[JadeNB]

> I loved Permutation City and his short story collection, Axiomatic and really liked Distress. However, I stopped reading Diaspora 30% in. If it hasn't click yet, should I still keep reading?

It depends on what doesn't click. If you're waiting for it to get more down to earth, it doesn't (either literally or figuratively). But I do remember it as starting out very dry, and getting, while not less dry, considerably more absorbing as it went along.

[ajmurmann]

I am totally fine with dry. What usually pulls me in with Egan and hard scifi in general, is cool technological ideas and seeing how they play out societal (example: floating island state in Distress). Egan sticks out to me that he also will apply or combine existing concepts in mind-warping ways (example would be the infinite cellular automata in Permutation City). So far non of that has really happened for me in Diaspora. AI existing at a faster speed than the physical reality is cool, but feels like table stakes.

[QuackingTheQ]

I'm not sure how far into Diaspora you made it, but the further you go the more mathematical or physics-based it gets. Computability/complexity theory show up later, there's a large portion of the book dedicated to an alternative physics model, etc

[ajmurmann]

Oh, that sounds wonderful. None of that has really come up yet. Thank you! I'll give it another shot.