Claudia's Reviews > Axiomatic

“Everyone is manipulated; everyone is a product of their times. And vice versa.
Whatever the unchangeable future holds, I’m sure of one thing: who I am is still a part of what always has, and always will, decide it.
I can ask for no greater freedom than that.
And no greater responsibility.”

This book goes straight to no. 1 in my personal top of collections. I never read anything like it, and I doubt there is another out there to match it (except, maybe another one of his, which I'm yet to read).

All stories are focused on questions about self-perception, identity, solipsism, personal choices and consciousness, through the most original, bizarre, shocking and mind-blowing ideas ever to be found in fiction. The mix between philosophy and hard science-fiction ideas might sound incompatible, but Egan makes it sound so natural and plausible.

The Infinite Assassin - how much of yourself are you going to sacrifice in order to perform your given task? A tale of a myriad possibilities, all converging towards the same endpoint.

The Hundred Light-Year Diary - time travel at another level. Can you change who you are, when reliving the same life again?

Eugene - if you could conceive the perfect human being by gene altering, would you do it or leave nature takes its course?

The Caress - based on Fernand Khnopff's painting with the homonym title. If you had rights of life and death over someone, would you reclaim them? How far would you go in the name of the art and own pleasure?

Blood Sisters - do you get as much as you give, when it comes to the loved ones? Truth is, you’re never going to know a person completely, no matter how close to you.

Axiomatic - if someone you love would be killed without a reason, how would you cope with that? Would you be able to move on without answers, would you forgive the killer, or would you want revenge? Would you be able to live with yourself afterwards?

The Safe-Deposit Box - a story about consciousness; are your actions/appearance what define a person? Are you the same today who you were yesterday?

Seeing - if your life would be turned upside down completely, will you be able to cope with it? Will you find the resources to move on with your life?

A Kidnapping - if you love someone deeply, how far are you willing to go to keep them safe? What would you sacrifice? And keeping them safe is it only for their sake or for your own (too)?

Learning to Be Me - what makes you, you: your cells, neurons, emotions, consciousness, thoughts, actions?

The Moat – written 25 years ago and it seems like yesterday; deals with racism, immigrants, but also with morality. What makes a person worthy to accept in a society? Is DNA defining for who we are?

The Walk - when a killer plans to kill a victim, who really dies inside?

The Cutie - Would you bring into the world a child, knowing it has just a few years to live? Would you suffer less if your child would die because of its disabilities than you would if it were perfectly healthy? The most heartbreaking, it ripped my heart apart.

Into Darkness - sacrificing oneself for the good of others.

Appropriate Love - the sacrifice of a woman to save her husband's life. The most bizarre; it should be a sick concept, strangely it was not.

The Moral Virologist – based on HIV, it's a fanatic’s quest to eradicate adultery. However, it’s too near to what is happening now with the pandemic; gave me the chills.

Closer – follows the same concept as in Learning to Be Me . If you'd love your partner with all you heart and had the means to also know them completely, would you do it? Is it the best choice or some mystery is preferable?

Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies – would you remain forever free if you don’t follow other’s beliefs?

So, if you like challenges and ingenious ideas, you wouldn’t want to skip this collection; there is so much food for brain here that will satiate your thought-provoking hunger for quite some time.

“The number of parallel worlds is uncountably infinite—infinite like the real numbers, not merely like the integers”