Riding the Crocodile by Greg Egan

Under the Milky Way tonight.

I was initially drawn to Riding the Crocodile for three main reasons:

1. It’s by Greg Egan, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, capable of delivering some of the most mind-blowing stories in the genre.
2. The intriguing title.
3. The wonderful opening paragraph, which immediately grabbed me:

In their ten-thousand, three hundred and ninth year of marriage, Leila and Jasim began contemplating death. They had known love, raised children, and witnessed the flourishing generations of their offspring. They had traveled to a dozen worlds and lived among a thousand cultures. They had educated themselves many times over, proved theorems, and acquired and abandoned artistic sensibilities and skills. They had not lived in every conceivable manner, far from it, but what room would there be for the multitude if each individual tried to exhaust the permutations of existence?

Cool, right? The strong opening suggests that the story will involve deep existential themes and high-concept sci-fi—both things Egan excels at. Unfortunately, the actual story turned out to be an impenetrable slog weighed down by relentless infodumps and hardcore physics that often felt more like a science textbook than a narrative.

As a first-contact story, Riding the Crocodile drags through long stretches of dense, didactic hard science fiction that completely drowns the plot. One could argue this is more of a novella than a short story, and at times, it certainly feels that long. Maybe if I had a background in engineering or particle astrophysics, I would have found it more engaging, but as someone who lacks a PhD in theoretical physics, much of it felt borderline incomprehensible.

The premise itself is interesting enough: in a distant future where humans can achieve digital immortality (I think? The story never really clarifies how it all works in layman’s terms), Leila and Jasim—an ancient married couple—set out on one final intellectual challenge before choosing to die. They want to make contact with the Aloof, a reclusive alien civilization that has ignored all attempts at communication for millions of years. The story ties into the Fermi Paradox, exploring why advanced civilizations might deliberately isolate themselves.

That sounds like a solid setup, but the execution is painfully dense. There’s a lot of talk about information theory, relativistic travel, and high-level astrophysics, most of which went completely over my head. By the time Leila and Jasim finally succeed in making contact, the reveal is anticlimactic, and honestly, I wasn’t sure it was worth the effort—either for them or for me as the reader.

In the end, Riding the Crocodile is a story that tries to tackle grand, cerebral ideas but ultimately forgets to make them compelling. If you enjoy Egan’s signature brand of mind-bending hard sci-fi, you might find it worthwhile. But if you’re not well-versed in theoretical physics, prepare to spend more time scratching your head than actually enjoying the story.

You can read this story HERE.