Schild's Ladder (GollanczF.) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Woosh. That was the sound of this book going right over my head.
I love hard sci-fi, don't get me wrong. I've read plenty of layman's books on quantum physics and consider myself reasonably well-informed on science in general. Still, large chunks of "Schild's Ladder" were basically gibberish to me, and the book was actually somewhat of a chore to get through. I haven't had that experience in a long time.

The basic plot of "Schild's Ladder" is certainly engaging: 20,000 years in the future, an experiment gone awry creates a new universe that is expanding inside our own at half the speed of light, gobbling up worlds and forcing evacuations of whole planets. The key outpost to study the phenomenon is occupied by two opposing factions: the Yielders, who want to study and even protect the new universe, and the Preservationists, who want to stop or destroy it. The main character arrives at the station as part of the former clique, only to discover his childhood love has thrown in her lot with the other side.

Sadly, neither person really gets fleshed out, and I was puzzled by the main character's emotional obsession with his former love. She never seemed like anything special to me. Interactions with other characters come off as flat. We are told at one point that violent crime has basically been unheard of for 19,000 years, yet a brutal act of sabotage is taken in stride by people for whom a more natural reaction would surely be sheer bafflement or shock-inducing horror. The characters like to make trite quips one instant and in the next display thin-skinned petulance.

The story drags through the middle of the book as the factions solidify their positions, the main character engages in some flashback reminiscing, and the technicalities of quantum weirdness are explored in mind-boggling detail. The last quarter of the book is actually pretty gripping as the researchers make progress in understanding the new universe. Egan does a commendable job of describing what is on the other side of the boundary, and I found his technical descriptions easier to follow as they focused more on technology and engineering rather than quantum theory. He also deserves kudos for employing the etaphor from which the book gets it title. Schild's Ladder is apparently an actual mathematical proof and it's an impressive feat to take that and turn it into a metaphor for human change.

I picked up this book because I like hard sci-fi and had heard good things about Egan. I can say pretty confidently that Egan writes harder than anyone I've read. I felt like I needed to have a graduate degree in physics to fully appreciate the book. This definitely isn't a light read for a general audience.

Not great literature in the classic sense, but there's a lot of intriguing speculation here. The would-be reader should be warned, though: you will not fully appreciate this book unless you've made significant progress toward a degree in physics or a related field! (You could also get away with just reading a lot of pop science, provided you've read enough to be familiar with ideas like decoherence and superselection.) This truly is the hardest SF I've read.

Unlike a lot of hard SF, the characterization is actually more than perfunctory (at least in the main character's case), and the basic idea is very deep. The issues treated in this novel show a lot of philosophical as well as scientific depth. The story is not very gripping, since the future humans don't really face any life-or-death struggles, but I found myself interested enough to finish the book quickly. Recommended only for those with sufficient background.

In Greg Egan's inventive new novel Schild's Ladder, the diverse range of characters utilise a number of different languages and communication techniques, but manage to find a common ground of meaning through the use of Mediator programs. For the scientific layperson (like myself) trying to comprehend the depths of physics and quantum theory which drive Schild's Ladder, a Mediator program would be most welcome. At times, this hard SF is just a little too hard as the narrative is intersected with lengthy, heavily detailed descriptions of theoretical physics that are beyond my capacity to comprehend. On the other hand, the epic struggle that unfolds encompassing the fate of not one but two unique universes, combined with a vibrancy of characterisation, more than compensate for the sporadic opacity of scientific jargon.
In the opening section, the scientist Cass travels to the Mimosan's station in order to use their unique equipment to momentarily create a `novo-vacuum', a microscopic universe with a completely new set of physics. The novo-vacuum is only expected to exist for a fraction of a second, but in that time Cass hopes that what is discovered about the alternative universe will enrich the understanding of her own. Of course, the experiment goes horribly wrong and the physics of the novo-vacuum turn out to be more stable than those of the outside world, with the result that the alternative universe begins expanding, engulfing the old, wiping out all in its path.
Six hundred years later former lovers Tichicaya and Mariama both find themselves onboard the Rindler, the foremost research centre focused on the novo-vacuum. Significantly, the Rindler is also a spacecraft maintaining the velocity which keeps the ship the closest possible distance from the expanding boundary of the mysterious, new universe. Despite their past together, Mariama and Tichicaya find themselves on opposite sides of the philosophical rift that divides the ship's occupants. Mariama is in the Preservationist camp, desperate to destroy the novo-vacuum and stop the destruction of the planets in its wake. At the other extreme, Tichicaya's group have been labelled Yielders, those who believe the novo-vacuum is the greatest scientific discovery of all time and that is should be studied, understood and if possible adapted to rather than eradicating it. As the experiments on board the Rindler reach a point where the novo-vacuum's exterior might finally be breached, the philosophic divide becomes a material battle for the fate of both universes.
To readers of Egan's past novels, much of Schild's Ladder will seem distantly familiar. Although Egan never writes sequels, his stories reveal an almost evolutionary development of ideas and theories. As with his novel Diaspora, for example, there is a dichotomy between those characters who choose to remain embodied and those who exist as acorporeals, living only as informatic patterns in virtual worlds. However, unlike Diaspora, even the embodied make their choice at a philosophic level; every individual's identity is stored on a Qusp-Quantum Singularity Processor-and the choice to be embodied or otherwise is the choice as to whether the Qusp exists as part of a digital network or embedded in a flesh body. Similarly, the idea of opposing worlds (or universes) clashing against each other has appeared in Egan's short stories and in Permutation City. In Permutation City, however, the conflict was on an ontological level when the Lambertians developed an Autoverse ontology without the need for a creator and somehow this act started to unravel their progenitors' digital world. In Schild's Ladder, the struggle is far more scientifically based detailing the collision of two unique physical universes, but the development of ideas from Permutation City are apparent.
The most significant development in Egan's recent work, though, is his vastly improved characterisation beginning with Teranesia and continuing in Schild's Ladder. The plight of Tichicaya and Mariama in human terms-their love, their motivation, and their similarities even when philosophically opposed-is what drove Schild's Ladder for me. If the scientific theories are as credible and intriguing as the human story in Schild's Ladder, then this book will be impossible to put down for a scientifically literate reader. For me, I learnt a little about science, glimpsed an intriguing future, and revelled in the complications of an all too human story.