The powerful feelings of wonder and mystery explored here have quite literally inspired me to jump on this opportunity. “The Fifth Science” has for me become some strange parallel to my career choice in machine learning; while I find the science intriguing, it is the potential and soulfulness (so deeply examined in this book) where I have really discovered my passion. Innovativeness5), uncertainty6), importance of the future technology and technical competitiveness7) Throughout the book I spotted several stories that I wanted to mention here as my favourite but there are now quite a lot of them. The Girl and the Pit is wonderful and Be Awake, Be Good full of suspension. The Caretaker is psychologically interesting with a neat plot twist.

Not in the same way.” The sphere was in her lap now. She stroked it and the thing purred quietly. “There is a special problem in communications theory. We call it ‘narrative collapse’. When a planet is very connected, a time inevitably arrives when it becomes difficult to work out what is actually going on. Video and audio can be faked. Testimony isn’t reliable. All truths fall into a relative flatness. This is more dangerous than any doomsday weapon. You have a king and, if you don’t mind me saying so, not a very nice one. But at least his population knows when he’s being deceitful or harsh. On my world and the sister world we’ve lost even that. Many still don’t even believe Morae really exists. They claim it’s a fabrication by Al’Hazaad.” She held her beer up to the moonlight. “Doesn’t look like a fabrication to me.”Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.”

The fact that the book started with a timeline of the 'The 500 year Climb.' Made the events even more realistic.never rly delved into science fiction before this book, but it was a good entryway into sci-fi themes and philosophy. the ideas in each short story were complex but the author writes in a simplified way, so that it’s accessible to younger audiences and people like me who haven’t studied science since year 10 lol— In terms of the means of realizing the future technology, it has been shown that 27.5% of the technologies I have always been a firm believer in an eventual galactic human empire. This book has thus been nothing short of a treat for me. But more than that, Exurb1a brought up some really interesting concepts surrounding consciousness and artificial intelligence. Namely, is there any reasons for consciousness to be a strictly biological phenomenon? The first story had a fairly original plot around this premise. Others stories also had quite enjoyable and thought-provoking plots, but maybe where their inspirations came from was much more visible. That and the fact that some of the character traits felt a bit repetitive are the only reasons I am not giving it five stars(to be fair there IS another reason - I have just decided to get more stingy with my five stars recently, that's all). Otherwise, brilliant writing. Excellent execution of ideas. He writes so vividly, the last few days I have been having dreams of distant worlds trimming with billions of humans, incomprehensible technologies beyond mankind's greatest wit and stars with minds of their own.