s a young man, Jake Sullivan has a loud argument with his father, during which he watches him collapse. Doctors diagnose his condition as a rare disorder that Jake has inherited. His father, owner of one of Canada's best-known breweries, will be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, and someday Jake will suffer the same fate.
Twenty-five years later, rich and middle-aged, Jake has been living an emotionally estranged life, fearing commitment, as he awaits the day he will suffer the same brain hemorrhage as his father, when he hears about a new technology that may offer hope. A company called Immortex has developed a technique to transfer an exact copy of a person's mind into a state-of-the-art mechanical body. At an Immortex seminar, where he is by far the youngest attendee, he learns that the contract requires the original organic person to retire at a luxury resort on the far side of the moon, called High Eden, and sign over all rights to the new mechanical version.
Despite the misgivings of his mother, who worries whether his "soul" will be transferred, Jake goes to Immortex for the procedure, which uses a "quantum fog" to achieve instantaneous transfer of minds by duplicating quantum states in the molecules of the biological and mechanical brains, due to momentary quantum entanglement. At the facility, he meets 90-year-old Karen Bessarian, whom he met briefly at the seminar, and realizes that she is the famous author of juvenile novels that he read as a teenager. The transfer works for both Jake and Karen, and the originals are sent immediately to a space shuttle to the moon.
The new immortal Jake seeks to resume his life, but finds that his family and friends are emotionally unable to accept his new body. He instead reconnects with Karen, and they quickly become friends and lovers. After some months on the moon, the original Karen dies, while Jake finds that his genetic condition is now operable and curable. Back on Earth, Karen's son files a lawsuit to have her claimed legally dead and inherit her fortune, and Jake begins having periodic telepathic communications with what appear to be memory-defective versions of himself, which wake up in various Immortex facilities. Meanwhile, on the moon, the original Jake, now cured, unsuccessfully seeks to have Immortex return him to Earth, and when that fails, takes hostages and threatens all of High Eden unless his new self comes to the moon to negotiate a solution.
Readable, but not cutting-edge
Over the past decade, Robert Sawyer has developed into one of science fiction's most reliable authors, producing a long series of superior novels. His books generally feature compelling plots and likable characters in believable near-future venues, with interesting new technologies and engaging themes about what it means to be human, all written in prose of near-Asimovian clarity.
In almost every aspect, Mindscan is a typical, and therefore very readable and enjoyable, Sawyer novel. Jake is a very sympathetic character—and indeed becomes two sympathetic characters as the novel progresses—as is Karen, who appears loosely based on J.K. Rowling. The ability to transfer minds into new, essentially immortal bodies is a fascinating technology that would most certainly have profound emotional, sociological and legal ramifications, and Sawyer's novel investigates these ramifications logically and flawlessly.
The only real problem is that Sawyer's sheer flawless logic in looking at this new technological breakthrough makes the novel very predictable. There are no surprises, no startling revelations. Everything that happens in this book is almost exactly what one expects to happen. Even the unexplained sporadic mental contacts between mechanical Jakes results in no real revelations (although Sawyer can be commended for not having Immortex turn out to be the stereotypical evil corporation illogically aspiring to some nefarious end—I think we all know how this book's plot will be adjusted if Hollywood gets its hands on it). While the novel is certainly an engaging read, a few unexpected turns would have made it even more memorable.
But I don't want to cavil too much. Not every novel can be an award-winner, even when written by award-winning writers. Mindscan is a very readable science-fiction novel, and fans of Robert Sawyer should not be overly disappointed.
