Art & Creativity Quote by Greg Egan

A throwaway line that quietly telegraphs a whole philosophy of craft: Greg Egan admitting he’s been taking longer is less a confession of “writer’s block” than a quality-control report. Coming from a scientist who writes some of the most conceptually dense hard SF alive, “longer” reads like a proxy for “more rigorous.” It’s the voice of someone who treats fiction the way engineers treat bridges: if you can’t justify the load-bearing assumptions, you don’t ship.

The intent feels twofold. On the surface, it humanizes a writer whose work can look superhuman in its mathematical confidence. Underneath, it’s a statement about cost. Egan’s stories hinge on cleanly imagined consequences of physics, computation, and identity; as the real world’s science gets messier and more specialized, the research burden rises. So does the ethical burden: the sharper the speculative tool, the more damage a sloppy swing can do. Taking longer becomes a kind of intellectual humility.

There’s also a sly rebuke to a culture of speed. In an era of hot takes, rapid-release content, and algorithmic productivity, Egan’s timeline signals resistance: depth has a tempo, and it isn’t “weekly.” The subtext isn’t nostalgia; it’s an argument that the future demands patience. If your subject is the structure of reality, you can’t afford to be glib about it.