The Gemini Experiment by Brian Pinkerton
Flame Tree Press (May 30, 2019)
240 pages; $16.48 hardcover; $10.37 paperback; $6.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington
The premise is somewhat familiar and rather simple. Technology has advanced to the point where it’s possible to digitize the mind. Combine this with the ability to create a perfect, nearly indestructible, mirror-image of a human body and you have the recipe for immortality…or disaster.
Someone had to be first. His name is Tom Nolan, a good guy who happens to suffer from an incurable degenerative muscle disease which will eventually result in his death. His best friend happens to be a research scientist working on The Gemini Experiment.
Tom won’t actually be first to undergo the transfer. That will be Louis Karp, a prison inmate who believes he’s got a chance at life by volunteering for this unproven concept.
This man… comes from prison where he’s serving a life sentence for multiple murders. He has terminal stomach cancer. We’re not altering his fate.
The people running the project had it all planned out. They would digitize Karp’s brain (a process so invasive, it destroys the original). They would then transfer Karp’s brain into the new body of Tom Nolan, verify the transfer was successful, and after a time they would remove and destroy Karp’s brain and repeat the process with Tom Nolan, giving him a new lease on life.
When things go south—as you know they inevitably will—they do so quickly and in ways you could never imagine. The Gemini Experiment is a thrill ride filled with twists and turns that keep the reader guessing and entertained all the way to the stunning conclusion. Brian Pinkerton has created a wonderfully constructed story, frightening in its believability.
The Gemini Experiment is not the first book I’ve read with this particular theme, but it’s taken a fresh approach and is an exceptional read. Sort of a modern-day Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus. A read I can readily recommend.
