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The Multiplex Man
Richard Jarrow was a mild and unassuming teacher who was sure that the government knew best, with its strong environmental controls on industry and its equally stringent control of education and the media. He knew that the countries of the former Eastern Block, who now claimed to have more freedom than the United States, as well as booming economies fueled by their exploitation of the resources of space, were only spreading ridiculous propaganda, and they either would soon collapse, starved by their diminishing natural resources and choked in their own pollution—or else they would attempt to steal the resources of the rest of the world, and have to be destroyed. Didn't the government say that was so?
And then his world went to hell...
400 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
8 people are currently reading
303 people want to read
About the author
James P. Hogan
114 books268 followersJames Patrick Hogan was a British science fiction author.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
November 20, 2015
I am faced with something of a dilemma in how to rate this book. On one hand, it is a science fiction thriller in which the technology of personality transfer has been accomplished. An obscure schoolteacher wakes up one day to find himself inhabiting a body that is not his own and is many hundreds of miles from home. After making his way back to his hometown he discovers that it is seven months later than his most recent memory. He also finds that he may as well forget about returning to his original body. He died six months before. The story then gets more exciting as it turns out that the body in question houses several personalities, even though only one holds consciousness at a time. Even so, the personality that happens to be conscious at any given time has access to skills and knowledge that it does not remember acquiring. All of this makes me want to give this story four, maybe even five, stars. On the other hand, the author has a political axe to grind and it is considerably at odds with my own political axe. I can't say that he blatently preaches throughout the entire story, but he does include an anti-environmentalist and pro-capitalist message wherever he can work it in. For that reason I want to give it one star. I will compromize and give it three stars.
April 30, 2015
reviews.metaphorosis.com
2 stars
Richard Jarrow, a conformist schoolteacher in the ever more rigid European American Consolidation, wakes one day to find himself in a strange place, with five months of his life missing. He has papers that show a new name, and his only lead is a woman who thinks he's her recently deceased lover. Records say he himself died months ago. Trying to make sense of the situation, he follows clues that lead ever deeper into a web of intrigue.
My exposure to James P. Hogan has been limited. I liked his Gentle Giants of Ganymede trilogy, and I thought Two Faces of Tomorrow was okay. I thought I'd expand my reading a bit with The Multiplex Man. Either it's not as good as the other books, or I simply don't enjoy Hogan as much as the younger me.
Hogan's wolrd-building premise is a simple inversion, with the West as increasingly authoritarian and directive, while the former Soviet states have become free and laissez faire. There are sizable infodumps, but it's a mildly interesting setup. Unfortunately, Hogan focuses so heavily on a libertarian message that it gets in the way of the story. Heinlein did this more smoothly, while Hogan appears to suggest that any regulation at all is a freedom-killer. In some ways it is; the whole point of rules is to limit behaviour to agreed norms. But Hogan never really suggests how his desired anarchic society would function practically; life was just better when we could freely smoke, pollute, not pay taxes, and do other fun, free stuff. It's reminiscent of Heinlein's 'citizen=armed male' formula, but without the conviction.
Although the book was written in the 1990s, it seems to carry the ballast of long-gone decades. Most of the cast are men. The text includes the line "with another soldier who gave his name as Schott, and a black called Lowe" - who is also a soldier. There's not a lot more of this, but it doesn't sit well. Probably the kind of PC nit-picking that freedom-loving libertarians despise.
The story itself, about transposition of identities and skills across bodies, is fairly well constructed, with distinct personalities among the various identities. There are portions that are weak on credibility, and there's a certain amount of 'happy coincidence'. A phrase late in the book encapsulates the problem - "All of a sudden, something inside him didn't feel right." There just isn't enough buildup for some of the key changes. Hogan does do a nice job of presenting the confusion of the key actors, and a fair job of sequencing sections of the plot in an interesting way, though Hogan fudges with some 'no one will ever know'. The climax, however, is visible a long way off, and isn't saved by satisfying final resolution. Though this is definitely soft SF, there's a little too much hand-waving about the powers of the story's science, which achieves a little more than it should.
