Freeman, Anthony. Consciousness: A Guide to the Debates. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2003. A fascinating look at the various controversies.
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990 [reissue; originally published in 1976]. An enchanting, if ultimately unprovable, hypothesis that true human consciousness didn’t emerge until Classical times; utterly fascinating.
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking, 1999. A fascinating, optimistic look at thinking machines and uploaded minds; see also my dialog with computer scientist A. K. Dewdney about this book at www.sfwriter.com/brkucz.htm.
LeDoux, Joseph. Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. New York: Viking, 2002. A good look at the neuronal nature of human minds.
Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. A classic about artificial intelligence.
Ornstein, Robert. The Evolution of Consciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think. New York: Touchstone (Simon & Schuster), 1991. Makes clear that Darwin has a lot more to teach us about consciousness than Freud.
Penrose, Roger. The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. A classic proposing that human consciousness is quantum mechanical in nature.
Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Among many other fascinating things, explores the possible relationship between microtubules and human consciousness.
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. A fine overview of modem cognitive science, mostly from an evolutionary-psychology perspective.
Richards, Jay W., ed. Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. Seattle, Washington: Discovery Institute Press, 2002. Precisely what the title says.
Searle, John R. The Mystery of Consciousness. New York: New York Review of Books, 1997. The originator of the “Chinese Room” problem cited in this novel spells out his beliefs about the ineffable nature of human consciousness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to John Rose, Salman A. Nensi, and Kristen Pederson Chew, for creating The Bakka Anthology, and to Stanley Schmidt of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. My short story “Shed Skin,” which inspired this novel, was commissioned for that limited-edition anthology, and later also appeared in the January/February 2004 issue of Analog.
Thanks also to artificial-intelligence pioneer Ray Kurzweil, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when we gave joint keynote addresses at the Twelfth Annual Canadian Conference on Intelligent Systems in Calgary in 2002; Ray subsequently provided me with a whack of very useful printed material. Thanks, also, to Greg Armstrong, Senior Research Technician, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, who gave me a wonderful tour of their facilities. And thanks to Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre, who provided me with an advance manuscript copy of their brilliant nonfiction book More than Human, forthcoming from Tor.
Many thanks also to Dr. Hal Brian Scher of Scher Psychology Professional Corporation, Thornhill, Ontario, who went above and beyond the call of duty in discussing brain injury and the nature of consciousness with me. Jerome M. Siegel, Ph.D., Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, and Robert P. Vertes, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, both provided excellent research refuting the notion that sleep was required for memory consolidation. And neurologist Dr. Isaac Szpindel of Toronto and neurosurgeon Dr. Lou Jacobs of Garden City, Michigan, both kindly vetted the manuscript.
For advice on the legal aspects of the plot, I thank Russell J. Howe and Darcy Romaine of the law firm Boland Howe Barristers LLP in Aurora, Ontario; Victor A. Coen, a specialist in probate litigation at the Michigan law firm of Sommers Schwartz Silver & Schwartz; Richard M. Gotlib, senior corporate counsel, Hudson’s Bay Company, Toronto; and Ariel Reich, Ph.D., senior corporate counsel, Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto.
For advice on the theological aspects of the plot, I thank the Rev. Paul Fayter, historian of science and religion, York University, Toronto.
Many thanks, also, to the friends and colleagues who let me bounce ideas off them or otherwise provided input, including Ted Bleaney, Linda Carson, David Livingstone Clink, Lily Sazz Fayter, Kim Howe, Al Katerinsky, Howard Miller, Kirstin Morrell, my brother Alan B. Sawyer, Gordon Smith, Elizabeth Trenholm, Hayden Trenholm, and David Widdicombe.
Parts of this novel were written while I was writer-inresidence at the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy. Many thanks to collection head Lorna Toolis, and to the Toronto Public Library Board and the Friends of TPL’s South Region, which jointly funded my residency.
Thanks also to Danita Maslankowski who organized the Spring 2004 “Write-Off” retreat weekend for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, at which much editing and polishing of this manuscript were accomplished.
Huge thanks to my wife, Carolyn Clink; my editor, David G. Hartwell, and his associates, Moshe Feder and Denis Wong; my agent, Ralph Vicinanza, and his associates Christopher Lotts and Vince Gerardis; Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, Nicole Kalian, Irene Gallo, and everyone else at Tor Books; and Harold and Sylvia Fenn, Janis Ackroyd, Melissa Cameron, David Cuthbertson, Marnie Ferguson, Leo MacDonald, Steve St. Amant, Heidi Winter , and everyone else at H. B. Fenn and Company.
Finally, thanks to the 700 members of my online discussion group, who followed along with me as I created this novel. Feel free to join us at:
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/robertjsawyer/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert J. Sawyer is one of only sixteen writers ever to win both a best-novel Hugo Award and a best-novel Nebula Award. The Hugos are the “people’s choice awards” of the SF field, voted on by the attendees of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, and the Nebulas are SF’s “academy awards,” bestowed by the members of the genre’s professional association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
In total, Rob has won thirty-six national and international awards for his fiction, including nine Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”), as well as three Japanese Seiun Awards for Best Foreign Novel of the Year. He’s also won the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, both for Best Short Story of the Year, as well as the Collectors Award for Most Collectable Author of the Year, as selected by the clientele of Barry R. Levin Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature, the world’s leading SF rare-book dealer.
Rob’s books are top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada, and have hit number one on the bestsellers’ list published by Locus, the American trade journal of the SF field. He is the author of the bestselling “Neanderthal Parallax” and “Quintaglio Ascension” trilogies, plus ten standalone SF novels. In addition, he edits the “Robert J. Sawyer Books” SF imprint for Canada’s Red Deer Press, and is a frequent TV guest, with over two hundred appearances to his credit. He is also a highly sought-after speaker, having given keynote addresses at such varied conferences as the Second International Symposium on Physical Sciences in Space, the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Science Centres, and BioMedex 2004.
Born in Ottawa in 1960, Rob now lives in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, with poet Carolyn Clink.
For more information about Rob and his work, visit his World Wide Web site—which, according to Reuters, was the first-ever SF author site, and now contains more than one million words of material—at www.sfwriter.com.
1 published by Tor Books
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MINDSCAN
Copyright © 2005 by Robert J. Sawyer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429914697
First eBook Edition : February 2011
First Edition: April 2005
First Mass Market Edition: January 2006
Mindscan Page 35