Axiomatic

I might have enjoyed these stories more had I understood them.

That is a slight exaggeration. I was not completely in over my head with every story, but since Egan is known for writing the hardest of hard SF, I am sure I would have been having a different experience at times if I knew more about the physics of parallel universes or the behavior of wormholes. When Egan builds the stories around psychological or biological concepts I was on surer footing.

My favorite story was his last, "Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies." I thought I had had my fill of post-apocalyptic fiction, but Egan has an entertaining spin on the genre. The "event" in this story is neither nuclear - nor zombie-induced. The world has been taken over by competing ideologies, and individuals have settled into whatever ism they decide to accept. These range from Liberal Judaism to anti-intellectual hedonism, with possibilities both expected and surprising in between. Our heroes are outsiders, determined to avoid the spheres of influence attempting to draw them in, like those pits certain insects build to trap their pray.

However heady his material, Egan pulls off his concepts by creating believable characters and always telling a good story.