Robert J. Sawyer

This was wretched. I read it because it's about mind-uploading, and I am co-teaching a class on that... but I will not be teaching this book. Let me take the time to explain.

The book has two concurrent ideas in play. One is that the main character, a designer of medical devices, is preoccupied with the idea that there's no definitive way of knowing when someone transitions between being alive and being dead. He invents an extremely discriminating device to map the brain, and using it on show more someone at the moment they die, detects what he dubs "the soulwave" leaving their body. This rocks the world: suddenly we know when people are alive and dead, we know what kind of life counts as alive and dead, and so on.  But once the device is invented and made public, this idea basically vanishes from the plot of the novel, and just becomes a background element; between chapters, we read news updates of how this is affecting society. But it never affects the story, it never even really affects our main character, who could have just easily been an inventor of a new type of soda pop, and the plot would have proceeded in exactly the same way. This seems to me to be one of the worst sorts of science fiction; it's a complete lack of imagination. Isaac Asimov says in Asimov on Science Fiction that in sociology-dominant sf, the author should come up with a society affected by a "what if—" and then "[t]he actual plot of the story, the suspense, the conflict, ought to arise—if this were a first-class story—out of the particular needs and frustrations of people in such a society" (p. 172). None of that is true here; Sawyer squanders his central idea. Interesting extrapolation in the background, but none in the foreground.

The other idea is that the main character sells his mind-scanning technology to an AI research firm. He asks if they can upload his consciousness into a computer... and they just do! Apparently all you have to do is scan the brain in order to have a working simulation of the brain. This seems like a huge leap to me. Like, being able to map where neurons are does not equate to being able to simulate how someone thinks! On top of this, the book acts like this is no big deal, and that no one will be interested in it! Even though the soulwave thing doesn't affect the plot at all, it does change the world. But the characters totally brush off the idea that anyone would even want to upload a brain. This surely has theological and philosophical repercussions even bigger than those of the soulwave. Where there was once one person, there are now four (they make three copies of the main character's brain). They call a press conference to announce the soulwave... but treat this advancement as if its old news. Again, it's a complete failure of imagination when it comes to worldbuilding. At one point they even go, "Oh, who would be interested in such technology anyway?" Like, everyone would!

The brain uploading stuff also reads as hugely improbable. Even though the technology was just invented, the AI researcher can just hit a couple buttons to rewrite the main character's personality. Of the three uploaded scans, one is edited to simulate how he would be if he was immortal, the other is edited to simulate how he would be without a physical self. And then all three selves can move themselves around because the original knows how directories work... I don't think that follows. Also, why don't they copy themselves if they are files? Somehow there's only one copy of each of the three versions. That a brain uploaded to a computer instantly becomes a super-hacker seems like something from a cheesy 1970s sci-fi film, not a supposedly serious 1990s near-future sf novel, but it's how the entire plot resolves; they stop the copy that goes evil by uploading the copy of a police officer's brain into the Internet to get him!

On top of all this, the prose reads like it was written by a tedious pedant. Utterly lifeless. This won the Nebula!?

(Not Sawyer's fault, but the way the book is dated by being written in the 1990s but set in 2011 is often hilarious. There's a bit that essentially goes, "He's taken over the entire Internet... AOL and CompuServe!" Well... maybe it is Sawyer's fault; his version of the future seems exactly like his present except that they have e-readers.) show less

I think this author is always at his most clever when he takes on American politics. The story begins with an assassination attempt on U.S. President Seth Jerrison. Ironically, the President was speaking about the need to combat increasing violence, which lately had included a series of bombs emitting widely-damaging electromagnetic pulses. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia had been destroyed, as had the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and the Willis Tower in Chicago.

After being shot, show more the president was rushed to surgery, but during the procedure, yet another bomb went off, this one destroying the White House. The electromagnetic pulse that followed the bomb interacted with some experimental hospital equipment in use. Most of the people in the hospital, including the President, were affected by the resulting “quantum entanglement,” which changed them in radical ways no one could have predicted.

