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Mindclone: When you're a brain without a body, can you still be called human?

David T. Wolf (Goodreads Author),

Larry Gilmour (Illustrations)

4.20 · Rating details · 35 ratings · 17 reviews

Mindclone asks the question, What if you had your brain scanned and all your memories and your entire persona were uploaded to a digital version of yourself? How would you and your Mindclone get along? How would your Mindclone feel about the fact that he has all your memories and desires--including a desire for your hot new girlfriend--but no physical body to act on them? ...more

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Paperback, 328 pages

Published March 16th 2013 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (first published March 7th 2013)

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Dec 27, 2014 Richard Bunning rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

There aren't too many science fiction books that are quite so positive about near future sciences that may well allow the 'cloning' of the human mind. I got the strong impression that Wolf is contemplating/dreaming a life for himself as an artificial intelligence when his body gives up the ghost, the 'soul'. We see the dream of a 'heaven', a life beyond the disposal of our corpses, a continued existence in the digital world. We see Wolf's hopes for adding the other senses, than just easily achie There aren't too many science fiction books that are quite so positive about near future sciences that may well allow the 'cloning' of the human mind. I got the strong impression that Wolf is contemplating/dreaming a life for himself as an artificial intelligence when his body gives up the ghost, the 'soul'. We see the dream of a 'heaven', a life beyond the disposal of our corpses, a continued existence in the digital world. We see Wolf's hopes for adding the other senses, than just easily achievable hearing and sight; namely touch, sensation, sentient feeling to his future non-biological self. He guards against the evil inside us all by allowing the earliest freed mind, his Adam, to set strong moral parameters to all future behaviour patterns. Wolf seems to be considering his own moral architecture as the ideal, as seen in the many personal 'political' imperatives he works into the plot.
The book comes through to me as being deeply unreligious, though certainly not anti-religion. A conventional belief in the afterlife isn't excluded. Mindclone simply 'invents' an electronic heaven between the life here and the future ones expounded by 'church'. So really, this isn't the sort of SF that might cause religious offence, even though it envisages the construction of artificial 'soul' as one answer to our prayers.
The science fiction is top notch, truly Asimovian, but as with most such serious SF it isn't the sort of book that is dynamically exciting. Ideas, the excitement of science, and scientific philosophy, are more important to Wolf than emotionally manipulating of the reader. Many modern readers seem addicted to tension and attack books that fail to offer constant adrenal punches. In this book, excitement is generated by opening up ideas, through challenging us to make use of our own minds to think through the implications behind this someday, soon plausible, plot. We are led to explore jealousy, love, hate, pain, and everything else that makes us human. These feelings are essential to the building of personality, us, into any truly 'humanitarian' artificial intelligence. Also to an 'evil' intelligence, of course!
The quality of the writing is as high as the quality of Wolf's ideas. I am critical of the failure to make the most of the conspiracies within the plot, because the better employment of these elements would have made this an even better book. The villain was as clichéd and unsatisfactory as the hero was original and substantive. Perhaps Wolf is too frightened of his future upload becoming the victim of the evil in mankind to make the villain truly diabolic, powerful and likely to succeed.
This book is interesting, creative, intelligent, engaging, well-worth my time. Wolf is here very positive about near future developments in the non-biological reproduction of biological self. This individual, the biological me, found this book to be stimulating rather than exciting. ...more

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Mar 24, 2014 Angelo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sci-Fi at its best. And a wild ride across several fields, Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Philosophy, Stock Market, Music, and so on...
I already had this book on my long list of books to be read. Luckily, someone in one of my book clubs was already reading it, and told me that she was really enjoying the story, and highly recommended it. So I moved it up on my list. Bought the book. And I started reading it. Bottom line, I have been reading it every day ever since, non-stop. Well, except ...more

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Jun 20, 2016 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Mindclone is possibly the best independently published SF novel that I have ever read. The author's meticulous research into the field of Artificial Intelligence and his witty, accessible writing style made it a page turner that I was sorry to see end. As a neuroscientist who spent most of her time in biotech working in the damp and messy world of biological neurons, I had always tended to dismiss talk and writing about the “singularity”—the idea that the human brain, and its consciousness, coul Mindclone is possibly the best independently published SF novel that I have ever read. The author's meticulous research into the field of Artificial Intelligence and his witty, accessible writing style made it a page turner that I was sorry to see end. As a neuroscientist who spent most of her time in biotech working in the damp and messy world of biological neurons, I had always tended to dismiss talk and writing about the “singularity”—the idea that the human brain, and its consciousness, could be neatly downloaded into a computer—as woo, wishful thinking, or scientism. But now I think if such a thing were to happen, David J. Wolf provides a plausible path forward. He understands and describes realistically the economic, scientific, and human forces that would drive this sort of wish-fulfillment to fruition.

