Review: Eight Billion Genies

 Eight Billion Genies explores a fun concept, which is that if everyone on earth had one wish, what would people do with it, and what would the resultant world be like? The book starts out in a bar where the bartender in a fit of inspiration immediately wishes that nobody else's wishes can affect the bar and whatever and whoever is inside it. Turns out the guy's a prepper and was prepared for things to turn out dark.

Indeed, the book goes through the initial impulsive phase, where the folks with no impulse controls immediately start wishing for whatever would suit them in the moment, followed by the folks who're coherent enough to start wishing for super powers, or wishing for their country's' welfare, etc. The author comes up with rules that the genies enforce on how conflicting wishes work.

Pretty soon, the population of the world is diminished by a lot, and then you get the religious people going for pretty much a rapturing of the earth, which kills even more people, of course.

When all is said and done people use up their wishes and by the time the book comes to a close, there are only 2 people with wishes left, and obviously the last one gets to remake the world, but it's clear at the end of the book the author's written himself into a corner and doesn't have a good answer for what the final wish should be either (it's vague and probably wouldn't change anything).

Nevertheless, it's a fun short read and worth the time.