Identity Theft: And Other Stories

This is a collection of short fiction by Sawyer with each the author giving a brief background behind the writing of each. The longest story and the best on is the title story, Identity Theft. This story as well of a couple of the others uses the basis for Sawyer's Mindscan novel, that is people decide to have their mind scanned into an automation. In some cases, the human is euthonized after the scan. In the Shed Skin tale, the human is sent to an isolated paradise to live out their remaining days (the Shed Skin tale is actually a scaled back version of Mindscan). In Identity Theft, a man disappears (his robotic form) after he has uploads his mind. It turns out that he never entered the intended robot body but assumed the robot body that was meant for another (thus the title). This story has some tense moments making it the best of a collection of very good stories. Some of the other stories would make excellent Twilight Zone tales such as Ineluctable, where man tries to be too "smart" communicating with the first aliens to make contact and thus ultimately sends the "wrong" message to the aliens. In The Eagle Has Landed a bunch of astronauts travel back to Earth after more than a hundred years have passed since they left and find that the now governmentless world may not be a place where they can ever live. The final tale Biding Time is a lot like a Twilight Zone episode that involved a male astronaut. This tale involves a woman that goes into space for over 30 years where she will only age seven years during the process and will leave her husband behind during that time. Sawyer has an amazing gift for anticipating many of the social problems humans will face as we move into space and each one of his tales focuses on a different one of these problems. It makes this a very intriguing collection of tales from a science fiction master.

Let me start by saying that the titular novella that begins this book has to be the best SF/crime fiction story I've read since Asimov's "Billiard Ball" and the Caves of Steel (The Isaac Asimov Collection Edition) and is well worth the price of admission. Nor does the rest of the book disappoint. I especially enjoyed "Come Al Ye Faithful" about the 1st Catholic priest on Mars and "Mikeys" which lovingly revisits and revives the reputation of astronaut Mike Collins - the Apolo 8 astronaut who was left in orbit and didn't get to walk on the moon. There are other gems as well - "The Uploaded" which looks at the perils of humanity choosing between two paths, a new look at the Morlocks of HG Well's The Time Machine (Penguin Classics), and "Flashes" which considers the demoralizing effect of contact with a truly advanced civilization. The only disappointments I had were the stories "Shed Skin" and "Immortality". The former is an earlier version of Sawyer's book Mindscan and the author did a much better exploration of the philosophical and moral issues of creating a copy of one's consciousness when he used the longer form. The latter, an homage to the music of Janis Ian (which I like - ie: Between the Lines) seemed a bit forced in integrating references to her music. (She's also a hardcore SF fan and apparently she loved it, so maybe you'll disagree with me.) Another criticism IMHO is that I find Sawyer's openings somewhat weak and rely all to much on characters talking or thinking, but he quickly picks up the pace with a strong description, plot lines and characterization. IMV good hard SF is about "what if" and following through on the implications of ideas and in that respect Sawyer is one of most reliably good writers around today. I highly recommend Identity Theft: And Other Stories for a good dockside or snuggle up next a fireplace read as well as his other short story collection Iterations: And Other Stories