Greg Egan is an Australian science fiction author. Egan published his first work in 1983. He specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind uploading, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion. He is known for his tendency to deal with complex technical material, like inventive new physics and epistemology, in an unapologetically thorough manner. He is a Hugo Award winner, and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. His early stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror. Egan's short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including regular appearances in Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction. Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Western Australia, and currently lives in Perth. He has recently been active on the issue of refugees' mandatory detention in Australia. Egan is a vegetarian. Egan does not attend science fiction conventions, does not sign books, and appears in no photographs on the Web, though both SF fan sites and Google Search have at times mistakenly represented photos of other people with the same name as being of the writer.