A review by mckitterick
Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan

3.0

I really, really wanted to like Egan's Schild's Ladder, because - wow - now THAT's hard SF! This book is so physics-crunchy that it'll scrape your gums raw. So I slogged through the physics (not a quick read), listened to the characters argue physics (because you can't really care about any of them), and finished without really feeling it is a better book than some of the others. It's certainly full of fascinating science and SFnal issues, such as humanity having moved beyond sexual dimorphism; or the entire planet's population which intentionally drops into super-slowtime so their intrepid explorer will return to all his old friends; and the very core of the novel is that the universe is going to be devoured by an experiment gone awry… but it'll take billions of years for it to threaten most people. The only reason the characters care is that they're essentially immortal. Try that in your New Yorker story!

These things make the novel sound full of invention (it is) and exciting (sorry). Events occur in the characters' lives - things which should really matter to us (like, say, death) - but they never made me really care. It's a brilliant SF novel, but I need people I can care about and action that goes beyond intellectual debate.