I’ve finished several new books, and another box came in a few days ago…<\/p>\n
Kiln People<\/a>, by David Brin<\/a>, is a very intriguing book. Brin seems to have been inspired by the Chinese terracotta warriors<\/a>, which are even mentioned in the book. He posits a society where one can make nanotechnological clay copies (golems<\/a>) of oneself, which carry a partial copy of the mind; the clay lasts about 24 hours, after which it begins to decompose, and the copies’ experiences can be reloaded back into the original’s mind.<\/p>\n The main character, a private detective, releases several specialized copies of himself to help solve a complicated case; in every chapter, the copies (and sometimes the original) narrate the happenings in a stream-of-consciousness manner. This works surprisingly well for this book, given that Brin used a similar style in his last three books (the Uplift Trilogy<\/a>), where I found it a little tiresome. Even so, nearly all of Brin’s books are among my favorites.<\/p>\n I also read two shorter books: Outward Bound<\/a>, by James P. Hogan<\/a>, and Genesis<\/a> by Poul Anderson<\/a>. Hogan’s is a “juvenile book”, in the tradition of Heinlein’s juveniles, and quite lightweight compared to his other books; no scientific or technical speculation. Even so, it’s enjoyable. Anderson’s is probably his last book – he died a couple of years ago. Here he tackles the problems of immortality and post-human societies in his characteristic way, which recalls the scandinavian sagas. This book won the 200 John W. Campbell Memorial Award; even so, I found the book oddly unsatisfying, but can’t point at specific faults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve finished several new books, and another box came in a few days ago… Kiln People, by David Brin, is a very intriguing book. Brin seems to have been inspired by the Chinese terracotta warriors, which are even mentioned in the book. He posits a society where one can make nanotechnological clay copies (golems) of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-AG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}