Book details of 'The Multiplex Man'

Title	The Multiplex Man
Author(s)	James P. Hogan
ISBN	0671578197
Language	English
Published	July 1999
Publisher	Baen Books

---

Back to shelf Science Fiction
Amazon.com info for The Multiplex Man

Score:

Vote for this book

The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'The Multiplex Man':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Having reviewed and enjoyed other books by Hogan (cf. BKBUGPRK.RVW and BKIMMOPT.RVW) I was terribly disappointed by this one. Not that it is really bad, as such: the story is a fairly average piece of science fiction. It's just that Hogan can do so much better. I am giving away nothing in saying that the Multiplex Man of the title is a man of many parts, and only a little in stating that the parts are multiple personalities. (The surprise twist ending, in fact, will come as no surprise at all to anyone who has been paying attention throughout the book.) The technology taken to accomplish the multiplexing is standard fare, but, again, unsatisfactory given Hogan's previous level of detail and realism. In some passages of the book itself, the author proves that he knows more about neurophysiology than he is willing to put into the story, at one point citing the complex nature of both neuronal paths and biochemistry involved in memory, but then conveniently ignoring that complication. Given multiple personalities, the task of making one, or all, sympathetic enough to engage the reader is difficult. It may, then, be no wonder that Hogan fails. Very few of the characters in the book are attractive, and those few seem to be relegated to bit parts. By the end of the book it was very hard to care about how any of them came out. (And I felt that two of them who showed a lot of promise were very hard done by.) The trade mark magic, card-sharping, and mentalist tricks that are part and parcel of Hogan's "careful, you can be fooled" thesis show up, but only in passing, at the level of parlour games. And this leads to the biggest disappointment of all. A number of Hogan's other works have pointed out how people are fooled, and very carefully teach how the illusions are constructed, and how to test them for validity. This book simply rails against government intervention, conservationism, political correctness, and health fads. Rather than illustrating logical flaws, the discussions in the book degenerate into "yes it is/no it isn't" arguments. The result is that whenever the story gets close to a political or social analysis, it takes on a bad-tempered, right-wing pamphleteering tone, quite reminiscent of the worst of Ayn Rand. Other than that, it's fairly mundane. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
Add my review for The Multiplex Man