Qoheleth

I ges i am getting more and more curmudgeony as i grow older.

There are some common story elements that i think are just impossible (some obviously so, others not so much) * faster than light travel * time travel * magic and divine intervention * »body swapping«

That does not mean that people shouldn’t use them in fiction. But for me there ar two conditions: The trope is used just for convenience. The classic is Star Trek: Yu want a clean slate for each episode, so the cast is at a new planet each week. Somehow. Dto. the transporter. Yu just save episode time and cost of a shuttle prop. Or if it is important for the plot it still must not be the plot. Take body swapping stories. There the plot generally not »what if we could separate ›consciousness‹ and memory from a brain and put it in another brain«. The plot is generally »what if people were treated the way they treat other people«.

So. Finally, Qoheleth. Here the main plot seems to be »what if, if you had a hiper-immersive computer interface, that would mean that your ›consciousness‹ and your memories could somehow not just be copied, but would somehow be moved out of your body«. In my eyes it is not a priori completely impossible to make some sort of copy of a »person«, but i don’t see how »consciousness« can be anything other than some brain function. I don’t see how that brain function could be moved out of a brain and then be a function of something that is not a brain. Especially not by accident.

As such, i reject the basic premise of this book. No star rating. The situation is too odd for that.