Teranesia by Greg Egan

Welcome to Teranesia, the island of butterflies, where evolution has stopped making sense. Prabir Suresh lives in paradise, a nine-year-old boy with an island all his own: to name, to explore, and to populate with imaginary creatures stranger than any exotic tropical wildlife. The evolutionary puzzle of the island’s butterflies that brought his family to the remote South Moluccas barely touches Prabir; his own life revolves around the beaches, the jungle, and the schooling and friendships made possible.

I don’t understand why Greg Egan generally, and this book specifically, are not getting more respect. Teranesia is unapologetic hard science fiction. At the end of the day, his books make you think (quite literally, to understand the science driving them). Teranesia is the made up name of a remote Indonesian island that forms the backdrop of this novel. It is the island where Prabir grows up with his biologist parents and where he and his sister return years later to investigate strange new creatures that have been discovered. In this book Egan shows that he can talk biology as convincingly as he can discuss maths and physics. I’m afraid I have to say that I enjoyed this novel the least of all of Egan’s boo Originaly posted at SF Crowsnest Nov 2008.

Also by greg egan from gollancz. Critical acclaim for greg egan. Also by greg egan from gollancz. To say that she’d married a book-keeper three years younger than herself who’d fought his way up to live in the slums wouldn’t have had quite the same value as a throw-away line at parties. His father was milder, merely saying that ‘Given their background, what could you expect?’ Radha was studying genetics at the University of Calcutta.

Publisher: Gollancz, London, 1999. Nine-year-old Prabir Suresh lives alone with his baby sister, Madhusree, and his biologist parents on a tropical Indonesian isle. Teranesia is so small and remote, it’s not on the maps, and its strange native species of butterfly remained undiscovered until the 21st century. Prabir never wants to leave, but war forces him to flee with Madhusree. He believes he has saved his sister-until she returns to Indonesia, a grad student seeking to carry on their parents’.

In true Greg Egan fashion, what is actually at stake is the future, and past, of the entire universe. The first few chapters, on the Frankenscience documentary, give Egan a chance to show off what are basically a bunch of fun short stories (although some do have a small later significance). I did have one problem with the book. Well, other than the fundamental premise of the tale, of course, but then it is science fiction. It is clear that there is something very wrong with Worth, maybe some kind of mental problem, from his dependence on his pharm and its melatonin patches, to his need for rules to interact with his girlfriend, to his reluctance to have a brain scan. But I never did manage to figure out what.

About book: This book was sent to me by a mystery philanthropist in South Africa. Actually, I have a pretty good idea who sent i. It took almost three months to get here. I'd be interested in what you think. I have another Greg Egan, Distress, which has been entertaining dust-bunnies on my shelf for several years. I'll read that shortly as the guy seems to have a lot of fans.

20 years later strange plants and animals are being discovered in the same area his parents were studying. Far in the distant, post-human future, the Cater-Zimmermann community set out to refute the theory that the universe is created exclusively for mankind by cloning themselves a thousand times over and sending each copy to a different star within the galaxy. One of the copies of Cater-Zimmermann, Paolo Venetti, arrives at Orpheus; a water-world inhabited by floating mats that perform as a Turing machine.

Written by Greg Egan Read by Vince Canless Format: MP3 Bitrate: 64 Kbps Unabridged. Prabir Suresh and his younger sister, Madhursee, live in a remote paradise called Teranesia, where their biologist parents are studying an unexplained genetic mutation among the island’s butterflies. Then civil war erupts across Indonesia, shattering their idyllic world and their lives. Twenty years later, Prabir is still plagued by feelings of guilt and an overwhelming responsiblity for his sister, now a biologist herself.

And since no one had been deprived of the original, it wasn’t really an act of theft. More a matter of cloning r more than schoolwork, his father had made him promise never to reveal his true age to even the most innocuous stranger. There are people whose first thought upon meeting a child is to wish for things that should only happen between adults,’ he’d explained ominously