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Bug Life Chronicles
Science fiction paperback book is Baen original by Philip C. Jennings-Bug Life Chronicles.
- GenresScience Fiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 4, 2023
2019 reread notes:
In brief, not as good as I recalled. I'd forgotten this is actually a collection of linked short stories. TOC & such here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3...
--and here's what the SF Encyclopedia has to say about Jennings, http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Excerpts: These stories describe "our solar system dominated by "bugs" – personalities in electronic storage." This technology has gotten so easy and cheap that it's easy to commit a "felony" -- as happens to the MC in the lead story -- & lose your self to the govt -- which then resells it to the highest bidder, or the judge's pals. There is, as the saying goes, "potential for abuse."
So: it sounds good, but the first couple of stories are pretty crude on reread. SFE continues: "Jennings's exuberance is intermittently chaotic." Yup. They say his later stories get better, but they remain uncollected. So: I may reread a few more, or maybe not. Dropped to a weak 3 stars, for now.
In brief, not as good as I recalled. I'd forgotten this is actually a collection of linked short stories. TOC & such here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3...
--and here's what the SF Encyclopedia has to say about Jennings, http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Excerpts: These stories describe "our solar system dominated by "bugs" – personalities in electronic storage." This technology has gotten so easy and cheap that it's easy to commit a "felony" -- as happens to the MC in the lead story -- & lose your self to the govt -- which then resells it to the highest bidder, or the judge's pals. There is, as the saying goes, "potential for abuse."
So: it sounds good, but the first couple of stories are pretty crude on reread. SFE continues: "Jennings's exuberance is intermittently chaotic." Yup. They say his later stories get better, but they remain uncollected. So: I may reread a few more, or maybe not. Dropped to a weak 3 stars, for now.
December 28, 2015
interesting concept, new to me at the time. My first introduction to nanotech.
April 27, 2025
Possibly try again later, but most of these are striking me wrong. It seems the author has IDEAS. He wants to do thought experiment stories, but the lead-ins are flawed (to me) so that situations and actions (therefore the story itself) just don't seem plausible.
December 25, 2020
This book is a collection of short stories of a future earth. The stories revolve around the main theme of the human conscious being down-loaded into a hard drive ( sometimes with legs, hence the term bug in the title ) to live on in various fashions. In time some of these bugs can be down-loaded back into a human body. But, with more people getting down-loaded ( then shelved in hard drive form ) and less bodies available for stored "people" the stories start to take convoluted paths. 5 out of the 15 short stories where worth reading, the rest should have been left out. All in all there are many other short story collections out there well worth reading. Larry Niven is the first to come to mind. Try one of his books before you buy this one
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews