Riding the Crocodile

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Riding the Crocodile - Wikipedia

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"Riding the Crocodile"
Short story by Greg Egan
Country	Australia
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publication
Published in	One Million A.D.
Publication date	December 2005

"Riding the Crocodile"
Short story by Greg Egan
Country Australia
Language English
Genre(s) Science fiction
Publication
Published in One Million A.D.
Publication date December 2005

"Riding the Crocodile" is a science-fiction novella by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in One Million A.D. edited by Gardner Dozois in December 2005. The novella was included in the collections Dark Integers and Other Stories in 2008 and Oceanic in 2009.^[1]^[2]^[3] The short story is set in the same universe as Egan's short stories "Glory" and "Hot Rock" as well as Egan's novel Incandescence.

Plot

For millions of years, an alien civilization known as the Aloof living in the core of the galaxy have kept a strict isolation. Any attempts to communicate have been ignored and any non-sentient probes sent into their territory have been shut down and sent back decades later. Leila and Jasim, after having been married for more than ten thousand years and, voluntarily having chosen death, want to start another attempt for contact and travel through the communication network of an alien civilization known as Amalgam from their home planet Najib to the planet Nazdeek. More than ten thousand additional years are spent mostly unconscious for this journey, hence their children and grandchildren have probably already chosen death. Leila enters the network of the Aloof and is allowed to pass through the core of the galaxy. Every attempt to communicate is still ignored and Leila realizes, that surely none of her arguments regarding cooperation have already been thought through by the Aloof. Leila finally accepts their isolation, but assures them, that others will nonetheless continue to investigate them for a better understanding since that is simply their nature.^[4]

Reception

Reviews

Rich Horton writes on the SF Site, that "the portrayal of the far future posthuman culture is intriguing, and the notion of the Aloof comes off pretty well, but never did I quite care."^[5]

Karen Burnham writes in Greg Egan (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) about "Riding the Crocodile", "Glory" and Incandescence, that "the real challenge is coping with the ennui of immortality" and that "his characters tend to do this by maintaining a spirit of scientific inquiry".^[6]

Awards

The novelette was a Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novelette in 2007 and reached the 12th place.^[7]

References

^ "Bibliography". 2024-04-09. Retrieved 2024-04-17.
^ "Summary Bibliography: Greg Egan". Retrieved 2024-04-19.
^ "Title: Riding the Crocodile". Retrieved 2024-04-17.
^ Greg Egan (2006-12-31). "Riding the Crocodile". Retrieved 2024-04-19.
^ Horton, Rich (2008). "Dark Integers and Other Stories". sfsite.com. Retrieved 2024-06-01.
^ Burnham 14, p. 33
^ "Locus Awards 2007". Retrieved 2024-08-11.

Literature

Burnham, Karen (2014). Greg Egan (Modern Masters of Science Fiction). Modern Masters of Science Fiction. University of Illinois Press (published 2014-04-03). ISBN 978-0252038419.

External links

Riding the Crocodile title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Riding the Crocodile (full text on Egan's website)

Greg Egan

Novels

An Unusual Angle (1983)
Quarantine (1992)
Permutation City (1994)
Distress (1995)
Diaspora (1997)
Teranesia (1999)
Schild's Ladder (2002)
Incandescence (2008)
Zendegi (2010)
Dichronauts (2017)
Perihelion Summer (2019)

Orthogonal	The Clockwork Rocket (2011) The Eternal Flame (2012) The Arrows of Time (2013)

Collections

Axiomatic (1995)
Luminous (1998)
Dark Integers and Other Stories (2008)
Crystal Nights and Other Stories (2009)
Oceanic (2009)
The Best of Greg Egan (2019)
Instantiation (2020)
Sleep and the Soul (2023)
Phoresis and Other Journeys (2023)

Short Stories

"Neighbourhood Watch" (1987)
"The Cutie" (1989)
"The Moral Virologist" (1990)
"Axiomatic" (1990)
"Eugene" (1990)
"Learning to Be Me" (1990)
"The Safe-Deposit Box" (1990)
"Appropriate Love" (1991)
"Into Darkness" (1992)
"The Hundred Light-Year Diary" (1992)
"Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies" (1992)
"The Walk" (1992)
"Chaff" (1993)
"Mitochondrial Eve" (1995)
"A Kidnapping" (1995)
"Wang's Carpets" (1995)
"Luminous" (1995)
"TAP" (1995)
"Silver Fire" (1995)
"Reasons to Be Cheerful" (1997)
"The Planck Dive" (1998)
"Oceanic" (1998)
"Border Guards" (1999)
"Singleton" (2002)
"Riding the Crocodile" (2005)
"Glory" (2007)
"Dark Integers" (2007)
"Lost Continent" (2008)
"Crystal Nights" (2008)
"Zero for Conduct" (2013)
"This Is Not the Way Home" (2019)
"The Slipway" (2019)
"Dream Factory" (2022)
"After Zero" (2022)
"Crisis Actors" (2022)
"Didicosm" (2023)

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