THE GEMINI EXPERIMENT BY BRIAN PINKERTON - BOOK REVIEW

Stories that feature body-switching can always be a bit problematic. It’s very easy to fall into a situation where the swaps happen so often that it can be confusing, or the masterminds behind the swapping technology forget to setup a failsafe and they fall victim to being tricked by the new persona hidden within their friend. Brian Pinkerton’s The Gemini Experiment does a decent job dodging most of these pitfalls to create one of the better versions of the ol’ switcheroo I’ve seen.

There are many different ways to have a conscious jump from body to body. You could have someone make a wish, or have some sort of demon power, or maybe run afoul a magic carpet. In Pinkerton’s novel he’s decided to go in an interesting route, jumping your conscious into an exact copy of your body, allowing you to be you while living in a synthetic body that can live forever. And this isn’t through magic, the scientists in The Gemini Experiment have discovered a way to digitize your conscious. Is this the same person? Or is this someone brand new? We do get answers to these questions, but don’t be surprised if it nags at you throughout the story.

Our main character, Tom Nolan, seems to have the perfect life: a great job, great wife, and a great kid. The only problem? He has Lowry’s disease. Good thing for him he happens to have a friend that is a scientist participating on a top secret experiment that could not only cure him of his disease but give him a rad new robot body. Turns out this experiment is being funded by an ultra rich man that wants Tom to be a beta test for the digital transfer. If this works, the donor, his wife, and the President of the United States will all be digitized and given a new lease on life.

Of course, things quickly turn sour. First, they do a test with a death row inmate, which as you can guess doesn’t go great. He runs a muck and falls into the hands of the Russians, who have their own plans including uploading brains into giant war mechs. After that, things really go wrong, because when you play the game of switching minds nothing can ever go right.

There’s an episode of Rick & Morty where multiple Ricks and Mortys are hunting down a specific Rick and Morty. In one scene, the multiple Ricks mark their foreheads so that they can tell the “good” Ricks from the “bad” Rick. I bring this episode up because this makes sense, this is the way you’d handle dealing with duplicates of a person. The Gemini Experiment falls into the trap of having a number of characters not realize they are talking to the wrong conscious, which gets frustrating when you’d think they’d be on the lookout for something strange. Pinkerton does add an explanation to why this keeps happening. The experiment is super secret, so only a handful of people know about it. But, seriously have these guys never seen a movie where this stuff happens?

Despite this, I really did enjoy the book. Pinkerton is truly a master when it comes to action scenes. They are thrilling, fast-paced, and will leave you breathless. He never over does it, keeping us interested while not just giving us action scene after action scene. He also interjects a lot of humanity into his characters. You truly feel for Tom and his wife, cursing his friend scientist for even bringing up this experiment to him. You even feel for the criminal, knowing he just got caught up in a terrible situation. Pinkerton’s work in characterization and intense plot sucked me right in and made me cringe, cheer, and curse as things go from bad to worse.
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I have to give it to Pinkerton, he might have fallen into the trouble of generic body swapping plot issues, but damn did he make it look good and kept me hooked for the entire ride. There’s some really interesting concepts in here that will work for those looking for a fun sci-fi story or those looking for what really makes a person a person.

THE GEMINI EXPERIMENT

​In a secret lab, a team of doctors and scientists funded by a mysterious billionaire create the first human replica entirely from technology. The robot is prepared to host the digitized consciousness of Tom Nolan, a family man suffering from a terminal illness.  But when Tom’s replica escapes before the transfer can take place, he is faced with the horrors of an alter ego bent on death and destruction. When the experiment draws the attraction of spies, Tom is caught up in an international crisis with a showdown that could change the course of the world.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

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