{"id":2283,"date":"2009-04-14T09:39:16","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T17:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2009-04-14T09:48:04","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T17:48:04","slug":"incandescence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=2283","title":{"rendered":"Incandescence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gregegan.net\/INCANDESCENCE\/Z\/Hatchet.html\">Greg Egan complains<\/a> about sloppy reviews of his latest novel:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>About half the reviews of <i>Incandescence<\/i> made at least one of the following false assertions: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Splinter orbits a neutron star.<\/li>\n<li>Rakesh visits the Splinter.<\/li>\n<li>The relationship between the novel&#8217;s two threads is never revealed.<\/li>\n<li>The reader learns nothing about the Aloof.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The first two errors result from failing to notice that Egan violates a common pattern of First Contact stories: chapters alternate between two sets of characters who would conventionally meet in the end.  Odd-numbered chapters of <i>Incandescence<\/i> are about Rakesh, a human who learns of evidence of DNA life in an unexpected place and follows the trail; even-numbered chapters are about the discovery of general relativity by the inhabitants of the Splinter, an artificial worldlet orbiting a black hole.  Rakesh never finds the Splinter; he arrives at <strong>another<\/strong> artificial worldlet, with the same origin as the Splinter but orbiting a neutron star.  So there is a clear link between the two threads, but it&#8217;s at the wrong end.<\/p>\n<p>And unless I missed something the Aloof remain as mysterious as ever, though slightly less aloof than they seemed before.<\/p>\n<p>Two stories in the same universe as <i>Incandescence<\/i> are online: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregegan.net\/INCANDESCENCE\/00\/Crocodile.html\">Riding the Crocodile<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/outofthiseos.typepad.com\/blog\/files\/GregEganGlory.pdf\">Glory (pdf)<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg Egan complains about sloppy reviews of his latest novel: About half the reviews of Incandescence made at least one of the following false assertions: The Splinter orbits a neutron star. Rakesh visits the Splinter. The relationship between the novel&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=2283\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2286,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions\/2286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}