A metaphor for the mundane

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote, in his introduction to Nebula Awards Showcase 2002, that science fiction stories are 'statements about the way we live now, coded'. In the age of pioneering (and then mass) aviation, we had space stories. In the era of Cold War paranoia and dread we had post-apocalypse and aliens-among-us stories. Or to use the example Stan gives: in the decade when we encountered the internet, we had mind-uploading stories.

For me, the most haunting metaphor for the way we live now is Robert Charles Wilson's 1998 story Divided by Infinity. The narrator is given a pseudo-scientific book that argues, on the basis of the Many Worlds Interpretation and quantum handwaves, that you never die. Other people die, but (from your POV) you don't: subjectively your consciousness continues in a less likely infinity of possible worlds. As you get older, the world around you just gets weirder, and weirder, and weirder.