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Instantiation Paperback – 23 Jan. 2020

by Greg Egan (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 689 ratings
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“Instantiation” is a collection of eleven science fiction stories by Hugo Award winning author Greg Egan:• “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”• “Zero For Conduct”• “Uncanny Valley”• “Seventh Sight”• “The Nearest”• “Shadow Flock”• “Bit Players”• “Break My Fall”• “3-adica”• “The Slipway”• “Instantiation”
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  1. Print length
    436 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    23 Jan. 2020
  4. Dimensions
    15.24 x 2.77 x 22.86 cm
  5. ISBN-10
    1922240338
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1922240330
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Greg Egan (23 Jan. 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 436 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1922240338
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1922240330
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.77 x 22.86 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 689 ratings

About the author

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Greg Egan

Greg Egan
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Greg Egan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He has won the Hugo Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Japanese Seiun Award for best translated fiction.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
689 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

Red King
5.0 out of 5 stars Easily the best work of speculative fiction in a long time.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 July 2021
Verified Purchase
Intelligent, literate, immaginative.
Reminiscent of Ursula le Guin and Willam Gibson but not at all derivative.
I have never written an amazon book review before but I was so taken by this one that I just had to recognise it.
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S. Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars Savour these stories as fine wine
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 February 2021
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Just stunning. I have read hundreds of sci-fi books and this is the best short story collection I have ever read. The ideas, the characters, the quality, all the best. If you only read one sci-fi book make it this one.
2 people found this helpful
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George Crawford
5.0 out of 5 stars Confusing and entertaining.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2021
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A series of the tales unlike most others. To be honest I'm not sure what to write. Totally unlike my normal reading material but I consumed it in 1 sitting.
One person found this helpful
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MR M T PASCOE
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Ideas
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2020
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I loved the comp stories. A particularly unsettling thought. I just wish they could be built out into a novel
One person found this helpful
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Captain Pig
2.0 out of 5 stars Not a patch on his earlier work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2022
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I first came across Greg Egan's collection Luminous 20 years ago and was floored by the imaginative virtuosity on display. Hard SF at its best, a series of 'what if' stories that didn't outstay their welcome and played to the writer's strength.

Since then he's lost his way a bit, for me. The 'what if' questions have become more obscure, requiring lengthy sections of clumsy exposition. And, even as a mathematically literate person, I struggle to care about some of these concepts he's presenting. What do they mean?

Additionally (this is a long term trend) he's focusing more on the character arc of his cast. This is a mistake, as he just doesn't write interesting characters. This collection contains a story about a refugee girl in a difficult environment who against the odds creates a room temperature superconductor. All fine, but compared with the grand questions of identity and reality of his earlier work, it just merits a shrug.

And then, as others have pointed out, the stories just stop. When you're writing a high concept 'what if' you can get away with that, but with a character driven adventure, this just doesn't fly.

Overall disappointing.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Jean Marie Guieau
2.0 out of 5 stars Greg Egan needs money maybe?
Reviewed in France on 21 July 2022
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Being a great fan of Greg Egan, I cannot hide how much INSTANTIATION is a disappointment.
Egan is a genius who has offered plenty of actual 'chef d'oeuvres', masterpieces, like Axiomatic or Oceanic just to talk about novels.
Here it is a kind of caricature. Some of the novels have rather poor ideas as a backbone and for most of them the writing tend to be lengthy. Too lengthy. 'Uncanny valley' is probably the worst case of all Greg Egan novels. It's a neat mark zero.
Also a confirmed trend, déjà vu, to mix personal political views in the story. Result is more than often awkward because it dilutes the sense with side aspect bringing absolutely nothing. At best.
So I am hoping this was a book for food, and that sometimes the real, excellent, Greg Egan will surface again with great stories without bla bla...
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Richard Murphy
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly thought provoking stories for the 2020s....
Reviewed in the United States on 25 July 2020
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These stories all revolve around a common theme: what happens when AI technology leads to true sentience? One of the best stories concerns certain characters who inhabit virtual game worlds and understand that they are "living" in a simulation. Being a software writer himself, Egan actually brings many novel twists to this topic. One of the more interesting is having a virtual world be hacked by the characters in the world, the ultimate "inside job." Of course, in Egan's work I have found some of the best science fiction written in recent decades, so this collection of short stories builds on this excellence. Read this book if you want to see the future.
2 people found this helpful
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Steersman
5.0 out of 5 stars Great SF however overlap with Best Of
Reviewed in Germany on 17 August 2020
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Instantiation is a great collection of short stories dealing with a wide range of topics from wormholes to human perception and mathematics. The scientists in these stories work and think like real scientists and are not shallow caricatures, and the science is close to real science. I highly encourage the readers to look for explanations and discussions by the author on his homepage or in “The Astounding Analog Companion” (also online).
One caveat is a rather large overlap between “Instantiation” and “The Best of Greg Egan” collection. The contents of both can be seen on the authors homepage.
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Gregory W. Ash
4.0 out of 5 stars These stories are more approachable and personal than anything else I've read from Egan.
Reviewed in the United States on 20 June 2020
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As always, Egan is thought provoking and challenging. I've read several of his novels. His hard science SF is dense and usually over my head. But these stories are more approachable and personal than anything else I've read from him.
Some of the stories do suffer from Egan's usual impenetrable (at least for me) science and math. Nonetheless the stories are more human than his novels. The great thing about Egan, whether shorts or novels, is his wild imagination. One reason I read SF, aside escapism, is for ideas. Egan's ideas never disappoint.
5 people found this helpful
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Arula Ratnakar
5.0 out of 5 stars Memorable characters and beautifully detailed science
Reviewed in the United States on 29 January 2020
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A brilliant collection of stories. "Zero for Conduct", "Uncanny Valley", and "The Slipway" in particular stand out for their memorable characters and beautifully written imagery, of aspects of the world we live in and descriptions of immensely detailed
and thought-out fictional scientific events.
12 people found this helpful
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