Long ago, a friend in Montreal with whom I’ve lost touch gave me a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a favorite author. I read it and enjoyed it, though it didn’t turn me into a fan. Still, I kept it since it was a gift from a friend. I no longer have the book—it was donated to a symphony booksale fundraiser in my hometown, when my mother moved house recently—but I have a different copy here, collected in a sort of not-quite omnibus of Ondaatje’s earlier work. The omnibus, from 1997, contains The Collected Works of Billy …

As with earlier posts in this series, I’m publishing this some time after reading the book.  The Planetbreaker’s Son is another of the PM Press Outspoken Authors series. As I’ve said before, that series hasn’t let me down before.  Mamatas’ contribution to the series contains the usual mix of fiction and nonfiction plus an interview by Terry Bisson.  “The Planetbreaker’s Son” is a wild story of life, well, “life,” in a post-Singularity spaceship with a bunch of digital personalities: some uploaded, some rebuilt simulacra based on the memories of the uploaded, and some generated onboard. Except it’s really about family …