I also found his description of the awakening of the computer consciousness—the Mindclone—to be both intriguing and poignant, evoking both Henry James and Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Wolf gleefully turns the overused fictional trope of the narrator awakening from a dream into something both emotionally moving and necessary to the plot. The two main human characters, Marc Gregorio and Molly Shaeffer, are also perfectly drawn to the last detail, both physical and mental. They are both San Francisco Bay Area high achievers and simultaneously realistic flawed human beings, able to hurt each other without being able to help it.

I am peripherally in the classical music world and I know a number of cellists, and I really appreciated the insights the author brought to the character of Molly, a professional free-lance cello player. She was plausible, and relatable, as a modern-day former classical prodigy-turned-working-freelance-musician. I also, as a hetero, cis woman, and sometime reader of romance fiction, found it interesting to read about the courtship of Molly from not one, but two, male perspectives (one human, one almost human). This novel is almost a conventional romance, but the author takes it in unexpected directions and lets us know in detail what the male half of the couple is thinking, something a reader rarely sees in the traditional genre.

I would highly recommend this book, so why didn’t I give it 5 stars? There are two reasons, both of which are philosophical and idiosyncratic, having more to do with me and my worldview than with the book itself. The first is that I think the ending is too happy. While part of me wanted everything to work out for these characters, another part of me, the part that cried after reading a Tale of Two Cities and Flowers for Algernon (the latter of which this book, at its best, evokes), wanted something more elegiac. But instead, I came away from the book thinking that these privileged characters manage to have their cake and eat it too—with ice cream and a cherry on top. In Wolf’s universe, there is everything to be gained, and nothing to be lost, from developing Mindclone technology, and developing it as quickly and efficiently as possible. While this is refreshing on one hand, especially in this era of almost endlessly dystopian SF; on the other hand, it struck me as a technical solution that was too easy and pat. In particular, I wanted to know, what would the Superhacker Vigilante do about human trafficking? About poverty, war, and racism? About climate change and the fate of the earth itself? Could any of this really be solved by a handful of well placed emails?

Also, personally, I found Adam the Mindclone's attitude towards women and sex to be a little frustrating, due to his way of his seeing and describing women and sex in simple and rather juvenile terms. For example, on several occasions, Adam expresses frustration with being “dickless” and with not having a cock. In fact, the way Adam is written, it seems as if this is his main problem with being a computer simulation. On many other subjects, Adam is a profound and poetic thinker, but on this one, the best he can come up with is to lament his lack of a penis, using teenage slang words. I was indeed happy for Adam at the end, when his inventors came up with a way to give him a sense of touch, but I could have done without the wink-wink-nudge-nudge idea that the new sense of touch came at the hands of a blonde bombshell girlfriend.

My other, related, issue with this book was with the psychological healing that Marc and Molly received. Both human characters were struggling with inner demons from the past, the products of a combination of bad luck and bad individual choices. These situations had left them both wary and sad, walking wounded who were not able to be fully honest and present in relationship with each other. This dynamic was portrayed realistically and almost painfully at times, and provided the necessary obstacles to the fulfillment of the romance plot. The solution for each character came in remembering, confronting, and confessing the events of the past, after which, a blissfully happy future awaited them in each others’ arms.

While I think this idea of individual redemption and forgiveness could in theory have great emotional power, here it also struck me as too quick, easy, and pat. In particular, I found Molly’s situation and reaction to be unrealistic and even a bit misogynistic. I understand and sympathize that Molly would have feelings of guilt and remorse about her sexual relationship with an older, married male teacher and the abortion that ensued, but the idea that Molly would be held fully responsible, 13 years later, for something she did at age 15, while not even giving her adult partner his 50% share in the sorry outcome, is very unfair to both females (by casting a 15-year-old girl in the role of dangerous, evil, unstoppable temptress) and males (by casting a mature adult man in the role of helpless victim, lacking in both agency and moral compass). While Marc’s eventual forgiveness and generosity of spirit towards Molly do him some honor, he doesn’t question the basic narrative that only Molly the woman, and not her male former teacher/lover, is fully responsible for their suffering. In that sense, he doesn’t have appeared to have learned much from his own epiphany about his mother’s grief and its role in shaping both their lives—in spite of the fact that we are told that remembering it at Adam’s behest made him feel so much “lighter."