Discussion: How can you not love Robert J. Sawyer? He has won fifty national and international awards for his fiction, and is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science fiction novel of the year. Additionally, he received an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Letters, honoris causa) from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. His books are witty, stimulating, and overwhelmingly convey a rosy view of life no matter how dire the circumstances.

The increase in terrorism is certainly dire, and is a development that has informed other works by Sawyer as well as this one. What is the right way to handle terrorism? Do you take an eye for an eye? Do you trust in the strategy of mutually assured destruction? Or is it possible that people can actually become committed – somehow - to mutually assured survival?

Sawyer maintains that science fiction is “ a literature of ideas,” embracing “science, philosophy, history, and ethics.” Certainly, his science fiction is! And although he is very into complicated ideas from the fields of neurobiology and physics, not to mention ethics and political theory, he writes in a way that is neither abstruse nor didactic. His approach is more like Goldilocks found the third bear to be: just right!

Evaluation: I so enjoy the imaginative flights Sawyer takes us on when he contemplates different realities. The plot in this book seems - to me - a bit more improbable than in some of his other books, but I might feel that way just because the author has such an optimistic, upbeat vision of the future! (I, as you may know, am more of a glass three-fourths empty type. Okay, seven-eighths.) Nevertheless, just because Sawyer is positive and a happy-seeming person doesn’t mean his conjectures are outlandish. He is an incredibly thought-provoking, entertaining writer who rarely disappoints! show less

Ah, the last book in this trilogy had a lot to live up to and it succeeded for the most part.

What can (or should) you do for an intelligent entity living in the World Wide Web who has been outed across the world? Take over? Declare peace? Be hunted, or be the hunter?

It is the Prisoner's Dilemma writ large with many iterations. And does Sawyer pull it off? A worldwide revolution?

Yes. But again, for the most part.

What's my complaint?

Yeah, well, that's my problem. Sawyer's political leanings show more and outlook is too close to my own to judge this as anything other than a "oh, wow, I really appreciate this" setup.

Do I believe in win/win scenarios and deep optimism? Yes. Do I believe in rational behavior, strong methods to bring about the best good for the most people? Yes. So I believe in mercy and understanding? Yes.

And that's kinda the thing. This novel is SO DAMN OPTIMISTIC and joyful to read, with all the conflicts arriving from the outside rather than from within, that I felt like I was reading a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Come on. Who here hasn't wished for some near-omnipotent being to come down to earth, kick the evildoers in their seat, and give the rest of us a means to take the power into our own hands?

Yeah, that's what I thought. :)

But then, look here at the title of this book. If that doesn't give it all away, I don't know what will.

And I REALLY DID ENJOY it. A lot. :) show less

Early in the Second World War Robert Oppenheimer is appointed to the role of director for the Manhattan Project, the push to build the atom bomb. Surrounded by the world's best physicists, many of who are European Jews, Oppenheimer is driven to build the bomb to defeat Hitler. When victory in Europe is achieved and Japan becomes the target he loses his enthusiasm for the project. Among the Manhattan Project team is Edward Teller who wants to go further and build a super bomb. Riven by show more tensions about the morality of nuclear weaponry, the team are stunned by the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Teller's research leads them to a further horrific discovery- within 90 years the sun will throw off a layer of atmosphere and obliterate the Earth. The physicists begin a new project, using the power of the atom bomb to save humanity.
This book just scraped a third star by virtue of what happened in the last few pages, which transformed it from a very turgid fictional account of the interactions between a host of Nobel physics laureates into a proper science fiction novel. Clearly it was well-researched and Sawyer had a strong understanding of the events around the Manhattan project and the characters of key players like Oppenheimer, Teller and Einstein, but it was so dull. I could have got the same story by reading Wikipedia. The twist at the end was good though and this could have been a much better novel if about half of the first three quarters (I make that 3/8) was removed and the ending extended. show less