by Greg Egan

We gained the freedom we ever lacked: who we are is now shaped by the future, as well as the past.

Axiomatic is a collection of science fiction short stories written by Greg Egan. But I guess you could have gleaned that information from the title and book cover.

This was the first book I read on my Kindle in years. Reading on a Kindle is a pleasure– it is small, handy, and overall pleasing to the eye. I can read in bed with the lamps off. I can read with one hand. I can change the font size, make highlights, and define words on the spot. However, I still can’t give up on physical books. I love collecting, and I love the smell of books. These days, I don’t buy new books (neither new clothes nor cameras) unless I’m anticipating some new release or if I can’t find a used copy. Sometimes I can’t find either– that is where my Kindle comes in. ThriftBooks.com is my personal Amazon.com and Ray’s Archives Bookshop, right off Grand River and a quick bike ride away, is my shopping haven.

I first learned about Axiomatic from my philosophy professor. I was discussing a story I had read from a different science-fiction anthology Exhalation which is from the same author behind the story of the movie Arrival. We were discussing some of the philosophical implications behind these sci-fi stories and he casually mentioned Axiomatic as something similar to Exhalation. It caught my attention, but the book only existed on Kindle. I bought it immediately and read the story he suggested to me.

That story was The Hundred Light-Year Diary. In this short, scientists have discovered a galaxy that is stuck in reverse time. Through some pretty thick, but relatively graspable science, it’s illustrated that the galaxy does not emit photons but instead absorbs charges from our detectors. Instead of seeing the flashlight pointed towards us, we are the flashlight. Through some more explanations, it is revealed that the delay of information transmission is negative, meaning signals come from the future. Information about the future is received, when using a shutter, in the past. The gist is that if the button lights up before you press it, you will still press it, vice versa and no matter what. Scientists could therefore see the future through data that was received before the actual data happened. The anthropogenic implication of the discovery is eerily stated:

As a birthright, though, everyone on the planet is granted one hundred and twenty-eight bytes a day. With the most efficient data compression schemes, this can code about a hundred words of text; not enough to describe the future in microscopic detail, but enough for a summary of the day’s events.

A hundred words a day; three million words in a lifetime. The last entry in my own diary was received in 2032, eighteen years before my birth, one hundred years before my death. The history of the next millennium is taught in schools: the end of famine and disease, the end of nationalism and genocide, the end of poverty, bigotry and superstition. There are glorious times ahead.

If our descendants are telling the truth.

The story builds off of that– the future diary of your own life. One hundred words are not enough to detail your day, but it is enough to say who you will fall in love with or where you will retire. Does free will still exist? To some, it may comfort that their life has a path and purpose. To others in the story, they don’t tend to read into their life, attempting to preserve their free will. This story, like many of the other ones from the book, is a mindblow that might make you feel uneasy. It is a beautiful introduction to philosophical science fiction for me.

If you want to read a bit more into each story this Reddit post has a ranking of the stories from most tame to most mindblowing. I highly suggest this book if you are looking to get into Sci-Fi or are already a fanatic and have somehow missed out on Greg Egan.

I give this book four stars.