Book Description
Word count: 5812. ... Read more

Book Description
When the 130,000-year-old bones of Peking Man were discovered in 1927 near Beijing, they were believed to be proof of the Missing Link, but the attempt to smuggle them away from the advancing Japanese in WWII ended in disaster beneath the Atlantic in 1941. Now, from central Europe, comes the true story of Peking Man and his evil roots back to the dawn of human civilization. Aurora Award Winner ... Read more

Book Description
Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids, the first volume of his bestselling Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, won the 2003 Hugo Award, and its sequel, Human, 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. "Mindscan is both a love story and a parable about the possibility of fixed beliefs in a world of constantly shifting morality and ethics. Sawyer keeps his very readable tale moving by rooting it all in characters who have just enough humanity to have conflicted and occasionally contradictory reactions to the new realities." -- Quill Quire This is Sawyer at his best: compelling characters, an intriguing and involving plot, and deep philosophic themes backed by credible scientific reasoning. Mindscan will resonate in your thoughts for a long time after you have closed the book. -- The Record A fascinating look into our collective tomorrow, Mindscan takes us on a witty and wise fast-forward to the year 2045Much like the socially aware science fiction of Vancouvers Spider Robinson, Sawyer works hard to bring a Canadian flavour to the sci-fi universe. -- Monday Magazine ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

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.

A Meeting of Minds
Mindscan (2005) is a stand-alone SF novel.Yet it represents an ongoing theme in the author's works (see The Terminal Experiment (1995) and Factoring Humanity (1998)).

In this novel, Jacob Sullivan was born into a very rich family.But he also has a genetic disorder, arteriovenous malformation, which had struck down his father, making him a vegetable.AVM has since dominated his lifestyle.He avoids all activities that would raise his blood pressure.And he also avoids becoming close to any women, for he sees how his father's condition affects his mother.

It was AVM that led him to the sales talk on Mindscan, a method of downloading the human mind into an artificial brain within a mechanical body.The pitch is presented by a man who has undergone the process.Immortex, the owner of the patents on the process, has set up a virtual paradise at High Eden, located in the Heaviside Crater on the Farside of the Moon, for the shed skins -- the biological copies -- to live out the rest of their lives;meanwhile, the mechanical copies eternally continue their Earthside existence.

Jake meets a woman named Karen Bessarian at the presentation, an author who intends to keep her copyrights active forever (or a reasonable semblance thereto).The mechanical Jake is attracted to the mechanical Karen and, after his human friends snub him, they begin hanging out together.Eventually, they become a couple.

In High Eden, the biological Jake learns that Pandit Chandragupta has devised a cure for AVM.Jake tries to convince the High Eden administrator to let him go to Earth for the cure, but Brian Hades refuses;Jake's contract with Immortex does not allow the biological copy to resume contact with his former acquaintances.Yet Hades does bring Chandragupta to High Eden for the operation.

On Earth, Jake tries to get along with Tyler Horowitz, Karen's son, but the relationship doesn't gel.Tyler even has problem with Karen herself.After the death of the biological Karen, Tyler sues to probate Karen's will.Karen and Jake consult Malcolm Draper, a civil rights attorney and another Mindscan, about the case and Malcolm suggests that his son and partner, Deshawn, take the case.

At High Eden, the biological Jake has neurotransmitter fluctuations in his brain after the surgery.Chandragupta recommends analgesics for the pain until the condition stabilizes.But Jake begins to distrust his medications and stops taking them.He even suspects the food that the High Eden staff is preparing for him.He becomes heavily paranoid.

In this story, the Karen Bessarian case is setting new precedents in the United States and the biological copy of Jake is doing much the same -- although illegally -- on the Moon.Moreover, the mechanical Jake is having mental conversations with other copies of his brain;apparently the quantum entanglement that allows the brains to be copied also continues to connect all copies of the artificial brains.Of course, the mechanical Jake is certain that his other copies are being used for some nefarious scheme.

This novel raises some interesting questions about the nature of consciousness.As the author states in the epilogue, consciousness was neglected for almost a century except by the novelists, who continued to use stream of consciousness as a literary style.Then recently cognitive studies became paramount within psychology and now almost every branch of philosophy, science and religion is speculating on the subject.

Highly recommended for Sawyer fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of exotic technology, human foibles, and a touch of romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Liberal Political/Scientific Junker
MINDSCAN(2005) starts off slow, and then hits a brick wall when the ultra-liberal politics and science takes over.

There is supposed to be a story about copying of human awareness to a machine, but the shallow characters and plot are lost in the backdrop of the left-of-AirAmerica Canadian politics, as masses of Americans are "fleeing" to Canada, where they can get legal hookers, drugs, suicide doctors, etc., all because of a "post-Buchanan administration" America.

Americans are also fleeing to Canada to escape GLOBAL WARMING, because in 2048 Toronto's climate is supposed to be balmy in the Winter (this is utter baloney, and not going to happen, folks).

