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A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe

A Borrowed Man

A Novel

Gene Wolfe

Tor/Forge · Print & ebook · November 22, 2016

DystopianSci-Fi CrimeAndroids & AI Science FictionScience Fiction
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MysteryFantasySpeculative FictionScience Fiction Fantasy
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Who it’s for
A future-facing crime mystery pairs cloned identity with a missing book and a family secret.
Genres
Sci-Fi Crime, Androids & AI Science Fiction, Dystopian
Published
Tor/Forge, November 22, 2016

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About this book

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.

Continue reading

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.

Borrowed Mysteries

A future-facing crime mystery pairs cloned identity with a missing book and a family secret.

Come here for

  • A clone carrying a mystery writer’s recorded personality
  • Crime and questions of who counts as human

Expect

  • Science fiction shaped around a missing-book mystery
  • A sustained narrative with a complicated trail

Where it sits

Sci-Fi Crime90%
Androids & AI Science Fiction48%
Dystopian36%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Sci-Fi
  • Genetic Engineering Sci-Fi
  • Noir Fiction
Authors
Gene Wolfe
Publisher
Tor/Forge
Published
November 22, 2016
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Sci-Fi