Agent Missing?

[Jason]

I finally bought and read "Agent". It was a good read, with lots of nifty details about the OTU that had never been revealed before. A good first novel, Mr. Miller!

I have a few questions though:

I bought the book on DriveThruRPG, and it apparently isn't the most up-to-date fully annotated version. Will there be an update to that version sometime in the near future?

The link on Far Future's page for the Kindle version goes to a "page not found" on Amazon. The paperback version is available on Amazon still.

I rather suspect that the forthcoming Baen version might be behind the broken links and un-updated version.

And, with regards to the book itself, did anyone else find it remarkable that the book seems to say the Vilani myths of the afterlife are correct?

[Grav_Moped]

I've brought that up a couple of times -- also that it was the afterlife for other sophonts as well. It may be that it's the Vilani interpretation of the afterlife, and other sophonts may experience it differently. Also, it's still not known to be "real" to the general public, since the protagonist had an unusual life-path (well, life/death/life etc.) that allowed him to experience it repeatedly, and he did not pass that information on to others. (Which in retrospect seems odd... he did take it for granted and therefore it wasn't news worth repeating, but still.)

It's also noteworthy that psionics, even more than a century before the Psionics Suppressions campaign of 800-820, was popularly considered fringe science at best. Yes, in-universe it was "real" but it generally wasn't accepted as such.

[BRover]

I agree about the afterlife: It may well be how that person interprets the experience. Another person, of different tradition, may see something rather different.

[mike wightman]

Note that Bland encounters the 'afterlife' after the copying process.

It is my conjecture that the 'afterlife' is the universe storing the personality/memory imprint of the dead organism. There are several explanations of why this could be so but top of my list at the moment is that the entire OTU is an ancestor simulation and thus universe laws can be re-written by reality manipulation technology (see T5).

[Jason]

In chapter 14 Bland is told in the afterlife that the scrubbed Deyis II still has databanks of the Niikiik Luur and embryos of the scrubbed population stored in a vault. When Bland returns to Deyis II in chapter 24 the databanks and embryo vaults are there. So that is pretty good evidence that Bland's spirit really is interacting with other spirits and exchanging useful informstion in the afterlife.

[mike wightman]

Bland's 'spirit'?

You mean Bland's copied personality and memories than now exists solely in a wafer system is interacting with a 'spirit realm' data base?

I'll stick with a less paranormal explanation - once you have been digitised the super advanced alien data retrievel system can now interact with your 'copy' - and 'you' can interact with it...