Synopses & Reviews
In a perilous future, disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every citizen's legal and illicit whim. Life as a 24-hour "ditto" is cheap, as Albert Morris knows. A brash investigator with a knack for trouble, he's sent plenty of clay duplicates into deadly peril, then "inloaded" memories from copies that were shot, crushed, drowned . . . all part of a day's work.
But when Morris tackles a ring of crooks making bootleg copies of a famous actress, he trips into a secret so explosive it incites open warfare on the streets of Dittotown. Kiln People is a 2003 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.
Review
: “Intricate plotting, unflagging inventiveness, and a judicious sprinkling of puns and in-jokes: Brin keeps the pages feverishly turning.”-
Kirkus Reviews“Brin presents a rich, kaleidoscopic story that challenges the concepts of identity and individuality.”- Library Journal
“Brin deftly explores the issues of identity, privacy and work . . . the book features the authors usual style, with a lighter touch and punish humor abounding amid the hard SF speculation.”--Publishers Weekly
“More than any writer I know, David Brin can take scary, important problems and turn them sideways, revealing wonderful opportunities. This talent shows strongly in Kiln People, a novel which is deep and insightful and often hilarious, all at the same time.”—Vernor Vinge
Synopsis
In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more times than he cares to remember.
But when Morris takes on a ring of bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of Dittotown.
Dr. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence, has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been kidnapped-or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome discovery falls into the wrong hands.
To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing -and no one-is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist.
David Brin's Kiln People is a 2003 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.
About the Author
David Brin is the author of more than a dozen novels, including six volumes in his award-winning Uplift saga, as well as two short story collections and a nonfiction work,
The Transparent Society, about privacy in the electronic age. His
New York Times bestseller
The Postman was the basis for a major motion picture starring Kevin Costner. Brin was a fellow at the California Space Institute and at the Jet Propulsion Lab, studying spacecraft design, cometary physics, and analyses of the likelihood of life in the universe. He now lives in southern California.