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3.0 

A Borrowed Man

By Gene Wolfe
A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

A Borrowed Man: a new science fiction novel from Gene Wolfe, the celebrated author of the Book of the New Sun series.

It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He 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. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

27 Reviews

3.0
“Dare I say, this was cute. Felt like a Ray Bradbury story but with that extra dash of Wolfe's narrative creativity. The setting being more contemporary was interesting but ultimately much less so than the other settings of his I've read so far, and also made his weird little gender quirks stand out all the more to me. Sometimes it just feels like he wrings a little too much philosophizing and romance out of gender roles. It's always been excusable in some sense as it always presents as a flawed view from the narrator's perspective, and this unique sense of "narrator's perspective" I guess is the main appeal of Wolfe's works, and the views of gender roles throughout are certainly varied, but this aspect is the closest thing to feeling a bit "one note" that I've found. That said, this book and its narrator are charming in their own way and ultimately it's an engaging mystery and a good time”
“The lead concept is a great idea. It is the future, there are clones of famous writers (complete with their memories). It explores the ethical issues of this and the domestic issues ensuring from a cloned writer meeting with their cloned past life spouse. I loved a lot of the world-building. I was blindsided by the twist in the direction of the story. It became something very unlike itself very suddenly. If you’re not paying attention you’ll have to go back and read over things again. I had to anyway, just to be sure I was entirely following things and hadn’t missed something. It reads like a detective fiction story set in the near-future. I think it would make a really good basis for a series actually. I really love the idea of a man who has lived an entire existence brought back to tease out the threads of a tale he is suspected as being wrapped up in. Overall, I enjoyed it. I recognise there were some moments where it did fumble. But I read a few reviews afterwards (some quite rude, but most good) and it became clear that this is not Wolfe’s finest work. I’m really glad I picked up a shorter piece first though. The next of his I plan to read will be The Book of the New Sun. So, I’ll be pacing myself!”

About Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.

A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.

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