Today’s team review is from Terry.
Terry blogs here https://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.com/
Terry has been reading Backup by Guy-Roger Duvert.
4 out of 5 stars
An interesting story, a terrific idea – I loved the plot. Some time in the future, everyone lives squashed into high, high buildings in the cities, your social standing indicated by your position up or down the enormous skyscrapers.
Aidan and his expectant wife Lucy live not far from the bottom, as he is a lowly cop.
In use by the powers that be is a system by which a person can download his entire psyche so that if he dies, he may be cloned and come back to life, as it were. Aidan is not interested until he and partner Natasha are invited to the Backup HQ, and offered a chance to go through the system free of charge – which is when the trouble starts and he discovers the ways in which this particular form of transhumanism is open to all kinds of abuse.
I liked a lot of the detail in this book, the world-building; I particularly liked the idea of never being able to get away from advertising, even more so than now, as promotional drones constantly hover outside the windows of one’s apartment. I also like the writing style in this clever take on the dystopian future that could be waiting for us. My only criticism is that I found it unnecessarily complicated, having to remember whose psyche was in which body and who was supposed to be where when. I felt that with a less complex plot and a bit of tidying up, it could have been even better.
Book Description:
In the relatively near future, immortality has become a service. For members, the day they die, they simply download their most recent backup into one of their clones.
Aiden Romes is a cop. Honest, straight-laced, even psychorigid, some of his less law-abiding colleagues would say. The situation changes, however, the day he helps save the daughter of the head of the Backup firm, who thanks him by offering him a free subscription to the company’s services.
Does Backup technology constitute access to immortality for human beings, or the loss of their identity?
