Title: Who
Subtitle: A Novel of the Near Future.
ASIN: B01N9ETD3H
ISBNL 978-0-9980604-0-8ISBN: 978-0990564195
Five stars at Amazon
Reviewed by Nicki Kenyon" originally for her blog The Liberty Zone
I always get nervous when I get a
request to review a novel. My usual MO is to read a book, and review it if I
like it, so that others can get the same pleasure out of the novel as I
did.
When it’s in reverse, and someone
asks me to read a specific book and review it, my neuroses kick in. What if I
hate it? What if the author is someone I like? What if it’s a friend or a family
member, and I have to do a negative review, because the work sucks? What if it’s
boring? What if it’s badly written? What if…
When Karen A. Wyle sent me a
blurb about her new book “
Who,”
and asked if I would review it, I was intrigued by the description.
Death is no longer the end. Those
who prepare, and can afford it, may have their memories and personalities
digitally preserved. The digitally stored population can interact with the world
of the living, remaining part of their loved ones’ lives. They can even
vote.
But digital information has its
vulnerabilities.
After the young and vital Thea
dies and is stored, her devoted husband Max starts to wonder about changes in
her preoccupations and politics. Are they simply the result of the new company
she keeps? Or has she been altered without her knowledge and against her
will?
But I was nervous at the same
time, for the very reasons I described above. What if I hated it?
I needn’t have worried. I
couldn’t put the book down. It was intelligently written, engrossing, and not at
all what I expected.
I’m a fan of novels that explore
what happens after we die. I’ve written at least one short story on the subject
– something way too dark and depressing to share with readers right now.
One of my favorite episodes
of the series “Black Mirror” involves a woman who loses her husband, who is
subsequently “resurrected” by a service through the use of his extensive social
media presence. He is not real, and he is not meant to be. He’s merely an echo
digitally created for her to communicate with – an echo she uses to keep the
memory of her husband alive in the virtual world. Eventually, the service
provides a body using synthetic flesh that is almost identical to her deceased
husband. The robot isn’t real. It cannot be. He’s a digital echo comprised of
all the information he stored about himself online.
In “
Westworld” –
one of my current favorite television series – the idea of androids gaining
consciousness of the world around them is explored.
In the movie “
AI: Artificial
Intelligence” the story of Pinocchio is retold through robots who are
capable of experiencing emotions and learning to be human.
The ideas in “Who” are not new,
but Karen delves deeper into those ideas and explores what can happen when
power-hungry humans get a hold of technology that can store human consciousness
in digital form. At the same time she explores the digitized “humans” themselves
and probes the idea of the human being – his essence, his conscience, and what
makes the human being… well… human.
The bright side: Loved ones can
continue to interact and be together in every form but the physical after the
corporeal body has died.
The bad news: Like any
technology, it can and will be abused for those seeking power and profit.
The “stored” dead people live in
a digital world. Their consciousnesses downloaded – recorded and digitally
preserved. They can interact with their loved ones and with one another. They
can continue to create, work, and enjoy hobbies in their digital existence. They
can get politically involved and eventually gain the right to vote.
Just imagine how this technology
can be abused by power-hungry entities – both corporate and political!
Information stored is information
that can be altered.
Personalities stored can be
altered – changed to hold political views convenient to those in control –
without the knowledge or consent of those to whom these personality traits
ostensibly belong.
Can you imagine what an
unscrupulous corporation – or politician – can do with that kind of power?
Could they create an army of
voters who would form a solid voting block to push legislation through? Would
the “stored” – altered to vote in a particular manner – eventually outnumber
living voters and usher in a new era of government control and power, as
designed by those who seek it?
And what about individual rights?
Do the “stored” still have them, even though they’re digital entities “living”
inside someone’s servers?
Are they human? What makes them
human? What kind of protections do they enjoy under the Constitution?
These are all complex
themes.
Karen is an attorney, and she
obviously understands the law so well, that she is able to apply it to the
characters she created and weave a tense courtroom drama that explores these
issues – humanity, civil rights, digital technology, consciousness, conscience,
and individuality.
She makes the legal dilemmas
entwined in these very real issues readable and interesting without spewing
lawyerese or preaching to the reader about right and wrong.
She simply tells a story, and she
tells it well.
I’ve read plenty of authors who
do nothing more than produce a thinly-veiled vehicle for their political views,
with cardboard characters and a crappy plot. They lecture the reader endlessly
about political ideals, and produce so much badly written dreck that does little
more than allow them to vent in written form.
Karen A. Wyle does none of that.
She seamlessly creates a complex world in the near future that is fraught with
intricate and elaborate moral dilemmas and uses her knowledge of the law to
weave an intelligent, suspenseful, and engrossing story!
It’s the holiday season,
so grab and enjoy! This one’s a keeper!
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen A. Wyle
MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG
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