Shortform

( My opinions, in reverse order, and hopefully spoiler-free: )

Robert J. Sawyer's "Shed Skin," Analog Jan./Feb. 2004 (I know, i stopped reading Analog, but I was sent a copy of the story, presumably because I'm listed in Ye SFWA Directory or something, so I read it). This short story is on the Nebula preliminary ballot.

The setup is simple, and made me think rather longingly of Hans Moravec's (nonfiction robotics-for-laypeople manifesto) Mind Children. A man wants out of a deal. What is the deal? He's arranged to have a copy of his personality uploaded to a new better robotic body. And the man is left behind; he's the eponymous "shed skin," and while he's in a "paradise," he can't leave. Legally, the man is no longer considered to be George Rathburn; the being-in-the-robot is George Rathburn. Flesh-George finds this intolerable, and so he hatches a plan.

Did I mention that the setup is simple? I wouldn't have had any trouble reading this story in an anthology from some decades back. It would have fit right in. As it stands, I found the premise and its moral implications too, too familiar. Hasn't this whole question of object vs. pattern identity been hashed out enough? The legalities of the situation in this story, these different copies of self running around in different places, seem decidedly regressive in contrast to--I'm blanking on other examples of this premise, but parts of John Wright's The Golden Age come to mind, and I know I've read others that look at the subject from less-trodden angles.

Mind you, this is not a bad story. It's a solid, respectable sort of story, with serviceable prose and serviceable characters, but it doesn't push any boundaries. I wouldn't tell anyone not to read it; I'm also unlikely to urge anyone to go out and read it, although if anyone wants my copy, I'm happy to snail it to you.

( Further thoughts: spoilers, and also spoilers for Asimov's 'The Bicentennial Man' in comparison. )