Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids, the first volume of his bestselling Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, won the 2003 Hugo Award, and its sequel, Humans, was a 2004 Hugo nominee. Now he's back with a pulse-pounding, mind-expanding standalone novel, rich with his signature philosophical and ethical speculations, all grounded in cutting-edge science. Jake Sullivan has cheated death: he's discarded his doomed biological body and copied his consciousness into an android form. The new Jake soon finds love, something that eluded him when he was encased in flesh: he falls for the android version of Karen, a woman rediscovering all the joys of life now that she's no longer constrained by a worn-out body either. But suddenly Karen's son sues her, claiming that by uploading into an immortal body, she has done him out of his inheritance. Even worse, the original version of Jake, consigned to die on the far side of the moon, has taken hostages there, demanding the return of his rights of personhood. In the courtroom and on the lunar surface, the future of uploaded humanity hangs in the balance. Mindscan is vintage Sawyer -- a feast for the mind and the heart.
An enthralling existential drama This book is awesome, at par with Philip K. Dick weirdest novels. Jake Sullivan's man's soul is divided: an uploaded consciousness inhabits an artificial body, whilst the supposedly dooomed original is whisked on a nursing home on the other face of the moon. Only, the brain vessel condition that affected Jake,and that killed his father in an oedipal scene, turns out tho be curable...too late! Meanwhile, the uploaded Jake , the "Mindscan", found love and company in a rellw uploaded, the writer Karen, who's sued by a son reclaiming his inheritance, This truly kafkian sityation is narrated matter-of-factly, as Asimov would, and it makes for a strange reading indeed, like a lucid, weird dream. What's a man's soul, and can it be made truly immortal? What if the soul is something different? And what if there IS more than one soul? I really liket this profound, touching novel, and if there's a flaw, it's in the somewhat uncalled for violent denouement on the Moon. But everything else is perfect! I recommend it!
Strong storyline ... Average Characters The strengths of Sawyer's novels have been the combination of strong, science fiction storylines coupled with complex characters.
Unfortunately, MINDSCAN, fails on the latter point.
The premise has been discussed at length, so there's no need to cover ground that other reviewers have described.
But, if you're interested in consciousness and the philosophical debate about the existence of a soul, then you should find this novel quite enjoyable.
The characters, on the other hand, were not very enjoyable. Despite Sawyer's own words admonishing writers who intrude upon the narrative with soapbox issues, I couldn't help but feel that the characters of Jacob and Karen reflected Sawyer's own feelings with respect to liberal politics and intellectual property.
There's certainly nothing wrong with a protagonist with liberal political views; nor is there anything wrong with one who's a strong advocate of artists' rights.
The problem with this novel is that there is no balance. The protagonist has no sympathetic counterpart (e.g., a well-meaning, politically conservative or moderate character).
All that being said, this novel is very educational. That, combined with the "page-turning" trial scene, make this novel well worth the read.
And be sure to spend some time with Sawyer's appendix, which describes his research sources for consciousness studies.
I'll give the book 3.5 out of 5 stars and "round up."
boring & banal i bailed on this turkey after 80 pages. the writing is dull & unimaginative. a book about copying & downloading the human personality promises interesting specualations about the nature of consciousness, but there is nothing here but mechanism. the purpose of this novel seems to be to put the author's political opinions & philosophical materialism into the mouths of his characters. if you read sf novels in order to confirm your dialectical materialism then this may be for you; i prefer creativity.
Couldn't put it down Wow. I couldn't put this book down until I finished it. This is an excellent SciFi novel. Smooth as silk plotting and prose. Great fleshed out charactors, in a tale with lots of heart. Can't believe I've never read anything by this author, but I'm glad he's written quite a bit for me to catch up on. :) Highly Recommended!
Interesting ideas dealt with unconvincingly, plus flat characters Mindscan is another of Robert J. Sawyer's award winners -- rather inexplicably, to my mind, it won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel. The central idea here is upload to robotic bodies. Are such new bodies "human", in a moral or legal sense? And what about the (in this book, still living) "original"? Who gets the property?
Jake Sullivan is a very rich man -- heir to a beer fortune. He is also ever guilty -- afraid he provoked his father's fatal stroke -- and every afraid -- because he shares the genetic malformation that actually led to his father's stroke. Thus he has spent his life afraid of commitment to other people. Then a new process becomes available: one can upload one's mind into a robotic body -- more of an android, really, capable of most things normal bodies can do, though not all (for example, sex: yes, but eating, pretty much no). It's very expensive. Most people who choose the option are quite old, but Jake jumps at it only in his 40s. The kicker is, the company doing the process requires that the "new" person, the android, inherit the identity of the "original", while the "original" is sent to the Moon, to live out what will presumably be a short life -- in conditions of luxury but isolation.
The new Jake quickly finds love, with Karen Bessarion, a fabulously successful novelist (think J. K. Rowling). But Karen soon has a problem -- her original body dies, and her son sues -- he argues that his mother is dead, and he has a right to inherit her estate. But of course the "new" Karen Bessarion feels she is the "real" Karen.
Jake himself represents the opposite side of the debate. His "original" decides he isn't happy stuck on the Moon, especially when a cure for his condition is found. He wants to reclaim is original life. But that would cause problems for the new Jake.
This is, let's be clear, a fascinating setup. And it could address some pretty interesting ideas. But Sawyer bungles the whole thing. Partly, he doesn't consider some fairly elementary dodges to avoid some of these legal problems -- the company offering the uploads could arrange to be paid essentially the entire fortune of the original, but hold it in some sort of trust to be dedicated to the support of the original for the rest of its life, and also to the support of the upload. I think such an arrangement would for the most part sidestep the problem of heirs. But more than that, the basic idea at the core is monstrous: the "original", Sawyer seems to think (or at least this book seems to think -- Sawyer may not necessarily hold these ideas) is really just so much worthless remnant garbage, kept alive in comfort for convenience's sake, but not really a person. My goodness, how horrifying! Of course these are still people! The book argues eloquently enough for the "humanity" of the uploads -- I'm fine with that -- but then totally dismisses any argument that the original is also still human.
Add to these issues some more general plot and character issues. I was never really convinced by Karen Bessarion's love affair with the new Jake (the old Jake was plausibly messed up, could the new Jake really be a better man so soon?). And the plot resolutions -- a hoary courtroom drama plus a thoroughly unconvincing violent standoff with a convenient conclusion -- just didn't work for me. Another frustrating outing from Sawyer.
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