When it comes to ultra-left SciFi Politics and Science, Mindscan is like the worst of Ben Bova and Allen Steele combined.Virtually nobody listens to AirAmerica, and virtually nobody should read Robert J. Sawyer... only died-in-the-wool America-Bashers and Global-Warming extremists will really be at home. ... Read more

Book Description
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are whisked into the year 2096 to solve the biggest mystery of all: if the universe should be teeming with life, where are the aliens? Story authorized by Dame Jean Conan Doyle. Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire Award Winner, HOMer Award Winner ... Read more

Book Description
It was time to end the war against the Altairians once and for all--that is, if the three fighter ships from Earth could reach their target... ... Read more

Book Description
Cholo, a dinosaurian astronomer, managed to save his race from the impact of the great asteroid. Or did he? ... Read more

Book Description
A serial murderer's consciousness is transferred into the mind of a Tyrannosaurus rex. But which of them was the greatest killer of all time? Arthur Ellis Award Winner, Aurora Award Winner, Seiun Award Nominee ... Read more

Book Description
Paleontologist David Ludlum thinks the frequent reports of alligators in the sewers of New York may be evidence of something much more dangerous ... and much, much older. ... Read more

Product Description
A partir de la visita de un alienígena a un museo de la ciencia, empieza una insólita investigación que pretende demostrar la existencia de Dios. El paleontólogo Tom. D. Jericó descarta, por principio, la intercesión divina en cualquier controversia científica, hasta el día en que le descubren un cáncer terminal y debe enfrentarse a su propia finitud. ¿Podrá entonces sostener sus tesis racionalistas sobre la inexistencia del Creador? / His new novel concerns the appearance at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto of a spiderlike alien paleontologist named Hollus. The alien has come to Earth to study the five great extinction events that have hit our planet over the eons, the best known being the asteroid collision that wiped out the dinosaurs. When the museum's head paleontologist, Tom Jericho, consults with the alien, he is shocked to discover that Hollus has proof that her own planet and that of another alien race suffered a similar series of five catastrophic events at virtually the same times as Earth did. ... Read more

Book Description

For years now, 40,000 readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been reveling in the adventures of Matt Hughes's Guth Bandar, the hero of this novel. Hughes is one of the top voices in modern SF, and this book has a huge audience waiting for it.

For 100,000 years, Old Earth's Institute for Historical Inquiry has mapped the collective unconscious of the human race. They have encountered all the archetypal figures - the Wise Man and the Fool, the Destroyer and the Redeemer - the "usual suspects" that populate the myths and legends at the back of the human mind.

And now young Guth Bandar suspects the collective unconscious has become aware of itself. Worse, it has an agenda. And worst of all, it can force Bandar to go deep into the darkest forests of the mind, where the only escape from madness is death.

"A fascinating premise. There is interest for the reader here on several levels: in following Guth Bandar's adventures, in the various archetypical personality types he encounters, in his reflections on the more philosophical questions of the nature of consciousness. In The Commons, Hughes has created a universe with particularly fertile prospects for speculative activity."
-- Tangent

"Irresistibly good reading."
-- Booklist on Black Brillion

"Hughes's boldness is admirable."
-- The New York Review of Science Fiction ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a new perspective
This book contains a number of stories which were originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, some of which were also collected in the book "The Gist Hunter."In the later part of the book there is a story which shows the events and plots told in Hughes's book, "Black Brillion" from a new perspective: the viewpoint character in "The Commons" meets the viewpoint characters from "Black Brillion" in an episode told in the latter book, and experiences many of the same events as them.

However, while the plot and events have a lot in common, the parts played by the various characters and their knowledge of what it all means are quite different.The story, if you will, is different because the protagonists portray different people with different histories and different futures.

The approach Matthew Hughes takes here is clearly not to everyone's taste, but I found it entertaining and very worthwhile reading.If all you care about is the twisting and turning of the plot or new and shiny plot coupons, read "Black Brillion" and perhaps leave "The Commons" aside.If character and story beyond plot are the reason you read, or even if you just love Hughes's Jack-Vance-informed writing style, read both for maximum enjoyment. ... Read more

Amazon.com
This is a libertarianist anthology of (mostly) original stories that, depending on your tastes, can be too narrowly focused or wonderfully concentrated. The "Free Space" in the title is just that: a loose federation of space habitats that has no central government. Free enterprise rules, and the editors let 20 authors ranging from William F. Buckley Jr. to William F. Wu have their way with it. The result is mixed, but on the whole successful, and it definitely makes for interesting reading. Several of the writers are winners of the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Award.Book Description
These are stories of the men and women of this new Free Space era, visions of adventure, social speculations, and downright arguments about freedom and responsibility. Free Space fiction, from Hugo and Nebula Award winners such as Poul Anderson, Gregory Benford, and Robert J. Sawyer, and particularly from winners of the Prometheus Award of the Libertarian Futurist Society, such as Victor Koman, Daffyd ab Hugh, and L. Neil Smith. Free Space is a big, rich, varied compendium of politically-engaged science fiction adventure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Not Free SF Reader
This anthology shows that good libertarian SF stories written by Prometheus award winners are pretty thin on the ground. A very ordinary collection. Don't get it unless you are super-keen on the theme.

