Schild's Ladder

Starts mind bending and then bores you to tears

The math/physics quickly lost me, but I really love Egan's far-future people and their moral dilemmas about what it means to be human. And the evolution of sex/gender makes me happy. Basically fantastic world-building, less fantastic plot, especially toward the end where things get so utterly weird it's hard to relate to anything. But also that's kind of the point, so. Solid Egan book, not my favorite of his but I still desperately want his vision of the future to come true.

The absolute best thing about this book is the eponymous concept: a way to ensure that, as you grow and change, you are still true to yourself.

I came for the rigorous, mathematically-informed hard sci-fi that came up with a solution to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity and also invented an entirely new system of physics. I stayed for the surprisingly human musings on what it means to be YOU in a world where you can live (and change) forever, and also the optimistic speculations about the future of humanity (or what we might become).