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178th out of 205 books
—
1,330 voters
Mindscan
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: h
...more
Jake Sullivan has cheated death: h
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
April 1st 2005
by Tor Books
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I've read several of Robert Sawyer's SF novels, and they have all been consistently entertaining and thought-provoking. This novel is set in 2045, at a time when it has become possible to scan and store one's brain into a new, virtually indestructable android body.
Sawyer thoroughly explores the social and scientific implications of this development, following two characters: a novelist facing the physical frustrations of old age and a man in his late 30s who is genetically prone to strokes. The...more
Sawyer thoroughly explores the social and scientific implications of this development, following two characters: a novelist facing the physical frustrations of old age and a man in his late 30s who is genetically prone to strokes. The...more
Jake Sullivan has a hereditary, potentially terminal disease. He lives his life in a state of utmost care so as not to trigger it, and knows that he, like his father, will probably die a young man. So when he hears about a new process, called mindscanning, he is intrigued. Immortex claims to be able to make a scan of your brain and duplicate your mind in an artificial body. The new body, the new you, will become the primary you, while the old you will live out the rest of your days in a luxury r...more
Put yourself in the following situation: You are a young person in the prime of your life when you are told that you are terminally ill. You will be able to spend the rest of your life in peace and quiet provided you agree to live on the moon while your clone replaces you at work (you are a productive person after all). While on the moon colony for the terminally ill, you find out that the disease you have has been cured, but the clone refuses to give up what he has on Earth and the rules forbid...more
This science fiction plot was interesting, the idea of replicating a human mind and putting it into a fabricated body to allow people to live "forever". In this case the service of this replicating has been marketed to those with physical ailments or the genetics that determine that they will eventually have certain ailments. The main character Jake Sullivan is afraid of succumbing to the illness that made his father a vegetable and has lived his life afraid to make commitments and enter relatio...more
I haven't read much of Sawyer's work, but what I have has always been very well written, and this is no exception. I found myself giving up on it after only a few chapters though, because of what to me is fatal flaw in the central concept he actually raises himself but then proceeds to ignore.
The protagonist, who has a congenital condition which leaves him vulnerable to aneurysm, decides to take advantage of new technology which will scan his brain and enable his personality and memories to be i...more
The protagonist, who has a congenital condition which leaves him vulnerable to aneurysm, decides to take advantage of new technology which will scan his brain and enable his personality and memories to be i...more
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,
...more
“You know,” said Sugiyama, “there used to be a lot of debate about this, but it’s all evaporated in the last few years. The simplest interpretation turned out to be the correct one: the human mind is nothing but software running on the hardware we call the brain. Well, when your old computer hardware wears out, you don’t think twice about junking it, buying a new machine, and reloading all your old software. What we at Immortex do is the same: the software that is you starts running on a new, be...more
Mindscan is one of those books heavy on ideas, well-plotted, but not written as well as it deserves to be.
so here's this guy, with a potentially fatal disease. there's no cure. all he can do, if he wants to live, is get his mind uploaded into an android body and let his "real" one go live out its span on the moon (where there's no legal jurisdiction). so he does.
complications ensue.
the problem with this book is not that the complications are not believable; they are, Sawyer is quite good enough...more
so here's this guy, with a potentially fatal disease. there's no cure. all he can do, if he wants to live, is get his mind uploaded into an android body and let his "real" one go live out its span on the moon (where there's no legal jurisdiction). so he does.
complications ensue.
the problem with this book is not that the complications are not believable; they are, Sawyer is quite good enough...more
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"Another good read by one of my favorite SF authors. In book after book, Sawyer manages to explore big questions while crafting characters you care about and keeping the story moving at an interesting pace."
This quote from my review of Rollback is also true of Mindscan. While these two books have some overlapping issues and themes, Mindscan goes deeper into concepts of consciousness and personhood. The trial proceedings are the device for bringing up scientific, philosophical, religious, and le...more
This quote from my review of Rollback is also true of Mindscan. While these two books have some overlapping issues and themes, Mindscan goes deeper into concepts of consciousness and personhood. The trial proceedings are the device for bringing up scientific, philosophical, religious, and le...more
Every time I read a Robert Sawyer book I always wonder the same thing: what kind of amazing novel would come out of a collaboration between Sawyer, who has great ideas about theme and plot, and another writer, who can write good characters and dialogue? Yes, Mindscan kept me reading: the premise is compelling and thought provoking. But like so many of Sawyer's novels, it's full of ham-handed author intrusion. The characters are so obviously loaded down with the pet peeves, knowledge and thoughts...more
In Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer, Jake Sullivan lives with the knowledge that he has the same rare, hereditary disease that resulted in his father's long time vegetative state. He feels doomed until he discovers with his hereditary wealth he can be mindscanned, a process where his entire brain is scanned and downloaded into a technologically superior mechanical body that doesn't breathe, eat, or sleep and is theoretically immortal. The process, however, results in two Jake Sullivans.
