Re: (ReacTor) Five Books About Duplicating Human Beings

On 5/8/2025 10:38 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:

>
Five Books About Duplicating Human Beings
>
For some reason, cloning or copying people never goes according to plan...
>
https://reactormag.com/five-books-about-duplicating-human-beings/

 I have a copy of
    Blish, James and Lowndes, Robert _The Duplicated Man_ (1953)
 Which I picked up from a rack in, IIRC, a K-mart back in
the 70s.  Don't remember much other than I didn't like it
at the time.

Don D'Ammassa's 2017 mini-review (http://www.dondammassa.com/R1B2017.htm#Duplicated_Man_) starts with:
 > This is a mess from beginning to end.
and ends with:
 > Awful. Unreadable.
"Unreadable" may be a slight exaggeration since I managed to finish it, but I remember wondering why I bothered.
As an aside, whenever I read a poorly written collaboration by otherwise capable authors, I wonder if there may be a story behind it, perhaps something like the story behind Simak/Campbell's _Empire_ -- https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2873162