Axiomatic

Greg Egan is one of the many authors whose work(s) I haven't explored yet. But as this anthology appeared in several lists the past few years, I decided to give it a go and only after having read a few reviews to be sure I wouldn't buy a pig in a poke. This anthology contains 18 stories (I won't go into detail), which appeared between the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, and deal with humanity's possible future. It's all hard science-fiction (from bioengineering over chemistry to physics), but you don't have to be well-educated to understand the stories Egan has written. However, you do need a certain basic understanding (or you can look up what you don't understand) of certain scientific aspects, I won't deny that. The stories are presented (some of which were not previously published), in a very readable manner, about what it means to be human and how the future could look different when more and more technological developments dominate society (from certain drugs to neural implants, e.g. the Ndoli Jewel). So, yes, there's also a good slab of, for example, philosophy. While not every story hit the bull's-eye, the vast majority did. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone, SF-fan or other. The writing is, in my opinion, fairly accessible and smooth, the themes diverse in number, and you get food for thought about humanity and the impact of technology, certainly in this day and age.