Mass Market Paperback, 576 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2003 by Tor Science Fiction.
"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.
Interesting premise. Good story and good writing. Got a little weird at the end.
Wow. That was something.
Gritty detective novel in a world where people can duplicate themselves into short lived clay duplicates.
This is a tough book to review.
It's good. Quite good. But David Brin has written better.
Kiln People is extremely clever, funny, original, and memorable. It presents a very original idea: a future society in which people can temporarily spin off copies of themselves in clay duplicates, "inloading" the memories from those golems at the end of the day. And in that setting, it incorporates a nicely-handled detective story, as well as more puns and obscure references than you can shake a stick at.
At the same time, there's no denying that it's not first-rate Brin. For any other writer (except the greatest ones), I'd give this book a strong 4.2. But I expect more from Brin, so I'll give it a 3.8.
It does tend to get a bit metaphysical and ends up losing its way towards the end, a bit. Still, it's well worth a read.
