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.
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