Phoresis

This short novella is good, but to my mind extremely similar to four other books Mr. Egan has already written. Like Dichronauts and the Orthogonal series (The Clockwork Rocket, The Eternal Flame, and Arrows of Time) this book examines alien beings with very human personalities. The primary difference from humans in each book seems to be their sexuality and reproductive systems. Because the characters have human motives and personalities I found it easy to relate to them. In each book the protagonists find themselves in a world at risk and they have to save themselves with mathematics and science.So should you read this? You won't be disappointed with your purchase if you do, but if you want the best of what I consider five similar works, then read Dichronauts. It is the most unusual and interesting. Phoresis is the least technical by a wide margin, and is much easier to read than the other four. Some may prefer it for that reason.If you just want to determine if you like Greg Egan then I would recommend none of these titles. I would instead pick one of the following:Diaspora, Distress, Permutation City, Quarantine, Schild's Ladder, Teranesia, ZendegiDisapora and Schild's Ladder involve space, robots, and machine minds.Distress, Permutation City, Quarantine, Teranesia, and Zendegi are in the near future and on Earth.Diaspora, Permutation City, and Zendegi concern man-made virtual worlds.My personal favorite works by Mr. Egan are Distress, Teranesia, and Zendegi. Each book managed to surprise me in a way I enjoyed.

Coming up on 10 years ago I reviewed the only Greg Egan novel I ever read, INCANDESCENCE. I didn't like it. Even though I have many Greg Egan novels on my to-read list, I never go for them first. I like hard science fiction, but Egan always seemed a bit out of my reach. A couple of years ago I read and reviewed the novella "The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred", which I liked quite a bit. Based on that novella, and the general impression I've gotten that Egan works better in smaller chunks when he doesn't have time to go all info-dumpy on the reader, I picked up "Phoresis".The story is about two planets - Tvibura and Tviburi - which are tide locked and exist extremely close together. Tvibura is inhabited, while Tviburi is not. The driving issue in the story is that Tvibura is becoming less and less able to support its inhabitants by producing conditions that generate the air and soil needed to maintain the ecology of the planet. Because the planets are in such close proximity to each other, it is fairly easy to get a telescopic view of Tviburi from Tvibura. Because the inhabitants of Tvibura are in danger of starving, two plans are developed. One attempts to generate more of the geysers that produce the necessary air and soil. The other is more daunting: building a tower that will eventually allow the inhabitants of Tvibura to cross over to Tviburi and hopefully start a colony with the end result of getting the rest of the inhabitants of Tvibura to make the crossing.The story takes place in three parts over multiple generations. The first part mainly talks about the planning for and engineering of the tower, the second deals with the crossing by the first pioneers and their struggles on the new planet, and the third relates the story of people living on Tviburi going back to Tvibura to investigate what had happened to those that stayed behind.While "Phoresis" does have a great deal of the hard science and exposition that Egan is known for - engineering, climate, orbital mechanics, physics, astronomy, geology, and botany (and I until I typed that out I didn't realize just how much Egan crammed into this novella) - it's a story that also deal with the social dynamics of a people that are trying to survive in a very unfriendly environment. While the characters are humanlike, they definitely aren't human. All the characters are female, and the males provide a rather, uh, unique way of reproduction (it was difficult enough to get my head around it, let alone try to describe it here). There is also some mention of the people not having to breathe for long periods of time. So, the characters are humanlike but not quite human.I don't quite know what to make of "Phoresis". It has all the hallmarks of a Greg Egan story, but not so much that they're overwhelming. There's a good story and good character interaction. The social aspect of this story is really what makes it work...I think. But it doesn't quite work for me for some reason. There's nothing wrong with the story; it just didn't do anything for me.Still, for Greg Egan fans, "Phoresis" probably is a winner; I'm okay with that.

Phoresis (Kindle Edition) by Greg Egan Altho, I think I may have more questions now that I'm done? The characters definetly drive the plot in the novella, and they drive it well. This quick read is really three short stories that are done in succession of each other. I sort of think that our twin planets *may* be an analogue of Enceledous, but maybe not. Also our heroes are all women, but are they? And don't even ask about their brothers and such!The struggles are real, and the obstacles they each overcome are momentous. Yet, I really liked the sensible, yet crazy approach of the characters. A worthy read.

I love egan and his very hard sci-fi work, but this particular book didn't explore exciting new ideas or cutting edge science, it was basically just a long treatise on orbital mechanics and various other basic college level physics problems with shallow characters and little in the way of theme or engaging plot.

It is a very unique world that was created in this book. It wasn't what I was expecting after reading Axiomatic, Diaspora, and Permutation City; all of which I loved. I'm not positive if I didn't like the book because it wasn't what I was expecting, or because it wasn't good.

Like Clockwork Rocket, a central idea of the novella is the conflict between the immediate concerns of personal survival and reproduction versus the needs of courage, sacrifice, and intelligence for the continuation of life, at least the higher ideals of conscious life.

A creative and emotive fable, Phoresis chronicles an alien race’s response to a global environmental catastrophe. Would that we were as persistent, prescient and visionary as this imaginary species.

This novella is a crystallization of a society and species Mr. Egan has created.Very satisfying with hints of Ursala LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, we are taken in a multi generational story of hardship and survival in a binary planet orbiting a star.

An interesting and very detailed world ( or worlds) but the story itself seems a little slight. Worth reading though