Damien Broderick, (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au), writes:
> Feeling rather in need of an immediate refreshing upload, I report that
> Aussiecon 3, the World SF Convention just finished in Oz, was a trip. For
> a start, Greg Egan finally won a Hugo (for `Oceanic').
BTW this story, Oceanic, is available on the web at Egan's web site, at http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/OCEANIC/Complete/Oceanic.html.
I didn't like the story much; like many of Egan's short stories, it seems to take a simplistic view of consciousness and the mechanisms that underly it. I know that many people are distressed to consider that the miracles of life and of consciousness may be ultimately mechanical, but I doubt that most of us feel that way. It seems though that many of Egan's stories are meant to depict a sense of hopelessness and of the meaningless of life based on this fact.
Hal