Free Space : Crisis in Space - William F. Buckley Jr.
Free Space : Nerfworld - Dafydd ab Hugh
Free Space : Day of Atonement - J. Neil Schulman
Free Space : No Market for Justice - Brad Linaweaver
Free Space : Kwan Tingui - William F. Wu
Free Space : Madam Butterfly - James P. Hogan
Free Space : Early Bird - Gregory Benford
Free Space : Tyranny - Poul Anderson
Free Space : The Killing of Davis-Davis - Peter Crowther
Free Space : Demokratus - Victor Koman
Free Space : The Hand You're Dealt - Robert J. Sawyer
Free Space : If Pigs Had Wings - William Alan Ritch
Free Space : A Matter of Certainty - L. Neil Smith
Free Space : Planet in the Balance - John DeChancie
Free Space : The Performance of a Lifetime - Arthur Byron Cover
Free Space : The Last Holosong of Christopher Lightning - Jared Lobdell
Free Space : Between Shepherds and Kings - John Barnes


Soyuz defection

3 out of 5


Laser launch job.

3.5 out of 5


Jewish Liberation hologram revelation.

3.5 out of 5


Departure diatribe.

2 out of 5


Family explanation.

2.5 out of 5


Asteroid bootleggers blinded.

3 out of 5


Repayment refly refry risk.

4 out of 5


Freedom infiltration.

3 out of 5


Bridge redeal time.

3 out of 5


Groundhog day vote.

4 out of 5


Copshop finds incest foretold.

3.5 out of 5


Reading escape.

3 out of 5


War reasons.

2.5 out of 5


Terraforming, nanoforming, don't think so.

3 out of 5


Disease execution.

3 out of 5


Ship war.

2 out of 5


Writing problems.

3 out of 5

Not just a book of libertarian stories...
This is a book of some of the BEST Sci-Fi stories ever.With such authors as Poul Anderson, James P. Hogan, Ray Bradbury, Gregory Benford, L. Neil Smith and Dafydd ab Hugh you can't lose.The stories don't just focus on freedoms and rights, but also deal with time travel, murder and some are in the form of poems.So, come, visit Free Space and enjoy the future of mankind.Just make sure to leave your hang-ups behind and bring lots of money!

Thanks for holding out!
This book combines two things I really love:short stories and science fiction...with an added bonus - libertarian themes!Stephen King once said that if novels are like long romances, then short stories are like a briefkiss.'Free Space' gives you tongue. ... Read more

Book Description
Harold Bloom is one of the most influential-and controversial-of contemporary Shakespeare critics. These essays examine the sources and impact of his Shakespearean criticism. Through focused and sustained study of this writer as literary icon and his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, the essays address a wide range of issues, from the cultural role of Shakespeare to the ethics of literary theory and criticism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Bloom still controversial

This anthology was recommended to me by someone who loved Bloom's huge
book Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human. The recommender hadn't
read it, but thought it would be a celebration of Bloom.It partly is, but mostly
it takes up the controversy over Bloom's role in the literary reception of Shakespeare over the last twenty years.Most of the essays are very readable and enjoyable. Particularly good are essays by Hawkes, Fahmi, Desmet, and Charnes. Linda
Charnes' concluding essay "The Two Percent Solution: what Harold Bloom forgot" is
a knockout, a tour de force on what's wrong, and right, with Bloom, and with literary criticism in general these days.Anyone interested in the controversy over Bloom and the Bard would greatly enjoy reading through the essays in this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This book is NOT by Robert J. Sawyer.
He wrote the forward.It's one page long.The rest of the book is by F. P. Grove.Imagine my disappointment in finding out that the "co-author" who I purchased the book for really had nothing to do with the writing of the novel.

Despite all of the mentions of his name on the page, he did not write this book.

Not what I was looking for, but interesting
OK.This is not the book I was looking for...which is too bad since I really wanted the "other" Consider Her Ways, but this was an interesting read nonetheless.

An epic satirical adventure - Ants will never be the same!
This tale of an expedition of Venezuelan ants north into America (they end up in NY) is breathtaking. Physiological and social ant-info abound but these details merely back up the gripping story. With ferocious battles, double-crosses and these bizarre humans everywhere (still seen as inferiour to our protagonist) I couldn't put this down.
Several scenes in the film 'Antz' must have been lifted straight from this classic. ... Read more

Book Description
Mendelia Space Station is supposed to be a utopia, so when Detective Toby Korsakov is called in to investigate the murder of a genetics counselor, he's quite surprised. But there are more shocks to come as his investigation leads him toward a chilling conclusion. Aurora Award Nominee, Arthur Ellis Award Nominee, Hugo Award Nominee, Locus Poll Award Nominee, SF Chronicle Poll Winner ... Read more

Book Description
A cosmonaut commits suicide aboard the Russian space station Mir, and the Space Shuttle Discovery is sent to retrieve the body. But astronaut Paul Rackham finds something besides a corpse waiting for him inside Mir. HOMer Award Winner ... Read more

Book Description
An alien scout craft crashes in northern Ontario, and the pilot is dying. Can a small group of humans who've never seen an alien before save the life of the pilot? ... Read more