These may be quibbles, with which other readers are likely to disagree. I commend the author for taking on such topics in the first place. I wish he could have given his creation, Adam, a truly global reach and significance, whether in life or in death. Instead, in my opinion, he unwittingly bumps up against the limits of his subject matter and the individualistic worldview that it implies: the idea that society will be made better simply by making better individuals, whether by downloading them and giving them the cognitive powers of a supercomputer or by healing them with psychotherapy. In this book’s universe there is no possibility for something more than Flaubert's halting, imperfect, dancing-bear-drum of communication via the senses, and no sense that this could be seen as a tragedy, still unable to move the stars to pity. ...more

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Sep 22, 2017 The Time Traveler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Forgettable

Unfortunately the Author choose to focus on love interests more than a page turning Thriller.

I also would have liked a broader timeline of events and a more encompassing world for the reader.

The author limited the advancement of technology and the repercussions on society.

Worth reading but keep your expectations to nothing more than a good read (like reading the newspaper in the morning).

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Dec 28, 2019 Brandon McNulty rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Black Mirror meets Michael Crichton

Loved this book. It's equal parts philosophy and emotion, with plenty of suspense to drive it from start to finish. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. ...more

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Jan 04, 2015 Hazen Wardle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Artificial Intelligence or The Singularity?
Science writer and author Marc Gregorio finds himself in a unique situation, but more on that shortly. Marc tends to get wrapped up in his work, and relationships with his girlfriends suffer as a result. Three successful books and three lost relationships later Marc has come to the understanding that he will probably never be successful at both, and he seems ok with that, until one day he meets two people at social party who will forever change his life Artificial Intelligence or The Singularity?
Science writer and author Marc Gregorio finds himself in a unique situation, but more on that shortly. Marc tends to get wrapped up in his work, and relationships with his girlfriends suffer as a result. Three successful books and three lost relationships later Marc has come to the understanding that he will probably never be successful at both, and he seems ok with that, until one day he meets two people at social party who will forever change his life. The first is Molly, a wild-haired cello playing free spirit. The second is Dr. Kornfeld, a brilliant scientist who Marc tends to shy away from due to his tendencies to be on the fringes of mainstream science.
Molly flirts her way in and out of Marc’s life, and he is not sure if he wants to get wrapped up in another relationship, but there is something about her that he just can’t take his mind off of. He is just never quite sure how to read her.
Dr. Kornfeld invites Marc to his lab, and Marc takes it as an opportunity to write another article, though under strict warning from the doctor that it may be months, if not years before he can ever publish whatever article it is he may write. By the end of the visit Marc knows he had much more than just an article. He will have a full fledged book as he ends up with much more than that when one of twelve volunteers becomes unavailable for an experimental brain scan. Marc offers himself up as the twelfth volunteer with the idea participating will add just that extra perspective his article will need.
Six weeks after the visit to the lab, Marc is invited back to the lab, only to be greeted by a digital clone of himself.

Marc’s clone knows everything Marc knows, up to six weeks prior. From that point on the two have diverged, and though they think alike, have become two different people. The clone even thinks about Molly and wishes for a relationship with her.
The questions remain: 1) Is Molly truly interested in Marc? And 2) Is his clone, who has taken on the name Adam, truly ‘alive’? He’s stored inside a computer, so is he Artificial Intelligence, or is he the fabled Singularity, the next evolutionary step for man?

David Wolf has created a scenario for the perfect storm, for ushering in the digital age. Just think what it would mean if you too, could upload your mind and leave your body behind.

**warning. Some language and adult content, though nothing graphic or gratuitous. ...more

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Jun 19, 2013 Caminsky rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, speculative

I want to give this book 3.5 stars due to its shortcomings, but I am willing to go with 4 because the premise is great and it was executed fairly well. I have been fascinated by the subject of "mind uploading" for a while now, and I feel that this book does a great job portraying what the early days of this technology (if it ever exists) would be like. However, the book is not without its flaws.

