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Kiln People
But after a brief prelude (reminiscent of the introductory scene of Indiana Jones), on the first full day of Kiln People Morris and his dittos are pulled by players in a great game seeking to use him to their own ends. He is hired by Ritu Maharal when her father Yosil Maharal dies in an unexpected and rare car accident. Yosil Maharal and his partner Vic Kaolin founded the corporate giant UK (Universal Kilns) after pioneering soulistics and inventing dittotech years earlier; changing the world forever.
We are introduced to a cast of characters through the first person narration of Albert and his dittos, each of whom, like the blind men touching an elephant in the Indian fable, sees a different picture of events. Albert is the heart of the book, and we understand his motivations and how his physical manifestation, as ditto or person, affects his outlook, attitude, and actions. However, the motivations of other characters including Yosil Maharal, his partner Vic Kaolin, his daughter Ritu, and Albert's mysterious nemesis the dittotech pirate Beta remain cloaked -- disappointingly so as the book closes with some, but not all, of our questions probably, but not certainly, answered in speculative form.
Kiln People is a bit long. Through the first half, as Albert and his ditto selves picked up the trails of their inevitably converging cases, the shadowy figures of Vic Kaolin and Yosil Maharal were mixed in with a cast of other minor characters including Pal, Carla, Gineen Wammaker, the Maestra, and Queen Irene. I had to flip back at least once to recall which one was actually supposed to be dead!
There's a lot of action here. The book features bar fights, urban gun battles, guerrilla surveillance insertions, sabotage, and plenty of danger for the characters. (It could make a good movie with the right script and director). But the characters involved in many of these harrowing situations are themselves dittos, and like the citizens of the Kiln People world, I became desensitized to violence against all dittos, and disinterested in the plight of the characters.
Through the second half, perhaps because of previous experience reading David Brin's previous book Earth, certain future events became rather apparent, and I did find myself eventually wading through the last 100 pages or so just so that I could get through to the foreseeable climax.
That said, Kiln People tied neatly some nagging mysteries as it closed. The book gives a realistic portrayal of a world which had integrated the disruptive technology of ditto tech, and it succeeded in presenting some interesting scientific and speculative material too.
This book shared many themes with David Brin's previous book Earth including the attempted/accidental creation of a deity, people seeking to be Godlike, the threat of mass human destruction, a lone mad genius, and the unity of all humanity within a greater entity. Also, this world, like the world of Earth featured the end of secrecy the dangers of technology, and a semi-libertarian legal system ( Called "the Big Deregulation" here). However, the setting, story and ideas of Kiln People, while reminiscent of Earth, are substantially independent.
If you enjoyed Earth, you will probably also enjoy Kiln People as I did. It's a fair story wrapping interesting ideas in a realistic but fantastic setting. However, it can be a bit long and obtuse.
You can purchase Kiln People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Its not unusual to see such themes as open information in his books. David Brin is active on the NPR front promoting one of the few alternate plans that attempts to stop INS detentions *and* terrorist activity in one fell swoop.
His essay "The Transparent Society" calls for open information that can be used in social policing and accountability. Much of what he models this on came from observing news groups and other (i think he calls them) militant internet movements. Linux itself is one of those movements he mentioned.
If he did use the word militant, it was more a commantary on the way these groups police themselves, and how they band together to wage information war against those they don't like. In Slashdot's case that would be the RIAA, MPAA. For Linux, it would be whatever would try to keep us from hacking our own kernel.
Whats interesting about this is its Orwellian overtones, but lack of a centralized big brother. Anyway, as far as idelogues go I probably like Brin more then say Chomsky or Kato, although they have their simularities.
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OnRoad:Hacking that which costs more and is more deadly.
I've been trying to read this lately, mostly over lunch. Big mistake. There are ditto bodies melting all over the place. It's one of the most violent things I've read in a long time. Yuck.
And here's the thing: I disagree with a fundamental premise of the book. Brin's constructed a world where you send your ditto (copy) out to do things for you. It lives a very short time (24 hours or whatever). You can pull its memories back into your "real" self, if it physically survives. The dittos are treated really badly; shot at, spat on, you name it, because they're disposable.
But if these memories are coming back to the real people, why would dittos be treated so badly? Some kind of "net good" effect would happen, I'd think...where people would do unto others etc...
Upshot? Nasty, violent society that isn't much fun to read about, so far.
They're somewhere between the two. In the book there's no need to project your will onto the ditto's because they are you- including all of your memories. They also have a very limited life span (a couple weeks at the most), and their only shot at living (even just in memory) is to get back home and upload their memories to their creator.
If you like this book, you might check out some really good 40s and 50s detective books about a detective named Nero Wolfe who never leaves his house. Excellent books.
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Ditto's are androids, copied from the original human. They have the original's memories up to the time of imprinting. The 'dits' have a limited lifespan (usually about a day). Then they tend to fall apart.
Dits come in different styles, some are cheap and made for errands. Some are optimized for sensation (you send the dit on an adventure and 'upload' the resulting memories). The obsidian dits are optimized for thinking and concentration. They're like hackers all juiced up on jolt.
Having disposable labor results in mass unemployment. For instance, the best janitor in the city can make 50 dittos every morning, and send them out to work. After their work day, they turn themselves in to the 'reprocessing center'. He gets the money and the other 49 janitors who used to have jobs end up on the dole.
Of course, that makes the lynch-pin of the economy, makers of the 'dittos' and the 'ditto-ing' process, incredibly rich AND incredibly vulnerable.
Albert Morris has a real job. He's a detective. His dittos are 'ditectives' and they make him some nice coin. When he (they) gets involved in a complicated plot involving the 'dittotech masters'.
David Brin is known for novels that shift the POV. With Kiln People, he gets to shift the POV to realAlbert and all his 'dits'. This results in one of Brin's better developed characters. You even start to like his 'dits' as they change over time.
IMHO, Brin tends to get messy at the end of his novels. He usually throws everything and the kitchen sink in the last 100 pages. Heaven's Reach was one of the worst examples, the entire book departs from Gigo and goes to a black hole, distant galaxys, a dyson sphere, and extra dimensions... Kiln People gets a little convoluted in the end, but it's a good story.
My father is a blogger.
All I know is this...
If I were a ditto, only going to live 24 hours, I sure as fuck wouldn't want to go to work for 8 or more of those hours. I don't care if my schmuck primary created me for that purpose. In fact - being the primary, since the dittos think like me, I know they'd just play truant.
I'd be more likely to go to work and send my dittos out on holiday. I know myself well enough to know that only the threat of my future existance being uncomfortable keeps me in a 9-5 job when there are more fun alternatives.
I really don't see dittos wanting to go to work for their primaries (or whatever they're called). Especially with the possiblity that the ditto won't get uploaded at the end of the day.
Ah well. It's an interesting concept, and I think I'll read it for myself.