Kiln people
"Thanks to the new technology of imprinting, people in a near-future America can copy their personalities into animated clay bodies (called "dittos" or "golems"), which last a single day. Albert Morris, private investigator, is his own sidekick as he attempts to uncover the murderer of a prominent imprinting research scientist."--Amazon.com.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
14mentions
14people
2011–2025years
86% recommend14% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- see the novel kiln people and the transparent society essays by David Brin
- I also liked David Brin's Kiln People. Very creative and fun.
- my favorite so far is The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell.
but the best thing i have done to get good book recommendations is to join a scifi book club where we pick a new title every month.
here is what we read until now:
everyone of these was selected by popular vote from a handful of nominations, which means each is endorsed by half a dozen or a dozen people.Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary William Gibson: Neuromancer Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee: AI 2041 David Wellington: The Last Astronaut Nathan Lowell: Quarter Share Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built Octavia E Butler: Parable of the Talents John Scalzi: Kaiju Preservation Society David Brin: Kiln People Emma Straub: This Time Tomorrow Ursula K Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness Dennis E Taylor: We are Legion Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility William Gibson: The Peripheral Dan Simmons: Hyperion Elisabet Moon: The Speed of Dark Alastair Reynolds: Eversion Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children Of Time Andromeda Romano-Lax: Plumb Rainsunfortunately i had to move and am no longer part of that club, and getting updates on their current selections is difficult.
anyone know of a similar club running online? (telegram, matrix or a forum maybe)
or is there interest in forming a club?
we could have a monthly HN post with recommendations, making selections by upvotes/downvotes, and a jitsi meetup to discuss the book afterwards.
- David Brin's Kiln People also touches on this theme, though in a fairly benign way within the overall structure of a whodunnit.
- I really enjoyed the exploration of this premise in the novel "Kil'n People" by David Brin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People
The premise is quite similar to "uploads" except the device is a "golem scanner", which copies your mind into a temporary, disposable body. Different "grades" of body can be purpose made for different kinds of tasks (thinking, menial labour etc).
The part that resonates with your comment is around the motivation of golems, who are independently conscious and have their own goals.
In the novel, some people can't make useful golems, because their copies of themselves don't do what they want. There's an interesting analogy with self control; that is about doing things that suck now, to benefit your future self. This is similar, but your other self exists concurrently!
Key to the plot though is the "merge" step; you can take the head of an expiring golem, scan it, and merge it's experiences with your own. This provides some continuity and meaning to anchor the golem's life.
- For space opera stuff, I really liked Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword https://annleckie.com/novel/ancillary-justice/ series and Corey's The Expanse stuff (I read the books after watching the series).
For transhuman stuff, Brin's Kiln People, Morgan's Altered Carbon, and Scalzi's Old Man's War were fun.
Along the lines of epics like Asimov's Foundation and Banks' Culture, nothing springs to mind. Sadness. That's probably my favorite genre.
