[REVIEW] Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan
Aug. 3rd, 2005 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldCanadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer's latest novel, Mindscan, examines the question of consciousness. The mid-21st century is a time when Canadian Jake Sullivan, suffering from a physical condition that places him at high risk of a debilitating stroke, can fly into space to have his mind electronically copied and downloaded into an immortal android body. It's also a time when the question of what constitutes consciousness has not been settled, either legally or metaphysically. Hijinks ensue.
Unfortunately, and despite its interesting premise, Mindscan is a book that shouldn't have been written. Perhaps more than other genres of literature, science fiction seeks to instruct and delight its readers, in that order. Sawyer fails so short of achieving the second goal that he misses his first. His style is leaden, his characters are one-dimensional, and his plot becomes an exercise in wish-fulfillment. Most critically, Sawyer just can't resist the temptation to make the people who are putting forward the arguments that he doesn't like ridiculous caricatures. The people who support copy-Sullivan's claims are genial and sympathetic people who truly want to help. The people who oppose him are self-righteous idiots too caught up in their own personal and ideological traumas to do anything. Most annoying of all for me is Sawyer's eager indulgence in self-righteously liberal anti-American Canadian nationalism, the sort of sneering-down-one's-nose condemnation that almost makes me long for the day when the United States brutally annexes Canada and purges my homeland of its idiotically bigoted nationalists.
I wish that I hadn't read this book--I would have done much better to have read the papers on consciousness theory cited in Sawyer's bibliography. Consider yourselves warned.
Unfortunately, and despite its interesting premise, Mindscan is a book that shouldn't have been written. Perhaps more than other genres of literature, science fiction seeks to instruct and delight its readers, in that order. Sawyer fails so short of achieving the second goal that he misses his first. His style is leaden, his characters are one-dimensional, and his plot becomes an exercise in wish-fulfillment. Most critically, Sawyer just can't resist the temptation to make the people who are putting forward the arguments that he doesn't like ridiculous caricatures. The people who support copy-Sullivan's claims are genial and sympathetic people who truly want to help. The people who oppose him are self-righteous idiots too caught up in their own personal and ideological traumas to do anything. Most annoying of all for me is Sawyer's eager indulgence in self-righteously liberal anti-American Canadian nationalism, the sort of sneering-down-one's-nose condemnation that almost makes me long for the day when the United States brutally annexes Canada and purges my homeland of its idiotically bigoted nationalists.
I wish that I hadn't read this book--I would have done much better to have read the papers on consciousness theory cited in Sawyer's bibliography. Consider yourselves warned.
