Friday, December 09, 2005

Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It's set in Toronto in 2045, about a guy who decides to get his consciousness transferred into an immortal android to avoid a hereditary disease that will leave him in a permanent vegetative state.

The plot itself is perfectly good, but where I really fell in love with the book is the tiny attention to detail.

Subway lines that are currently being planned IRL Toronto had "recently" been completed.
The protagonist randomly thinks to himself one day "It's 2045! Why the hell don't I have a self-steering car?"
His android form isn't colour-blind, so when he wakes up his first thought is "OMG, what's that colour?" "Green" "Oh wow! That's my new favourite colour!" Then he spends a while staring at green.
They keep old people on the moon, where they'll be less likely to be injured in a fall and can be mobile for longer because of the lower gravity!

I listed a whole lot more beautiful little details, but then I decided to delete them so people who haven't read the book can discover them for themselves. The author creates a perfectly plausible Toronto of 40 years in the future, uses clever conceits to insert details that wouldn't normally be explicitly stated but need to be mentioned to the 2005 reader, and fills the whole thing with brilliant, clever little touches that make me want to applaud him.

Note to self: read this book again in 2045 and see how it stands up to reality.

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