I keep trying to read Diaspora and struggle too much with the concepts presented early on. Very "hard sci-fi", just stick it out and it all gets explained?
The beginning describes the formation of an intelligence and it is indeed very dense. You can figure out what's going on but it takes some slow reading, and probably best to revisit it once you have some more context from later in the book.
The whole book isn't like that. Once you get past that part, as the other commenter said, it gets much easier.
Egan is always dense. It's some mind bending physics/comp sci, but all cooked up in his brain so doesn't really apply to anything productive. I struggled with his books and his writing but toughened it out because I liked the concepts, but he's divisive.
Another book by Greg Egan - "Zendegi" - has more overlap with MMAcevedo. It covers a different approach to mind uploading (possibly) more practical in near future: a generic model of the brain is fine-tuned on responses from a specific human. The generic model itself is made by averaging over many scanned connectomes. The other part of the book is VR Shahnameh which, honestly, was a bit too boring.
He also has a whole bunch of short stories on the same topic. Some assume reader is already familiar with concept of sideloading, as it's explained in the passing:
stickynotememo|16 days ago
candiddevmike|16 days ago
marcellus23|16 days ago
The whole book isn't like that. Once you get past that part, as the other commenter said, it gets much easier.
marcusf|16 days ago
k__|16 days ago
The whole birth of an virtual identity part is so dense, I didn't understand half of what was "explained".
However, after that it becomes a much easier read.
Not much additional explanation, but I think, it's not really needed to enjoy the rest of the book.
killerstorm|16 days ago
He also has a whole bunch of short stories on the same topic. Some assume reader is already familiar with concept of sideloading, as it's explained in the passing:
1. Bit Players: https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/BIT/BIT.html
2. 3-adica
3. Instantiation
4. Uncanny Valley (available online)
Other:
1. "Reasons to Be Cheerful"
2. “Learning to Be Me”
3. Closer
WillAdams|16 days ago
https://museum.netstalking.org/storage/cyberlib/lib/burz/vin...