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The Terminal Experiment Paperback – 1 May 1995

by Robert J. Sawyer (Author)
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To test his theories of immortality, Dr. Peter Hobson creates three electronic clones of himself, who escape from his computer into the international electronic matrix, where one of them begins to kill. Original.
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    HarperCollins
  3. Publication date
    1 May 1995
  4. Dimensions
    10.64 x 2.24 x 17.15 cm
  5. ISBN-10
    0061053104
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0061053108
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 1 May 1995
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061053104
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061053108
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 159 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.64 x 2.24 x 17.15 cm

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Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer

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Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has also won the Robert A. Heinlein Award, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and the Hal Clement Memorial Award; the top SF awards in China, Japan, France, and Spain; and a record-setting sixteen Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”).

Rob’s novel FlashForward was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name, and he was a scriptwriter for that program. He also scripted the two-part finale for the popular web series Star Trek Continues.

He is a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest honor bestowed by the Canadian government, as well as the Order of Ontario, the highest honor given by his home province; he was also one of the initial inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Rob lives just outside Toronto.His website and blog are at sfwriter.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon he’s RobertJSawyer.

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Charlie T.
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2016
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    Written in 1995 but not dated at all. A science fiction murder mystery that holds you from page one.
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  • The Cognologist
    3.0 out of 5 stars just ok
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 September 2013
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    I realise the author is award winning and all that but I feel these are small stories turned into books. Just OK.
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  • Larry Ketchersid
    4.0 out of 5 stars A decent story from one of the best SF writers
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2007
    Format: Paperback
    Robert J. Sawyer is a great science fiction writer, having won every major award in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, and would have won one in Antartica if they had a contest. This novel won the Nebula and was a Finalist for the Hugo.

    Frankly, I do not see why.

    The story is based on two scientific premises: detection of the soul leaving the body and computer based artificial intelligence. Detection of the soul leads to experiments in AI to determine what life after death might be like. Dr. Peter Hobson, the inventor of the "soulwave" detection, uses AI and nueral net scanning to create three versions of himself: a life after death sim, an immortality sim and a control sim that is just like him. Hobson has some issues to deal with in his personal life (I won't play spoiler here), and those issues are duplicated into the three sims. One of them goes bad, and starts using the net to kill people.

    Sawyer's claim to fame is that he will take premises like this and wrap very real characters around them. The concept of science fiction is in making both the science and the fiction work for the reader. Many writers tend to forget this, either throwing out unbelievable science or getting the science right but forsaking the characters or the plot. Sawyer is normally magic in this.

    The Terminal Experiment is a good read, with nice pacing. It bogs down at times in the explanations of the science, and some of the philisophical discussions of the AI's. But the concept of killer AI computers has been hashed and re-hashed (remember HAL!), as has the concept of detecting something that proved life after death. And unlike other Sawyer novels, I had difficulty caring about the characters, esp. Cathy, Peter's wife.

    I'm glad I read it, but I'm gonna go now and read Hominids, Humans and Hybrids, his classic Neaderthal Parallax series.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Friederike Knabe
    4.0 out of 5 stars It's all in the brain...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 January 2008
    Format: Paperback
    Going back through time, I just finished Terminal Experiment, winner of the prestigious science fiction Nebula Award in 1995, after having read all of Robert Sawyer's book since his "Calculating God" (2000) in sequence. The subject matter, how technological advances can extend life beyond the usual lifespan has been a major topic in his most recent books, "Mindscan" and "Rollback". Terminal Experiment, Sawyer stated at the time, was "an exercise in determining what a human mind might be like if it were aware either that it would live forever or that it was already dead."

    "Hobson's Choice", named with a touch of irony after the primary protagonist, Dr. Peter Hobson, and the title of the novel's serialization in Analog magazine, "is the choice between immortality or a scientifically verified life after death." Hobson's fascination with AI reaches new levels when he discovers an electromagnetic pulse that can be monitored as it escapes from the brain at time of death. He calls it a "soul-wave". Does that mean that a "soul" can be scientifically identified? Where does it lead and how long does it survive outside the body? Does it apply to everybody or was it a fluke? What about animals? Sawyer explores these topics with his usual sharp, investigative mind both from the technological angle as well as the spiritual.

