Teranesia they seem to devlop new morphology, new relationships, symbiosis and parasitism. Egan stuns us with his erudition of science but just when you think he is overdoing the science 'bit' he lays another twist and tangle.

Part thriller, part science fiction, but all tied up in an emotional journey of childhood and growing up, TERNAESIA is pure gold. It brims with such insights and such wry humour it is very hard to describe or classify. But one thing you can be sure, it is a brilliant read and a superb piece of fiction by any standard.

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