Book review: Mickey 7

This is OK; indeed, better than the modern average. Reasonably well written, decent starting idea and plot, but a bit pedestrian. This review says some other things, some of which I agree with.

The basic idea is that people can be replicated. To get round the obvious problem - rich people would use this to copy themselves - takes a bit of not terribly plausible gymnastics, and we're left with social taboos against replication, so that only low-level Expendable folk are replicated, to do dirty jobs that will kill them. For no obvious reason Our Hero is left alive between jobs - on a resource-poor colony with food in short supply why would you do that?

Due to errors, he gets re-instantiated while still alive. No-one notices, which is weird because they all have implants. Never mind. There's then some rather desultory attempts at philosophy - are they the same person? Is #7 the same as #6 the same as... but there is no solution, of course (see some prior discussion in Derek Parfit, Ex-Philosopher). We see all this from the perspective of #7, whose relations with #8 are strained (they're both on the same, short, food ration; and short of space too) but there's no hint they feel any bond to each other. In the end (spoiler) #8 dies and #7 doesn't give a toss.

The "enemy", in true Forever War style, turns out to be a hive entity which gives not a toss about the loss of individuals, and so doesn't understand the human's worry about the death of some of its individuals. Our Hero somehow can talk to them, and so ends up as a sort-of ambassador, which resolves his status. Until the inevitable sequel, obvs.

Our Hero suffers at the hands of The Boss, sometimes being literally killed. In the story, of course, we just sympathise. But if this was reality, we'd wonder if there shouldn't be some kind of checks and balances. A frontier colony needs stern discipline, obvs; but nonetheless you'd expect some constraints on power. Although that would get in the way of the story.

Food is in short supply, because their agriculture is a bit shonky. But they have a machine that can transform goo into humans. Why not transform goo into food? That would take energy, obvs, but as we discover towards the end, they have available starship-engine amounts of energy, so that's no excuse.

An oddity, which is forced upon the book by what-the-book-is-about, is that in the end we do indeed discover that the "Creepers" are sentient. And what do our characters do with this info? Nothing, other than persuade them not to attack, and to split territory. Do they converse, exchange ideas, world-views? Good grief no this isn't even thought of. FFS.