While the fl...more
While the fl...more
Mindscan is the story of a legal battle to establish whether a copied consciousness, transferred to a robot body, can be considered the same person as the biological original. It is also my least favorite Robert J. Sawyer book that I have read thus far.
One thing I did like--The book is always from the perspective of Jake, but it alternates between biological Jake and new artificial Jake. They both have goals, and they are mutually exclusive. It's an interesting back and forth with the reader's s...more
One thing I did like--The book is always from the perspective of Jake, but it alternates between biological Jake and new artificial Jake. They both have goals, and they are mutually exclusive. It's an interesting back and forth with the reader's s...more
What happened to Calculating God happened to this book as well. Sawyer tried to build a story around some complex questions, and the only way he could was to have characters flat out ask them.
The basic premise of the story is illogical. Why the hell would anybody agree to copy their mind into a robotic body when they know it’ll be the robot that gets to be immortal and not them!? Nothing will change for them; they’ll still be in their aging, frail bodies, so this procedure does nothing to help t...more
The basic premise of the story is illogical. Why the hell would anybody agree to copy their mind into a robotic body when they know it’ll be the robot that gets to be immortal and not them!? Nothing will change for them; they’ll still be in their aging, frail bodies, so this procedure does nothing to help t...more
This book reminds me of works by Phillip Dick or Arthur Clark. It's presentation is sort of in line with older science fiction. The hero has an inoperable AVM so he elects to have a mindscan procedure: his mind is scanned to the smallest particle and rescanned into in an android body. The original person is then sent to live out his days on the moon. Both Jake Sullivans are initially happy with the decision; however, the situation changes when the original Jake finds a surgeon who is able to cor...more
Another RJS book, another set of ethical and ideological circumstances to explore.
Like all of his books I've read, he begins by putting his politics and "beliefs" out there, along with the storyline. Read too many of his books too close together - as I've done - and that part gets a bit tedious. Nothing else does, however.
Like all of his books, this one is part scifi, though that's not the main focus. The scifi slant is the "uploading" of human minds to robot bodies. The rest of the book is a...more
Like all of his books I've read, he begins by putting his politics and "beliefs" out there, along with the storyline. Read too many of his books too close together - as I've done - and that part gets a bit tedious. Nothing else does, however.
Like all of his books, this one is part scifi, though that's not the main focus. The scifi slant is the "uploading" of human minds to robot bodies. The rest of the book is a...more
I really liked how the ethics of personhood were incorporated into this story. Here we have a story, of complex philosophical and scientific concepts, yet portrayed in such simplistic a manner as to positively stun one. What is it to be a person, that is the question this book asks. I won't give away the answer to that question of course.
