A Borrowed Man

A Novel

by

Paperback, 304 pages

Published by Tor Books.

ISBN:
978-0-7653-8115-6
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5 stars (2 reviews)

It's perhaps a hundred years in the future and E. A. Smithe is "a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer". Colette Coldbrook "decides to check Smithe out from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars", and the physical copy of the same book was in the possession of her father when he disappeared and presumed dead.--

5 editions

reviewed A borrowed man by Gene Wolfe

Review of 'A borrowed man' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

The narrator and protagonist of this book is a "re-clone". He is the clone with memory prints of a mystery writer. Now he is a "thing" with no legal rights who resides in a library and his continued existence depends on people consulting him or checking him out from time to time.

With this sort of world-building, I would have expected some sort of sweeping tale where the hero starts a revolution so that people like him get legal rights.

But no. He just does the best he can with the situations that come his way in the constraints he has.

His limited worldview reminded me in a good way of Martha Wells Murderbot.

reviewed A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe

Review of 'A Borrowed Man' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

The narrator and protagonist of this book is a "re-clone". He is the clone with memory prints of a mystery writer. Now he is a "thing" with no legal rights who resides in a library and his continued existence depends on people consulting him or checking him out from time to time.

With this sort of world-building, I would have expected some sort of sweeping tale where the hero starts a revolution so that people like him get legal rights.

But no. He just does the best he can with the situations that come his way in the constraints he has.

His limited worldview reminded me in a good way of Martha Wells Murderbot.