All in all, a workmanlike SF thriller in an interesting if tired environment. It's not terrible, but there's nothing that suggests you should go out of your way to buy the book, or even to shift it higher in your reading stack. If you want to read Hogan, I suggest his Giants series instead. If you want libertarian escapism, read Heinlein.
October 15, 2021
When James P. Hogan wrote The Multiplex Man for publication in 1992, he recognized the realities of the climate crisis (even though it was not greatly believed at this point), as well as the possibility for the balkanized former Soviet Union to pull back together via a shadow movement. There is a libertarian feel to the way Hogan approaches the story. It just seems like he didn’t realize that the advocates of freedom versus big (aka “nanny state”) government could become as autocratic as they fear the big government proponents could be. In that sense, The Multiplex Man is hauntingly relevant for modern readers (at least in the U.S.A. and the euphemistically known U.K.). It even includes high-level politicians who have cut the POTUS out of the loop and reorganized elements of the government into their private projects and militia/special operations group.
The most entertaining part of this novel is the concept of capturing personality patterns and transferring them from one person to another. Could this device be used for training? Could it be used for more insidious purposes? And when a middle-school teacher who has swallowed the establishment Kool-Aid awakens in the body of a warrant-officer in the armed services who has expressed misgivings about the government, and then, in turn, that body uses abilities we are more likely to associate with James Bond or Jason Bourne, will the real personality please stand up? So, starting with a hidden identity and evolving into a secret agent episode, The Multiplex Man is pretty “multiplex” itself. But, it gets better when that identity question is resolved.
What doesn’t get better is the political preaching that takes place throughout the story. What makes it worse is that while I had some ecological concerns at the time of this novel’s publication, I also had some of the same beliefs that our pollution-multiplying technology would also provide the solutions to the ecological problems if the government would stay out of things it didn’t understand. I still see the need for government to allow innovation to explore possibilities without constraining them to what a bureaucrat may see as “safe.” Yet, the idealistic deus ex machina of technology in Hogan’s novel is almost entirely off-base. I resonate more with his later book on AIs versus humans (Two Faces of Tomorrow). I like most Hogan novels, but this one was just okay once one gets past the transferred personality conceit.
The most entertaining part of this novel is the concept of capturing personality patterns and transferring them from one person to another. Could this device be used for training? Could it be used for more insidious purposes? And when a middle-school teacher who has swallowed the establishment Kool-Aid awakens in the body of a warrant-officer in the armed services who has expressed misgivings about the government, and then, in turn, that body uses abilities we are more likely to associate with James Bond or Jason Bourne, will the real personality please stand up? So, starting with a hidden identity and evolving into a secret agent episode, The Multiplex Man is pretty “multiplex” itself. But, it gets better when that identity question is resolved.
What doesn’t get better is the political preaching that takes place throughout the story. What makes it worse is that while I had some ecological concerns at the time of this novel’s publication, I also had some of the same beliefs that our pollution-multiplying technology would also provide the solutions to the ecological problems if the government would stay out of things it didn’t understand. I still see the need for government to allow innovation to explore possibilities without constraining them to what a bureaucrat may see as “safe.” Yet, the idealistic deus ex machina of technology in Hogan’s novel is almost entirely off-base. I resonate more with his later book on AIs versus humans (Two Faces of Tomorrow). I like most Hogan novels, but this one was just okay once one gets past the transferred personality conceit.
May 7, 2017
This book was... not good. I first realized this when I read the steamy sex scene expressed as, "They kissed and fondled for awhile." Even though this was pretty early on, for some reason I tried to stick it out. Sure, the writing is amateurish, I figured. But it's a decent scifi adventure story, right?
Wrong. The plot drags along at a pace that you could still keep up with half-asleep. (I should know, I was for much of it.) The libertarian agenda is laid on so thick it's enough to make you gag--even if you like the agenda.
The best I can say about it is that it's pretty amusing in an unintentional sort of way. The last time I picked it up (a month ago at least) I laughed out loud when the main character mused to himself, "I guess lucky coincidences aren't just for cheesy action heroes!"
Wrong. The plot drags along at a pace that you could still keep up with half-asleep. (I should know, I was for much of it.) The libertarian agenda is laid on so thick it's enough to make you gag--even if you like the agenda.
