INCANDESCENCE, the latest from physicist/author Greg Egan, is an ironic title. Rather than offering warmth or enticement, it is instead a rather cold and distant reading experience.

“Hard” science fiction is uniquely challenging. The author must not only accomplish the usual suspension of disbelief, but also incorporate extrapolated scientific facts or theories in ways that enhance the story and keep it entertaining. In experienced hands — Ben Bova, Greg Bear and Gregory Benford, to name a few currently active — the results are exciting and open new worlds of science to explore further. Egan is definitely a hard sci-fi author, but in this work, the science pretty much strangles the fiction to death.

The setting is a million years in the future (you read correctly: a million) in a galaxy presumably light years from our own, populated by various and varied species in a vast cooperative known as the Amalgam. But dwelling in the center of this galaxy is a shadowy civilization that long ago shut them off from the Amalgam and reject all attempts at exploration and communication. They are known, not surprisingly, as the Aloof.

Rakesh, a resident of the Amalgam, is approached one day by a traveler named Lahl, who claims she was contacted by the Aloof and told of a meteor full of traces of DNA in the center of the galaxy. Rakesh, himself a decedent of DNA construction, accepts the challenge and sets off with his companion Parantham to find this new world.

Roi lives inside this new world, which all its subterranean inhabitants know as the Splinter. And like her fellow residents, Roi spends her day laboring withing the tunnels of the Splinter planting and harvesting food. Then she meets Zak, who reveals to her a map of their world and shows her ways to determine how weight and motions can be calculated. Roi is hooked and becomes Zak’s student, even though it means time away from her sworn duties and responsibilities. As Roi enlists others to share Zak’s teachings, they discover that their home is in danger.

Rakesh and Parantham also learn of the fate that threatens the Splinter — what they refer to as the Ark. But as they move closer and uncover more details about the planet, they wonder how or if they should intervene and alter the planet’s destiny.

Lurking within all this is the theme of curiosity, how scientific exploration and methods joyfully fulfill such curiosity, and how the results can be marshaled to solve serious and urgent problems. Unfortunately, Egan dampens any such excitement with an overload of prose equations and jargon. Characters don’t speak to each other as much as they exchange data, discuss results and agree upon additional research tasks. Even as events race toward a possible destructive climax, the principles can’t climb their way out of the mound of calculations.

Rakesh, Roi and the others seldom express or demonstrate the kind of emotions that stir our empathy and make us wonder what’s going to happen next. It could be argued that they are not human, and therefore, lack such capabilities. But there are countless science fiction examples of alien beings — and even androids — that capture our sympathy.

INCANDESCENCE reads like an overly long set of “story problems” a university professor might present to help illustrate the major points of his course in physics and astronomy. We can forgive how dull and silly the stories are because, well, that’s not the point. But a novel should not be an accompaniment to a textbook. Let’s hope Egan erases all the equations crowding the blackboard and tries again. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.