The Short Review: Zendegi by Greg Egan

I've picked up the habit of reading a book when I go on my long walks about twice a week. The first book to have been read pretty much completely while doing this was Greg Egan's Zendegi, which I finished reading today. It's a short novel by a rather good scifi author, and it tells its story succinctly, but its length and focus prevent it from exploring some very fascinating plot threads within the book's world satisfactorily. Primarily, though, it is a story about a man who is dying as a new world is rising. Regimes have fallen, and a new VR game called Zendegi is beginning to gain traction, and the main character sees in this world a means by which he, or a version of him, may live on to raise his young son.

The book is more content to explore the emotional questions that it raises while eschewing some of the political and moral ones, but it does spur one to much thought about the future of consciousness. The ending is heartfelt and satisfying, and the final words of the book may be the most indelible of any SF novel I've read in recent memory.

Recommended.