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Gene Wolfe, A Borrowed Man (Tor, 2015, 300 pp, £11.99)
Gene Wolfe's A Borrowed Man is a science Action mystery novel set in a future in which clones exist. The protagonist and narrator, Ern E. Smithe, is a replica (a 'reclone') of a mystery writer who lived a hundred and fifty years before. The voice that leads us through the narrative, then, is the personality of a deceased writer that has been uploaded into a clone. Smithe the reclone is a piece of property. He belongs to the Spice Grove Public Library, where he lives on a shelf in the Fiction department - a shelf that seems to be much like a small and comfortable apartment. Clones may be checked out if the interested browser has authorization. If they remain unchecked on the shelf for a substantial amount of time, however, they are deemed defunct and, soon after, incinerated.
Colette Coldbrook, a wealthy patron, takes Smithe from the Library, revealing that her murdered father owned a physical copy of Murder on Mars, a book written by the human E.A. Smithe. That book, she believes, contains a hidden secret, a key that will open a doorway to the mysteries surrounding her father's death and, moreover, help her unlock a trove of immense family wealth. As E.A. Smithe later remarks, 'motivations [ . . . ] The reasons why people act. Motivations are always important, and I haven't been thinking enough about them'. Wolfe's novel suggests that we, its readers, have not been thinking about them enough either. Colette, the catalyst for Smithe's journey from the Library to various kinds of other worlds, has 'motivations', but, as we are in a Gene Wolfe novel, the desires and wants she makes explicit are there for us to reasonably doubt.
A Borrowed Man - the 'borrowed' clone of the title, as well as the book that you hold in your hand (and, in many ways, this is a book about books in a postbook world) - would form a good introduction to Wolfe's writings. It moves along at a steaming pace and its narrative is perhaps less circuitous or labyrinthine than some of his earlier masterworks. However, A Borrowed Man does begin with what could be perceived as characteristic...