Rating: 4/5, good
I picked this up because I heard Greg Egan uses nonbinary ve/ver/vis pronouns for his characters in it. I was looking at pronoun lists, trying to figure out which I liked best for myself, and was really attracted to the sound of ve/ver/vis… it sounds very shiny and futuristic and I dig it. I like the way the pronoun set has neutral, feminine, and masculine sounds all together and the familiar English pronoun endings.
Important Note: ve/ver/vis pronouns were actually first used by Keri Hulme in her novel, The Bone People (which looks very depressing, though I do plan on reading it).
I have to say that although I really enjoyed seeing my favorite neoproun set used, I didn’t get a lot else out of Diaspora. It’s very hard scifi to the point where it almost feels like a different genre from the classic scifi I’m used to (like H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury). It’s very heavy on the math and physics and I have to admit most of it went right over my head. If you like math and physics and have a good background in it, though, you might love it (I know at least two physicists who did!).
The story follows Yatima, a newly-minted “orphan” AI who lives in a city (or server) full of other AI. There’s a long, involved description of how the computer creates new AI and then a funny scene of how Yatima develops vis personality by interacting with older AI, much like a human baby. I was able to imagine Yatima as not being gendered, but the other characters had names and personalities that seemed more gendered to me – Blanca, Gabriel, and Inoshiro seemed feminine, masculine, and masculine and I imagined them in my head as those genders.
Actually, Yatima is a feminine name in Africa… it does seem like the characters were written to have gender, but not sex, and that’s what the nonbinary pronouns are referring to (because they’re computers and don’t have physical sex characteristics). In that way, it’s not quite as progressive as I was hoping it would be.
After Yatima meets vis new friends, they watch the AI fend off an asteroid from hitting Earth together…
Then the humans are all destroyed in a gamma ray burst, after which the AI are put on physical computers and propelled into space, where they encounter one race of aliens that live in five dimensions and another that live in sixteen. To say the least, things get weird and very technical. There are some philosophical ideas brought up, like how having multiple versions of oneself saved at different times might affect one psychologically, but it’s very hard to follow without understanding what’s going on on a technical level, and I just did not have the patience or science background to untangle it.
I did like the idea of living in a computer—not having to feel pain or any other physical sensation without consent. If I could do it, I absolutely would, no question. I can live without physical pleasure, but I would LOVE to live without physical pain. Plus near-infinite mental speed and capacity is the cherry on top!* Diaspora is very optimistic in this way. Even though the fleshers die, humanity survives on in computers, living until they complete their self-realization and end their sequence.
If you could live in a computer, would you do it?
*- This is assuming Cartesian Dualism is real and the mind can be separated from the body. If thoughts and emotions are actually physical sensations I’m not sure what living without a physical body would be like. It might not resemble intelligent life as we know it…
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