The best I can say about it is that it's pretty amusing in an unintentional sort of way. The last time I picked it up (a month ago at least) I laughed out loud when the main character mused to himself, "I guess lucky coincidences aren't just for cheesy action heroes!"
January 6, 2025
This was required reading. I was told to read this so that “when the time comes, you will have a framework of reference to understand what has been done to you.”
March 25, 2020
The Consolidation tells people how few reserves we have. Travel is restricted, highway speed enforced, you need to get a license to have a baby, etc. They say the FER (the wild wild East) and the Offworlders are going to run out of resources and come begging when that happens. Richard Jarrow is a middle school teacher who fully buys the party line. Jarrow goes to his April third appointment with Dr. Valdheim, and next thing he knows he has woken up in Atlanta, it's Tuesday, and his ID says he's Maurice Gordon.
His first thought is to get back to Minneapolis and find out what happened. As Gordon he had no trouble getting a flight, but in his hometown no one recognizes him, and it's not just Tuesday, seven months have passed and Dick Jarrow died of a stroke in May.
The first half of the book follows Jarrow as he comes to realize that it's his consciousness in the body of an Army test subject. Then the narrative switches to Samuri chasing after Ashling who is the private sector genius who came up with instantly adding what someone else took years to master. The Army was going to shut down if he didn't work for them. He sees how they want to use his techniques and he wants to defect.
The first half with Jarrow was great. The Samuri portion seemed a bit contrived. Why send him to chase after Ashling when so many other agents are closer? We get an explanation of the chase. It probably seemed very clever, but I felt that police procedures seemed to be way behind the rest of the technology. The ending would have been more satisfying if there had been a prologue or a few chapters with Tony Demiro to begin the book. Our investment in Jarrow comes to an abrupt end. 4 of 5 stars, the world building was good, the premise was great, and I loved the Jarrow character.
His first thought is to get back to Minneapolis and find out what happened. As Gordon he had no trouble getting a flight, but in his hometown no one recognizes him, and it's not just Tuesday, seven months have passed and Dick Jarrow died of a stroke in May.
The first half of the book follows Jarrow as he comes to realize that it's his consciousness in the body of an Army test subject. Then the narrative switches to Samuri chasing after Ashling who is the private sector genius who came up with instantly adding what someone else took years to master. The Army was going to shut down if he didn't work for them. He sees how they want to use his techniques and he wants to defect.
The first half with Jarrow was great. The Samuri portion seemed a bit contrived. Why send him to chase after Ashling when so many other agents are closer? We get an explanation of the chase. It probably seemed very clever, but I felt that police procedures seemed to be way behind the rest of the technology. The ending would have been more satisfying if there had been a prologue or a few chapters with Tony Demiro to begin the book. Our investment in Jarrow comes to an abrupt end. 4 of 5 stars, the world building was good, the premise was great, and I loved the Jarrow character.
January 28, 2019
Hmmmm. This book....meh.
It was okay. A tad too political for me. I like my politics to be either nonfiction that is blatantly political with facts, statistics, and first hand narratives, or to be fiction that you aren't even aware is political while you are reading it. One or the other, I don't particularly enjoy the half political half fictional works all that much. Even though this one tends to follow my prejudices!
I did think it was highly amusing that even though it was published in the 1990s he pretty accurately described what would happen with the Green movement in the U.S. That was rather interesting and slightly scary. I can only say, thank goodness it hasn't gotten that bad with regulation yet, but honestly it's only a matter of time. The other thing that was amusing was the way that the mass media was essentially a fourth arm of the government and spreading only govern-mentally approved messages. That seemed rather hilarious when you look at how the mass media is nose diving right now.
The story though, was meh. I thought that the Scalzi books, which have the same personality overwriting basis in them, were much better. Probably because they didn't try to explain how it was done, it's just done. This guy had sections of pseudo-neuroscientific goobledygook designed to confuse the reader and make them thing 'Oh, it's possible after all!'. But really, it was just goobledygook. But still, not bad for a 50 year old gentleman born in the 40s to write. Interesting, worth while, but definitely not worth buying.
It was okay. A tad too political for me. I like my politics to be either nonfiction that is blatantly political with facts, statistics, and first hand narratives, or to be fiction that you aren't even aware is political while you are reading it. One or the other, I don't particularly enjoy the half political half fictional works all that much. Even though this one tends to follow my prejudices!
