Books › Axiomatic
Axiomatic
384 pages
A cerebral plunge into the terrifying, exhilarating fragility of human consciousness and identity.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stepping into a brilliantly lit, sterile laboratory where the fundamental building blocks of your own mind are placed under a microscope. The experience is less about emotional warmth and more about profound, dizzying intellectual vertigo. With a steady, uncompromising pace, the narrative strips away comforting illusions about free will, love, and the soul, replacing them with cold, crystalline logic and terrifyingly plausible neuro-technologies. The prose is clinical and precise, acting as a scalpel that dissects what it means to be human. It is an atmosphere soaked in existential dread yet crackling with visionary brilliance. This is a feast for readers who crave hard science fiction that treats philosophical thought experiments with mathematical rigor, leaving you questioning your own reflection long after the final page.
- Mood
- existential
- uncanny
- mind-bending
- sterile
- Tone
- clinical
- cerebral
- inquisitive
- detached
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the illusion of self · neuro-determinism · technological alienation · limits of consciousness · bioethics
- The writing
- Precise, analytical, and uncompromisingly technical, prioritizing conceptual clarity over lyrical flourish.
- The arc
- Moves from detached intellectual curiosity to a profound, lingering sense of existential vertigo.
- Who it's for
- Fans of rigorous, hard science fiction who love having their fundamental assumptions about reality, free will, and identity systematically dismantled.
Content notes
- existential dread
- body horror
- loss of identity
- suicide
About the book
AXIOMATIC is a collection of eighteen short stories including;
THE HUNDRED LIGHT YEAR DIARY - Scientists can bounce messages from the future back to the present, but there's no guarantee they'll tell the truth...
LEARNING TO BE ME - Crystalline minds may take the place of human brains, but where does the self really lie?
CLOSER - Lovers exchange bodies and minds, but their experiments go just that little bit too far, proving that you can have too much of a good thing...
Description from Open Library.
Books like Axiomatic
See why they match
Permutation CityGreg EganA dizzying plunge into the deep end of hard science fiction that will leave you questioning the fundamental nature of your own consciousness.
QuarantineGreg EganA gritty cyberpunk mystery that rapidly escalates into a dizzying, mind-bending exploration of quantum mechanics and free will.
Schismatrix PlusBruce SterlingA dizzying, idea-dense plunge into a post-human future where biology and machinery wage a relentless war for the next stage of evolution.
AccelerandoCharles StrossA relentless, jargon-fueled rollercoaster ride through the technological singularity that will leave your brain feeling overclocked.
Anvil of StarsGreg BearA cold, dread-soaked voyage through the cosmos where the pursuit of ultimate vengeance demands the sacrifice of humanity's soul.
Islands in the NetBruce SterlingA globe-trotting, idea-dense plunge into the dark, data-pirated underbelly of a seemingly utopian corporate future.