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A review by riotsquirrrl
Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte
5.0
The more I think about this story, the more it guts me.
In the near future you can access someone's brain in a limited way after they die. His life in academic shambles, the protagonist keeps going back to that simulacrum of his dead father ostensibly to get help with solving an impossible math problem when he desperately wants his father to be other than who he was.
The thing that gets me the most about this story is that I can clearly imagine myself doing the exact same thing, searching for the same answers that would be as impossible to obtain now as they were before my father's death two months ago.
Is this story about math? Kind of but not really. The math part is all just made up and is designed to show how the two men could connect so seamlessly as adults talking about technical stuff. I'd really say that it's about legacies and how people fail to live up to who we want them to be. And it's about a technology that I am infinitely grateful doesn't exist because I know that I would be just as tempted as the protagonist to use it and be just as ultimately disappointed.
In the near future you can access someone's brain in a limited way after they die. His life in academic shambles, the protagonist keeps going back to that simulacrum of his dead father ostensibly to get help with solving an impossible math problem when he desperately wants his father to be other than who he was.
The thing that gets me the most about this story is that I can clearly imagine myself doing the exact same thing, searching for the same answers that would be as impossible to obtain now as they were before my father's death two months ago.
Is this story about math? Kind of but not really. The math part is all just made up and is designed to show how the two men could connect so seamlessly as adults talking about technical stuff. I'd really say that it's about legacies and how people fail to live up to who we want them to be. And it's about a technology that I am infinitely grateful doesn't exist because I know that I would be just as tempted as the protagonist to use it and be just as ultimately disappointed.