Science Quote by Greg Egan

There is a quiet provocation in Egan's plain phrasing: the real scarcity in literature is not talent but access. By saying "new writers everywhere", he refuses the cozy geography of the usual gatekeepers - the Anglophone capitals, the MFA pipeline, the friends-of-friends ladder. "Everywhere" is doing political work. It hints at how many voices get filtered out not by merit but by distance, money, language, and the invisible credentialing systems that decide who counts as "promising."

Egan's background sharpens the intent. As a scientist (and a famously rigorous science-fiction writer), he's invested in ecosystems that reward discovery, not pedigree. The line reads like an argument for biodiversity in culture: you don't get breakthrough ideas if the lab only recruits from one hallway. Publishing, in this view, isn't merely a marketplace; it's an infrastructure problem. If the infrastructure is narrow, the output will be predictably narrow too.

The subtext is also a critique of the romantic myth that good work will inevitably "find its audience". Egan implies the opposite: audiences are manufactured through exposure, editorial trust, and distribution. Opportunities to publish are opportunities to be read, reviewed, translated, and remembered - all the compounding advantages that turn potential into a career.

It's an unglamorous demand, almost bureaucratic, which is part of why it lands. In an era when platforms promise democratization while algorithms concentrate attention, "need opportunities" reads like a call to build real on-ramps, not just louder shouting.