I did think it was highly amusing that even though it was published in the 1990s he pretty accurately described what would happen with the Green movement in the U.S. That was rather interesting and slightly scary. I can only say, thank goodness it hasn't gotten that bad with regulation yet, but honestly it's only a matter of time. The other thing that was amusing was the way that the mass media was essentially a fourth arm of the government and spreading only govern-mentally approved messages. That seemed rather hilarious when you look at how the mass media is nose diving right now.
The story though, was meh. I thought that the Scalzi books, which have the same personality overwriting basis in them, were much better. Probably because they didn't try to explain how it was done, it's just done. This guy had sections of pseudo-neuroscientific goobledygook designed to confuse the reader and make them thing 'Oh, it's possible after all!'. But really, it was just goobledygook. But still, not bad for a 50 year old gentleman born in the 40s to write. Interesting, worth while, but definitely not worth buying.
January 22, 2019
Algo lento de enganchar pero vale la pena seguir leyendo
February 17, 2020
I thought it was an okay (at least three stars) until I got to the last couple of chapters and then it got way too unbelievable. I finished it but it was a struggle.
July 2, 2025
very good
Good book. Good read. I really liked it. Hope to read more. Reading time was enjoyable. Nice story. Good job!
Good book. Good read. I really liked it. Hope to read more. Reading time was enjoyable. Nice story. Good job!
December 30, 2011
I used to love Hogan, and perhaps part of the problem with this book is that it was the book I was reading on my phone when I had nothing else available - so I read it over a period of a month and a half.
Still, it was just not believable. Fine, Americans might, conceivably, in a completely alternate universe, have been convinced to scrimp and conserve because the world's resources are finite - while letting the Eastern world go ahead and consume in a completely American manner. I might be convinced to swallow that. But then to expect me to believe Hogan's propaganda that of course there really isn't any need to conserve - because we can just spend our way out of any problems we cause, flies in the face of reality, common sense, and scientific consensus. Even if you don't think we're going to run out of oil at any time in the near future, it has to happen sometime. To assume we can hand-wave an oil-shortage out of existence by using cheap fusion energy - something that has been researched for 50 years now, and is still no closer to existence - is cheating.
It shouldn't even have been necessary to force me to try to believe all that, because none of it is really germane to the story: it's just a chance for Hogan to spout his "science will cure all ills" claptrap.
Still, it was just not believable. Fine, Americans might, conceivably, in a completely alternate universe, have been convinced to scrimp and conserve because the world's resources are finite - while letting the Eastern world go ahead and consume in a completely American manner. I might be convinced to swallow that. But then to expect me to believe Hogan's propaganda that of course there really isn't any need to conserve - because we can just spend our way out of any problems we cause, flies in the face of reality, common sense, and scientific consensus. Even if you don't think we're going to run out of oil at any time in the near future, it has to happen sometime. To assume we can hand-wave an oil-shortage out of existence by using cheap fusion energy - something that has been researched for 50 years now, and is still no closer to existence - is cheating.
It shouldn't even have been necessary to force me to try to believe all that, because none of it is really germane to the story: it's just a chance for Hogan to spout his "science will cure all ills" claptrap.
October 5, 2012
"Let's put it this way. Either I walk off the other end of this bridge tonight. Or you never get to walk off it at all."
I really enjoyed this book. The shifting viewpoints kept things interesting, and Hogan's deft switching of political views is very cleverly done indeed. Even the tone and style of writing changes noticeably by persona, the quote about the bridge would not have been uttered by the timid and conservative schoolteacher at the opening of the novel.
Sadly, not a five star read because the ending sort of let it down, if it was a little necessary to sort things out, that doesn't excuse it being a little flat. That, and the whole contrivance when the old professor reappears was hard to swallow.
Still, a worthy idea fairly well executed by an SF great, no mistake.
I really enjoyed this book. The shifting viewpoints kept things interesting, and Hogan's deft switching of political views is very cleverly done indeed. Even the tone and style of writing changes noticeably by persona, the quote about the bridge would not have been uttered by the timid and conservative schoolteacher at the opening of the novel.
