Talk:Diaspora (novel)

I modified the synopsis a bit -- my recollection (seemingly backed up on Egan's home page http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ ) is that the novel is much more focused on the polis' desire to understand the cascading cosmic catastrophes and that the ET aspect is a consequence of that. Probably a better job could still be done by someone more intimately familiar with the book. Jgm 16:03, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This book was an excellent read. I just read it a few months ago and it's not lost anything with the passage of time... :-)

This talk page is for discussions about the Wikipedia article, not about the subject of the article. Acasson (talk) 15:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Wasn't "polities" the plural of "polis" in the novel? (Just from memory: I don't have my copy to hand) -- Karada 17:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Nope. End of chapter 1 -- "Welcome to the Coalition of Polises". 4.253.46.181 22:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've just submitted a rewrite/expansion of the article, and included a provisional infobox (it's the first infobox I've done), which is based on the paperback version I have. It's a Gollancz paperback, with a yellow cover, featuring a reddish, thermal-imagey comet and a starry background. Strangely, the artist isn't credited anywhere on the book. What a book!

Gardener of Geda 06:08, 16 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've just submitted a new version, with a completed infobox and a scan of the cover. It's not the first-edition cover; I couldn't find one that I considered to be "legal" to upload, so I just scanned my own copy.

Gardener of Geda 15:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Isn't it mentioned somewhere that the polis has backups scattered about the Solar System? —Tamfang 23:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Inoshiro says so during the "trimming" (deflection of an asteroid that might someday be a threat). —Tamfang (talk) 03:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Shouldn't there be one somewhere before the plot summary?

It's... it's... uhhhm... it's the plot summary. Those words alone should be a spoiler warning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.231.230 (talk) 18:03, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

What's meant by "virtualized gender-neutral pronouns"? —Tamfang 22:23, 22 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

I changed this and included information from the gender-neutral pronouns article. I don't think the "v" in ve/vis/ver stands for anything at all. -Father Inire 22:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think I see. Isn't there an asexual (corporeal) character in Distress who uses ve? —Tamfang 08:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, and Keri Hulme, who coined the term, identifies as an asexual. I don't remember whether the term pops up in any of Egan's other work featuring intelligent software.-Father Inire 02:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I just finished this book, and I've got my copy on hand. This whole article is really very.... well, A) it doesn't describe the book very well, B) what it does describe is so full of spoilers it isn't even worth putting in a spoiler warning, you might as well just say, "don't read this article if you also intend to read this book." and, C) some of it is just plain uninformative. I've gone ahead and done a significant rewrite, I've tried to streamline things as much as possible, I've added in important information and removed unimportant information, and I got rid of a number of absurdly, rediculously large spoilers. Some sample modifications: I've significantly altered the plot section to not give away large chunks of the plot (neutron messages, Transmuters, that sort of thing), I've removed a profusion of characters from the characters section, keeping only those characters who either appear before the Diaspora or whose mention cannot give away plot points not already given away in readily available publicity materials (Egan's website). I don't know how much information on Kozuch Theory should be in the plot summary, but I'd like to move the gender-neutral pronouns bit (it's only like a few sentences) to the plot summary right after the bit on the invented Kozuch Theory. If any of you think any of these changes were bad and damaged the article irreperably, feel free to change back (not revert, change back specifically the parts you disagree with, please) but I'd like to know why, just out of curiosity.

No offence to people who have contributed to this thing before me, but when I picked up this book I was horrified to realise just how much this article gave away of the plot and how little justice it seemed to do (again, no offence, it just struck me as emphasising all the wrong things).

P.S. I'd like to include some sort of summary of the book's... "gist," not just the plot's gist but the ideas that float around in the book like the future of life in a space-faring world and of personhood and so on, which I hope can be discussed without giving away major plot points, considering how important they are to interpretations of the book itself. Thanks for your contributions, all.216.129.211.105 (talk) 07:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

You read the article before reading the book? --Closedmouth (talk) 08:13, 7 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think that you have done the community a disservice by stripping out information from this article. I just finished the book and read this article in the hopes of finding some background information on the characters and concepts. To say that the information ought to be stripped out to prevent plot spoilage for those who haven't read the book, I think misses the point entirely. If you read a wikipedia entry about a book before you read the book, aren't you doing things in the wrong order? In any case, what possible benefit could there be in removing certain character profiles? That certainly seemed to me to be a haphazard and poorly considered edit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.196.154.118 (talk) 05:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

