"The Pure Product" By John Kessel

I'm going to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what's exactly going on in this short story. In the story, Kessel introduces us to a nameless* protagonist who, as we quickly find out, not only appears to be immortal, but also totally immoral, travelling across America leaving a trail of senseless murders and various petty crimes in his wake. Furthermore, it appears that he's not the only immortal out there, as he meets a "girl" named Ruth during the course of his story that's also immortal and, like him, pretty randomly psychopathic. To make matters a little more confusing, he might also actually be from the future, and lives in the past because he's afraid of change; of what the world becomes. Of course, that particular revelation comes during a scene in which he's hallucinating from heavy drug use.

So like I said, I don't know what's going on here, but I do know that it's pretty compelling. Despite the central character's psychopathic impulses, the mystery of who or what he is really pulls you along in the story. You really want to know if he's some kind of immortal or demigod or man from the future. Or, if he really is just crazy. Perhaps it's a tribute to Kessel's writing that he doesn't really let us pin the character down into a neat little category. That maybe keeping us guessing is part of the point? Whatever the case, I know that the end result is an awfully good read.


*He might be named "Gerald Spotsworth," or he might be named "Loki." It's hard to tell.

"Finished" by Robert Reed

Another day, another story about immortality. Or rather, another story about the cost of immortality, which is almost invariably a more important question than whether immortality itself will ever be acheivable.

In Reed's iteration of the theme, immortality is acheived by a process called "finishing," in which a person's mind is imprinted on a crystal, which is then placed inside an artificial body. The drawbacks are that the process destroys the person's original body, and freezes their consciousness into the state they were in when the finishing was performed. Essentially, people that are finished are frozen in time. The can use memory sinks to learn new things and store their new experiences, but, essentially, they remain the same person that they were at the moment they were finished.

There are a lot of directions that Reed could have taken with this premise, many of which have already explored to death (excuse the pun). Of course, he could of asked whether the finished are really people anymore, whether the person really dies during the process, or if immortality is really worth the cost of being frozen in time.* Instead, Reed focuses on the physical cost of being finshed. To a certain extent, Reed is a realist/pessimist (depending on how you look at it) about humanity and society. In his world, much like it would be in ours, finishing is not a cheap process. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to even have the most basic of finished bodies, and much more for the creation of the crystallized brain.

However, as you see in the story itself, it isn't only the super-rich that get finished. Many average people seem to go through the process as well. So, the question remains, how does the average person pay for their finishing. Keeping in mind that, after the process is completed, the finished person is essentially immortal, the possibilities are quite disturbing. I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to ruin anything, although I will say that the resolution does not show a very positive picture of the capitalist spirit.

*To a certain extent, he does address this last question briefly, when we hear the story of a terminally ill man who was finished to escape death. We find out that, because he was sick and miserable and in pain when he was finished, he remains locked in that state for eternity. Basically, this is just a point for the argument on the main character's part for picking the "perfect" day to be finished.

"The Policeman's Daughter" by Wil McCarthy

In "The Policeman's Daughter," McCarthy creates a world in which death has ceased to exist. Through the technology of "fax machines," which in McCarthy's world, are kind of a cross between Replicators and Transporters from Star Trek. They can copy and transmit anything, including human beings. In addition, copies of anything, including human beings, can be saved in "hypercomputers" (really dumb word, I know) indefinitely. Essentially, this means that people can live forever, making new copies of themselves as needed, sometimes existing as several copies at once in order to multitask. A new state of deathless "immorbidity" ensures. It's a little cheesy, but interesting nonetheless.

What I really like about this story, however, is that McCarthy has decided not to focus on how immortality would affect the way people act. It is in there a bit, of course, but it certainly isn't the focus of the story. Instead, McCarthy asks the question "If death doesn't exist, does that mean that murder also ceases to exist?" Of course, copies can be killed, and people arn't impervious to injury, but, if a new copy can just be made, is it really murder?

In a style reminiscent of old noir stories, this is exactly the question that Carmine Strange Douglas, Esq., renowned lawer of "strange cases," is faced with when his old university friend, Theddy, shows up unannounce at his office one day. Theddy wants to elist Carmine's services because he believes that he is trying to kill himself. More specifically, an earlier version of Theddy from 70 years ago (when both he and Carmine were in their 20s), is now trying to destroy all the current versions of Theddy. The story revolves around the figuring out why, and how Carmine can solve this problem. It's a great twist on the detective story, and even involves a great romantic sub-plot that involves the titular policeman's daughter. All in all, and enjoyable twist on the genre.