I've been listening to this book for so long that I've kind of lost track of the beginning stories. I remember really appreciating them and, in general, being moved by Liu's ongoing meditations on the transformation of the human in the face of technology and also parenthood.
Those two themes sweep through the book and, while he's manifestly not attempting to make specific claims, the intertwined questions of who are we and who are we becoming are threaded through every story in the book.