Calculating God, Mindscan – Review
In the last few months, I’ve read two books by Robert Sawyer: First I read Mindscan and more recently Calculating God. Robert Sawyer is a Canadian science fiction writer who has won both the Nebula Award (for The Terminal Experiment) and the Hugo Award (for Hominids). More recently and of more relevance, he won the John W. Campbel Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Mindscan takes place in the not too distant future. A company has found a way to scan a brain and copy the exact neural pattern in it into a synthetic body. The procedure is extremely expensive, so the only customers to undergo the procedure are those who don’t believe they will be around any longer – generally the elderly, who want to transfer their consciousness into a body that will live on for longer. Once the procedure is done, the synthetic body is supposed to inherit everything from the biologically original, while the original goes off to live out the remainder of their days on the moon.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner Review
This review is going to look at Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a classic science fiction novel, as well as its movie adaptation Blade Runner.
When comparing a movie to the book it is based on, it is important not to expect the movie to just be a visual version of the book. Often the director pursues different themes, though using the same concepts as those the author did. Thus two different versions of “the same” story can explore vastly different ideas, without one being a cheap copy of the other.
I will first give the concept behind both the novel and the movie, and then review each.
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