The Clockwork Rocket
by Greg Egan · first published 2011
77% recommend23% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Hard sci-fi set in a universe where time behaves like a spatial dimension, with the physics worked out rigorously. Suits readers with math and physics backgrounds who like curious scientist characters.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A series of strange meteors enters a planetary system, and a world is in danger. Can space travellers from this world, travel in time and space, and return in time with the technology needed to avert the disaster? This is the first book of the Orthogonal trilogy, following the travellers on their mission.
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Just finished Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan. Anyone here needs to check out their work.
on “New sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this August” ↗…stopped taking physics in high school. Authors who take physics seriously are quite rare, even in the science fiction genre. If you want a book written by someone who knows some real physics, read The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan. He changed one simple law of physics, worked out the consequences for quantum mechanics and relativity, made up some plausible–enough biology, and wrote a series of books in the resulting…
on “Physicists detect signs of neutrinos at Large Hadron Collider” ↗…and science fiction writers suck at plotting and pacing that I'd prefer they lean on crutches occasionally rather than bore their readers to death. Egan's two most recent books, Incandesence and The Clockwork Rocket, are great if you're a math and physics guy.
on “The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)” ↗I recommend Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy: The Clockwork Rocket, The Eternal Flame and The Arrows of Time. It features a finite four-dimensional universe with no time-like dimension.
on “Science Fiction Stories with Good Astronomy and Physics: A Topical Index (2014)” ↗Haven’t read anything more hard-sci-fi than Egan myself (Clockwork Rocket, quite good). From comments from the OP Egan may not suit (but very recommendable nevertheless)
on “Ask HN: What are the best Sci-Fi books you've ever read?” ↗I loved Permutation City. Have you read anything of the Orthogonal series by Egan? The Clockwork Rocket bent my mind and feels like harder sci-fi still.
on “Neal Stephenson – Announcing Termination Shock” ↗…usually true anyway. Well, I suspect I just spent a lot of words telling you something you already knew, so I’ll leave off with a book recommendation. Dichronauts, by Greg Egan. Between that and the Clockwork Rocket trilogy, I don’t know a better way to inculcate an intuition for special relativity. One is set in a 2+2 spacetime; the other in 4+0. The differences are instructive.
on “Fundamental physics sees worlds in grains of sand and infinities in hours” ↗Strong rec for Greg Egan’s Clockwork Rocket series, which explores the role of the +++- metric tensor in chronology protection in our universe, by contrasting it with a universe with a ++++ metric tensor. As per his style, it’s a fiction book set…
on “Time Travel: Probability and Impossibility” ↗If you read The Clockwork Rocket, it becomes very, very obvious that Egan is a mathematician who will go to any length - including writing excellent fiction - to attempt to cram knowledge into your head.
on “Pi and the Golden Ratio” ↗And in case anyone is new to Greg Egan, there's also the Orthogonal series (starting with The Clockwork Rocket) where the metric is (+,+,+,+) - the "time" dimension is just like the spatial dimensions. Pretty cool read with a bit of physics background!
on “Strange new phase of matter acts like it has two time dimensions” ↗Greg Egan - A Clockwork Rocket (book 1 of the Orthogonal trilogoy, all three of which I recommend)
on “A Growing Number of Scientists Are Convinced the Future Influences the Past” ↗…hard because of the hyperbolic structure of +-. Once you're going FTL, changing your direction to point backwards in time is trivial; you just turn your engines on and accelerate. Read Greg Egan's "Clockwork Rocket" and "Dichronauts" books and support material on his website to develop an intuitive understanding of spacetimes with ++++ and ++-- signatures and (by contrast) our own spacetime with a +--- signature.
on “Sabine Hossenfelder: I think faster than light travel is possible. Here's why” ↗I’ve seen Greg Egan mentioned a couple times. I love most of what I’ve read by him, but “The Clockwork Rocket” trilogy stands far above for me. A multi-generational hard sci-fi story. Characters who are intelligent, curious researchers who set out to learn and unravel the nature of their universe to try to save…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?” ↗If you haven’t read Greg Egan’s Orthogonal Trilogy, you might like it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clockwork_Rocket
on “The Webb Telescope further deepens the Hubble tension controversy in cosmology” ↗The orthogonal trilogy from Greg Egan really stands out (Clockwork rocket, eternal flame and the arrow of time) for fiction. For non fiction "Why nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu was quite well done.
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