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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780765349750
ISBN number: 0765349752
Label: Tor Science Fiction
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Publishing house: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: December 27, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 230425
Studio: Tor Science Fiction
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Product Description:
Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids, the very 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, something that eluded him when he was encased in flesh: he falls for the android version of Karen, a woman rediscovering all the joys of life now that she's no longer constrained by a worn-out body either.
But suddenly Karen's son sues her, claiming that by uploading into an immortal body, she has done him out of his inheritance. Even worse, the original version of Jake, consigned to die on the far side of the moon, has taken hostages there, demanding the return of his rights of personhood. In the courtroom and on the lunar surface, the future of uploaded humanity hangs in the balance.
Mindscan is vintage Sawyer -- a feast for the mind and the heart.
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Rated by buyers 
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i bailed on this turkey after 80 pages. the writing is dull & unimaginative. a book about copying & downloading the human personality promises interesting specualations about the nature of consciousness, but there is nothing here but mechanism. the purpose of this novel seems to be to put the author's political opinions & philosophical materialism into the mouths of his characters. if you read sf novels in order to confirm your dialectical materialism then this may be for you; i prefer creativity.
Rated by buyers 
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Wow. I couldn't put this book down until I finished it. This is an excellent SciFi novel. Smooth as silk plotting and prose. Great fleshed out charactors, in a tale with lots of heart. Can't believe I've never read anything by this author, but I'm glad he's written quite a bit for me to catch up on. :)
Highly Recommended!
Rated by buyers 
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Mindscan is another of Robert J. Sawyer's award winners -- rather inexplicably, to my mind, it won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel. The central idea here is upload to robotic bodies. Are such new bodies "human", in a moral or legal sense? And what about the (in this book, still living) "original"? Who gets the property?
Jake Sullivan is a very rich man -- heir to a beer fortune. He is also ever guilty -- afraid he provoked his father's fatal stroke -- and every afraid -- because he shares the genetic malformation that actually led to his father's stroke. Thus he has spent his life afraid of commitment to other people. Then a new process becomes available: one can upload one's mind into a robotic body -- more of an android, really, capable of most things normal bodies can do, though not all (for example, sex: yes, but eating, pretty much no). It's very expensive. Most people who choose the option are quite old, but Jake jumps at it only in his 40s. The kicker is, the company doing the process requires that the "new" person, the android, inherit the identity of the "original", while the "original" is sent to the Moon, to live out what will presumably be a short life -- in conditions of luxury but isolation.
The new Jake quickly finds love, with Karen Bessarion, a fabulously successful novelist (think J. K. Rowling). But Karen soon has a problem -- her original body dies, and her son sues -- he argues that his mother is dead, and he has a right to inherit her estate. But of course the "new" Karen Bessarion feels she is the "real" Karen.
Jake himself represents the opposite side of the debate. His "original" decides he isn't happy stuck on the Moon, especially when a cure for his condition is found. He wants to reclaim is original life. But that would cause problems for the new Jake.
This is, let's be clear, a fascinating setup. And it could address some pretty interesting ideas. But Sawyer bungles the whole thing. Partly, he doesn't consider some fairly elementary dodges to avoid some of these legal problems -- the company offering the uploads could arrange to be paid essentially the entire fortune of the original, but hold it in some sort of trust to be dedicated to the support of the original for the rest of its life, and also to the support of the upload. I think such an arrangement would for the most part sidestep the problem of heirs. But more than that, the basic idea at the core is monstrous: the "original", Sawyer seems to think (or at least this book seems to think -- Sawyer may not necessarily hold these ideas) is really just so much worthless remnant garbage, kept alive in comfort for convenience's sake, but not really a person. My goodness, how horrifying! Of course these are still people! The book argues eloquently enough for the "humanity" of the uploads -- I'm fine with that -- but then totally dismisses any argument that the original is also still human.
Add to these issues some more general plot and character issues. I was never really convinced by Karen Bessarion's love affair with the new Jake (the old Jake was plausibly messed up, could the new Jake really be a better man so soon?). And the plot resolutions -- a hoary courtroom drama plus a thoroughly unconvincing violent standoff with a convenient conclusion -- just didn't work for me. Another frustrating outing from Sawyer.