A lot of the stuff I removed, I felt, was not very informative. An example of a character profile I got rid of was a one sentence introduction to the Contingency Handler. I can't remember all the others. Before I made the modifications, the article seemed to imply that the book was solely about hunting down aliens. The plot description went something like (abridged): "the earth is destroyed, and the Diaspora is formed to look for aliens, and then they discover a message hidden in neutrons, and then they discover a way to leave the universe." What sort of background information were you looking for? I've been interested in modifying the sections on polis concepts and polises, just to... clean them up a bit, perhaps make them a little bit truer to the index in the back of the book. Any suggestions? Should there be a section on Kozuch Theory?216.129.211.105 (talk) 08:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

I didn't edit the article, because maybe this is a matter of opinion (though I have a faint recollection of it being stated explicitly), but isn't the fact that Gabriel has a gender a consequence of being a Carter-Zimmerman native (and thus more fond of certain ancestral conventions) rather than an "eccentric" personal choice? Maybe I missed something, but that was my impression.72.49.11.230 (talk) 19:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

The meaning of "gleisner" has been removed a couple of times by German-speakers unfamiliar with the word. The word does appear in some German-English dictionaries, but not all of them, so I imagine it's just an obscure word. As a native English speaker, I'll admit that there may be many words in the English dictionary which I'm not familiar with either. The link to the Webster's site works just fine as far as I can tell, and I've restored it. Father Inire (talk) 21:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think the question is, does giving the German definition of the word provide any information about the subject of the article (the novel)? I'd say no; there's no indication from Egan (that I know of) that the word was chosen based upon any meaning in any language (of course if there is such an indication it could be included here and referenced). As it stands this is just random digression or, at best, original research. Jgm (talk) 02:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'm with Jgm. There's nothing within the novel to explain the origin of the name. So unless there's some source out there that makes this connection (with all the usual caveats about the quality of that source), this definition shouldn't be in here. I would be interested to know if Egan chose the name on the basis of some translation or the "sound" of it, but unless we can source a meaning, it's just WP:OR. As an aside, the cited German definition sheds no light whatsoever on the gleisner's of the novel. It's difficult to see how the terms "hypocrite" or "dissembler" apply to them as they are portrayed in the novel. I'll remove the text for now, but we can discuss further here as required. --Plumbago (talk) 07:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

The definition itself isn't original research, so in my opinion it would be trivia at worst (and there's plenty of trivia in Wikipedia articles - I thought it was better to incorporate this trivia into the article rather than start a trivia section). I loaned someone my copy of Diaspora, so I can't go back and check the text for now, but as I recall the fleshers and polis dwellers are somewhat prejudiced against the gleisners to the extent that they're essentially banned from living on Earth, and the polis dwellers have little to do with them. My interpretation (this part is indeed original research) is that the fleshers and the polis dwellers see the gleisners as hypocritical and dishonest because they imitate biological life in form while their minds exist "only" as software - not totally embracing either "pure" experience. Father Inire (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'd buy this explanation. Certainly, as far as the fleshers and polis-dwellers are concerned, the gleisners fall between two stools: they reject biology (unlike the fleshers), but wish to maintain close contact with the "real world" (unlike the polis dwellers). Anyway, while I would completely agree that WP has far (far!) more egregious examples of WP:TRIVIA, I'm reluctant to add this here because of its WP:OR overtones. Perhaps we need to contact Egan (presumably he has an e-mail address?), proffer appropriate and abundantly-justified praise, and then pop the question?  :-) --Plumbago (talk) 14:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I read somewhere that gleisner means 'one who wants to have it both ways'. Wish I could remember where; it's not in my dictionary. The applicability is obvious. —Tamfang (talk) 07:07, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Personal communication from the author: It wasn't intended to mean anything. "Gleisner" is just a surname, the ethnicity of which I've never bothered to check [it's hard to believe it's a German name, if it really does mean "hypocrite" in German!], which I heard and liked the sound of. Its use was simply meant to attribute the robots' design to a fictitious human inventor. —Tamfang (talk) 11:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Brilliant. Nice work Tamfang. Cheers, --Plumbago (talk) 11:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks for clearing that up. Father Inire (talk) 21:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

In his short story Transition Dreams, which has a near-future setting (featured in the Luminous collection) Egan illustrates the early days of 'Gleisner', obviously a corporation dealing in pre-introdus uploads to robot bodies ......... "Caroline Bausch smiles, reassuringly. Her office, on the sixty-fourth floor of the Gleisner Tower, is so stylish it hurts--her desk is an obsidian ellipse supported by three perspex circles, and the walls are decorated with the latest in Euclidean Monochrome--but she's not at all the kind of robot the cool, geometric decor seems to demand". Kind of like the Trump Tower - but different. Caroline reminds me of Rachel from Blade Runner, minus the "do you like our owl" speech. Hi, Greg. Great book! -- DropShadow (talk) 01:23, 21 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

