Schild's ladder
A Novel
by Greg Egan · first published 2002
67% recommend32% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hard SF about physicists whose experiment creates an expanding bubble of new physics, with digital minds, deep quantum mechanics and graph theory. Suits readers who liked Diaspora and Permutation City.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Good article. Anyone here a fan of Greg Egan? I found "Schild's Ladder" the best piece of Sci-Fi I ever read. Can anyone suggest similar authors?
on “The importance of science fiction to entrepreneurship” ↗you should read the work of "greg egan" in particular his novel "schild's ladder", in which space travel mostly involves digital brains being transmitted by laser between physical outposts sometimes "people" send along specifications for biological hosts in which to be embodied,…
on “Water Planets in the Habitable Zone” ↗You should try Greg Egan's books, if you like SF at all. I think a good introduction would be Schild's Ladder or Axiomatic, but my personal favorite is the Clockwork Rocket trilogy and Dichromatic. The latter two are conceptually related. If you know about metric signatures, you'll be able to tell how. If not,…
on “Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers” ↗Not OP, but Greg Egan is mentioned somewhat often around here. Having read some of is books (Schild's Ladder, Permutation City, Diaspora) I can firmly recommend them, and would assign them the "hard sci-fi" tag. You can also never go wrong with Arthur C. Clarke. Another favourite of mine, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow"…
on “Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality” ↗…'different people' who happen to share a single memory and narrative. 3. Your personality shifts at some point to wanting to death, at which point (assuming suicide is allowed) life ends I highly recommend Schild's Ladder[1] and Permutation City [2], both by Greg Egan, which do an excellent job of asking 'who am I?' if we had the ability live for infinite time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild%27s_Ladder [2]…
on “Around the World, People Have Surprisingly Modest Notions of the ‘Ideal’ Life” ↗Strongly agree on Greg Egan. "Schild's Ladder" is one of the best 'hard' SF novels I've ever read! I can see how you'd feel that way about Market Forces. Personally what I liked most in that book was the way the main character developed/changed…
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗If you don't mind highly technical hard SF, Schild's Ladder is also very good. It's not explicitly spelled out in the text, but it serves as a good pseudo-sequel to Diaspora. Egan's publisher recently ran off a new printing of many books in his back catalog…
on “Six works of Computer Science-Fiction” ↗Another Egan book well worth reading is Schild's Ladder, which reminds me a lot of Diaspora and was recently reissued in the US: http://www.amazon.com/Schilds-Ladder-Novel-Greg-Egan/dp/1597...
on “Top Books on Amazon Based on Links in Hacker News Comments” ↗You might enjoy Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It has some hard sci-fi elements inspired by mathematics (orbital mechanics, phase space). Also books by Greg Egan such as Schild's Ladder (graph theory).
on “The Case Against Reading Everything” ↗For me, several books by Greg Egan fall into this category. Permutation City, Diaspora, Quarantine, and Schild's Ladder have all... changed me. I was a different person before and after I had read those books, and now I categorise all works of fiction into those that forever alter my way of thinking and those that do…
on “Ask HN: What are some deep, mentality changing books?” ↗…time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated." I immediately went out and bought Greg Egan's "Schild's Ladder" after find out he'd used this as a plot device.
on “Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?” ↗Greg Egan's Diaspora, Schild's Ladder, and Permutation City feel similar in scale if not exactly style. I've just started reading Alastair Reynolds's books, and those are closer to the sort of space opera of Banks, and so far so good. If…
on “I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)” ↗My go to is works by Greg Egan (e.g. Diaspora and Schild's Ladder and Permutation City). Thanks for the suggestion, I will check out Baxter.
on “What sonic black holes say about real ones” ↗Huge fan of Greg Egan. Schild's Ladder was formative for me when I was growing up.
on “Accelerando (2005)” ↗Have you read "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan?
on “Growing evidence that the universe is connected by giant structures (2019)” ↗