First and foremost, the book can be quite cheesy in places. For one thing, the first chapter leaves a ...more

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Dec 07, 2013 Masquerade Crew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

KALIFER'S REVIEW

Mindclone is a love story between Marc Gregorio, a science writer of some note; Molly Schaeffer, an accomplished cellist; and Adam, Marc's brain-uploaded double, a computerized virtual person. Marc was not expecting anything surprising when he dropped in on a lab funded by Memento Amor, an interactive mortuary. What Marc suspected would be a naïve project used sophisticated scanners to copy him into the firm's first success, and more than anyone bargained for. Certainly more than ...more

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Jan 26, 2016 T.M. Raskin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading "Mindclone". I felt the idea was unique and a perspective I had never thought of. As I began reading I was intrigued, I wanted to know more. I thought the idea of morality and artificial intelligence was fascinating. I imagine that the story might not even be fiction. After the initial introduction to the main characters, the book took a turn in a different direction, once when a romance began to bud and again when a scandal was intrduced. The ...more

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Aug 13, 2014 Catburglar rated it it was amazing

An outstanding novel; would make a great motion picture.

The story treats some of the classic religious/philosophical questions: What exactly constitutes a human being? What, if anything, makes a human being different from other animals and inanimate objects? Does a person have a soul? What exactly is a soul? Can the essence of a person be duplicated? If so, is the duplicate a viable, human being, like the original? What is intelligence? What is consciousness?

Mr. Wolf addresses the moral issue ...more

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Jan 12, 2015 Joe Crowe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“I emerge from blackness into panic that swiftly inflates to mindless terror as I see the impossible: me watching myself.”

The intro of this book surprised me. It started out as stream of consciousness, with what to my proofreading eye appeared to be mistakes. That bummed me out. But I kept reading.

And I found out that it was first-person dialogue from one character. That’s a nicely done intro, very Robocop.. Even the font is different. When a writer changes fonts to depict changes in a story, th

...more

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Dec 21, 2014 Melissa Fabregas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Loved the book. It didn't take me long to "read". I often read multiple books at a time, but this one kept me interested and every time I opened the Audible app I would click on Mindclone. There were a few things I wouldn't buy, like the fact that they gave Adam unlimited internet access almost without question... I did think that the entity naming himself Adam was a nice nod to the Bible. The writing style was great. The science seemed well researched and just complex enough to make it believab ...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Melanie Spiller rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This fast-paced story was a bit like peeling an onion--many-layered, with the sweet spot near the end. The characters are interwoven by changing viewpoints; only the AI character is first person, which lurches the reader into a very intimate experience with this strange new kind of being. Although there are classic plot elements, like good versus evil, Wolf keeps us guessing with quite a few of the characters about which side they're on. The ending was a surprise and quite conclusive, but I coul ...more

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Jun 07, 2013 Kim Heimbuch rated it it was amazing

Mindclone is a book about a guy, Marc, who offers up his brain scans as part of a new form of AI in development. While the prior trials had failed, Marc's AI worked. Maybe to well. With access to the internet, it has literally become the most intelligent being alive. So smart, it knows how to manipulate the scientists within a matter ...HERE ...more

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Apr 08, 2014 Simon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

You have to wonder how far the science is away when you read Mindclone. It definitely got me thinking what it would be like to meet a virtual version of myself. It think this is a very clever and well written novel and I am hoping there will another one from David T. Wolf in the near future!

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Jan 09, 2016 Skip Stein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a great new author. He writes with power and confidence and weaves an intriguing web of tech with crime and passion. Posing interesting quandaries on 'What If?"

I truly hope this will bridge into a sequel or something similar. Slight reminiscent of the WWW series by Robert Sawyer. ...more

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Apr 18, 2014 Annastew1144hotmail.com rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I thought Mindclone was interesting on multiple levels. First, the science is intriguing and I couldn't help wonder if this will be possible one day. Secondly there were the moral implications. Both are dealt with by David T. Wolf whilst telling a very good story. ...more

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About David T. Wolf

David T. Wolf

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Like most writers, I live two lives. My outer life is filled with friends and family and my work as an ad man. My award-winning TV, radio and print ads have amused millions of people and helped sell tons of cleaning products, coffee, macadamia nuts and other goodies. My inner life is devoted to strange and wonderful characters driven to desperate or preposterous acts. Some of my short stories are ...more