The Good:

• I loved those old choose-your-own-adventure books! (``If you open the box, go to page 431. Otherwise, go to page 480.")
• The mathematical discussion is quite well done: accurate, informative and interesting.
• The math major character is presented as appealing as well as smart, avoiding the stereotypes.
• The idea of a choose-your-own-adventure book about/entitled "The Axiom of Choice" is quite clever!

The Bad:

• It's not really a choose-your-own-adventure story since the whole point is to emphasize that you don't actually have a choice. This may boost the book's post-modern `cred', but I found it frustrating every time. (That, I suppose, is the point.)
• I am always uncomfortable with works of fiction that conflate The Axiom of Choice and the question of whether people have free will. As far as I can tell, the Axiom of Choice is really something that has to do with the foundations of mathematics and set theory and has no direct philosophical implications to the question of whether people's actions are entirely the consequence of prior conditions. This story does not actually say that it does. In fact, the author does a very good job of mentioning some of the interesting aspects of this area of philosophy without including the hyperbole and mysticism that often accompany it. Nevertheless, I suspect that most people who read this will assume that a deeper connection exists between the math in the title and the philosophical dilemma beyond the fact that both involve the notion of `choice'.

Originally Published in the Winter 2011 issue of the New Haven Review, this story is available free online as a PDF and has been nominated for a Nebula award.