The repeated hostility to exponential replicators (as represented, at one point, by a Coca-Cola can!), and a mention that the fleshers have unlimited discretion in modifying the environment only within small enclaves, suggest to me that the original Introdus – a scary leap into the unknown for most people – was driven by environmental collapse. Is there anything else to support or contradict this? Is there a passage stating or implying that the biosphere had "recovered" since 2100? —Tamfang (talk) 07:14, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Yes; the coke-can scenario was very good. I didn't "get it" until my second read. "PreIntrodus, this was pandemic. Distorted whole nations’ economies. It had hooks into everything: sexuality, tribalism, half a dozen artforms and subcultures ... it parasitized the fleshers so thoroughly you had to he some kind of desert monk to escape it". No; I don't think there's anything said about the Introdus being motivated by environmental collapse, or anything like that. People probably uploaded because .... well .... if they didn't, they'd eventually suffer the indignities of old age and die. Or get run over by a bus while they were deciding. Presumably, in the early days, there was a lot of communication between the citizens and those who were still "outside". When your friends and relations who have uploaded tell you that it's "great in here" and "I still feel like me" it must be very reassuring. Or something. -- DropShadow (talk) 01:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

I agree with this explanation as it is quite consistent with some of the subplots in Permutation City (that novel also a great read by the way). Mr. Shoeless (talk) 15:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

There's no sign of old age in Atlanta, is there? —Tamfang (talk) 20:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

Probably because all the really old ones were kept indoors in case visitors (ie polis-controlled robots, etc) noticed them and become alarmed and/or embarrassed. And quite right too. DropShadow (talk) 19:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

It now occurs to me that the can incident happened close to the home of The Coca-Cola Company. I must ask the author whether that was intentional (or even conscious; would an Australian know that?). —Tamfang (talk) 03:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Clearly an anti-corporate statement. Or he's a Pepsi man. DropShadow (talk) 19:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Radiya (Yatima's math teacher) says: "Exponential growth is a curse in all its forms. You know it almost wiped out the fleshers?" —Tamfang (talk) 04:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

A new passage:

Certain assumptions, common to Greg Egan literature, are made to enable the plot, such as the digital mutability of reality (that there is no difference between any real thing and a sufficiently similar mathematical replica of that thing).

I don't see any of that, at least as the motif appears in some of his other works. The polis assumes that a real thing can be simulated with arbitrary accuracy, but a view that simulation is equivalent to reality is held only (if at all) by the most solipsistic of the uploads. —Tamfang (talk) 10:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Gestalt is rather entirely or almost entirely subconscious.

What's the evidence for that? On the contrary, when Blanca taught Yatima to follow location-tags, Yatima had to examine them and learn their significance. —Tamfang (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

I can't remember Egan specifically stating that Gestalt was broadcast or received subconsciously. The writer of that piece probably means Gestalt, as an evolution of qualities like facial expressions and gestures is something that once learned becomes hardwired and unnecessary for the conscious self to worry too much about, just like with us fleshers. I'm confusing myself, really. -- DropShadow (talk) 02:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

The reviews section is clearly in need of changing. Also, there is far more information about in world events that information about the book regarding the real world. I have no objection to this per se, but there should be at least a paragraph about the reception of the book rather than links to reviews. --Rubiksphere (talk) 23:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Delta primarily function as filters ...

Can someone explain/cite this? As I understood it, delta is simply the representation of a meter (length) in scape-space. A scape is a self-contained universe; its distance from other scapes cannot be measured any more meaningfully than the distance between paragraphs in different books. —Tamfang (talk) 21:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

I've removed it. The editor who added it can always re-add and explain what he means. Full text was "Delta primarily function as filters, used or ignored at will, which allow citizens, scapes, and other polis objects to remain uninvolved with unrelated polis entities, unless they make a connection specifically through will or necessity."DropShadow (talk) 19:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

During the "trimming": People began shouting excitedly, their words [...] degraded with distance by the scape, scrambled into a pulsating roar. That could be considered a sort of filtering. —Tamfang (talk) 04:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

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Recently I have twice undone a mistaken "correction" of verself to herself. I've added a comment <!--THIS IS NOT A TYPO--> but is there a way to protect from automatic typo-hunters? —Tamfang (talk) 05:32, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

{{not a typo|verself}} —Tamfang (talk) 22:52, 16 June 2023 (UTC)Reply