SOLVED. Sci Fi book about space travel via cloning/reconstruction [s]

[Greyflood]

Hi, I'm looking for this book for a friend. Here is her description of it:

If I can remember right, the story follows a guy who has to travel somewhere really far away. FTL travel doesn't exist, but the ability to copy a person's fundamental code (genetic but also memory and skills in that particular moment) and convey that code to a machine that reconstructs it does exist.So that's how people move around deep space. But there are ethical concerns about this since clones are effectively sent on one way trips and are disposable. And I think one copy of the main character who was sent on some dangerous mission ends up rescuing himself and falling in love with a girl, but there are plot complications because he lives and the girl dies and he goes on some manhunt to find another clone of the girl he fell in love with. Or maybe he accidentally met another version of himself. Something sort of like that?

I have no idea how old this book is, but my friend said it was probably fairly old (a cheap paperback at the used bookstore). Anybody have any ideas? Thanks!

[Andy]

Sounds like Wall Around a Star or possibly one of Pohl's Eschaton series The Other End of Time

[Michele]

Maybe one of Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs books. I've only read the first, Altered Carbon, and the plot doesn't quite fit, but the world has that technology, with downloading personality into various clone bodies instead of FTL space travel.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

I'm pretty sure there's another request in the queue for this book / type of book, as well.

There's also tech like this in (I think) a Sawyer book. They can copy a human's thought processes, but it's a one-way shot, so continuity is a thing (ie: the download into new body is (to be) the legal owner... complications ensue, and MC for some reason is a rebootable personality (the first they've ever discovered) anbd so can be sent to the stars for aliens to build. Plus telepathy.

[Kit]

Hey. I'm the friend! Farthest Star it is! I completely forgot about the Dyson sphere. Thanks for finding it. And I'll check out the other suggestions-- they sound interesting!

[Edward]

Neptune's Brood

Doesn't match the plot but it is a similar concept.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Hi Kit. Who suggested _Farthest Star_ (and/or where? sounds like there's some content somewhere that I'm missing)?

Also, get Greyflood to mark this as solved - and verify you're the friend he was talking about :D

[Andy]

I suggested "Wall around a Star" which is the sequel to Farthest Star - which I guess was close enough that Kit found Farthest Star.

[Michele]

Could be Piers Anthony's Kirlian series, starting with Cluster: a person's "aura" (which includes personality, memories, skills, etc.) can be transferred around the galaxy. In the first book there has to be a willing (or empty) host to transfer into, but in later books they figure out how to transfer into unwilling hosts. Although they aren't clones specifically, at least two of the later books involve two characters getting transferred several times and trying to find each other, so it's sort of like clones. And Thousandstar, which is the 4th or 5th in the series, does have a bunch of clones as characters.

[Aaron]

I havn't read the book in over a decade but that sounds alot like Orion by Ben Bova.

[Michele]

This was solved but waiting for confirmation from the OP who posted for a friend. Friend ID'd it

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Yeah, I sent Greyflood a PM earlier - I'm hoping they'll confirm that Kit is the friend they were asking for.