Every Version of You
Ratings2
Average rating4
15
Ratings2
Average rating4
'Asks what it is to be human. Visceral, mind-bending and tender.' - Inga Simpson In late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments. Across the city, in the abandoned 'real' world, Tao-Yi's mother remains stubbornly offline, preferring instead to indulge in memories of her life in Malaysia. When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future, or an authentic past. Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Murakami surrealism thrown in, this is speculative literary fiction at its best.
Reviews with the most likes.
Australian speciulative fiction that imagines a life in which the metaverse, AI, and other tech become entangled with what it means to be human and to exist embodied in the world. I'd probably bump this up to 3.5 stars for the ending- maybe the last 100 pages make this book much more worthwhile than I found it initially. Starting out, I found it hard to be engaged in the story- it seemed, vapid, cliched and a bit contrived at times, but really developed some steam, intrigue and conflict, moving from utopian to dystopian really quick. This is a very millenial-on-the-cusp-of-genz, australia-as-part-of-asia feel that I enjoyed, and I think it's an important addition to Australian new writing. Glad I read it! Worth your time! Looks like there'll be a sequel which I'll be interested to read.
