Cool concept, very light on the actually being a story.

I said it about Atwood's Peneolpiad and I'm sure I'll say it many more times before I die, having a good idea is great, but I personally need more from a story than to be a perfunctory vehicle for that idea. Reading a story should be a more rewarding and rich experience than the blurb, but that's all this story is. I don't think that is unreasonable to ask.

**Thematic Spoilers for Division by Zero by Ted Chiang**

Take Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others shorty story collection, each one is essentially a thought experiment, but the ones that truly stand out actually take the idea and do something interesting with it, extrapolate and expand on it in some way, or marry it with similar or contrasting themes. Division by Zero is by far my favourite of that collection because it's far more than a story about discovering that maths isn't actually provable. It's about how easy it is for things to fall apart so quickly. How the tragedy of falling out of love can happen at any moment. It's about the pain that comes from losing everything you understood about the world, whether that is the physics that underpin your understanding of reality or falling out of love with someone as suddenly and intensely as falling in love, and having to confront the fact that you can't offer the love and support that you once needed and were given. There is so much heart and humanity around the maths.

In comparison, The Egg is a simple two shot exchange between a man and God about the meaning of life, which is rather underwhelming in its conception, despite being a nice enough idea, but incredibly lacklustre in execution. I don't see what is lost by explaining to someone what this story is about, rather than reading it. I'm a master of hyperbole, but this time in completely serious.

Look, if this was some gem from the 40s I would feel very different about this than I do as a story written in 2009. I need more than a pitch as a story.

I feel like I've been overly mean, but I just don't get it and it's popularity. It is really butting up against my autistic confusion and frustration.

I had a whole bit here where I was going to talk about Logic did a concept album based on this story with Neil DeGrasse Tyson playing God in a skit. I was going to rant about how awful I thought that sounded and about how NDGT was a fun vampire and a pendant, spoiling people's fun, but it seems his less inclined to do that these days than school transphobic bigots on the gender spectrum, which is very cool indeed. I still hate the fun goblin stuff, but when he's being a fun goblin to be Shapiro for good and saying trans rights, you absolutely do have to hand it to him. You love to see it! ( )

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

This took about 5 minutes to read, so there was no time to get bored, and no reason to skip any part of it. It was an interesting read, and a unique outlook on one of the infinite theories of the possible meaning of life. I thought it made as much sense as any of the others - actually more than most, although not as good as my own theory that it's a video game we play over and over, after taking some drug that makes us forget everything first. When you score enough points, you get to create a world of your own, and everyone spends eternity visiting all the different worlds, trying to locate old friends and making new ones. Or maybe there's nothing. Doesn't really matter.

Thanks to Nataliya for the link to this story. ( )

yawn

Side note: do not expect much from a story whose top reviews all have more GIFs than words. ( )

I fell for the peer pressure and read this little shorts story...

What a story...



You can find the story here!

Oh, you can even read this story in Swedish...that's cool! :)
( )

Nice short story I can't wait for his next novel. ( )