MEM
"Bethany C. Morrow achieves the nearly impossible feat of creating truly new speculative fiction; reading it feels like discovery." -- BuzzFeed In Jazz Age Montreal, an underground Vault imprisons living memories. Known as Mems, theses physical clones of other people are doomed to experience a single memory over and over--one that belongs not to them, but to the memory's original Source. Lacking thoughts or personality of their own, Mems expire inside the Vault, where they are monitored by scientists known as Bankers. That is, except for one 19-year-old Mem--Dolores Extract n. 1--who shocks the world with the capacity to make her own memories. With the help of the doctor who created her, Dolores is released from captivity and establishes an independent life in the glittering city. She is a beautiful enigma, celebrated by a public obsessed with this dangerous procedure. When she is suddenly summoned back to the Vault, she must confront the Bankers and her own Source to discover the ultimate truth: is she human, or not?
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
The writing is good, and the story was interesting, but I couldn't get over my discomfort with the original premise. Why would you make an entire person out of a *bad* memory? For bad memory removal, the straightforward "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" seems the way to go. For human copy creation, any number of other motivations make more sense: because the original person seeks a form of immortality, or because a loved one wants to remember the person. Even the opposite reason, making a person for the conservation of a single good memory makes more sense to me. Nonetheless, enjoyable!
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.