I was disappointed with the 2 page epilogue. It was unconvincing, unrealistic, unbelievable, and felt half cocked. It didn't mesh well for me with the over all...more
I was disappointed with the 2 page epilogue. It was unconvincing, unrealistic, unbelievable, and felt half cocked. It didn't mesh well for me with the over all...more
Is it possible to be both nostalgic and excited about the future at the same time? The more of Sawyer's books, the more I find my self in that peculiar mind state. Sawyer's writing style, clarity of prose, humour and ability to make the advancements of technology seem perfectly ordinary and part of daya to day life make me nostalgic for those days of first discovering Heinlein, Asimov, Pohl and the other masters from the golden age. The settings, extrapolations and conflcits experienced by the m...more
An interesting premise: what if you could upload your complete mental makeup (consciousness, memories, etc.) into an immortal body. You still exist, but there is another entity that thinks like you, has all of your memories, beliefs, etc. Which is you? Both, just one? If the real you dies, what happens to your estate, etc. This story raises and discusses these questions. I found the discussions interesting and thought provoking, but the story itself was not interesting nor was it convincing. Non...more
Mindscan is certainly better than Rollback. In what way, you may ask. Rollback was scattered, possibly due to it's periodical nature. But Mindscan reads more like a novel, coherent story line tracking etc. I sadly found the prologue to be a bit cheesy. Sawyer was obviously trying to point back to Heinlein, but was almost too in your face political about it. Of course, a prologue is an after thought, but his mention of the "special marriage/special person" Mars colony was very disconnected from t...more
This one is a favorite of mine because it includes a fictional version of my publisher, Brian Hades. Rob portrays an interesting legal take on the immortality-via-download issue in it. His sympathies lie with the mindscan versions of the protagonists, but he portrays the shed flesh versions well enough the skeptical can sympathize with them. I am not sure, myself, that we ought to perpetuate our egos in ageless machinery. Or, rather, that we would still be interested in human things if we take t...more
the idea of replacing the human consciousness into a body of an indestructible cyborg raises some questions. Since the human body itself goes through a whole lot of replacement naturally; the blood cells get replaced every 24 hours, skin cells die, drop off and get replaced by the lower dermis, bone cells get replaced when a fracture occurs, milk teeth drop and get replaced by adult teeth, hair, nails…So what is the big issue about replacing the entire human consciousness and uploading it into a...more
This book has some similarities to The Positronic Man by Asimov and Silverberg. A construct with the copy of the brainstructure, the mindscan, of a real person goes to court to get her personhood recognised. The use of a copy is also the way around AI, in the mid 21st century we still have no idea as how to create this.
Although the questions are important in an ethical and philosophical sense, the plot isn't too sophisticated.
Although the questions are important in an ethical and philosophical sense, the plot isn't too sophisticated.
Gostei muito deste livro, não tem um enredo muito profundo mas esta obra oferece muito mais do que um mero enredo, o livro toca profundamente naquilo que nós definimos hoje como é ser humano, e o que nos define como tal. A história ocorre no futuro quando é possível transplantar a nossa consciência e toda a informação existente no nosso cérebro num andróide, que vai ocupar o nosso lugar na sociedade, enquanto o original vai se reformar numa instância lunar até a sua morte, neste caso Jake um hom...more
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, some...more
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, some...more
Sawyer siempre tiene historias interesantes que contar, y esta es la prueba. En este caso se trata de trasladarse a un probable (y más que posible) futuro cercano, más concretamente al año 2045, en el que una empresa canadiense, Inmortex, ha logrado lo que parecía imposible: copiar la conciencia de un ser humano para trasladarla a un cerebro de nanogel, que a su vez está acoplado a un cuerpo sintético, pero que posee toda la movilidad de un cuerpo normal. Esta tecnología, llamada mindscan, sólo...more
The setting will really connect for Canadians, love Toronto for a good Sci Fi thriller but I never bought the premise that an reproduction of consciousness would be a good replacement for a human. Didn't think a human would buy in to reproducing themselves in this way and paying big bucks to shuffle off to the moon, although the idea amused me. Loved the pokes at copyright law and the idea than an author wanted to live forever in order to keep their copyright, too funny. Lots of good ideas.
I have to say that this is one of my favourite sci-fi reads in a long time. Sawyer is pretty good at finding a plausible idea and running with it. His characters are believable and easy to imagine. Despite some of RJS's other works that I was less than impressed with, this one was magnificent. The only reason it gets 4/5 instead of 5/5 is that I didn't have the compelling urge to reread this book since I've finished it 2 years ago.
Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good sci-fi novel.
Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good sci-fi novel.
Mindscan is the latest from Mississauga author Robert J. Sawyer, and continues with his tradition of using cutting-edge science to deal with contemporary moral issues.[return]Telling the story of a near-future where a process is discovered that can 'scan' a person's brain and download a perfect copy of it into an artificial body. The artificial body then takes over the person's life, and the 'shed skin' of the original person is sent off to a retirement community on the far side of the moon.[ret...more
A positive book about life and computer uploads.
The first book I had ever read by Sawyer, Mindscan, the title, says it all.
The science of scanning and uploading a mind into a computer is discovered
but not perfected. The book deals with the concept of synthetic
intelligences running through computer systems, and a murderer on the
loose. Won't give any more away, but it's a very good offering by this
Canadian Science Fiction writer.
The first book I had ever read by Sawyer, Mindscan, the title, says it all.
The science of scanning and uploading a mind into a computer is discovered
but not perfected. The book deals with the concept of synthetic
intelligences running through computer systems, and a murderer on the
loose. Won't give any more away, but it's a very good offering by this
Canadian Science Fiction writer.
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Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in...more
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