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Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? Did someone slip him an overdose of Botox? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc, a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now he has to find a reason to keep on, um, “living.”
Adam the Mindclone meets the real Marc Gregorio--and his new girlfriend Molly Schaeffer. Adam loves her, too. But how does a digital entity experience love? He can’t even experience pizza. His one compensation: a powerful digital brain. At Molly’s urging, he applies it to unearthing terrorist plots, schoolyard mayhem, congressional malfeasance and Wall Street chicanery. However, his good deeds gain the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing—theft, kidnapping and worse—to control the technology. Without a body, how will Adam save himself – and the world – from a terrible fate?
Mindclone, 94,000 words, is a serio-comic speculative fiction romance about the first successful upload. It’s a book of ideas that explores looming advances in computer technology, and what it means to be human even if you don’t have a body. Plus there’s a carbon-carbon-silicon love triangle, a redeemed ad-man, adventure, humor, frustrated romance, human and digital foibles, and as an extra added bonus, the defeat of death itself.
Genre: FICTION / Science Fiction / High TechMy numbers and ranking are not impressive. Not yet. But my marketing efforts are just getting underway. Because there is so much Japanese activity and interest in the whole field of robotics, Mindclone is being translated into Japanese. It's already been translated into Spanish and Italian, and I look forward to working with translators into French, German and perhaps Russian.
From Chapter 1, as the entity awakens, unaware of its nature:
The couple appears to be talking. At least, their lips are moving, but I don’t hear them. In fact I’m now horrified to realize I can’t hear anything at all. No voices, no beeping of instruments, no telephones chirping, no distant street sounds, no radio or television, nothing. Nothing but silence. I am overwhelmed at the appalling discovery, plunged into despair. How could I have I failed to notice this awful loss? I am totally deaf.
My shock and dismay gradually diminish to a muted sadness. After another drifting time, I rouse myself to summarize my disabilities: I can’t move my head, and I can’t hear.
Now I worry. What else is wrong with me?
A brief inventory reveals an even more appalling flaw: I can’t feel my body.
Staving off my rising panic, I quickly confirm that I have no sense of my physical self, no awareness of the pressure of my 190 pounds on the bed or examining table. No feeling of warmth or cold. No itches or discomfort. No constriction of clothing or bedcovers. I can’t feel how my arms and legs are arrayed. I can’t even swallow, or feel if I need to. Only a terrifying and mysterious lack of proprioception. It’s as if my six-foot-two frame has been stolen from me.
I attempt to cry out, to plead for help, to scream--but nothing happens. I can’t tell if the urgent signals made it from my brain to the muscles in my diaphragm, my jaw, my throat. I can’t feel my face. Or move my eyes. Or feel if they are flooding with tears as surely they must be. I can’t lift my head to look down the length of my body. I am frozen in position.
It’s as if I’m nothing more than an assemblage of terrified thoughts--afloat, levitating in this silent, sterile room.
What the fuck is wrong with me???
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Chinese
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Translation in progress.
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Elodie Demogue
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Author review: A beautiful and elegant translation of my science fiction novel, done with great professionalism and on time, as well. Highly recommended! |
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Japanese
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Already translated.
Translated by Sayaka Yamada
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Cristiano Frota
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