Review – The Fictional Man by Al Ewing (Solaris, 2013)

The Fictional Man, published by UK imprint Solaris, is based on an impossible conceit, one of those high concept movie-friendly ideas where one aspect of reality is altered from our world but things continue just the same. Absurd, but depending on how well it’s done we buy into it for the duration. Here it is generally very well done. Al Ewing is a breathtakingly clever writer and his conceit is that human cloning was perfected decades ago but then outlawed because everyone is entitled to their own unique identity.

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Lost Curiosities: Bringing Dogs Back from the Dead

During the Lazarus experiments, Cornish excited much interest in Hollywood. Boris Karloff starred in two films inspired by Cornish’s work, The Man they Could Not Hang (1939) and The Man with Nine Lives (1940). The scientist actually served as consultant to the former film. These movies sparked a “mad scientist” craze in science fiction, and were also among the first to conceptualize open-heart surgery.

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