Kil'n People

David Brin

2002

Now, come on, you can admit it, everyone’s had the problem of having too many jobs to be done in too few hours. The loo really needs a good clean and there’s that pile of plates that need feeding into the dishwasher. Then there’s all that studying that modern life seems to entail. And let’s not forget the, ah, pleasures of the flesh! And there’s the boring everyday stuff of earning a crust.

It is mid 21st century California, in Al Morris’s time and it looks like the ‘too many jobs, too little time’ problem had been overcome for golem technology means that anyone can create a new copy of themselves to tackle a task, no matter how menial.

Each task has its own colour; ebony for brainwork, green for those menial tasks and grey for the general everyday task.

Now, Al is unusual in this brave new world for he actually has a job. Al is a PI specialising in data copyright issues, but he’ll still do the old fashioned missing person cases (though ‘cheating spouses’ is a dead issue with the presence of those ivory dittos). And it’s a missing person case that leads to Al’s greatest case as the daughter of Kaolin Industries co-founder hires him to trace her father.

As the case wends its way to an epic confrontation in the bowels of a forbidden weapons store many aspects of Al’s society are brought into focus in a neat exploration of a society where video surveillance and free time are ubiquitous.

Unfortunately the book looses its way in the last few chapters that introduce unnecessarily deep philosophical details. If this is not to your taste, just ignore those bits for the rest of the story is great!

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