When reality is only perceived through multiple layers of filters, what is truth?

When memories are readable, writable, and editable, what is an individual?

When superintelligences are capable of predicting the vast majority of our decisions, what is free will?

When biochemistry and emotional states are hackable (and therefore suppressible), what is discipline?

When every human has the option to plug in to their own custom virtual world, what is humanity?

If these questions sound like philosophical mumbo-jumbo, you may want to treat your mind to the whiz-bang, action-packed books of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and other less thoughtful authors.

If these questions consistently keep you and your geeky friends in heated discussion until 3am, then prepare to be seduced by John Wright and the deepest and most thorough picture of a transhumanist future ever scribbled.

By the way, don’t expect to have any of these questions answered. At best, you’ll come away with a deeper concern (and perhaps excitement) for the future of humanity.

Some of these questions even play with your sense of what is to be human today. For instance, plenty of psychological research is revealing just how fallible and influenceable our memories are. If our sense of personal identity relies on our memories of what we assume is the “true reality” of the past, what does it mean when these memories are so sensitive?

Warning: The first hundred pages or so are tough. Wright drops you in the middle of a world of sensory filters and altered memories and it’s not clear what’s real and what’s not. Treat this confusion as part of the experience of living in a future of hacked realities and keep reading.

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I suppose this clever little rift on the scientific establishment was supposed to make me worried about men like Dr. Felix Hoenikker and what their childish obsession with puzzles and experiments, regardless of their consequences, might spell for the rest of the world. But all I could think was, “Wow… I wish I could ignore the vast majority of human beings and play with physics all day.” Bravo, Dr. Hoenikker.

If you’ve never read any Kurt Vonnegut, he weaves a very readable and entertaining story that still packs a metaphorical punch.

The icing on the cake is the introduction of the word “granfalloon.” A large linguistic hole in my life has now been filled.

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Many sequels are written because either (1) the author is hungry and needs money, (2) the author is lazy and doesn’t want to start from scratch with a new story, or (3) the author is greedy and wants to milk their addicted fans for all their lunch money. Orson Scott Card might be hungry, lazy, or greedy, but, regardless, Speaker for the Dead might very well be a better book than Ender’s Game.*

The book imaginatively explores what happens when the human race discovers that they aren’t the only sentient creatures left in the universe, a reaction particularly complicated by a widespread guilt after wiping out the first sentient creatures (the “Buggers”) encountered 3000 years ago (in Ender’s Game). Card weaves history, political theory, social theory, and scientific philosophy in extrapolating on how the human race balances its interest in these creatures with their fear of another war. Card seems to know his science too and integrates creative evolutionary ideas as well as explorations into scientific integrity into the story quite well.

*Card actually developed the gist of Speaker for the Dead before he wrote Ender’s Game and never expected it to be a sequel.

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