In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every
legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one
knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack
for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more
times than he cares to remember. But when Morris takes on a ring of
bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon
a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of
Dittotown.
Dr. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence,
has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary
scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been
kidnapped--or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears
in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers
Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome
discovery falls into the wrong hands. To uncover the truth, Morris must
enter a shadowy nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing--and
no one--is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line
between life and death may no longer exist.
Kiln People is a 2003 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.
