{"id":23159,"date":"2024-04-15T20:17:14","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T00:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=23159"},"modified":"2024-04-16T11:26:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T15:26:31","slug":"the-downloaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/the-downloaded\/","title":{"rendered":"The Downloaded"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;The harsh reality of any advanced civilization is this: privacy <strong>can&#8217;t<\/strong> be tolerated, lest, in some dark recess, a malcontent plots to unleash atomic or biological weapons, computer viruses, antimatter, or any other technology that poses an existential threat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Downloaded<\/strong> by Robert J. Sawyer, published in 2023<\/p>\n<p>Roscoe killed a guy who&#8217;d bullied him as a child and an adult &#8212; when the state asks if he wants to serve his time in virtual reality, he says yes.<\/p>\n<p>Letitia is in charge of the mission to Proxima Centauri. She wakes up to discover that they haven&#8217;t gone anywhere &#8212; the ship is still in orbit around Earth. She checks the hibernation bay and finds that there are no bodies.<\/p>\n<p>This short novel is structured as a series of interviews.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about people who live their lives in different ways, from Old Order Mennonites to people who have genetically engineered themselves to live on Mars. It&#8217;s about ethical questions involving concepts like violence and privacy.<\/p>\n<p>There are some delightful references, such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read all 27 of Sawyer&#8217;s books. I previously reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/starplex\/\"><strong>Starplex<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;The harsh reality of any advanced civilization is this: privacy can&#8217;t be tolerated, lest, in some dark recess, a malcontent plots to unleash atomic or biological weapons, computer viruses, antimatter, or any other technology that poses an existential threat.&#8221; The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer, published in 2023 Roscoe killed a guy who&#8217;d bullied [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-23159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23164,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159\/revisions\/23164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}