Posted on January 5th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Science Fiction, Short Stories.
Greg Egan, "Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies" (1992 Interzone, reissued in Egan's Axiomatic, 1995)
Egan is as interesting as any science fiction writer alive, but his huge strength -- endlessly surprising ideas that open beneath the reader like trapdoors, each trapdoor sufficient for an astonishing story by itself -- is mitigated by areas in which he is just passable: characterization, style, tone, motivation, dialogue. He's not bad at any of these -- reading Egan is never painful -- but there'd be very little reason to read him if not for his ideas (and his development of the ideas).
"Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies," unfortunately, isn't one of his well developed stories. The idea is interesting -- humanity has had some kind of mass sea change in which prevailing belief systems manifest as psychic forces that compel all within their range to believe, and the city of the story is divided into zones of belief that vie and shift, with the protagonist one of a minority who seem to have kept free by constantly keeping between the zones, never being overwhelmed by any one belief system.
This is interesting, but Egan uncharacteristically only gives his idea a single twist, and that a light one (the paths being traveled by the uncaptured are, perhaps, themselves a zone, and existence in a non-believing state is no more subject to free will than any other). The rest of the story is a kind of mechanical exposition of a day spent as this kind of philosophical nomad, including an unconvincing and unnecessary attempt to explain how the situation ("the Meltdown") came to pass, ending in an argument over the twist explained above, but leaving the protagonist fundamentally unchanged -- and his decision to leave his companion does not signal any deep change in the protagonist, but rather in the companion.
There is some decent business with the protagonist trying to work through thoughts while subject to a constant barrage of psychic philosophical propaganda; but the story would have been much better if there were more of that, more development, more anything, really. It's an idea sketch, without even a plot draped over it. Strangely, it's the last story in the Axiomatic collection, so presumably either Egan or the publisher thought it one of his best. It isn't, but even failed Egan is intriguing.
"The monocles get stuck in my teeth."