''Luminous'' is a collection of short
science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
stories by
Greg Egan
Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961) is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Lo ...
first published in 1998 by
Millenium.
Contents
''Luminous'' contains the following short stories:
* "
Chaff
Chaff (; ) is dry, scale-like plant material such as the protective seed casings of cereal grains, the scale-like parts of flowers, or finely chopped straw. Chaff cannot be digested by humans, but it may be fed to livestock, ploughed into soil ...
" — An agent is sent to kill a geneticist who is working on important brain-altering research in a drug lord-controlled stronghold in the jungles of Colombia.
* "
Mitochondrial Eve
In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve (more technically known as the Mitochondrial-Most Recent Common Ancestor, shortened to mt-Eve or mt-MRCA) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans. In other words, she ...
" — An organization is trying to trace a common maternal ancestor for recent humanity.
*"
Luminous" — A pair of researchers find a defect in mathematics, where an assertion (X) leads to a contradictory assertion (not X) after a long but finite series of steps. Using a powerful virtual computer made of light beams (Luminous), they are able to map and shape the boundary between the near-side and far-side mathematics, leading to a showdown with real consequences in the physical universe.
* "Mister Volition"
* "Cocoon"
* "Transition Dreams" — A man is informed that the
mind uploading
Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer. The computer would then run a simulation of the brain's information ...
he plans to undergo is going to cause subjective experiences he is not going to remember.
* "
Silver Fire
The Silver Fire was a wildfire that burned in the San Jacinto Mountains south of Banning and Cabazon in Riverside County, California in August 2013. The fire, which started close to Poppet Flats Road near Highway 243, was first reported on ...
" — An epidemiologist traces the incidents of a fatal but rare disease through the rural USA.
* "
Reasons to Be Cheerful" — A boy discovers he has a serious brain tumor, which was causing him to be amazingly happy. With it removed, he becomes despondent, and undergoes a new and extensive treatment eventually, with a form of brain network, to try to get back to a more useful life many years later.
*"Our Lady of Chernobyl" — A man is hired to find a
radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...
religious icon. The search turns deadly.
* "
The Planck Dive" — Physicists about to undergo a one-way expedition into a black hole are visited by a stranger and his daughter.
Critical reception
Writing in ''Vector''
Brian Stableford
Brian Michael Stableford (25 July 1948 – 24 February 2024) was a British academic, critic and science fiction writer who published a hundred novels and over a hundred volumes of translations. His earlier books were published under the name Br ...
noted: "Egan's second story-collection, ''Luminous'', is markedly better than his first. Axiomatic, and warrants comparison with such classic collections of Contes philosophiques as Jorge Luis Borges's ''Labyrinths'' and Primo Levi's ''The Sixth Day''...This is ''the'' science fiction book of the year, and it should be on every sf lover's shelf...For good or ill, this is the shape of things to come."
In ''SF Commentary'' Bruce Gillespie noted: "Greg Egan has achieved an evenness of texture and consistency of accomplishment in these stories that makes it difficult to remember them separately. They so nearly add up to one Eganworld that it’s hard to differentiate between their viewpoints. I’ve given four stars to most of them, and particularly liked 'Transition Dreams', 'Silver Fire', 'Chaff', and "The Planck Dive"."
References
Short story collections by Greg Egan
1998 short story collections
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