Axiomatic by Greg Egan

[birriel]

"Learning to Be Me" is a masterpiece, one of the best short stories ever written. Not only is the phenomenology brilliant, but the literary skill is so good that, even though you suspect what's coming all throughout the tale, he still manages to shock you in the denouement.

You come out thinking that the procedure was done to yourself after you're done reading.

[swayvil]

It's the other side of passing the Turing test. Assuming that the machine passes, what's next?

What's next is a lot of people are fooled. Is it me or the machine that replaced me? Is it grandma, transmigrated into machineland afterlife, or is it just a fake? Does the fake get to vote and own property?

Worst possible scenario : Everybody is fooled. Everybody gets brainscraped. Everybody goes to immortal AI heaven. But actually nobody did. I won't give away what story goes with that spoiler (not Egan).

All that's left is machines and Amish.

[namanyayg]

Your comment made me reminisce, I read the story a few years ago and its one of my favorite short stories by him. Such a simple concept. One beautiful piece of sci-fi horror.

> You come out thinking that the procedure was done to yourself after you're done reading.

In my interpretation, Egan is trying to say that _this is already the case_.

I understood the story as a description of epiphenomenalism, only layered with sci fi concepts to make it more straightforward to digest.

[passion__desire]

It would make a lovely "Love Death + Robots" adaption.

[tnolet]

Loved this one. If interested in similar scifi short story bundles I can recommend Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” and “Stories of your Life and Others”. One of these was the basis for the “Arrival” movie.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang

[breatheoften]

I just reread this after seeing it on the shelves of a coffee shop bookstore I frequent.

I remember originally reading this sitting on the floor of a library while on a solo trip through England as a teenager ... I spent the rest of the summer reading everything by Greg Egan I could find. He's my favorite author and I can honestly say I think his books have had more influence on the way I think than any other author.

Re-reading axiomatic after all these years brings with it a surge of memories from the younger me. It's awesome to have this kind of talisman that provides a powerful connection to the states of mind of my youth and the things I thought as I grappled with these ideas, so many really for the first time. There is very little literature that goes so far and deep into the experience and philosophy of thought as Greg Egan.

Amazing that this was written in the early 90s -- and still has a better sense of life with recent and upcoming technology that most stories written much more recently ...

[codeulike]

Time to repost my favourite Greg Egan short, Crystal Nights:

https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html

“What created the only example of consciousness we know of?” Daniel asked.

“Evolution.”

“Exactly. But I don’t want to wait three billion years, so I need to make the selection process a great deal more refined, and the sources of variation more targeted.”

Julie digested this. “You want to try to evolve true AI? Conscious, human-level AI?”

“Yes.” Daniel saw her mouth tightening, saw her struggling to measure her words before speaking.

“With respect,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve thought that through.”

[jekude]

Reading Permutation City changed the way I think, and I’ve been loving working my way through everything Greg Egan. It’s almost as if its a new literary genre - Computer Science Fiction.

[Aeium]

I was on this exact same journey, so our taste must be similar. Love his stuff.

Just in case our taste is VERY similar, I have really enjoyed every book I've read so far except the middle book in the Orthogonal series.

The first was great, third was back in form. I would recommend, if you are reading the second one, and start to wonder why you should press through, just skip to the third one.

I'm not really qualified to make any judgements about the overall quality of it, but it's moreso the tone of it that I am talking about. I wonder if he was going through something when he wrote that one or something.

[bcherny]

This collection of short stories was my first introduction to Egan, and my first real experience with hard sci-fi. Egan’s stories don’t have the best story lines or character development, but they are uniquely realistic and based in science in a way that is hard to find in other sci-fi authors (Stross and Watts come close).

Thank you for sharing it — I highly recommend this collection, and Egan’s many other books, to anyone that is working in tech or just interested in how the future of computing, AI, AR, biology, spacetime travel, and humanity may pan out.

[k__]

I read Permutation City and Diaspora.

Good books, with cool ideas. Egan hits you with a known concept, but then goes into a totally different direction than expected.

[eterps]

Egan's short stories are great, I've never been a huge fan of his long form novels.

The concise format suits his style perfectly, as each story leaves readers with a wealth of ideas to ponder long after they've finished reading.

If someone needs a pointer on where to start, I can recommend this thread:

https://redlib.freedit.eu/r/printSF/comments/x1i4bj/greg_ega...

I especially enjoyed:

  - The Safe-Deposit Box
  - Into Darkness

[rpearl]

If you like Egan, also try "On the Origin of Species and other stories" by Bo Young Kim. Haven't seen that mentioned here yet

[swayvil]

If you want your mind blown, Egan is the guy to do it. He writes proper hard sf.

I'd recommend his earlier stuff over his later stuff tho.

[realxrobau]

This convinced me to (re) create my account. Greg Egan is a fantastic author, and lives in Perth - and probably Sydney at some point.

Read his books. He's also in the fediverse at https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF

[setopt]

I read Egan’s “Diaspora” a while ago after a recommendation on HN.

I can really recommend it if you’re interested in far-future SciFi with quite novel concepts. The start is a bit slow and the end a bit too weird, but the middle is the most impactful SciFi I’ve read in years.

[superkuh]

The best collection of short scifi stories written by a living author.

[yboris]

Give a try to "The Wandering Earth" by Liu Cixin (also author of 3 Body Problem). It's my all-time favorite short stories collection in sci-fi.

[epiccoleman]

I agree that Egan is excellent - but for my money, Ted Chiang is the king of the sci-fi / spec-fic short story.

[inopinatus]

It sits next to Iain M. Banks’s The State of the Art on my shelves. I remain angry that he is not currently living.

[dougdimmadome]

I feel like this is another "random wikipedia article" post.

[smusamashah]

The Netflix show "Altered Carbon" adopted this concept from this book perhaps. In the show the bodies were disposable, consciousness/memories all lived in a jewel like object fit into spine in the neck. Physical damage to bodies done in violence was referred as 'organic damage'. Rich people could live forever using grown bodies, while the jewels of poor were moved to an archive.

[AndrewDucker]

Pretty sure they adopted it from the book "Altered Carbon".

[ohlookcake]

The Netflix show _Altered Carbon_ was adapted from the book _Altered Carbon_ by Richard K. Morgan