Greg Egan

Dear Diarrhea,

Today I'm going to start covering some of the post- and transhumanist fiction I've been perusing of late. First up is a handful of short stories.

The interconnected short stories Learning to Be Me, Closer and The Extra, by Greg Egan, appear to take place within the same universe, although at various times in that universe, not depicting a linear progression or any narrative relationship other than the consistency of the framework. Each one is centered around a unique issue of the nature of identity, perception, society and interpersonal relationships.

Learning to Be Me posits the emergence of a device, dubbed the Ndoli device, that maps and mimics the neural activity of the biological brain, and that can eventually, with enough preparation, be switched with the biological brain without any inconsistency in the outward perception of personality or intellect. The short story is written in a first person narrative, taking the narrator, one of the first generation of humans born into the use of the Ndoli device, through the process of life as altered by the presence of an electronic back-up brain.

Questions are raised: whether the two identical intellects of the biological brain and the attached Ndoli jewel are philosophically and legally the same, or just merely identical twins with a completely overlapping pool of experiences and thoughts; whether the feeling of nervousness upon the coming switch to the jewel is just the diminishing but not completely vanished social imprint of a pre-Ndoli environment on the narrator; and whether the questionable revelation of the narrator's identity as the jewel instead of the biological mind sheds any of the story in a new light.

While Egan doesn't strive to answer these questions, he does at least ask them, and I feel that he approaches the subject in the exact manner I would want a curious mind to approach it. He poses those questions that spark further curiosity in the subject instead of searching for conclusions based in our current understanding of self. I take this open-minded approach as an implicit endorsement of posthuman ideology, with reservations pending suitable answers to the issues raised.

I take my leave for now with that, and I'm going to go on to take a look at The Extra next week. The third week of Greg Egan will cover Closer, concluding that section.

May thoughts of warm embrace feed your soul,
-Márton Körtesi.