62000

For some reason my library has categorized this as just plain fiction. Unless you take a very limited view of science fiction as taking place in space, to my mind this book is definitely science fiction. I first read about it in John Scalzi's blog, Whatever. A number of times a month Scalzi gives the post to an author with a book being released to talk about "The Big Idea" that inspired their book. Matthew Fitzsimmons' Big Idea was what would happen if cloning was available but so prohibitively expensive only the richest of the rich could afford to have a clone? This book is the result. Doesn't that sound like science fiction?

Constance D'Arcy is a musician. Three years ago she and her bandmates were in an motor vehicle accident just outside of Washington, D.C. Two of the band members died instantly; the other female band member and Constance (Con) survived with some physical damage and Con's lover, Zhi, went into a coma from which he has never recovered. Con still has physical pain from her right knee that had been broken in the crash but more than that she is severely depressed. The day after Christmas she goes to see Zhi and then goes to her appointment at the Palingenesis Clinic to have her memory refreshed. Con is certainly not wealthy but her aunt is the brains behind Palingenesis which provides clones to replace clients who have died and she gifted Con a clone. The clinic keeps a scan of the memory of each client to be downloaded into the clone and they recommend it be refreshed at least every 30 days. So that's what Con is here to do. Except when she wakes up it is 18 months later and her body doesn't have any of her tattoos or scars and her leg is fine. Her clone has been automatically resurrected because the original Con died. She doesn't remember anything about the past 18 months because she never went back to the clinic after December 26, 2038. Palingenesis is supposed to delete any clones if the original hasn't uploaded for 90 days but somehow Con's clone and memory file were retained. The director of Palingenesis wants to terminate Con but with some inside help Con is able to sneak out. Then she has to find out what happened to her original and recover the missing months of memory all while evading some scary looking guys who don't seem to have her best interests at heart. She is going to need help but her old friends are antagonistic to her because of things that happened in that gap time. She could possibly trust her aunt's business partner (also a clone) or maybe the police detective from Richmond Virginia who is investigating the disappearance of the original Con D'Arcy. It's a hard call.

There's lots of interesting background stuff about that near future. Global warming has happened. All vehicles are driven by computer and are electric. Communication is by LFD (not sure what that stands for) which projects a virtual screen in front of the user and combines phone and computer into one. I may have to read the next book in the series. ( )

An interesting premise, interesting enough to finish the book, but after a while I just got sick of so many things. Like people explaining things to other people who already know. “We’ve been over and over this” or "You know as well as I that...." Combine that with the incredibly strained similes and metaphors that litter almost every paragraph ("a late-model, two-door electric compact ... [that] was the color of cold oatmeal." How exactly does cold oatmeal differ in color from warm oatmeal?), and there was just no way I could really enjoy this book. ( )

Interesting take on the concept of cloning, if not a completely original one.

What if we could make an upload of our consciousness, a back if you will, and in the even the original were to perish, we could upload that consciousness automatically into a body that is a carbon coby of the original one? And what if you were uploaded and woke up a year and a half in the future with only the knowledge that someone had murdered said original? Oh, and there also existed a violent group of religious zealots murdering clones because they were unnatural? What if?

This was a very entertaining and fast paced read. The subject matter is intriguing, and it doesn't really try to sell the tech to you as anything that could actually happen (so this is by no means hard sci-fi) but it's still thoroughly enjoyable.

I feel like this would work very well as a film or TV mini series adaptation as well, get a little meat on the side plot bones, raise the stakes a little. ( )

Some scary/interesting ideas tossed around in this one. ( )