Rating: 7.5/10
When you think of science fiction, you probably conjure an image not very different from this: There is a Han Solo-like gung-ho captain swinging from the carbon nanoutube ropes of his solar sails, a gleaming spaceship rendered with a lot of blue, robots that could perform radical brain surgery on you in record time if you wanted them to, and invariably- various depictions of aliens.This is the traditional Asimov, Clarke and Lucas science fiction you normally read (“Douglas Adams” is a different genre altogether for me). So when I picked up Luminous, I knew after reading the bit at the back that this was vastly different form the above stereotypes.
And I was right. Luminous is a compilation of short stories by Greg Egan and it surely doesn’t disappoint. Most of the stories are based in the current century and center around a certain scientific advance, usually in the field of biology and medicine. What gives this book its appeal is the ideas – the ideas are incredible, thought provoking, and are the sort that question the morality and very base of science. I have not read anything like this before.
My favorite stories are Mister Volition, Reasons to be Cheerful and maybe even The Planck Dive.
Mister Volition follows a man who steals a “patch”- a new toy that provides visual biochemical feedback (displaying your body stress levels for example). The patch stolen by the protagonist has a software called “pandemonium”. He slowly discovers this software not only monitors the singular Stream of Consciousness that might be going on within, but every little undercurrent of thought that runs alongside. Every word, every stimulus allows him to see all the thoughts that are brought up in his head very distinctly. And in this, he starts struggling to try and find his own “soul”. The reason that he can do what he wants to do- he wants to look for his own mini-self, that commands his brain to do the stuff that he does. He starts seeing it everytime then, a pale blue dot, that he names “Mister Volition”. However, as he looks for justification for his actions, to kill a random teenager, he realizes that his Mister Volition was his own construct. It is his entire brain that together functions, together forms his self. It is not like Russian Dolls, there is no soul within a soul.
The other stories also make for pretty nice reads, set in gloomy (not dystopian by far) futures and packed with a lot of action. But there is one common shortfall: I simply don’t like the way half the stories end. Sometimes the author loses its grip, sometimes the character doesn’t appear true to form, and in one case I even got confused as to what happened, though it has never happened to me in any other book. And that leaves a bad enough taste in my mouth to give the book a 8. However, I still strongly recommend reading this book. Your little Mister Volition wants this one, trust me.