Rated by buyers -
Mindscan (2005) is a stand-alone SF novel. Yet it represents an ongoing theme in the author's works (see The Terminal Experiment (1995) and Factoring Humanity (1998)).
In this novel, Jacob Sullivan was born into a very rich family. But he also has a genetic disorder, arteriovenous malformation, which had struck down his father, making him a vegetable. AVM has since dominated his lifestyle. He avoids all activities that would raise his blood pressure. And he also avoids becoming close to any women, for he sees how his father's condition affects his mother.
It was AVM that led him to the sales talk on Mindscan, a method of downloading the human mind into an artificial brain within a mechanical body. The pitch is presented by a man who has undergone the process. Immortex, the owner of the patents on the process, has set up a virtual paradise at High Eden, located in the Heaviside Crater on the Farside of the Moon, for the shed skins -- the biological copies -- to live out the rest of their lives; meanwhile, the mechanical copies eternally continue their Earthside existence.
Jake meets a woman named Karen Bessarian at the presentation, an author who intends to keep her copyrights active forever (or a reasonable semblance thereto). The mechanical Jake is attracted to the mechanical Karen and, after his human friends snub him, they begin hanging out together. Eventually, they become a couple.
In High Eden, the biological Jake learns that Pandit Chandragupta has devised a cure for AVM. Jake tries to convince the High Eden administrator to let him go to Earth for the cure, but Brian Hades refuses; Jake's contract with Immortex does not allow the biological copy to resume contact with his former acquaintances. Yet Hades does bring Chandragupta to High Eden for the operation.
On Earth, Jake tries to get along with Tyler Horowitz, Karen's son, but the relationship doesn't gel. Tyler even has problem with Karen herself. After the death of the biological Karen, Tyler sues to probate Karen's will. Karen and Jake consult Malcolm Draper, a civil rights attorney and another Mindscan, about the case and Malcolm suggests that his son and partner, Deshawn, take the case.
At High Eden, the biological Jake has neurotransmitter fluctuations in his brain after the surgery. Chandragupta recommends analgesics for the pain until the condition stabilizes. But Jake begins to distrust his medications and stops taking them. He even suspects the food that the High Eden staff is preparing for him. He becomes heavily paranoid.
In this story, the Karen Bessarian case is setting new precedents in the United States and the biological copy of Jake is doing much the same -- although illegally -- on the Moon. Moreover, the mechanical Jake is having mental conversations with other copies of his brain; apparently the quantum entanglement that allows the brains to be copied also continues to connect all copies of the artificial brains. Of course, the mechanical Jake is certain that his other copies are being used for some nefarious scheme.
This novel raises some interesting questions about the nature of consciousness. As the author states in the epilogue, consciousness was neglected for almost a century except by the novelists, who continued to use stream of consciousness as a literary style. Then recently cognitive studies became paramount within psychology and now almost every branch of philosophy, science and religion is speculating on the subject.
Highly recommended for Sawyer fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of exotic technology, human foibles, and a touch of romance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
Rated by buyers -
MINDSCAN(2005) starts off slow, and then hits a brick wall when the ultra-liberal politics and science takes over.
There is supposed to be a story about copying of human awareness to a machine, but the shallow characters and plot are lost in the backdrop of the left-of-AirAmerica Canadian politics, as masses of Americans are "fleeing" to Canada, where they can get legal hookers, drugs, suicide doctors, etc., all because of a "post-Buchanan administration" America.
Americans are also fleeing to Canada to escape GLOBAL WARMING, because in 2048 Toronto's climate is supposed to be balmy in the Winter (this is utter baloney, and not going to happen, folks).
When it comes to ultra-left SciFi Politics and Science, Mindscan is like the worst of Ben Bova and Allen Steele combined. Virtually nobody listens to AirAmerica, and virtually nobody should read Robert J. Sawyer... only died-in-the-wool America-Bashers and Global-Warming extremists will really be at home.
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