    Hobson's friend and partner in AI experiments is Sakar Muhammed. Together, they dream up a scheme that should provide new insights into brain functions after death. They do this by developing sophisticated computer models of Peter's complete brain map. The three models are not identical so that they can monitor the different behaviour patterns in the virtual environment. But then the virtual and the actual realities collide with consequences the two scientists have not foreseen... Are they in the end faced with a real "Hobson's Choice"?

    As in the recent novels, brilliant to my mind, this novel combines the human aspects of what artificial intelligence (AI) can provide through advanced technology. He embeds pertinent questions of life after death and the morality resulting from the application of the technological advances into a full-fledged detective and mystery story. At times the story moves a bit slowly and there are unnecessary repetitions. His protagonists' characters are well drawn, their personal lives complicated by events and strong emotions. Other players, in particular, Sandra, Peter's wife are less convincing and rather shallow despite her role in the personal drama. While the reader may have more insights in what is going on than the protagonists, the unravelling of events is as creative as it is unique. Sawyer's knowledge of the latest science is, as usual, spot on and the realization of some of his fictional developments are within reach just a few years later. It makes the reading or rereading of Terminal Experiment years after publication particularly interesting and stimulating. [Friederike Knabe]
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  • Scott Reine
    5.0 out of 5 stars This is why science fiction is one of Canada's greatest exports.
    Reviewed in Canada on 30 September 2013
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    Robert J. Sawyer is one of the reasons why I believe that science fiction is one of Canada's greatest exports. This is a pretty standard Robert J Sawyer book. It follows an intellectual, science minded character exploring a quite interesting new idea. If you like Sawyer's other works, you really ought to read this.

    If you're not familiar with Robert J. Sawyer either you hate science fiction, or you've been living under a rock. In either case you really should check it out as it's a fairly good sample of what his writing tends to be like.
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  • Brian Driver
    5.0 out of 5 stars Another stellar work from one of Sci-Fi's best writers
    Reviewed in the United States on 9 January 2017
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    If I were to say that TERMINAL EXPERIMENT is typical of Robert J. Sawyer, I could not be paying it a higher compliment. You see, Sawyer (who won the Nebula award for this novel) gives me exactly what I want from sci-fi: heady, provocative concepts framed within a believable plotline. I’m not worried about literary turns of phrases or heart-thumping action scenes. No, in fact, the writers I like so much in this genre – Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert C. Wilson, Joe Haldeman, as well as many others – are quite usually writers who work with great concepts and continually prod and provoke those topics for what they can tell us. Yes, they do at the same time often have a framework of something thrilling happening, like the police angle in this one. But what I really like best is the fact that they constantly provide me with something – or many things – I never knew.

    So, yes, the more salient topic here is of course the murder aspect: if you’ve read the book’s promotional blurb you know the plot concerns itself with a computer program that in essence comes “alive” and is quite literally killing flesh-and-blood characters out there in the real world. And yes, I’m aware this topic has been out there already; the book was published 20 years ago. But like a great sporting event you’ve seen before, the book handles its certainly “trope-ic” topic in a way that is innovative and fresh and lets us see its concept in a new and stimulating light.

    For instance, the artificial intelligence(s) is not the initial focus of central character Peter Hobson: when he is a young medical grad student he has the opportunity to fulfill credit hours by observing a doctor and his team harvesting organs from a motorcycle crash victim’s dead body. Hobson’s early enthusiasm for the procedure is given a horrible shock when he observes the victim’s body go through very life-like -seizures, and afterward the post grad comes up with the idea of creating a neural net not unlike a shower cap that will map the brain’s activity of dying patients. It is through this procedure that he begins to notice a recurrent phenomenon: a small amount of electrical energy seems to “escape” the body and travel onward.

    It is because of this phenomenon that Hobson decides to investigate whether there is indeed an afterlife, and wonders if he can mimic it by creating three copies of his brain by cleverly removing certain aspects from two of them: the first will represents life after death; the second, an immortal mind; and finally, the third will be a “control,” or unaltered copy. And yes, one copy seems to be guilty of murder… first one, then two, and then, well….

    For me, the suspense is merely a by-product of a great topic; it’s not why I read Sawyer. No, he “sells” his book from the first words on. Though THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT is certainly suspenseful, I don’t feel Sawyer is necessarily merely hoping we will nail-bite our fingers while sitting up all night to read the next page. No, I believe it’s more that TERMINAL is asking us to look at what it is that makes up the human soul, to wonder if there is indeed a “life” thereafter… and, in fact, whether there might be a God. While many might argue that this is not a proper topic for sci-fi – that in fact, this is a better topic for religious books like THE SHACK (by William P. Young) – it’s not one he shies away from: in fact, a decade later this is a KEY factor in Sawyer’s excellent novel CALCULATING GOD (which was nominated for a Hugo award).

