A review by jnzllwgr
The Fifth Science by Exurb1a

4.0

Imagining the expansion of humanity to a empire is nothing that new, but describing its finitude and what leads our species to extinction was a nice twist. Like the highly enjoyable (and seriously recommended) self-published books by ‘qntm’, we have here another author with a post-Gibson-esque nom de plume with 12 snappy and humorous tales all loosely organized chronologically to walk the reader through various goings on across space and time. And I couldn’t help but keep comparing the two authors (partially because I found this book by web searching “books like qntm”). While very engaging it didn’t bend and break my brain like qntm’s work does. And I kind of like that aspect of their work. They are tackling some conceptual notions while Exurb1a has a bit more of a Weird Fiction vibe — grand scales, but more accessible imaginatively. I don’t want to spoil what the Fifth Science actually is for interested readers. But this is the where we find the greatest leap and hints at a larger continuum in evolutionary biology, I suppose. The finitude of our lives are writ large in that context.