Review: The transhumanist Wager

The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan is a philosophical mind expanding experience. In the pages you are confronted by fictional people and events that represent a culmination of arguments and struggles that had plagued humans for decades. Each pages is filled with choices to be made, metaphors about life lessons and sacrifices that some people make to hold on to an ideal. As you read on you might come to realize that what we believe isn't always so black & white and the lines can easily get blurred as to which is the right path to follow. A good example of just how blurred those ideal can be is the coming-of-age story that weaves its way through the book as we follow Jethro Knights and Gregory Michaelson as they make choices that shape their lives and the consequence that they find go along with those choices.

Mr. Istvan does a great job at making the interactions between his characters believable and with rich dialog that brings richness to his story. One such example are the discussions that take place between Jethro Knights and Dr. Zoe Bach as their relationship blossoms into love, separate to travel their separate path and finally re-united. There are many other such rich interactions, such as, when our protagonist, Jothro Knights, finally comes face-to-face with the antagonist, Reverend Belinas and they get into a long philosophical discussion over their differing beliefs.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is a student of philosophy, science fiction or just wants to understand more about the conflicts that all of us as humans struggle with in our daily lives. Whichever of those categories you fit into there are several lessons to be learned as long as you look at this book as an entanglement of stories and ideals represent the human race as a whole.