Sadly, not a five star read because the ending sort of let it down, if it was a little necessary to sort things out, that doesn't excuse it being a little flat. That, and the whole contrivance when the old professor reappears was hard to swallow.
Still, a worthy idea fairly well executed by an SF great, no mistake.
May 26, 2008
Hogan's near-future world isn't as convincing as it would have been when this novel was originally published, but the novel features some ingenious character development and change that make that and his slightly pedantic tendency to preach worth working through. The only real complaint about the book I had was that the frequent flashbacks needed a header or divider of some kind so that the narrative could be picked up more smoothly.
August 3, 2012
Wow! Yet another Prometheus Award winner that I would give ten stars to if I could! This one has got it all. It takes over the title of "best mind-f*** yet" from Total Recall (per the line "that's the best mind-f*** yet"). It has a great future vision, freedom politics contrasted sharply with slavery politics, political drama, lots of action drama, and credible science fiction. I highly recommend it.
December 30, 2013
Another quick, random book that my father threw at me. It's getting a bit dated, but it was a decent thriller type story set in the near future. The biggest knock I had against this book is that many of the characters seemed a bit flimsy, leaning more towards caricature than fully realized character. The underlying story was interesting enough to keep my attention over a few days though.
July 19, 2009
James P. Hogan is primarily the author of naive but touching hard science fiction, but he writes the occasional thriller. This book is a thriller with an interesting SFnal premise. I found it gripping and enjoyable, and it holds up on rereading. Oh, and the usual Hogan themes about authoritarianism are front and center.
December 18, 2008
Amazing how antique the ideas in this book feel considering they're only from 1994. The idea of overwriting an independent personality with a construct is nothing new, but the conflict between the two within the same man is at once humorous (unintentionally) and intriguing.
July 28, 2011
This book was a bit of a disappointment. It's been many years since I have read any Hogan. I think he used to be better than this. Actually, I got this book free of the Baen site...maybe it's one of his less successful works and that is why it's free.
December 7, 2010
Clank, clank, clank. Watch the pieces fall into place.
February 13, 2011
I thought the premise of the story was very good and parts of the story were really gripping. But for me the closer I got to the end the more predictable it became and lumbering it became.
February 29, 2012
The reader has to pay strict attention while reading this book or they will get hopelessly lost.
May 1, 2015
Fair-to-middling political thriller of the near future. Loses a star because I really hate being preached at in fiction, even when I agree with the preaching.
June 12, 2016
10% plot. 90% characters explaining the plot to each other. THOROUGHLY.
September 4, 2022
Winner of the Prometheus Award for 1992.
Read
August 22, 2008The Multiplex Man by James P. Hogan (2000)
April 10, 2017
An entertaining sci-fi thriller, full of interesting ideas. The cover art (the edition with the futuristic city) did not do it justice, as the story seems to be set in the not-too-distant future.
I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars due to too many sometimes jarring plot twists, as well as slightly shallow characterizations. The latter may be partly the result of the main character actually being a composite of personalities.
On the positive side, I found it surprisingly current for a book written in the early 90s, with an almost Nineteen Eighty-Four style story of government control and the individualists who resist being fit into neat little boxes. Unlike Orwell's classic dystopia, which has little beyond giant two-way "spy" televisions as a new technology, this novel posits an advanced technology that can basically implant either specific skills and knowledge or overlay entire personalities and memories onto human brains. It is that technology, gone awry, that gives rise to the main character who is, as the title alludes too, a multiplex of people embodied at various times in a single person.
I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars due to too many sometimes jarring plot twists, as well as slightly shallow characterizations. The latter may be partly the result of the main character actually being a composite of personalities.
On the positive side, I found it surprisingly current for a book written in the early 90s, with an almost Nineteen Eighty-Four style story of government control and the individualists who resist being fit into neat little boxes. Unlike Orwell's classic dystopia, which has little beyond giant two-way "spy" televisions as a new technology, this novel posits an advanced technology that can basically implant either specific skills and knowledge or overlay entire personalities and memories onto human brains. It is that technology, gone awry, that gives rise to the main character who is, as the title alludes too, a multiplex of people embodied at various times in a single person.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews