Eclipse Phase- The Transhumanist RPG

I'd guess Tib is referencing burningman.org/ .

Wow, thanks for the books, Tiberia.
I've heard of Eclipse Phase, but never got a chance to play it. I guess I was a bit scared off by the grimdark look of it (from what I've heard).
But if you say it's your favourite setting of all time, I must have a look at it.
Since I've been planning to try my hand at GMing this year, the books may come in handy.

By chance, do you run any online games in this system?

So I've been slowly trudging through the main book and so far it looks like the possibilities are just endless!
In fact, it's a little intimidating. I'm going to be reading on and see if I can make some sense out of it.

Some thoughts:

I guess the level of grimdarkness depends on how one approaches things, too.

On one hand, everyone's immortal and post-scarcity, so they never need to be hungry or sick, and their all but most extravagant needs are automatically satisfied.
If someone still suffers poverty, then only at the fault of evil conservatives and capitalists. So let's board one of the merry gypsy spaceships and go kick some Jovian fascist ass! (What's with Jupiter and fascists, anyway? They were there in Dark Reign games, too)

On the other hand, the same technology that grants immortality also allows creation of downright Lovecraftian things, like that one-woman-mafia described in the book. And also allows physical and mental tortures that CIA can't even dream of. "Identity theft" and "human trafficking" got a lot more horrid definitions. Gypsy spaceships (and most other extreme societies; and there are a lot in the main book) are not so merry if you had no say in joining them (ex. you happened to be born there).

Also, do the books ever explore the possibility that "sleeving" may not in the end work as advertised? That it's great for other people, since their friends / coworkers / what have you need never die, but from the point of view of one person, if they die then they die, and later simply a clone of them with their memories is brought to life, an entirely different consciousness.

I admit, that's probably the most uncomfortable thing in this setting to me. If I was to consider actually living in such world, since as a game mechanic it seems to be great.

I also wonder if it's possible to run a game without making a political statement.
Because depending on how you tilt things, any of the factions can be shown as more good or more evil.
Except Ultramarines Ultimates.

Actually, what is the difference between Ultimates and Exhumans? They seem to have pretty much the same views, only the former limit themselves to simply being asshole social darwinists, which makes no sense given all the possibilities the setting offers.
Are Ultimates just there to be Orcs?

It irks me to no end that the authors constantly mislabel free software as open source software (those are not the same things), and then they seem to thing that "open source" means "a bunch of communists came together and wrote it", when in fact most open source development is done by, yes, corporations.
But no one's perfect...

One thing I fear, if I were to run a game, is that I won't resist the temptation to call it "Attack on TITAN".

...it's why there are infant morphs for adults and uplifted octopi in the setting, isn't it?