The Egg

"You were on your way home when you died. It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. ... And that’s when you met me."

The Egg is a short story written by Andy Weir, his most popular, and follows a nameless 48-year-old man who discovers the "meaning of life" after he dies. The story is about "you" (in the second person), and God, who is "me" (in the first person). God says that you have been reincarnated many times before, and that you are soon to be reincarnated once more, leading to quite a few existential questions.

Andy Weir (1972-) built a career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian (2011), allowed him to live out his dream of writing fulltime. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail.