I've just finished reading Greg Egan's Zendegi, a near-future novel set in Iran exploring the possibilities of modelling human thought in computers. It was an easy, enjoyable read - much easier to read than some of Egan's harder SF such as Schild's Ladder, and it feels almost like a companion piece to his earlier novel Permutation City. That novel proposed a world where human consciousness could be uploaded and ran on computers, and then ran with the idea to explore the possibilities and limitations of an entirely virtual existence. Zendegi could be read as a precursor to this, where software engineer and biologist Nasim uses MRI and other scans to try to simulate thought, though not consciousness. Egan's world is entirely believable, his technology feels just around the corner, his virtual gaming environment, the titular Zendegi, feels almost inevitable.

I enjoyed the read. I enjoyed the setting (an democratised, almost liberal Iran), peppered with stories from Iranian folklore. There are hints of the short-lived TV series Caprica, which I loved.

And yet. And yet... like Caprica, like the TV pilot Virtuality, even like the Richard Gere film Arbitrage, the book failed at the last hurdle for me. After asking so many interesting questions, laying out possibilities, Zendegi just fizzled out. I'm getting the feeling that denouements are no longer required or expected. Or maybe it's just the sort of fiction and TV I enjoy is too much about questions that can't really be answered.

I recommend Zendegi, it's a lot simpler to read than some of Egan's other works, it's well paced. It just needed a stronger ending.