    Though TERMINAL’s topic is really the soul, it’s handled with Sawyer’s typically wry and clever approach. It’s not just through Hobson’s life that we see things develop...for instance, the story frequently steps back and let us see the topic through a variety of clips from the media. For instance:

    “The suicide rates on Native reserves in the United States in Canada, and in the three largest ghettos in the US, were at a five-year high this past month. One suicide note, from Los Angeles, typified a recurrent theme: ‘Something beyond this life exists. It can’t be worse than being here.’”

    In essence, Sawyer does what those other great sci-fi authors do: he writes well enough to let his provocative ideas sell the story. In fact, the author drives us to do what we must do with ALL literature, particularly sci-fi, and that is to suspend our disbelief by taking frankly difficult topics and building them step by step. We accept what we are reading because the authors let characters behave like people do, and by melding science fiction with the actions of everyday people and proceeding onward. I have read almost Sawyer’s entire collection and can hardly wait for his next.

    A little factoid I’ll throw in here for those who care: I was in near seventh heaven when Hobson relates to us that he is beginning to enjoy what was for him a new author: mystery writer Robert B. Parker’s SPENSER series…which is one of my favorites. Sadly, Mr. Parker passed on a short while ago, though his character(s) live on through other author’s penning new books. I can only hope Robert J. Sawyer is here for decades to come.
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  • Barbara Frederick
    4.0 out of 5 stars Not his Best, But Darn Good Anyway
    Reviewed in the United States on 25 March 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Robert Sawyer deals with some important and controversial themes, so I suppose I should not have been surprised that he wrote this one about Dr. Peter Hobson, a neurosurgeon who came up with instrumentation to determine the moment of death. He was motivated by the experience of having an organ donor seem to come back to life during the surgery to remove his donated organs. He discovers a phenomenon at the moment of death which immediately gets dubbed "the soul wave," and of course becomes a primary focus for all sorts of religious and spiritual attention.

    Oddly enough, that's not really what the book is about, except for openers. He goes a lot further in trying to comprehend this "soul" phenomenon, and what death really is -- and is not -- in ways that may or may not qualify as scientific. They are based on technology, sure enough, but he and his partner seem to do a lot of interpretation which goes well beyond the facts. But then, so does the mass media in reporting all that he is getting into.

    Still, they have an even more daring experiment which is not reported to the media, or to anyone else, and for which Peter is himself the guinea pig. Since I really hate spoilers, let's just say that I don't agree that his experimental design would measure what he thought it would, and the end of the story at least partially vindicates my skepticism. In the meantime, several murders and disappearances, and one or two rather impressive liars, are encountered.

    This is a good read, but not quite up to the standards of Sawyer's best work.
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  • Philippe Julien
    5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, better than the FlashForward book
    Reviewed in Canada on 22 November 2014
    Verified Purchase
    This book is even better than the FlashForward book written by the same author.

    With only few words, we can quickly grasp the visual aspect and feel of the scene the story takes place in.
    I even felt sick every time I read the part about the medical surgery at the beginning of the book.

    The story is compelling, and we want to get involved in resolving the crimes taking place in the book as we read it.
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  • Melanie D. Typaldos
    5.0 out of 5 stars How do you get from here to there?
    Reviewed in the United States on 3 October 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I am reading the Nebula Award winning novels in chronological order. This is the winner for 1996.

    Not all Nebula Award novels seem to me to be worthy of that recognition, but this one is. I found the book to be something of a page turner. I wanted to find out what happened to the characters more than I wanted a resolution to the mystery. The characters are very well developed with rich, full lives and confronting their own human failings. Of course, they are not completely real because this is science fiction.

    The story centers around three people, the main protagonist, Peter, Peter's wife Cathy, and Sarkar, Peter's best friend. Sarkar is not nearly as developed as the other two but he has enough personality to be more than just a prop.

    The novel starts at the end of the story with near resolution of the mystery. There is enough left to keep you wondering. More than that, I had a real interest in how the story got to that ending. Luckily, it makes sense at the end.
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